everything else falls into place.
-Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Now that is an interesting position, isn’t it?  The article is from Human Resource Executive online and features a brief look at Mr. Hsieh’s “unorthodox” HR strategy.

“We do two [job] interviews — the first for skills and the second for cultural fit,” he said, adding that the company has opted to not hire many talented candidates and has fired employees because they didn’t fit the culture or weren’t passionate enough about customer service.

Fifty percent of the company’s performance review focuses on culture fit, he said.

To ensure employees are committed to Zappos’ core values, it offers new hires $2,000 to leave the company.

Now that is commitment to the culture.

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SellingPower.com offers up a spot-on short article about maintaining customer relationships in this economy.  The pressure on salespeople is extremely high right now in two regards – there are limited opportunities to close new business and the business world continues its radical information shift thanks to the Internet.

First off, companies have slowed down their purchasing, but they are still purchasing.  I think this fact gets lost in the doom-and-gloom reporting that saturates our senses.  The tactical truth is that salespeople are going to have to unhook business from their competition to increase their sales.  Many order-taking salespeople will fail miserably in this endeavor.

Second, prospects are far more informed than at any time in history.  They are able to research companies, products, services and solutions.  Companies that are small and nimble can use the Internet as a force multiplier to compete with larger companies.  Prospects no longer start out in discovery mode – their first approach is usually a fairly educated question and discussion about your solution.  The prospect probably has your competition’s value proposition sketched out also so salespeople leap right into an intense qualifying call.

These two factors make customer retention even more critical today.  The author of the article makes a salient point (my bold):

Little “r” relationships. These are the interpersonal relationships between members of a selling team and members of a buying team. They are built gradually, over time, and rooted in “a salesperson’s ability to demonstrate that he or she is trustworthy, competent, and credible as a business consultant and advisor,” says Emde. These relationships are most effective when they’re built not with just one or two people in the buying organization, but with an entire network of people who come to view the sales rep as a trusted business partner. To build little “r” relationships, Emde says reps must know how to establish credibility, build trust, demonstrate the value of the relationship on every call, and be savvy about identifying the right people with whom to forge connections.

What’s the cost of not building these little “r” relationships? When your relationships are weak, or you’ve eroded them with substandard performance, you leave the door wide open for your competitors, warns Emde.

Exactly.  I have seen this play out firsthand in the marketplace.  This problem is most evident with order takers.  They simply wait for the phone to ring and provide a quote.  This approach, in this economy, requires the company to be perfect.  Perfect product/service, perfect delivery, perfect terms, etc.  The second the perfection falters, a competitor moves in and the battle is on.

The key is to make sure you hire salespeople who have the ability to nurture the little “r’” relationships while closing the deal.  If you are not assessing your sales candidates, you are risking more than you know.

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