Selling has always been about relationships, but it is becoming more significant in today’s world.  According to a recent study referenced in this Selling Power.com article - The Relationship Imperative - product superiority is not as big a driver in customers’ decision-making process.

“Product superiority used to be a big advantage for companies,” says Jim Dickie, partner at CSO Insights. “But collapsing product lifecycles is changing that. If a competitor doesn’t have a feature or function today, they can catch up a lot faster than they could in the past.” The result: product superiority has dropped down to the number three reason companies win deals with just 35 percent of companies citing it versus 56 percent who say relationships drive their wins.

Isn’t that notable?  “Collapsing product lifecycles” is really behind this shift.  I just read an article about 5 new cell phones coming out to compete with the iPhone.  They are all touchscreen phones with many similar features.  Maybe we are trading imitation for innovation?  Whatever the reason, relationships drive sales.

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Clearly newspapers are the poster child for this topic.  ABCnews.com approaches this topic with research that forecasts industry changes over the next 5 years.  Some of their predictions and suggestions:

Another way to avoid disaster? Diversify. In response to decades of declining circulation and shaky print advertising numbers, newspaper publishers are expanding their holdings in non-traditional ways. The two largest, Gannett and Tribune, own a stake Careerbuilder.com, the online job search Web site. In 2005, The New York Times Co. bought About.com, a general information site. Will it work? The jury is out. Worth noting, though–the industry’s most successful transition is also its most radical. The Washington Post Co. secured their future by buying Kaplan Learning centers, morphing the company into an “information” firm and leaning on the new entity, rather than their news operations, to drive growth.

The Washington Post has done a good job of adapting ahead of the trend.  However, I wonder if it is simply too late for these other papers to make such a shift in their business model (I think it is).

Here is one I didn’t think about, but it is a certain trend based on Gen Y:

The most surprising find: While technology is changing the face of many industries, the firms within them are often doing quite well. One strategy for surviving a technological onslaught is to control the change itself. AT&T and Verizon, the largest wired telecommunications firms, are hardly worried that more than 1 million phone “land lines” are expected to be switched off each year between now and 2012. Both of those firms saw their wireless subscriber numbers surge in 2007.

True.  I suspect home phone lines will disappear in the very near future as cell phones eventually become the standard.  The article is a good read if you have the time.

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My father likes to state that your ego is your most expensive business partner.  I’ve seen this firsthand in companies where the leader regularly proclaims their position or superiority.  I’m all for it when it is accurate and not overstated.

I’m thinking of one particular company where the President consistently stated:

Our company does things better than any other company.
We are the best in our industry.
Nobody can do what we do.

Unfortunately, in this instance, these statements were just not accurate.  The outcropping from this situation was painful for us.  We were searching for a regional sales manager for this company.  We lost good candidates because the President wouldn’t provide benefit information - he literally would define how many vacation days the candidate would receive, what the insurance plan was or what his quota would be.

I’m serious.

The candidate asked politely 3 different times.  We begged him to provide it in writing.  He wouldn’t.  Yet, the President added the candidate to his sales team’s email list.  He sent out some marketing material to the group and asked for feedback.  The candidate, who had not signed any agreement, was stunned he was on the list.  The President simply assumed the candidate would sign in spite of not providing the aforementioned information.  He believe his company held that much sway over the candidate.

The candidate passed on the opportunity.

The issue was simple - the President’s perception of his small company and it’s allure to strong candidates was overstated.  His ego cost him more than one good candidate.

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Here’s what we often see from hiring managers or recruiters that focus on a wide variety of positions.  They tend to look for qualifications in their sourcing activities.  Obviously, this approach is warranted and required when sourcing for positions like accountants, medical personnel, IT, engineers and so forth.

But what about sales?  What qualifications determine sales success?  A college degree?  5, 7 or 10 years tenure?  Industry experience?

The difficulty in sales is that there are so few, if any, verifiable qualifications that properly filter applicants out.  The better approach is to list the skills that the sale requires.  Notice I didn’t write “position?”  The typical sale is what needs to drive the skills for the position.  This is why our initial task, before sourcing candidates, is to profile the sale.

I can’t stress this enough, job descriptions typically won’t define the skills needed for a strong sales hire.  They work for other positions, but sales is vastly different.  I think this is where general recruiters get into difficulty.  I’ll go further and say even experienced sales managers get in trouble here.  Many of our customers tell us that they have tried to hire salespeople themselves without any tools or processes and it was just a crap shoot.  All - all - of them have more than one sales hiring nightmare story.

Here is the crux of the problem when it comes to determining what is needed to hire the right salesperson - bachelor’s degrees and time in the industry do not predict success in sales.  “Ability to develop territory,” “strong hunter” and “service existing accounts” are not going to cut it.

You need to understand the sale.  There is a difference in skill sets needed if it takes 5 contacts to close 1 deal versus 55 contacts to close 1 deal.  There is a difference in skills needed to close a 1 year sales cycle versus a 1 week sales cycle.  This information provides the qualifications to determine sales success.

For instance, if the typical sale requires 75 calls (to suspects) that filter down to 1 sale and the average sales cycle is 2 weeks, you have to source candidates that have the ability to build rapport quickly, qualify efficiently and handle rejection easily.

Understanding the critical aspects of a typical sale is the starting point for a successful sales hire.

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Selling Power.com’s Sales Management newsletter provides an excellent article that addresses a common issue in sales management - how do you move from salesperson to sales manager?  One important aspect of this move is becoming a coach for your sales team.

The suggestions in the article are worth the read, but this one is especially remarkable:

Keep questions open. Most managers know they should ask open-ended questions in a coaching situation, but closed questions still crop up far too often. Closed questions can be answered in one or two words – yes, no, good, okay. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, require the responder to think and elaborate and help paint a more complete picture of a situation. Starting questions with “will,” “did,” and “have” will likely lead you into a closed question, warn the authors. Rephrase those questions using words like “what,” “who,” “which,” and “how.” For example, instead of, “Did you check all the requirements?” try, “Which of the requirements most concerns you?”

That advice is applicable to sales qualifying, coaching, candidate screening and more.  Yes/no, or closed questions, lead you into a box where you are forced to ask another question.  Open-ended questions also lead to more detail in the answer.  As a sales manager, this detail is needed to be an effective, efficient coach to your team.

One other piece of advice from the article:

Keep questions forward focused. It’s all too easy for an employee to get caught up in rehashing a meeting or event that went poorly. And while a certain amount of emotional venting may be helpful to that person, your job is to help them avoid getting stuck there. One of the best ways you can keep the conversation forward focused is to avoid asking questions that begin with “why.” If you’re asking, “Why did that happen?” or “Why did you say that?” you put your employee on the defensive and keep the conversation focused on the past. Rephrase your questions in a way that encourages a look to the future. So instead of, “Why didn’t you contact IT?” ask, “What are the things you need to do to bring the project back on track?”

Exactly.  We tell sales managers to avoid using “why” in their questions with their direct reports and with prospects.  As effective as why is, it often carries a negative emotional aspect. Imagine in your youth hearing an upset parent ask, “Why did you do that?”  Or maybe it was, “Why didn’t you…”  Be careful with your use of this adverb, especially with your sales team.

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Well, I should qualify that; I suppose an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, etc. is a timeless award.  However, I just read an employment ad from a large recruiting firm that had this bolded statement at the top:

#1 Ranked Executive Search Firm - January 2006

January 2006?  My first thought was who beat them out for the past 2 years.  Maybe they have drastically declined in some way?

Call me a minimalist, but I prefer to get right to the meat in an employment ad.  In fairness to this firm, this was an internal hire.  Still, I would think they would have a bit more sense to remove that statement since it is more than outdated.

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This I did not know - from a Pioneer Press short Q&A article (my editing):

My company has a new district manager. He and I got off to a bad start when he divulged my salary in a mass e-mail and caused an uproar among my new co-workers. Some of them do the same job as me but make considerably less. When I called him on this, he responded, “What’s the big deal? They all tell each other anyway.”

A: Even though the manager showed poor judgment, he didn’t break the law, according to Richard Kass, a partner at Bond, Schoeneck & King in Manhattan. “Employees have no right to privacy in their salaries,” Kass said. The manager may have “acted stupidly,” he said, but he did not break any laws.

To take it one step further:

Your situation is unusual and is the inverse of a situation that actually is illegal. Companies typically get into trouble for directing employees to keep their salaries secret and then trying to punish those who exchange salary information, Kass said.

I’m a bit surprised by that fact.  It may be legal, but the manager sharing that information sure seems like a morale-killer.  He may have unwittingly opened a Pandora’s box.

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This topic comes up often in sales discussions - when should I go for the close?  Or hiring managers often ask, “Is he a closer?”  Or articles state that most salespeople fail because they don’t ask for the order (i.e. close).

So what are we to make of this topic?  Selling Power offers a bit of an enigmatic article titled Knowing When to Close.  The responses are from a sales meeting from 1929 (I don’t know why).  The pull quote:

A still smaller minority expressed the opinion which I believe to be the correct one, that while there is undoubtedly one moment that is the best time to close any sale, at the same time there are many moments almost as good, so that the salesman will have many other good chances to close, even if he does pass the one best moment.

I agree with that, but I have often stated here that the focus needs to be on qualifying instead of closing.  Sales don’t close due to poor, or incomplete, qualifying.  A salesperson who does not ask for the business will have problems, but not nearly as many as a salesperson who asks for the business without knowing if the deal is qualified.  This point is critical to sales success.

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First off, the word “wacky” should not be used in any form of writing.  Second, this Yahoo Hot Jobs article - Wacky Job-Seeker Stunts - lists some . . . zany gimmicks for attempting to land a marketing/advertising position:

• Puts up posters of himself in your company parking lot.
• Attaches pineapple scratch-and-sniff stickers to his resume.
• Announces his candidacy with a singing telegram.
• Sends lottery tickets with her resume.
• Rents a billboard that you can see from your office to list his qualifications.
• Bakes cookies with icing to write several reasons why she should be hired.
• Delivers pre-paid Chinese food, including a fortune cookie with his name and number.

Yeah, it doesn’t work (emphasis mine):

Less than half of the executives surveyed — 46% in advertising and 34% in marketing — said they might consider an applicant with a gimmicky resume, and only 2% of marketing execs and 8% of ad execs said gimmicks would help a candidate get hired. In other fields, where creativity is a less critical job skill, a candidate who sends a shoe “to get a foot in the door” will probably be dismissed as unprofessional, recruiters say.

Standing out is one thing, singing telegrams are another.  I’m always amazed that candidates don’t do the simple things to land a job like simply calling in to a company if they provide a number.  A well-written resume with a focused cover email goes a long way.  A network contact may have an in or know somebody in the company.

Again, it is amazing how candidates will focus on gimmicks when content is king. 

Of course, they were marketing positions.

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We have been sourcing for a handful of sales positions around the country this past weekend and we are starting to see some potential movement of strong candidates.  What I mean is that there is some contraction about to start among large sales forces.  Some strong salespeople will be pushed out in the contraction which makes for an excellent time to expand or upgrade your sales team.

Revenue-generating positions are always a priority no matter what the economy does.  A slowdown generally pushes companies towards cost-saving maneuvers which is good for sales hiring - some good salespeople are going to be squeezed out.

One example is a candidate we recently talked to who is starting to actively look for a new opportunity.  He works in the specific territory for a national company, but the company is going to eliminate some under-performing salespeople.  They are then going to combine territories and have fewer sales reps cover more territory.

This candidate is going to have his territory combined with a more tenured rep.  They are both selling at the same high level and are paid comparable salaries.  The candidate is going to be told he will take on a territory in another geographic location so he will have to move his young family.  He has no interest in that move and has no other options with his company.  Hence, he is looking.  Actively.

These types of situations are going to play out in greater frequency for the remainder of this year.  Good salespeople will become available.  Now is the time to upgrade or expand your sales team.

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