I just came across an ad this morning for a sales director that started this way: As a Business Development Director with Idea Information Security, you will enjoy a healthy base salary… The ad is quite long and covers more topics than needed, but the opening line is a bit of a concern. Hiring salespeople who are money-driven is a wise approach (though there are mitigating factors in that approach). The issue with the opening line is that it sounds like a reward for winning the interview process. This point is subtle, but we have run into it in the past. We prefer to list base salary amounts in the… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling With Style
We’ll close the week with an article from ManageSmarter.com titled Building Client Relationships: Use Sales Psychology to Create More Lifetime Clients. The thrust of the article is how to use DISC styles when selling. This tool is one of four assessments we incorporate into our hiring process. The author is correct – knowing your prospect or customer’s style should be part of any saalesperson’s repetoire. This isn’t the Jedi mind trick but rather a focus on clear communication. If a sales rep doesn’t know how to sell, understanding a prospect’s preferred style will only make the salesperson clearer in their failure. However, an effective salesperson who learns and uses the… Read More
Continue ReadingHow Responsive Is Your Company?
Here is a fascinating survey regarding customer service from large companies. The article is from ManageSmarter.com – Return to Sender: Responding to Customers. I think you will find the format quite clever: Every year, our organization conducts a customer service survey by sending the following one-sentence e-mail to our list of respected and admired companies: What is your corporate policy regarding the turnaround time for e-mails addressed to customer service? The subject of the e-mail is “Customer Service.” The goal of the research is to see who actually answers the question, which is different that simply responding and how long it takes them. The results: Here are highlights from this… Read More
Continue ReadingTips To Retain Employees
Retention is on everyone’s mind with the job-hopping world we now live in. I have to admit, if we see a candidate who has been locked in with a company for 10+ years, we start to wonder about their overall development. Today Kevin Wheeler offers an excellent article on the ERE website that deals with strategies to implement to improve employee retention. Money Won’t Hold Them starts with a quick history lesson on how we got here: But somewhere in the early 1980s, things began to change. The first crack came with the advent of the 401(k) and (b) plans that freed employees from the corporate retirement programs. The 401… Read More
Continue ReadingRaises For Results
This CareerJournal.com article can only be categorized as good news – More Employers Are Basing Raises, Bonuses on Results. Of course, none of this is surprising for salespeople since the vast majority are compensated based on their successful selling. For other positions, this may be a bit of a surprise: Employers have turned to tying pay to performance to shore up costs and to try to retain their best workers. “There is a limited amount of money that people have, and they are trying to get a better return on those compensation dollars,” says Steve Gross, Mercer’s global-reward practice leader. I am a passionate proponent of merit-based pay structures and… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Accountability For Others
We continue this week with another mission-critical sales manager trait. This measurement reveals a manager’s ability to take responsibility without using excuses for a lack of team peformance. Accountability For OthersThe capacity of a sales manager to take responsibility for the consequences of the actions of those under their management. This trait encompasses taking responsibility for the decisions and actions of subordinates and not shifting focus on blame or poor performance back onto them, or somewhere else. This trait derived from an internal responsibility and accountability to one€™s self as a manager. This internal willingness is to accept responsibility associated with being in a position of management. It involves understanding that it… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen To Trust Your Intuition
Yesterday I posted on a quick story regarding owners who make hiring decisions based on their gut feeling. I want to follow it up today by clarifying this approach. The article simply states that the owners made a yes or no hiring decision based on a gut feeling. It does not state what they did up until their decision and this is the point I want to make. Unfortunately, many hiring managers run down the same tired path – post an ad (the job description), sort the resume responses, interview the “yes-pile” people, follow their gut on the decision. Then the bad hire gets through and they attempt to revisit… Read More
Continue ReadingWarm Chair Attrition
The above term is from The Herman Group’s weekly newsletter (no link but their website is www.herman.net). I love that phrase – it is quite descriptive. Here is the excerpt that caught my attention: Fueled by the publicity frenzy the press is enjoying, the current volatility in world financial markets is affecting many people at all levels of our societies. From the employees’ point of view, this uncertainty engenders insecurity. What will happen to my company? Will it be in business? Will I have a job? The reaction is that they continue “corporate cocooning”, staying in the safety and sanctuary of their corporate jobs, despite their deep dissatisfaction. A number… Read More
Continue ReadingAds That Appeal
The Twin Cites are a hotbed for medical sales positions so we see many sales ads up here. One of these ads caught my eye this morning for this bit of clever writing: …what we do makes a statement about who we are. We are driven by scientific excellence and a commitment to make a difference in the quality of people€™s lives. We believe that investment in and commitment to our employees is key to our success and the achievement of our mission. I use the word clever in the best possible sense. We have worked with medical companies in the past in evaluating their sales teams. Our work has… Read More
Continue ReadingHiring Via "Gut Feeling"
If ever you wondered why hiring is such a gamble, feast your eyes on these 4 paragraphs from Inc.com’s Survey: Hiring Often Based on “Gut Feeling”: Most small-business owners hire employees based on likeability, rather than qualifications, according to a recent survey. In a survey of 500 small businesses nationwide conducted by The Price Group, a Texas-based marketing firm, 90 percent of owners said they decide whether or not to hire job applicants based on a gut feeling. Many reported having no formal hiring assessment process. The reason is that most small employers find hiring assessments too costly, according to Bette Price, president of The Price Group. “Unfortunately, they fail… Read More
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