The layoffs that have occurred in this weak economy have led to a larger percentage of overqualified candidates responding to lower-level positions.  We are presently seeing this effect in our sourcing efforts.

Clearly some companies that are looking to cut costs are laying off experienced salespeople who have 1.) higher salaries & benefits and 2.) are not delivering top-end numbers.  That’s not to say they are not being successful, but they are performing at a level where a financial decision maker may decided to release them.

This downsizing happens frequently to sales departments in weak economies.  The follow up move is this – hire a younger, less expensive salesperson for the same role.  This financial decision assumes similar production from the younger salesperson in the role.  Big assumption, but sometimes worth the risk.

What this means for a hiring company is that there will be some “deals” in the marketplace right now.  Some overqualified salespeople may be available for your open role.  Yes, there is a chance they are just going to ride out the economy and then look for a better job.  But I think the rewards outweigh this risk.

Now, I’m not talking about bringing in a VP-level to a telemarketing role.  A slightly overqualified candidate at a slightly higher pay level is often a good investment.  They tend to bring a broader skill set that you can hire at a discounted rate in this economy.

There is a caveat in this approach – you need to ensure you hire a salesperson with the right blend of skills, talents and motivations for your specific role.  This is an area in which we can help.

Comments(0)

Killian’s Cover Letters from Hell are out again with some highly entertaining fare.  This one does it for me:

I’m looking for work because even though my company was profitable last year, this year they are expecting a large defecate.

Comments(0)

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.

Comments(0)

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.

Comments(2)

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.

Comments(1)

The days of posting your employment ad on the weekend are over.  I think the whole weekend approach is a hangover from the Sunday paper days of job hunting.  Nowadays, few – few – people look for a job on the weekend.

According to The Career News newsletter (sorry, no link):

In a trend that has held true for three years, job hunting takes off on Monday, peaks on Tuesday and is still very busy on Wednesday, according to Monster.com. Job hunt traffic on Tuesday is 28 percent higher than on Friday, said Steve Sylven, a spokesman for Monster. EQuest, which manages job boards for companies, used to see Tuesdays and Wednesdays as tops for tapping new career possibilities. But in 2007, Americans broadened their search days, and eQuest indicates any weekday from noon to 4 p.m. is busy.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays bring fresh listings — eQuest and others advise employers to post then, or Sunday night and Monday morning. Hardly anyone spends the weekend hunting for a job. Saturdays and Sundays are the slowest days on Monster.com, and eQuest’s data shows less than one-third the traffic to career sites on those days vs. weekdays.

Comments(0)

The more companies we work with, the more we see communication breakdowns being the root of most problems.  Our work with our clients spans more than just recruiting.  We assist them in onramping their new salesperson.  This function places us in the unique position of working with both the salesperson and the sales manager.

One of the more dysfunctional situations we encounter is a communication breakdown between the manager and salesperson.  One manager complained that the salesperson wasn’t doing what he asked, but he never confronted the salesperson.  Another time we had a salesperson who would not submit his weekly call report.  Ever.  Yes, he was let go (even we so-called experts miss on occasion).

Those experiences led me to this Selling Power article about compensation – a recurring theme on The Hire Sense this week.  The opening statistics are shocking (my emphasis):

According to a recent WorldatWork survey of compensation practitioners and HR managers, 76 percent of organizations report revising their sales plans every year as a matter of course. However, the same survey found that only 58 percent of organizations communicate these changes directly to the frontline sales manager.

Makes me wonder with whom do they communicate the change?  The article continues with an excellent point:

Since frontline sales managers are the people doing the hiring, their ability to understand the incentive plan is really critical to making the right hire and putting together the right recruiting message, says Stoeckmann. If they fully understand the compensation and incentive program and are kept up-to-date, they can be very effective recruiters.

As a recruiter, it is difficult for us to have a full understanding of the compensation (especially commission) plan.  One thing sales candidates always want to know is how “real” is the plan?  How many people make quota?  I can’t imagine a situation where a sales manager didn’t know those details.  That would be a tremendous red flag for a candidate.

Comments(1)

We have really come to enjoy Dave Stein’s posts.  They are timely and cut straight to the heart of the issue.  Today’s post is no exception.  Working strictly on the sales side of organizations, one of the areas we look at while profiling their sale is compensation.  Most importantly, we look to see if the compensation structure rewards the behaviors the company expects of the salesperson.  More times than not it won’t and from one of Dave’s comments, he sees the same issues:   

I am bringing this up because compensation is another dysfunctional area within many companies.  During the past quarter, I’ve been engaged with several clients where “errors of commission” are preventing them from achieving their team and corporate goals.

We ran into a situation a few years back where a company President wanted to upgrade his sales team and bring in an experienced national salesperson who could help him grow his company.  He was okay about having to pay more for sales experience, but his commission plan wasn’t aligned.  The commission schedule for a sales person to break the 6 figure mark meant he or she would have to more than double the total revenue of the company.  If they accomplished that feat, they should be running the company.

Through all this compensation discussion, Dave makes an extremely important point:

One important point: Having the right people in sales jobs comes first.  The best comp plan in the world doesn’t mean much when the salespeople it is intended to motivate don’t have the requisite skills and traits to succeed.

I couldn’t agree more.  If you don’t know where to begin, let us help you get started.

Comments(0)

One of the points we always push when it comes to sourcing is to use multiple channels that still includes online job boards.  In fact we use them during our sourcing efforts, however if you talk to other recruiters you will probably hear that running ads on the boards will only get you active job seekers (the unemployed).  We find that at least half of the salespeople that respond to our ads are currently working or what other recruiters call passive job seekers. 

So the one thing we are always looking for are niche job boards to try out.  What we are finding is that the niche job boards deliver on their marketing promise to provide better qualified candidates than the big boards.  Even the big boards are trying to segment their space and create a quasi-niche approach.  Fox Business had an article on CareerBuilder.com’s attempt to develop a new niche site in WorkInRetail.com.  Here is what the Managing Director had to say (emphasis is mine):

“WorkInRetail.com will help retailers compete more effectively with other industries for qualified talent and make the talent acquisition process much more efficient for retailers,” said Ben Jablow, Managing Director of WorkInRetail.com. “Many job seekers are only aware of a few of the available retail positions, but in reality there are so many different types of retail jobs from finance to human resources to web development to market research to loss prevention. WorkInRetail.com will help elevate the profile of retail employment by educating job seekers about the long-term, diverse career opportunities that exist in retail.”

The big job boards are difficult to maneuver to find the jobs that are of greatest interest.  The aforementioned job board is a site that we will probably never use, but hopefully this will eliminate the clutter you encounter when you look for sales positions on CareerBuilder.  If you have ever searched for a sales position on the big boards, you know how cluttered the results are with retail positions instead of B2B inside and outside sales positions.  I think the niche approach is a smart, needed move by CareerBuilder.com.

Comments(4)

From the title of a resume posted online:

receptionist,homemaker,health aide,sales ass,youth counselor,or daycare aide

I know I have worked with many a sales ass.  In the resume, this person lists a job from years ago in which they worked the retail cash register at a drug store.  I particularly enjoyed their description of that work:

SALES ASSOCIATE:RECEIVE CASH FROM CUSTOMRES IN PAYMENT FOR GOODS.PROCESS SALES TRANSCATIONS AND ISSUE RECEIPTS.

“Issue receipts” just kills me.

Comments(0)