We’ll keep our baseball theme going today by referencing a well-crafted post from Dave Kurlan – Baseball and Sales Management by the Numbers. He develops a good analogy between how a manager’s style affects his starting pitchers’ stats (ERA) and how different situational factors affect a salesperson’s revenue totals. Towards the end, you get the fastball right down the middle of the plate (my emphasis):

Turning to sales, there are a number of statistics that are equally difficult to equate with performance, the most obvious being revenue. Many salespeople, considered top producers by their companies, top the charts for revenue but don’t perform in such a manner as to justify the attention, rewards or commissions that they earn. They may have inherited their accounts, built them up over decades, or have the best territory but if you removed those accounts and directed them to go out and sell, many of them would fall flat on their faces.

Conversely, some salespeople who don’t appear at the top of their company’s charts because they are new, don’t have the best territories or are starting territories from scratch, may be great performers, doing all the right things on a daily basis, but don’t get the recognition they deserve.

We’ve seen this inversion in spades often when we first start working with a client. Many times a top performer (not necessarily the top performer) has achieved their status by owning the best territory, longest tenure or the largest, locked-in account.

The unstated implication in Kurlan’s post is that a revenue metric is not the most accurate for determining your most skilled/talented salesperson. That being the case, how can you benchmark top sales performers? If revenue is your metric for selecting the benchmark participants that establish the baseline, you may be sullying your results.

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Yogi Berra once said, “Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.” Sales slumps are a fact of sales management life. I personally think most sales slumps occur because salespeople get complacent and out of the good behaviors that lead to closed deals. As a sales manager, it is important to stay engaged with your salespeople and hold them accountable for the activities that keep the pipeline fresh, not stagnant.

If a slump does befall one of your salespeople, ManageSmarter.com offers a worthwhile article on this topic – How to Get Out of a Selling Rut and Regain Your Selling Spark. The second point in the article is excellent (emphasis mine):

Sales Mindset 2: The Heart Is the Wellspring of Sales Confidence.
Salespeople who are in a rut don’t need a lobotomy€”they need a heart transplant! Why do I say this? Because the very issues that keep buyers from trusting us as salespeople are not logic-based, they are emotion-based. Whether you realize it or not, customers make purchasing decisions based first on their emotions, and then on other factors, such as price and quality.

Your ability to interact with your buyer in a confident manner answers the buyer’s basic, emotion-based doubts and questions about you: Can I trust you? Do you care about me and my business? Do you know what you’re doing?

The dilemma most salespeople share is giving too much power to the buyer. Two common reasons sellers allow this to happen are: 1. They haven’t earned the right to do business, and 2. They lack confidence. Both of these are closely linked to how you feel as a seller, and how the customer feels about you.

How true. Successful selling requires the proper balance of confidence and humility. Is there anything more annoying than a cocky, smug salesperson? Anyway, we have seen once successful salespeople spin themselves down into a rut due to lost confidence. As a manager, it is imperative that you know your salesperson’s style and motivation to properly guide them out of their slump.

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Inc.com reports on a Korn/Ferry survey in Most Employees Believe They Can Outperform Their Bosses. I don’t think the results are all that surprising:

Seventy-three percent of executive-level employees believe they would do a better job than their current boss, according to a new survey.
…

While a majority of executives admitted they would like to be at the top of the ladder, few indicated that they were actually dissatisfied with their boss. In fact, 42 percent of respondents rated their boss’s performance as either “excellent” or “above average,” while an additional 23 percent rated their boss as “average.” Only 11 percent of respondents rated their boss’s performance as “poor.”

I suspect these results are fairly consistent every year. I know I have been in positions where I was positive I could outperform my boss (whether that belief was accurate or not is a different story).

The article does contain one very important piece of advice (my emphasis):

For bosses, the survey results may serve an indication that employees feel they aren’t being utilized to their full potential, according to Griesedieck. “It’s really about recognition, and feeling like the boss is doing something to make sure you are developing in your job,” he said.

That is one of the keys to retaining strong employees. In our day-to-day sourcing activities, we always ask candidates why they are looking for a new opportunity. The vast majority of answers involves some form of desiring a more challenging position. Granted, candidates often use this statement as a standard answer. However, when you drill down on the topic, you do find that most of the candidates do have some variation of that desire.

If you have strong employees you wish to retain, make sure you are keeping the communication channels open and are career-pathing them up to the next level. If you ignore this approach, you put your top performers at risk to an eager employment market.

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Steven Rothberg at CollegeRecruiter.com knows about Gen Y hiring and managing so it is worth listening to him when he expounds on this topic. His post – Three Myths About Gen Y Employees – debunks 3 common myths about Gen Y. I have to admit, I believed all 3 of the myths . . . I don’t any more. Just to give you a taste:

Gen Y’ers are disloyal.

Myth. They’re loyal but not blindly loyal as were their Baby Boomer parents when their parents were in the twenties. Gen Y’ers are loyal but expect to be fairly compensated for the work they put in. If employers aren’t willing to be loyal to their Gen Y employees, then that lack of loyalty will be returned.

Read the whole thing.

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From CNNMoney.com’s They work harder for the money:

The International Labor Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency, conducted a study of more than 50 countries and found that 22 percent of the total workforce surveyed (614.2 million people) worked more than 48 hours a week, an amount the ILO defines as excessive.

Among the developed nations covered in the report, ILO found that the countries with the highest percentage of workers putting in a longer than 48-hour workweek are:

• Japan: 39.3%
• United Kingdom: 25.7%
• Israel: 25.5%
• New Zealand: 23.6%
• Australia: 20.4%
• Switzerland: 19.2%
• United States: 18.1%

First off, it is a UN agency so that must be considered. I must admit I was surprised by some of the countries on this list.

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Toby Dayton at Diggings has a remarkable study regarding regional newspapers and their use of online employment ads in conjunction with printed employment ads.  I posted earlier this week that I do not understand why some hiring companies continue to view the newspaper as the top option for ad placement.  It isn’t.  Online employment ads continue to expand while newspaper circulations continue to decline.

Here are the results from Toby’s study (my emphasis):

…we were surprised at how ineffective the dailies were in cross-selling print and online postings to their employer advertisers. Across all 6 categories, the average percentage of print ads that also appeared on their respective daily paper€™s web site was 62%, with a specific breakdown for each paper as follows:

71% – Minneapolis Star Tribune

70% – Omaha World Herald

67% – Fargo Forum

62% – Wichita Eagle

60% – Milwaukee Journal

60% – Sioux Falls Argus Leader

58% – St. Cloud Times

52% – Des Moines Register

I guess we can be proud of our ridiculous local paper for leading this motley crew.  The percentage seems inverted – I would expect a “modern” newspaper would default to placing ads online and then cross-selling down to the printed paper.  Not so with these Luddites.

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I am catching up on old email newsletters and came across a very interesting read from Penny Freymiller at MinnesotaJobs.com regarding cell phones. I thought these were great tips:

1. The Emergency Number worldwide is 112. Apparently even if you are out of your coverage area or your keypad is locked you can dial 112 and it will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you.
2. Imagine your cell battery is very low, by pressing *3370# your cell will restart with reserve power and will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get recharged when you go to charge your cell phone the next time.
3. If your cell phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them your serial number and they will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. To find out your serial number dial * # 0 6 # and your number will appear on the screen.
4. Save your money by dialing 1-800-373-3411 or 800 FREE 411 when you need a number instead of incurring the dollar or two that you may get charged for calling 411.

Kudos to Peggy for sending this information out.

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This text is from an online ad to assist job seekers in their quest (my emphasis):

—I am able to get job interviews anywhere I want. This is key because once you get the interview, you can get the job

— I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO!!!!!! I can school you on behavioral interviewing. Also, I can provide a background check for you– so you know what your potential employer will see.

I have had MANY interviews and job OFFERS (entry level and mid level) from some of the most hard to get into firms in the Twin Cities…

I can also show you how to use, but not really “use” job placement firms.

Nice, isn’t it? These types of services are the reason why it is most important to run a hiring process that smokes out the pretenders. Do not rely upon the face-to-face interview and your gut to make a hiring decision or you may fall prey to a well-coached candidate.

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Inc.com offers a short article titled Employers Focus on Worker Retention. The takeaway graphs (emphasis mine):

Small businesses are focusing more resources on employee-retention plans, rather than recruiting efforts or new benefits policies, a recent survey found.

Of 241 small-business executives surveyed nationwide, 21 percent said they have expanded training and professional development to boost employee retention, while 80 percent said they considered their salaries “as competitive” or even “more competitive” than larger competitors, according to Employco, a Westmont, Ill.-based business services firm.

Salary is a natural point in which it compete with larger companies. Most small companies are not constrained by salary slotting for specific positions as is the case in large companies. Paying more in sales is always a good retention strategy. The key is to ensure that you are paying for the right salesperson.

I would offer that sales hiring in small companies is more mission critical than in larger companies. The reason being that a bad sales hire at a small company can jeopardize the entire company. A bad sales hire in a large company can survive under the radar for some time before being discovered (unfortunately we have seen this phenomenon on numerous occasions).

In any sized company, lost opportunities are the largest risk with the least amount of measurability. One bad sales hire can cost a company far more than they will ever fully know.

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SellingPower.com has released their monthly sales management newsletter which is usually filled with insightful articles. How Long Are Ya€™ Gonna€™ Be New Here? is a client study on one company’s efforts to shorten their sales ramp time.

One of the universal problems all sales managers face is getting new hires up to speed quickly. It€™s simple math: the longer it takes for a rep to learn the €œins and outs€ of your company, your product, and your sales process, the longer it will take him to stop dragging down the average performance of your sales team and start producing meaningful results.

Another universal problem is sales managers hiring salespeople with whom they are unfamiliar. A new salesperson from outside of the company brings a unique skill set, motivation pattern and natural aptitude. The fastest method for learning these traits is to assess sales candidates before you hire them. Not only do you get an objective view of their abilities, you have the basis for a sales development plan to expedite their on-ramping time frame.

In regards to this article, the sales manager took the correct steps to accelerate the on-ramping of new sales hires:

First, he formalized his sales process. Aethon, like many companies, had a €œgut-feel, informal process€ that always worked for them, but it wasn€™t formalized anywhere, says Saman Haqqi, VP Marketing for Landslide, the company that worked with Aethon on this project. If you want new hires to catch on quickly, they need documentation showing each step of the sales process.

This step is often overlooked. Unfortunately, “gut-feel, informal process” describes many of the sales processes we encounter when first working with our clients. A sales process should not be cast in stone since each salesperson has his or her own style. But the absence of any sales process leads to confusion about where prospects are in the sales cycle. This confusion leads to unreliable forecasts. Unreliable forecasts lead to revenue surprises (usually of the negative variety).

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