From an ad for a National Sales Manager:

Required Skills:

1. Product knowledge.

The ad lists 3 other “non-sales” skills.  Sales is that strange position where many hiring managers focus on skills other than selling.  Is it any wonder there are so many sales hiring horror stories?

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This week Salesopedia is highlighting time-management with multiple authors providing articles.  This one by Mike Brooks provides a couple of truly elementary, overly-simple suggestions:

Key #1 – Begin each day with a written list of three to five priorities.

Ask yourself: “What are the five things that are crucial for me to accomplish today?”  (Hint: ask yourself what five things you can do today that will most affect your bottom line, i.e., dollars in your pocket?) Write them down — in order of importance and then….

Key #2 – Start each day with your top three to five priorities and work each one through until it’s done.

Then cross it off and work on the next one.  Resist the temptation to multitask.  Working each one through to completeness is the key.  Make sure and cross each one off when you’re done!

This builds momentum, a sense of accomplishment and empowerment, and most importantly you’ll actually be getting your important priorities done each day.

See what I mean?  The reason I call them dumb is because the work and I feel convicted about it.  I am guilty of not doing this in spite of Lee imploring me to “write it down.”  It is simple yet often ignored tip.

The same thing is true with salespeople.  Written lists are highly effective with most salespeople though I have encountered the noncompliant, seat-of-the-pants salespeople who will never use lists.  However, it is generally far more effective to use lists.  As a sales manager, it is wise to “suggest” to your team to have a daily list and to use it in their activities.

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Here is an interesting post from one of Inc.com’s blogs.  This one discusses the importance of a company’s name for branding purposes.  The short post contains something simple, but profound:

In fact, only one of the 12 — Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com — felt the name he selected was indispensable and key to branding his company. Surprisingly, not even Starbuck’s co-founder Jerry Baldwin felt the name was essential.

Some of the other business leaders I consulted with — such as Ben & Jerry’s Homemade founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cosmetics expert Bobbi Brown, Wally “Famous” Amos, Kate Spade, and David Oreck — named their companies in part or entirely after themselves. While this group felt it helped bring brand accountability and provide some level of differentiation, they did not believe the company name was essential in creating the brand. They unanimously agreed the best way to build a powerful brand identity is to offer unmatched quality, exceptional service, and consumer-centric products or services that focus on their customers’ needs and wants.

Isn’t this the mantra of sales?  I have worked for many companies where we tried to push this point through to marketing with little success.  The meetings continued and the brainstorming reached a fever pitch as they attempted to select the “right” name for a new product.

Sometimes it is as simple as listening to the customer and delivering what you promise.

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Persuasion is a key ability of any successful salespeople.  Think of the worst car salesperson or door-to-door salesperson you have encountered and you will know why this ability is so critical to success.  CNNMoney.com’s article – How persuasive are you? – interviews an individual who runs the Persuasion Institute who brought up this fine point:

Let’s take, for instance, how we handle objections, whether from a customer or some other audience, such as a boss we’re asking for a raise. Early on in life, we learn to perceive objections as opposition, so we get defensive. An unskilled persuader, often without realizing it, will show tension, uneasiness, or irritation when someone raises an objection, usually because the objection or concern stirs up the persuader’s own insecurities: “Aren’t I doing a good enough job explaining this? Didn’t I go over that already?” This way of thinking will only make matters worse.

By contrast, great persuaders who have learned new persuasion skills know how to welcome objections. Instead of seeing them as opposition, these persuaders see objections as a natural, and valuable, part of the process. They use their audience’s concerns as a way to open a dialogue, a chance to exchange ideas and discover new areas of common ground. Truly great persuaders may cut to the chase by addressing an objection before it’s even been voiced, just to get that communications ball rolling.

I say that is a fine point in that how salespeople handle rejection is key to their success.  We often discuss what traits are most important in sales and I think I would vote for handling rejection.  I think it is, in simple terms, the key differentiator between high-performance sales and mediocrity.

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We call it onramping because that is truly what occurs with new sales hires.  This area is often overlooked or under-served by sales managers.  They often hire new salespeople, offer some product/service training and then turn them loose in the field.

It is the sink or swim approach that leads to turnover.

SellingPower.com reports on this fact in On-Boarding: The Most Overlooked Part of Hiring.  Here is why this topic is so important:

Unfortunately, great sales on-boarding programs are still the exception, rather than the norm, says Stakenas. He says that most companies are missing an opportunity in the first three to six months of a new hire’s time to set the tone, discipline, and expectations. “To have them understand your desire for them to be successful, you must plan on using process, methodology, coaching, and technology to help them,” says Stakenas.

I don’t know if there is anything more important than setting the tone during that initial honeymoon phase.  Much of management resides in the smaller, less obvious pieces.  How you treat a new hire, the attention to detail in training, even the sales manager’s understanding of the process…these are all discernable during the onramping period.

The worst option is to ignore these responsibilities.  The benefit of this activity:

Stakenas also says that there are intangible benefits to ramping up a salesperson faster. “A guided salesperson that experiences success sooner is typically more loyal and more likely to stay longer than the average two years, reducing your need to hire year after year and bolstering your chances for long-term success,” he says.

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Selling Power’s Hiring Newsletter takes a look at assessments used in the hiring process.  This is a topic near and dear to our hearts in that we assess sales candidates with online tests.  One paragraph jumped out (emphasis mine):

According to Whittle, the average test runs around $200, but there were some tests that tacked on extra costs for interpretation up to $600 to $900 extra. Her company usually conducts the tests after at least two behavioral interviews to save time and costs. However, Whittle reminds us – the cost of testing is nothing compared to the cost of a bad hire. “We conduct the tests to validate what we’ve seen during the interview process,” explains Whittle.

I understand this approach, but I don’t agree with it.  Here has been my experience – hiring managers will doubt the test results as opposed to their “gut instinct.”  If you are two interviews into the process with a candidate, I guarantee someone has bonded with the candidate.  This is not a bad thing, but what if the assessment comes back with information that indicates the candidate would be a risky, or even bad hire?

This is the problem – the hiring manager has committed to the candidate at some level.  If the hiring manager has enough power, they will still hire the candidate in spite of the assessment results.

We assess candidates after a successful phone interview.  This provides a detailed view of the candidate’s abilities, motivations, drive and so forth.  The results also provide the topics for discussion during the initial in-person interview.  This data makes that first interview far more revealing than simply probing for unknown weaknesses with generic questions.

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Have you noticed that the best salespeople are usually subtle?  They have a way of moving through a discussion that is conversational in tone, but focused in purpose.  Some are so good at it that you don’t even notice if you are involved in the discussion.

ManageSmarter.com offers up an article with a direct analogy of sales questioning – comparing it to dating.  What I appreciate is the author’s description of how salespeople are trained to ask leading questions.  This is not a subtle approach as you will see from his example in the article.  The primary issue here is that you lose rapport quickly when you go down this path.

In trying to establish a prospect’s fit with our offering, it’s natural to want to uncover all the details about their situation that can help us make our case. What that often leads to, however, is a stream of questions that focuses only on product areas or applications.

And it’s not just junior sales reps who do this. I once listened to a regional sales manager for a large financial services company grind his prospect into the ground with his questions, each one having been designed to justify the features of his offering. Afterward, he thought he’d done a good job. But judging from the pain that grew in his prospect’s face with each additional question, I think “inquisition” is a much better description.

I sat through some “inquisitions” and it isn’t pretty.  If you have any people-reading ability, you can see the discomfort on the prospect’s face.  Heck, I was uncomfortable and I was with the salesperson.

The author closes with two good points for asking the right question:

1. Find out what their situation is like today—without trying to shape the conversation to fit your offering. Just ask your prospect what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not working, etc. Listen to the answers without trying to make points you’ll use later. Just have a conversation. It works wonders on building trust.
2. Ask where they’d like to be in the future. Ask “What are your big goals?” or “What would a perfect world look like?” Again, don’t frame your question in any way that could be construed as setting up your offering. I realize it takes patience, but spending a few minutes establishing your prospect’s big picture is invaluable.

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Red flags should go up if those words appear in a cover letter.  These sentences are from a recent graduate’s cover letter for a sales position:

Please do not contact me if the position is commission based, or involves cold-calling. Also your company must have a valid website that can help me to identify what your company does.

I will be following his clear orders and not contacting him.

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I had to share this one:

Offshore Employee – No Accent.

Excellent.  Memorable.

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The Wall Street Journal offers an article about companies combining 2 jobs into 1 and then hiring based on the lower level job.  The author explains it better than me:

Some job hunters have been encountering a new kind of downsizing: companies that aren’t eliminating positions entirely, but are combining a mid-level position with a more junior one — then advertising it as a junior slot and offering a lower salary.

I’m not sure this is the best approach to hiring in that you often get what you pay for.  One of my suggestions would be to assess the candidates if you go this route.  There are many talented, young candidates who could grow into a larger role quickly since they have the talent to succeed.  However, if you are not assessing, you may get caught over-relying upon your gut.  Or biases.  Or blind spots.

Recruiters say the trend is accelerating as earnings sink and companies scramble to cut costs any way they can. “Throughout every economic downturn, there’s a contraction in the U.S. economy and firms rethink how they organize themselves,” says Clark Beecher, managing director of Magellan International, an executive-search firm based in Houston. “They will bring in one person to do three people’s jobs and stretch their assets.”

We see the world through sales-colored glasses, but this trend is in the sales world too.  More and more companies are looking for salespeople to “manage the relationship.”  That is code for customer service.  I’m ok with that approach as long as the expectations are set properly.  One thing is for sure, hunters often make bad customer service reps.

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