I am going to chime in here a bit on the Velvet Hammer’s post from below regarding the 1 week window for making offers to candidates. Last week, Selling Power had an excellent article in their newsletter that contained some great tips. Dan Miller, vice president of Talent Acquisition and Retention at Monster.com made this smart suggestion (my emphasis):

“Don’t just talk about the base salary; talk about the ability the candidates will have to achieve the upside,” says Miller. “Candidates may take a lower offer on the base salary if they feel that they have the tools and opportunities to exceed quota. If you’re trying to build a world-class sales organization, you need to sell growth as a fabric of the culture. Enthusiasm and energy has to come through when you position the job offer.”

We look at things with a sales focus in mind. If you have a sales candidate that is looking for a large base salary or a guarantee, ask yourself why? Do they believe you have accurately portrayed your sales cycle, quota and value proposition?

Sales is the one area in a company where there are no guarantees. There is risk in that if you don’t close deals, you won’t make as much money. Yet the reward has tremendous upside in a large commission check. If a candidate is pushing for a guarantee, you need to address that topic quickly – why is the candidate asking for the guarantee? If it is a reasonable response, I would follow it up by asking what they are willing to give up in exchange for it.

Here are the things that the article suggested the offer letter should include. They are not in any specific order and I have added my take to some of the items.

• Position and job description – For sales I would recommend that you lay out your expectations and include milestones for the first 90-180 days and their first year’s sales quota.
• Location and working hours
• Base salary – You must include your commission schedule also. I would even recommend that you include a spreadsheet of the expected commission according to their quota. One other critical item – you must define when the commission is earned (at billing, at shipping, at payment received).
• Benefits – include a copy of you benefits statement. This topic has become a very important area for any new hire due to the escalating costs of healthcare. Be as specific as possible – who is the provider, when are they eligible for the benefit, how much it will cost, etc.
• Start date
• Information, documents that are needed on the first day of work
• Contingencies (reference check, start date) – If you tender the offer prior to references and a background check, make sure that the offer is contingent upon satisfactory completion of these steps.
• Last, include a date by which the applicant must respond to your job offer so you can move on to the next candidate if he or she doesn’t accept. As the Hammer always says, “It never takes them longer to say YES.” Often if they can’t give you an answer within 48 hours, they are using your offer to get a better deal with their present employer or leveraging your offer against another offer.

Comments(1)

We don’t work in the international hiring arena so this may be old news to some of you. I just read the latest Herman Group enewsletter regarding the Global War for Talent (sorry, no link). Apparently productivity is a real problem overseas (emphasis mine):

In some countries, notably Mexico and China, the productivity simply isn€™t there. According to fellow futurist Edward Gordon, €œthe productivity of China€™s workers is only 14 percent of their United States counterparts.€ When Joyce spoke at the first Human Capital Conference in Japan, back in 2000, the VP HR for Intel Asia complained that his productivity was one-third that of their US operations.

…

Advancing technologies address some of these deficits, but they only increase the demand for more highly skilled workers—in short supply. Offshore, though we find the schools in India, Germany, and elsewhere doing better at job-preparation, the training is insufficient to meet the increasing demand.

I have always expected technology to offset the short supply of skilled employees. Perhaps that is an overestimation?

Comments(0)

Many salespeople choke on money discussions when qualifying price with prospects.  The easy move is to simply discount the price, but this is a slippery slope.  The inherent perception of straight discounting is that your product or service is over priced to start.  This perception metastasizes into a consistent challenging of any and all future prices.

JustSell.com offers a couple of excellent points in their current newsletter to counteract this desire to discount:

Here are the hard-dollar points to better negotiating…

1. Remember that negotiation success depends more on the work you do early in the sales process than on the negotiation moment itself. It’s all about the perceived value of your offering and the buying urgency you create with your prospect. The stronger the perceived value and urgency by your prospect, the better. Great front work (asking open-ended questions, delivering key benefit statements, responding to objections appropriately, etc.) combined with the delivery of strong value/ urgency statements will further strengthen your and your team’s negotiating position.
2. Be prepared for the inevitable discount inquiry. Preparation feeds confidence. Always respond by implying that a discount is likely not possible and/ or if it is, it will mean the prospect will need to give up an added feature or make a larger buying commitment for you to €œdo something on the price.” By itself, avoiding the inclination to immediately jump to a discounted price can literally translate into thousands, if not tens of thousands, of extra dollars for you and your company every year.

Those are two points every salesperson can use in any negotiation.  Clearly there are going to be times to adjust prices, but watch out for salespeople who have developed a serial discounting pattern.

One point to note is that a salesperson who is uncomfortable discussing money stands out in a hiring process.  This weakness is not easily hidden so it is imperative to ask all sales candidates about their top customers and the pricing strategies they used when closing them.

Comments(0)

There is a subtle psychology to working with sales candidates in a hiring process when you get to the offer stage. The ideal time frame for an offer is approximately one week after the final interview. This 1 week window provides enough time for both sides to contemplate the position and the salesperson’s fit to it.

Now understand, I’m talking about a hiring process where a phone screen, assessment and multiple interviews have occurred. This candidate has been fully vetted and found to be a strong fit to the position’s requirements.

Unfortunately, we have seen a couple of clients work past this ideal window into an extended time period after the final interview. This delay has led to more difficult negotiations with the candidates whom have taken more demanding positions.

Here’s what happens when you extend this offer window:

Candidate Doubt
The candidate may start to think they are not the right fit for the position since all the momentum of the hiring process reaches a climax and then stalls. Most of us have experienced this doubt. The process goes well and an offer is expected yet a week goes by with nothing.

A strong sales candidate typically follows up to qualify the time frame. Often, they receive an ambiguous response. Since candidates are typically adapting to a highly compliant nature, they won’t push too hard on qualifying this information. And yet the wait can continue for another week or worse.

A secondary doubt can develop in which the candidate now starts questioning the company’s bureaucracy. If it takes this long to make a hiring decision, what is going to happen when I am closing a large new prospect? Can the company support my skills? These are legitimate questions that creep into the candidate’s decision process.

Candidate Confidence
The other negative consequence is you create an overly confident candidate. The candidate knows they did well in the hiring process and now they are gaining confidence that they are the only option. Why wouldn’t they think this? It has been weeks since the interview and now a negotiation is being initiated.

An overconfident candidate can be problematic in that they greatly overestimate their value in the negotiation. This is never good. Their thought that they are the only option may or may not be accurate, but it doesn’t matter. Their perception of scarcity of viable candidates drives their desires.

If you contact them within the 1 week window, the top candidate must consider the fact that other candidates are still available. The interviews were recent enough that other candidates are vying for the opportunity. If the top candidate gets too confident, the hiring company may enter into negotiations with the secondary candidate. This is valuable leverage in a negotiation.

There is always the possibility to successfully hire a new salesperson outside of this window and we have been successful at it in the past. However, this time frame is ideal for adding a highly skilled, successful salesperson to your existing team.

Comments(1)