I read often about web 2.0, recruiting 2.0 and sales 2.0.  Math was never my forte so numbers scare me.  But I did come across a very informative article in Sales & Marketing Management article titled A Step-By-Step Overview of Sales 2.0.  The first pull quote:

With instant access to corporate Web sites, search and social networks, your customers have company and product information at their fingertips, which give them much more control over the sales process than they had in the day when brochures and pricing were only available from a sales rep. Many prospective customers postpone talking with a sales rep, believing that they’ll get a better deal by acquiring as much “ammunition” as possible.

Isn’t that the truth?  I’ve seen many salespeople struggle with this transition as it is still underway.  Heck, I’ve struggled with it.  One change from prospects having the information has been a loss of control by the salesperson.  I don’t view this as a bad thing, just a change.

When salespeople controlled the information, they were able to qualify the prospect before supplying the catalogs/brochures/spec sheets.  Those days are long gone which is why I think there is such a strong push for relationship-focused salespeople.  Building a relationship with the prospect to get to the qualifying stage is the salesperson’s best approach today.

In the end, all things equal out which brings us to sales 2.0.

Sales 2.0 technologies are delivering instant information that build relationships and enable sales to be more efficient, more cost-effective and more productive that the old Willie Loman-style of selling.  Just as the Internet allowed buyers to literally let their fingers do the walking, these new Sales 2.0 technologies are allowing the customer’s online behavior to dictate the communication – before sales does the talking.

And that is a good summation of how selling is changing today.  Communication has increased dramatically between prospect and salesperson.  The next phase of selling continues the relationship sale by incorporating web-based tools to open a dialogue between the prospect and the salesperson in a new context.  In our business, we get calls from prospects who already have a general understanding of our process, assessments, training, etc..  The discussion starts at a point that would have taken 2 or 3 phone calls to reach just 10 years ago.

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The title of this post caught my eye from US News & World Report.  The insightful list made me laugh; I believe I have watched companies make all 10 of these mistakes in the past 12 months.  The 10 mistakes are:

1. Flakiness.
2. Making hiring decisions that aren’t based on the right criteria.
3. Not distinguishing between what can be taught and what can’t.
4. Not asking the right questions in interviews.
5. Letting candidates get away with superficial, stock responses.
6. Hiring too quickly.
7. …Not moving fast enough.
8. Not getting back to candidates.
9. Conducting intimidating, high-pressure interviews.
10. Not giving an accurate portrayal of the job.

Author Alison Green has this to say about #2

Employers often overvalue particular types of experience to the exclusion of more important things. You can teach someone to use a certain software program, research legislation, or understand your industry. You can’t teach people to be organized or efficient or have a work ethic.

In the sales world we like to call this industry experience and Alison is 100% accurate in that this criteria does not always lead to success.

If years of industry or product experience were a 100% guarantee of success, you would simply put your product experts in sales roles and rake in the revenue.  Typically that doesn’t happen.  What does happen is that the sale manager looks to hire the competition’s salespeople.  The assumption is that since they worked at a competitor they know the product/service, industry, market, etc. and that they have been successful selling it since their resume states it.

The real key is to know what specific abilities are needed in your particular sale.  Unfortunately, that typically isn’t limited to just experience.  In fact, it is mainly based on skills, aptitudes and motivations.  Understanding that fact, you can then build your hiring process around the criteria needed for success in the role.  Don’t assume that because they have worked in your industry that they automatically posses the needed skills to succeed.

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This is from the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link):

According to the U.S. Census Bureau the difference in lifetime earnings between a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree is a million dollars. Add on a master’s degree and you can expect to earn an additional half a million dollars in earnings. Those with professional degrees earn much more – about 4.4 million dollars during their working life.

Jennifer Day, Chief of the Education and Social Stratification Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau says, “In 1999, average annual earnings ranged from $19,000 for high school dropouts, to $26,000 for high school graduates, $45,000 for college graduates and $99,000 for the holders of professional degrees.

The data is almost 10 years old so I can only imagine how it has changed since then.  Degrees do equal dollars and I suspect that is why education is the most misrepresented information on a resume.

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