Allow me to indulge myself - I just read a fun, short post from Inc.com titled Spam, Where Art Thou?  The author has some highly entertaining metaphors (and similes) in the post regarding her company’s new high-octane spam filter:

This new filter, by contrast, is very efficient; cleansing my inbox of undesirables and dumping them all in spam ghetto, from whence I receive reports several times a week. Occasionally I find something like my CEO’s note has become accidentally trapped, and I release it like a dolphin from tuna nets. Generally, though, I just scan the subject lines. The sheer volume of coarse come-ons, unleavened by less-provocative missives from friends and business contacts, makes me mildly queasy. It’s a bit like tugging a hair clog from the shower drain at the end of the week.

I confess I miss my spam. I like to ease into my work day by sitting down at the PC and whacking away a few low-hanging fruit. Deleting messages titled “Re: Your pharmacy order #390842083;” “Your assistance is needed;” or, perhaps most provocatively, “S&WE&2789ueruu” took only a few seconds and required virtually no brainpower. Yet I felt as though I was accomplishing something: sweeping clean the stoop of my day.

That is the way to start a Monday.

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I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard an ad for a company that mentioned their website.  This company doesn’t sell anything over the web - this was simply a corporate website.  Here is what caught my ear in the ad:

“Our website is available 24×7.”

We are not professional marketers here at Select Metrix, but I’m not sure that is a strong value proposition.

In case it is, I am here to proudly announce that The Hire Sense is available 24×7.

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When sourcing and phone screening, we tend to come across salespeople who have been laid off from a previous position.  Layoffs are obviously a common occurrence in business, but they are problematic in sales.

Most companies do not lay off salespeople who are closing profitable business. 

Granted, some companies view salespeople as an expense and assume the customer relationship will remain - big mistake.  Some smaller companies are family owned and keep the family members employed as the business contracts.  There are always exceptions, but they are not the rule.

When we encounter a salesperson who has been laid off, we immediately look for logical specifics regarding their shortened tenure.  The candidate needs to clearly define the circumstances and the rationale behind the company’s decision.  If these items cannot be explained, the assumption has to be that the salesperson was not performing at the expected level (fair or not).

This item isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for a candidate so please don’t take me out of context.  My suggestion is to drill down thoroughly on this topic when talking to the candidate.  Make sure you are confident in the circumstances and keep your focus on what the candidate could bring to your company.  The candidate may simply have been misemployed in the previous role.

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BusinessWeek.com offers up a good summation of today’s hiring market in terms of executive recruitment.  We could have wrote this article - it describes exactly what we are encountering in a couple of executive searches.

Let’s unpack a couple points from the article:

This new environment requires that executive headhunters and companies’ human resources and business leaders delve deeper into what’s really important to senior-management candidates and calibrate the recruitment process accordingly.

Very true.  Part of this understanding comes from assessing their motivations and rewards, the other part from interaction.

Yesterday I posted on the need for flexibility when hiring since candidates desire work/life balance far more than in previous times.  An example (my order):

Many headhunters say search assignments used to be considerably easier to orchestrate when more management-level career climbers were willing to commit—with little or no hesitation—to do whatever it might take to succeed in a new job if it promised big career opportunity.

The truth is that in today’s market for executive talent, sought-after leaders hold the bargaining advantage because they’re facing a resilient economy, multiple job offers, and likely a steady stream of calls from headhunters who want to move them.

The issues that motivate today’s top management talent to pursue new career opportunities have themselves grown more complex, in large part because of leaders’ desire for more work/life balance and/or the need to protect their assets.

The work/life balance topic is at the forefront of hiring and retention.  Companies that do not proactively address this topic will flounder in the hiring arena.  Unfortunately, one of our customers would not adjust despite our pleas and they ended up losing a strong candidate because of it.

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From ManageSmarter.com:

• Blended jobs. These are jobs where the salesperson is doing two or more dissimilar selling tasks. Sales specialization improves performance.
• Corrupted jobs. Decontaminate jobs that are degraded with non-selling tasks such as “fetch and get” after-the-sale customer service duties.
• Account ownership confusion. While necessary, the effective use of global account managers, national account managers and overlay specialists requires explicit account ownership protocols.

The ownership confusion bullet catches my eye in that we have a customer that is working through this problem.  They have a major account manager who has a tendency to swoop into territories covered by local sales reps.  The major account manager often comes into town without informing the local salesperson of his visit.

In the worst-case scenario that actually happened, the local sales rep called on a prospect who became confused.  The prospect wanted to know why the local guy wanted to meet him when the major accounts manager just met with him 3 days earlier.

Oy vey!

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We’ve been focusing on retention recently as the present job market has forced this issue.  One point to note is that retention topics show up during the offer stage of hiring new salespeople.  The items the candidate values are often the ones in which they engage the hiring company.

Forbes.com’s How To Keep Your Employees Happy offers this:

Interestingly, throwing money at staffers isn’t always the answer. Neither is throwing a party every few months. Having fun at work and creating a cohesive team is just one element. The most successful companies also realize flexibility, values, career development and providing meaningful experiences are also important elements to minimizing turnover. The interesting thing is that many of the companies that value having a good time usually incorporate those other elements too.

Flexibility has risen to a highly-valued asset - an asset that enters into most offer negotiations nowadays.  Flexibility is the needed component  for reaching a desired work-life balance.

We recently had to virtually rewrite one of our customer’s offers due to a lack of definition regarding flexibility (vacation, telecommuting, etc.).  This factor was part of an undefined offer that cost us a strong candidate.  Companies with flexibility in their culture have a marketable advantage in this tight labor market.

The next step is to advertise the culture of the company. Use those events as a way to recruit talent. “The best thing to do if you’re a company is make it clear what you have to offer,” says Erickson. That way, when a candidate receives two job offers, and everything else is equal, they might go to the company that has a culture similar to theirs.

Hiring strong salespeople often comes down to a slight advantage.

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One thing that consistently stands out in sales is the ability to gather information. I’m not talking about personal information like family, home, education and the rest. That information is important for building rapport, but many salespeople (i.e. schmoozers) never move past that level.

The national sales team with whom we work has a strong sales manager who is constantly beating this drum. He implores his team to go beyond the excitement of a potential deal and start asking the straight questions about competition and pain.

The sales manager’s approach is excellent in that they sell in a competitive market where customer loyalty is almost lacking.  The service is viewed as an unsophisticated commodity so you can imagine how price sensitive the customers are.  These types of industries present a seductive option for salespeople - quoting.  Quoting is fine.  Quoting without qualifying is not.

No work should begin on a quote without first having all qualifying information collected by the salesperson.

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Interesting story today from the AP - Employers study applicants’ personalities - that discusses hiring processes designed to see if a candidate is the right fit.  These processes are a good start, but much of what they are trying to accomplish could be done through assessments.

Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employers are pickier than ever about whom they hire. Businesses in fields where jobs are highly coveted — or just sound like fun — are stepping up efforts to weed out people who might have the right credentials but the wrong personality.

But if you would rather take the longer route, there is this approach:

Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said, “We’d rather miss a good one than hire a bad one.”

The 1,900-person company is divided into 18- to 20-person teams. One team is so close, the whole group shows up to help when one member moves house, Napier said. Job interviews at the San Antonio-based company last all day, as interviewers try to rub away fake pleasantness.

“They’re here for nine or ten hours,” Napier said. “We’re very cordial about it. We’re not aggressive, but we haven’t met a human being yet who has the stamina to BS us all day.”

I suspect that the ideal process is somewhere in the middle.

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This truth is one that we cannot utter to our customers, but it is critical in assisting a company to upgrade their sales team.  Implicit in this statement is the fact that some companies, when it comes to sales, do not provide an “A” level opportunity.

The reasons companies do not fit the A level often revolves around a handful of lesser items and one big item.

First the lesser items:

Compensation.
A players expect A-level compensation.  Many hiring companies believe they can offer A-level compensation through their commission structure.  While this may be possible, it is often unattainable.  A commission plan in which the salesperson must triple the company’s revenue record to earn $100K is not going to do it.  For this very reason, strong sales candidates ask what the present salespeople are earning.

Tools.
I find this one to be most frustrating.  Today’s technology allows for incredible, interconnected tools (e.g. VPNs, PDA phones, VoIP phones) for an inexpensive investment.  Yet many companies still approach selling as an 8 to 5 desk jockey position.  It isn’t any more.  If you want top salespeople, make sure you provide them with the tools to perform at their best.

Marketing.
I know sales and marketing are often viewed as being at odds with each other, but it is still a symbiotic relationship.  Strong sales candidates want to see what marketing pieces are available, what does the website look like and where is the company positioned in the market?  There is no question that a company with clear name recognition is attractive to A-level salespeople.  If your company does not have extensive name recognition, a good website and a defined suspect list will go a long ways.

Finally, the BIG item:

Culture.
I’m talking about a sales culture.  I realize “culture” can span many topics, but the main point encompasses the company’s approach to sales.  I’m always intrigued by a company that clearly does not have a sales focus yet they want to hire the best-of-the-best salespeople.  The problem is that they have never had an A-level salesperson in their company and they have no idea what it takes to hire and retain one.

We work with many companies and have the chance to see past the veneer and straight to the inner workings of the company.  Some companies clearly can handle strong salespeople whether they currently employ any or not.  Other companies, if they could hire a strong salesperson, would have difficulty retaining them for 90 days.

We have worked with one customer for a year now and have seen them begin to transform their culture through a newly hired, strong VP of sales.  Previously, they were an operations-driven company that could only be described as an F-level sales culture.  Salespeople were fired for sport by operations people.  I’m serious.  They would hire salespeople and then not provide them with business cards, computers, marketing pieces…nothing.  In essence, the would ignore the new salesperson.  If the salesperson didn’t sell something in 90 days, they fired them.  How many A-level salespeople are going to sign up for that culture?

This customer’s cultural change is now underway.  Whether the VP will be successful in such a categorical change remains to be seen.  But their chances of now hiring A-level talent has improved greatly.  Presently, they have a stable full of strong B-level salespeople who may move up to A-level status with a successful change in the sales culture.  The same could be true of your company if you focus on these items.

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We’re having some fun with the website as we move it to a new web host.  There was a post about the move, and now there isn’t a post about it.  The joys of transferring a site!

Anyway, the new provider will allow for our site to load faster and perform better.  We will also unveil a new look for The Hire Sense in the near future.

In the meantime, please bear with us as we get back online blogging shortly.

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