I never had any doubts, but Yahoo offers this story regarding coffee:

What restored coffee’s reputation? Caffeine. After years of being viewed with suspicion, caffeine has pulled a scientific switcheroo. Besides helping students pull all-nighters and weekend warriors jumpstart their jump shots, there’s now evidence that it defends against diabetes, Parkinson’s, asthma symptoms, post-workout soreness, and even hunger pangs.

I’m purposely omitting the rest of the article regarding moderation.  Those lines are nothing more than pure sophistry…now on to my second extra large latte.

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This article is from the Salesopedia website.  The article is excellent and rather amusing to read (probably since I am guilty of many of the author’s items).  For instance:

If you’re a professional salesperson and you’re not selling, it could be because:

• You are boring. Do customers cut you off in mid-sentence, or jump in when you pause for breath? Chances are, you’re boring them. Paint a vivid picture and put them in it; use an example or interesting case history to illustrate your point. Whip out some visuals to show them how much they will save.

I love it.  When is the last time your read something that candid?  The second point is one we see often amongst salespeople who have been through some training but have not internalized it:

• You insult their intelligence. “Mr. Jones, would you like to save money on your long distance phone bill?” Polling prospects with lame questions in an attempt to get them to say yes is manipulative and insulting. Instead, ask open-ended questions to elicit their needs. Treat them with respect by tailoring your questions to their company, industry and circumstances.

There are few instances more uncomfortable than observing this error in person.  Believe me, I’ve been on many sales calls where I have seen salespeople make this mistake.

As they say, read the entire article.

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Podcasting news offers us an article with some amazing statistics about Internet usage:

• The Internet is the medium on which online users spend the most time (32.7 hours/week). This is equivalent to almost half of the total time spent each week using all media (70.6 hours).
• People spend twice as much time on the Internet as they spend watching television (16.4 hours).
• People spend eight times as much time on the Internet as they spentd (sic) reading newspapers and magazines (3.9 hours).

Clearly there is convergence occurring between television and the Internet to the point where they will be fully integrated.  Still, I’m surprised that today there is a 2 to 1 difference between them.

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Here’s an interesting little article I stumbled across this morning from Seacoastonline.com titled Get the most out of your sales team.  The premise is simple and accurate - nonproductive salespeople are the bane of any small (or large) business.

A nonproductive sales team is among the top common dangers that cause many small businesses to fail.

Analyzed studies reveal that a large percentage of small businesses are unsuccessful because of underperforming sales people who bring in, at a minimum, 50 percent less revenue than top performers, according to researcher Dr. John Sullivan, professor of Economics at San Francisco State University.

…

Studies indicate that a common reason for poor performance in the sales department is a lack of focus and poor time management. It’s vital for struggling small businesses to get their sales team on the right track.

Those first 3 months of a new salesperson’s employment is the most critical time period in their employment.  The pattens for their employment are set during this time - expectations, rules, focus, communication…I could keep going, but you get the point.

My thought is that many small business owners are pulled in many directions and therefore cannot dedicate the needed time for their new salesperson.  Knowing this fact leads the owners to hire salespeople from their industry.  Their thought process is that an industry salesperson will require less training, if any at all.  This approach is what leads to recycling mediocrity within salespeople.

Sales success may be measured simply by results. Managers may have the opportunity to observe their staff in action and identify areas that way. However, sales assessment tools can also be a valuable way to determine what additional training may be needed to boost the success of your sales team.

These tools provide a balanced view of strengths and need-to-improve areas. They take the emotional piece of performance review out of the picture and provide the sales person with a very comprehensive evaluation, along with materials to chart out an improvement plan.

“Objectivity” is the keyword.  We use our assessments to measure a salesperson’s strength areas and weaknesses.  The key is to neutralize the weaknesses and develop the strengths.  Many times managers attempt to turn weaknesses into strength which usually ends up frustrating all parties involved in the training.

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Here is an interesting article from our friends to the north (Canada is the only thing north of us here in Minnesota) titled Six Business Trends Every Salesperson Must Know.

All 6 of the trends are interesting and worth the read, but this one caught my attention:

Trend #4:
We are shifting from the Information Age to the Communication Age. (Communicating is more valuable than informing.)
Many salespeople rely on such marketing tools as a company web site, flyers, and sales letters. But all these things are static, meaning they are merely informing people. You hope your sales messages will entice the prospect to call, but it’s still a one-way interface. A better way is to have your sales messages create action. One way to do that is to engage prospects with your sales and marketing efforts. For example, you could have a contest that encourages people to go to your site and enter. So instead of just saying that you want people to buy your snack product, for instance, you can tell customers that they can go online and create or vote for the next new flavor. Now you get them involved in your product. The key is to generate communication, engagement, and involvement through your sales and marketing efforts. If you call someone and just talk to them and aren’t creating dynamic dialog, then you’re really just giving information. You want to give people consultative advice. You want to listen and speak and create dialog. Only then do you truly capture your prospects’ interest and convert them into paying clients.

My advice - start a blog.  And read the entire article.

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I’ve read in many articles, blog posts and white papers that people take a job because of the company and quit because of a manager.  I have talked to many salespeople about why they are looking for a new opportunity and the vast majority do come down to their manager.  But there is an specific reason that we have been encountering of late when it comes to salespeople. 

Companies desire to seek out and hire strong salespeople and expect that these new salespeople will be strong for them without extensive direction or guidance from them.  This lack of involvement is a pet peeve of mine.  Do the salespeople want to be hand held?  No, but they do expect the needed level of training, direction and guidance. 

A recent study in ManageSmarter highlights this plight.  A telecommunications company used a survey to discover their sales team had poor morale.  The survey found that the salespeople felt their supervisors “cared about their success,” but felt they were not getting adequate coaching from their managers.  The company also found because of insufficient coaching the team was low in motivation, productivity, and ultimately paid the price through high turnover.

The VP of Sales recognized his managers had never been trained in the importance of—and how to create—a coaching culture.  In response, he brought in an outside consultant to help establish a training program for his sales managers.  Maybe you aren’t to the level of this company, but a question  to ask yourself is where are we in regards to coaching our salespeople?

This exact concern is why we have developed our On-Ramping program.  Too many times we see strong salespeople left to figure things out for themselves.  It doesn’t matter how strong these new salespeople are - you know your market, value and company far better than they do.  Share with them your expertise, direct them after the prospects you want them to pursue and make sure you help them to understand your unique value in the market place. 

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Personality assessments, or “communication style” as I prefer, are highly valuable in the hiring process for one important aspect - communication.  How many office conflicts have you seen where poor communication was adding oxygen to the fire?  We see it in almost every office conflict.

One way to diffuse these situations is to assess candidates before they join your team.  Doing so allows the manager to know the preferred communication style of the new employee.  This knowledge can also predict potential conflict areas between two employees before any conflict develops.

However, there are still companies out there who harbor concerns about assessments.  One common concern is mentioned in this BusinessWeek.com article - Personality and the Perfect Job:

Isn’t there a danger that employers who use personality tests as part of the employment process stereotype individuals?

Enlightened employers consider personality as only one facet of the selection process. Finding the right “fit” between the job and the person should be a win-win proposition and should be a matter of discussion for any professional interview process.

Some of the personality traits to consider: Do you prefer a structured environment, or is a variety of tasks more important? Do you thrive in crisis situations or value consistent processes? Would you rather work primarily by yourself, or as a member of a team? Are you a big-picture thinker, or do you excel in making sure all the details of a job are completed? Knowing both your own preferences and the requirements of a prospective job can help you (and the employer) make a choice that will give good prospects for ongoing success.

The key point in there is to know what the job requires.  My concern with personality assessments is not that they stereotype individuals but rather that hiring managers think there is only 1 personality that can succeed in the position.  This reason is why I prefer to use the term “style” instead.  Personality is really more about style and how someone will approach people, problems, data, etc.  It is not indicative of skills, aptitudes and motivations.

This distinction must be made when hiring.  In the end, assessing solely for style is still better than not assessing at all.

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Honestly, that is the number of online job boards according to Peter Weddle in this Wall Street Journal article.  I had no idea.  Some perspective from the article:

About 2,000 new job boards have launched annually since 2000, and there are currently about 50,000, says Peter Weddle, chief executive officer of Weddle’s, a publisher of guides to job boards. Of these, about 30% are general job sites while 70% specialize in a particular niche, he adds.

And the two big boards:

Still, the nation’s largest job boards saw fluctuations in traffic over the past year. For example, Monster.com had 11,317,000 unique visitors last month, about 9% less than for the same month a year earlier, according to comScore Inc., an Internet-research firm. And that’s down more than 7% from 12,219,000 in July 2007. CareerBuilder.com had 24,752,000 unique visitors last month, about 17% more than for the same month the year before. But the site saw a 14% increase from July 2007 when it had 21,723,000 visitors.

That sounds like competitive pressure affecting Monster and CareerBuilder.  Lastly, this trend is one we are most supportive of (and involved in):

Once you get from the job ad into the application process, more employers are adding assessments — a form of candidate screening previously reserved for the interview stage, says John Hancock, managing director of recruiting services at Capital H Group, a human-resources consulting firm. The idea is to learn about candidates’ intangible qualities, like leadership skills, work ethic and business acumen, he explains.

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Selling Style is one area we assess in our process.  Some people refer to it as personality which I don’t believe is particularly accurate.  Nonetheless, style is an important assessment for managing the salesperson but too many hiring managers assume certain skills based on a candidate’s style.

When we refer to “gut-level decisions,” often those decisions are made based upon a candidate’s style.  That method leads to hiring mistakes.

One of our newer customers offered an interesting take on this style issue yesterday after a couple of candidate interviews.  The candidates were markedly different in their styles, but their aptitudes, skills and motivations were relatively similar.

Our customer’s comment:  “I’m surprised the candidates are so different.  I would have thought you would pursue similar profiles.”

Lee walked him through our graphic on this page and explained the greater importance of selecting salespeople based off the deeper-seated data and, more importantly, which specific abilities are needed for the position.  This approach is what differentiates repeatable, successful sales hiring as opposed to best guesses.

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Seems like our small-sized companies are catching on to the telecommuting option this year which is a bit of a change.  I think a good post would be one that lays out a salesperson’s tools of the trade for today.

Included in that list would be a web-based CRM and a VPN connection for telecommuting.  No?  Check these stats out from a recent Wall Street Journal article (h/t to Lee):

Seventy percent of Cisco Systems employees regularly work from home at least 20% of the time. So do 34% of workers at Booz Allen Hamilton and 32% at S.C. Johnson & Sons. Those stats, from a recent Fortune companies survey say a lot about flexible work these days. It’s becoming a way of working that benefits both the employee and employer, says Nicole Saulnier, a human resource manager for Rothstein Kass, an accounting firm in Roseland, N.J., that also believes in flexibility. “Happy employees are more productive,” she says. “If a flexible work arrangement will help them reach their full potential, we want to foster that.”

Salespeople have always been telecommuters to some extent, but today there are tools available to make their offices completely remote…and fully functional.

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