This week we look at an insightful trait that has become more important for salespeople in today’s market.  Sales requires a certain “feel” for a situation even though all of the data is not obvious.  You could call this trait sales intuition.

Decision Making
The ability to accurately compile intuitive perceptions about a situation into a decision or action. This ability allows one to be €œintuitional€ as opposed to intellectual (requiring data and logical reasoning) in effective decision making. This capacity requires a good deal of understanding of people, the outside world and the ability to visualize the whole picture in a mental scenario.

A salesperson with strength in this trait will be comfortable making decisions on their feet without having to study a situation or requiring logical data to examine.

A weakness in this trait indicates a salesperson who is not comfortable making decisions until he/she has had sufficient time and information to analyze a situation.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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I was talking to references for one of our clients last night and the reference kept telling me the candidate was excellent at solution selling. To sum up what he was telling me - the candidate is excellent at speaking the customer’s language instead of using company jargon or convoluted questions. The candidate ran a selling process to find out what business problems the company was facing and then articulated his company’s value proposition in regards to resolving their issue.

Interestingly enough, I then caught up to an article in my RSS reader titled 5 Quick Tips for Creating Conversations Salespeople Will Use from ManageSmarter.com. The tips can help your salespeople be consistent and effective with your message while getting them further into the process with prospects.

• Avoid using your own company’s “corporate speak.”
  Many companies have developed messaging at the corporate level, which likely includes the invention of your own unique term and associated acronym. Unfortunately, that can lead to salespeople spending their valuable presentation time trying to define and explain the messaging itself and not the associated business value to your customer. Instead, try enabling salespeople to tell a story that explores business challenges and your approach to solving them. Remember, customers want to know how you solve problems (your unique approach to value). Analysts want to know what you call it (your brand category and acronym).
  
• Make it meaningful and memorable for customers.
  Two suggestions here. First, keep points brief and on target. For example, “We work toward solving three key business challenges” helps customers associate you with specific pain areas right up front. Second, use examples. This introductory presentation is a great place to leverage case study (success story) data in a more personal way. Even if you don’t/can’t use specific company names, cite situations where your company was able to address business pains in a unique and measurable way.

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Selling Power offers a quick article titled Successful Phone Interviews (the headline writer must have had the day off). I’m not aligned with all of the suggestions, but I cannot stress this one item enough:

She also says to pay close attention to candidates’ phone manners €“ especially if they’re going to be using the phone on the job. How does their voice and tone sound? Do they project energy and enthusiasm or do they ramble on, putting you to sleep? How do they answer the phone?

The key here is to talk less than the candidate. If you are talking, you are not qualifying. Paying attention to the candidate’s “manners” is important in any sale. Paying attention to their answers, drilling down for clarification and matching the pressure of your typical sales call are even more important.

We provided some helpful hints in our Process-Driven Hiring series from a couple years ago:

The key point in this step is to ensure that the call is not too easy for the applicant. The purpose is to make the applicant reveal their selling skills as they attempt to persuade you that they are the best candidate for the position. The call will be unsuccessful if you allow them to regurgitate their pre-canned interview responses. Get them off their game with your abrupt style and make sure you are the one asking the questions.

This approach can be difficult for some hiring managers or HR personnel since it runs against the grain of stereotypical hiring. Yet, sales is different so it requires a unique approach. Use unexpected questions, don’t allow them the comfort of reciting common responses, challenge them to see their strength.

Much can be gleaned from a well-crafted phone screen so don’t focus on confirming resume information. Use techniques to see the candidate in action.

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In a recent article on SHRM’s weekly Newsletter (membership required), a survey of 597 organizations found that 86% of organizations have an orientation program (14% don’t?), but most said they lacked real impact. Here are some other findings of the survey:

• 81% of the organizations turn to HR to administer new employee orientation, 23% involve multiple departments and 21% include the department in which the new employee will report.
• Orientation usually takes a day or less for about half of the employers and 26% take two to three days.
• Nearly half use employee surveys to measure the effectiveness of their orientation program, 22% don€™t track it at all, 20% measure first-year retention and 17% look at performance ratings.

Robert Half offered some tips for a successful orientation program:

• Don€™t skip the basics. Supervisors should give new employees a tour of the office, introduce them to colleagues and explain security procedures.
• Invite senior management. An appearance by an executive or other leader in the company adds credibility and weight to the orientation session. If that€™s not possible, consider a high-quality video or virtual experience.
• Keep your messages consistent. The ideas conveyed in orientation should reflect those expressed during recruitment and how the company presents itself externally.
• Have an agenda. Provide an overview of the discussion so new employees know what to expect and to signal the importance the organization places on orientation.

One area the article did not address was keeping the orientation programs relatively similar across all levels of the organization. We have encountered sales departments where orientation programs are not tightly structured. Worse yet, we have found some of the 14% of companies that have no (sales) orientation program. As the article states (emphasis mine):

The company should use the opportunity to have new employees communicate and build relationships with leaders in the organization right out of the gate. Noting that new employee orientations offer a unique opportunity to gather a new recruit€™s impressions of the marketplace and the company.

What better way to set the tone with your new employee than to spend the first day(s) with them making sure they get acclimated to your company’s culture? You have spent a lot of your time and resources in making sure you picked the best employee so show them by investing more of your time to bring them onboard properly.

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CareerJournal.com pens an article titled Mobile Workers Tie In With Hand-Held Devices.  I hope most of the information in the article is familiar to you since mobile PDA phones are more than a passing fancy.  The article reads like a state of the industry address with a couple of notable points.

First, the sheer size of this industry (my emphasis):

There are an estimated 50 million “mobile” workers in the U.S., those who have no desk or spend more than 25% of their time outside the office, according to Frost & Sullivan, a business-research and consultancy firm.

Catch that?  No desk - totally mobile.  This new format is more than a trend.  We are working on positions in multiple states and the distributed sales force (salespeople living in the territory) is our clients’ most common approach.  Obviously, this new structure requires sales managers with different skill sets.

Even the U.S. government is getting into the act:

The U.S. government also plans to connect its mobile workers to central databases through hand-held devices. Last year, the Census Bureau spent $600 million to buy 500,000 hand-held devices, equipped with technology provided by Microsoft and Harris Corp. Census employees will use the devices instead of paper forms to record data.

Being a small company, we are highly dependent upon our mobile devices to handle multiple communication channels while we are on the road.  If you do not offer such options to your salespeople, now is the time to offer them these common tools.  Your team’s efficiency will improve dramatically.

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This is from a shady-looking sales employment ad:

Now is the time to get into the fast paced sales industry. We are looking for mativated (sic) well spoken individuals with a loose tongue.

I’m speechless.

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