CareerBuilder offers up the 5 most common candidate lies in this article.  They bring up a good point in that 85% of all companies perform some type of candidate verification.  Surprisingly, candidates continue to embellish or falsify their information.

The top 5 lies:

Exaggerating Dates of Past Employment
…as many as 35 percent of all resumes include discrepancies related to previous employment

Falsifying the Degree or Credential Earned
With roughly a 20 percent discrepancy rate in information provided by candidates regarding their education qualifications, it’s important that companies understand the variety of ways applicants lie to claim unearned degrees.
Even if a candidate has earned a legitimate degree, the applicant may lie about what they majored in to enhance their qualifications for a specific job €“ claiming a degree in engineering rather than in history, for example.

Inflating Salary History or Title Held
It is a best practice to always contact previous employers to confirm job titles. Obtaining salary history is also an important step. In some cases, employers will provide it. However, other times, they will not, and the hiring company can instead ask a candidate to provide a W-2 form to confirm salary.

Concealing a Criminal Record
Roughly 11 percent of all background checks return with a criminal record. The most common way candidates with a criminal background attempt to avoid detection is by changing details, such as their date of birth or spelling of their name.

Hiding a Drug Habit
48 percent of Americans admit to having used an illegal drug in their lifetime, so conducting a proper drug test should be a standard step in any screening program.

If you're new here and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Comments(0)

Most people are, according to a Workforce Management Quick Take titled Organizations Look to Get Personal in €™07. Statistics from the short article (my emphasis):

Organizations in 2007 will increasingly turn to personality tests when recruiting and hiring, according to Birkman International in Houston. Birkman, citing research from New Orleans-based Rocket-Hire Inc. (a Dear Workforce contributor), says 65 percent of companies used them in 2006, up from 34 percent a year earlier.

That is a noticeable increase in one year. If you are not using assessments today in your hiring process, we can help.

Comments(0)

Here is an urban legend we encounter frequently in our sales hiring activities - customers don’t walk with the salesperson.  What I mean is customers rarely follow a salesperson to a new company.  If the salesperson quits one company and goes to a competitor, it is a rare occurrence in which the customers move their business with the salesperson.

Yes, everyone can provide an example of when it happened, but we deal with many salespeople in many industries and it just is not common.  Sales candidates, on the other hand, will go out of their way claiming that they can bring the business with them.

Unfortunately, many companies who do not have a strong sales hiring process will get caught up in the possibility of gaining new business for little investment.  This blinding desire often masks the obvious weaknesses the sales candidate possesses.  Beware of this pitfall!

The best approach is to assess sales candidates based on their abilities, aptitudes and performance within your hiring process.  The strongest candidate may not be directly from your industry which will not be surprising if your run a talent-based process.  And if your final candidate is from your industry and brings a customer or two with them - terrific, they are the exception not the rule.  Just don’t make your hiring decision based on that hope.

Comments(2)

I had an revealing discussion with one of our client’s this morning.  This gentleman is the President of his company and we are running our process for a second sales position (selected 1 salesperson already).  The conversation centered on the problems he had with a previous salesperson who has since been let go.

This salesperson was completely reactive - he possessed no selling system whatsoever.  His process was to take a call and fish for a request for proposal (RFP).  He would respond to the RFP and hopefully get the business.  Sad, but that was his process.

The President was hesitant to let this sales guy go because he thought their RFP work would decrease.  They fired the guy and the RFP rate has continued unabated.

I asked the President what is the pattern for winning the RFP process.  His response - “We get the business when we are the lowest price.”  He followed that up by stating that it is obvious these companies do not see the value that the company brings to the marketplace.  This statement is absolutely correct.  The previous salesperson could not sell their unique value.

Our client has a unique finishing process that has tremendous advantages over the competing processes in the market.  Unfortunately, it is a rather unknown process and it costs more “per piece” to use it.  The long-term cost of the process blows away the competition.  But here is the rub - if a salesperson gets caught up in the RFP price matrix, they are toast.

When someone from a large company is making a purchasing decision and they do not understand your value, they will always revert to a price decision.  Their reasoning is simple, it is highly unlikely that they will be fired for choosing a lower-priced option that fails.  They can simply state they chose the best solution according to their price matrix.

Pathetic.  And a real issue for salespeople if they are asked to sell a product or service that is not the low-priced option in the market.  The difficulty is that value is not solely determined by price.  Price is simply a component of the value.  When companies cannot determine the unique offering you bring to the market, they simply drop your solution into an Excel spreadsheet.

Comments(0)

ManageSmarter.com offers a well-timed article titled Top Ten Ways to Kill a Deal. I say this is timely in that we have been dealing with multiple employment offers over the past week. These discussions are similar to salespeople closing a deal and, in fact, we like to observe the salesperson’s technique in handling these topics.

The first point in the article is the most critical to success in negotiating:

1. Don’t show emotions
Emotion€”such as neediness, desperation, or excitement€”are immediate turn-offs. Keep your body language and style of speaking emotionally neutral. Prepare your state of mind ahead of time. Repeat the mantra, “I don’t need this, I don’t need this,” until you believe it.

Nothing is more important to successfully closing a deal than maintaining emotional detachment to the deal. An emotional salesperson tends to lose objectivity which leads to them abandoning their selling approach. It has been my observation that salespeople who reach this point lock in on quickly closing the deal at the expense of seeing the long-term implications of the deal.

The best negotiators I have seen have the ability to walk away from the deal as this author suggests. The threat of not doing business with you is the buyer’s strongest tool. A salesperson who becomes emotional cannot negate this silent possibility.

Another related suggestion:

7. Don’t try to be friends.
The person sitting across the negotiating table from you is a respected opponent. Thinking about a long-term relationship or dwelling on whether or not he likes you is certain to cloud your decisions and disrupt your emotional neutrality. This keeps you from being in the present moment and from focusing, observing and collecting information.

One of the myths of selling that persists is the belief that the prospect must be your friend to purchase from a salesperson. Yes, there must be some rapport-building (dependent upon the sales cycle), but friendship is not a prerequisite to closing.

The reason this myth is so damaging is that salespeople cannot separate their emotions from their role. Sales is a position racked with rejection. A baseball player with a .300 career batting average can go to the Hall of Fame, but they still created an out 7 out of 10 times. Sales is similar to this analogy in that even successful salespeople face more rejection than success. If the salesperson ties their own self-worth to the suspect’s reaction to their approach, they will burn out quickly.

As an aside, this principle is the primary reason why so few people are successful at selling.

Comments(0)

According to Forbes.com’s article Near The Head Of The Salary Class, one of the “surprising” 6 figure jobs is that of a sales representative.  Surprising?  As most of you know, a strong salesperson can easily make 6 figures in most industries.  The main point regarding sales (and many other positions) is that you have to pay your dues.

Nonetheless, Forbes listed this information in their slide show regarding the sales rep position:

Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products

Sell goods, for wholesalers or manufacturers, to businesses or groups of individuals. Work requires substantial knowledge of items sold.

Top 10% Wage: $101,030
Median Wage: $49,610
Total No. Of Jobs: 1,488,990

Best-Paying Industry: Other financial investment activities

Top-Paying Metro: Danbury, Ct.

I am surprised that Danbury is the top metro.  I’ve been there a few times but I had no idea.

Comments(0)

As a continuation of my post from earlier this morning, I came across another Selling Power article that complements the point about the importance of asking the right questions.  The Sales Intelligence Imperative provides detailed statistics regarding the point at which many sales stall.  Interestingly enough, the researchers found that prospects were dropping out at a surprising time:

New research from CSO Insights shows an €œalarming erosion€ in sales reps€™ ability to move the sale forward from that initial conversation. Specifically, 57.6 percent of companies in 2005 said more than half of their initial conversations progressed further into the sell cycle.

There will always be salespeople who approach the wrong prospects due to a lack of prequalifying.  Some salespeople prefer any call instead of no call.

CSO managing partners Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer say the reason companies are struggling to move prospects past initial conversations is that today€™s ultra-informed prospects want reps to demonstrate a value-add beyond product knowledge during the initial meeting. When a rep can€™t do this, prospects shun further meetings.

That is exactly correct.  We have completed sales opportunity post-mortems for our clients and found this lack of value-add to be the top reason an opportunity is terminated before moving through the selling system.

Prospects can research your product or service through the web at a level that has not existed in days past.  Heck, I remember thumbing through old Thomas Registers to find information about manufacturing companies.  In those days, a salesperson spent much of their time explaining their product or service offering and that was a perceived value.

Today, those types of salespeople see “alarming erosion” in their forecasts.

(and my apologies for the title of this post - I simply have a weakness for that old saying)

Comments(0)

Simple thought here for anyone who hires or manages salespeople.  We always recommend reimbursing outside salespeople through mileage as opposed to a monthly allowance. 

Simple psychology here:

Allowance Reimbursement - you are paying the salesperson a set amount of money every month regardless of their travels.  Now the salesperson may look at travel as an expense the dilutes their personal profit margin.  They make more money by traveling less which is anathema to selling.  Yes, it is good to encourage them to be frugal in their travel so they don’t go on a shake-and-howdy bender - better to qualify prospects thoroughly before scheduling a visit. 

I don’t like the subtle reinforcement of limiting their travel (and thereby their prospect visits) in order for them to pocket more money.

Mileage Reimbursement - you are paying the salesperson for every mile they drive.  If they drive more (hopefully visit more prospects and customers), you pay them more.  Yes, they can game the system, but it is simple to verify where the salesperson has been if needed.

I like the subtle reinforcement of encouraging them to see more prospects.

I could be wrong but these are the strong points that resonate with me when we are helping our clients craft a sales compensation plan.  Still, we have clients who prefer the allowance approach.

Comments(1)

Selling Power provides an excellent article regarding a sales ability that is often overlooked - The Art of Asking Great Questions.  Listening is an important sales skill that leads to qualifying success.  But as the article points out, listening ability it not worth much if you cannot ask the right question.

You can€™t simply walk in a prospect€™s door and say, €œWhat are the issues you are struggling with?€ or €œWhat keeps you up at night?€ Today, you€™d be jettisoned out of the office by savvy executives who demand more researched, intelligent, and thought-provoking questions.

This approach is true no matter what you sell.  The ability to ask good questions comes from good preparation and research.  The days of “learning” about a prospect’s business in person are long gone.  Prospects expect salespeople to have a general understanding of their current needs before the initial meeting (sometimes even before the initial approach or call).

This ability is quite evident when sourcing salespeople too.  Some candidates respond to an ad yet do not recall any specifics from the ad.  When asked about their fit to the position, they often regurgitate common talking points or simply state they do not remember the ad . . . at all.  Red flag.

My favorite wisdom from this short article is found in point #3:

Don€™t assume anything. Don€™t assume you know what€™s important to customers. Even if you€™re right, you still need to provoke thought to make the sale. Witness what happened at IBM. Years ago, the company found new sales reps were growing their business for about 20 months and then they€™d plateau. In examining the problem, managers discovered that after 20 months, reps had so much product knowledge and customer experience, they could walk into an account and immediately tell the customer what would solve their problems. €œThey could diagnose a problem quickly, but they didn€™t give the customer a chance to talk,€ says Acuff. So even though their diagnoses were spot-on, they weren€™t closing sales. The lesson: even if you€™ve seen it all before, it€™s still critical to ask the questions.

One axiom we always live by is that prospects buy for their reasons, not ours.

Comments(0)

Ok, as a blogger I find this Yahoo story downright insulting.  From ‘Most Hated Internet Words’ Revealed:

“Blog”, “netiquette”, “cookie” and “wiki” have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published Thursday.

Topping the list of words most likely to make web users “wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard” was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system.

“Blogosphere”, the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; “blog” itself was third; “netiquette”, or Internet etiquette, came fourth and “blook”, a book based on a blog, was fifth.

They have got to be kidding.  Who did they poll for these results?  I have to admit that I have never heard the terms “folksonomy” or “blook” and I may be able to support those nominations, but “blog” . . . please.  I have suspect my mother may have been polled in this survey.  Or the Red Bird.

On a grander scale, I would vote “synergy” as the worst business word.  My apologies to any synergists who are insulted by my commentary.

Comments(0)