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… Read More
Continue ReadingFastest Dying Industries
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… Read More
Continue ReadingEgomaniacal Business Beliefs
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… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat Qualifications Determine Sales Success?
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… Read More
Continue ReadingFrom Closing To Coaching
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… Read More
Continue ReadingAssonance Alert: Archive Annual Awards
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… Read More
Continue ReadingSalary Legalities
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… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen To Close
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… Read More
Continue ReadingScratch And Sniff Resumes?
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,… Read More
Continue ReadingNow Is The Time
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… Read More
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