First let me say, I read through a business development job ad today that was fairly well-written. The ad did use many second person questions – Do you enjoy closing deals…? I’m not a huge fan of that approach, but I suspect it engages the readers at some level. The part I wanted to call out was towards the end of the ad when the author calls out the requirements for this position: To be a successful candidate for the BDM position, you should: · Hold a Bachelor€™s Degree, preferably in Packaging · Have 8 years sales-related packaging experience First, the B.A. degree should be a preference and not a… Read More
Continue ReadingGen Y And Self-Fulfillment At Work
We work sparingly with Gen Y-level salespeople but we do track the articles regarding this generation. BusinessWeek.com offers an informative read in their article Careers: The Goods on Generation Y. The takeaway information for me: Indeed, twentysomethings don’t view work as merely a way to make a living, says Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (Oxford University Press, 2004) and research professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “They expect work to be a form of self-fulfillment€”they don’t want to take a job that pays well but is boring or annoying,” he says. Money is important to twentysomethings, he… Read More
Continue ReadingSnap Judgments Rule The World
I thought this was interesting from the StarTribune’s Old-Time Job Search: In 1937, Elmer Wheeler published the advertising classic, “Tested Sentences That Sell.” He wrote it after testing 105,000 word combinations on 19 million people over 10 years, to find the phrases and communications techniques that sold the most goods and services. Wheeler included a chapter on tested ways to get hired, and here’s his number one rule for getting a job: “Watch your ten-second approach. Our case histories showed that many employers judge the applicant during the first ten seconds. He catches a flash of the man’s appearance, his personality, and is or is not impressed by his first… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Ads That Include Excel
I wouldn’t recommend this tact to a sales ad: Are you the candidate we are looking for? If you are very familiar with Excel, have good organizational skills along with verbal and written communication abilities, you may just be the future (salesperson) for our growing business. Leading with Excel and organizational skills are generally not the strongest points for drawing in talented salespeople. I would recommend putting those abilities in a “helpful to have” section. Far better to focus on the abilities the salesperson will need to close business.
Continue ReadingMisguided "Hiring A Hunter" Assumptions
I just read another article about hiring sales “hunters” that was filled with simplistic tips and tricks. The article triggered a thought – there seems to be much conventional wisdom about hiring strong salespeople that permeates these articles. Unfortunately, I think the logic behind them is overly assumptive. Let’s look at some of these mythical assumptions: Sales Managers Should Always Be Interviewing Sales CandidatesThis approach sounds good in a theoretical sense but has minimal real-world application. The only sales managers who should follow this approach are ones who head up high-turnover sales departments. A sales managers’ top priority is to increase profitable revenue (with an eye on SG&A at the same… Read More
Continue ReadingUnderappreciated
These surveys come out on a fairly regular basis. There is a part of me that believes 20 years down the road we will still be seeing similar results to the findings in Inc.com’s Employees Feeling Underappreciated. Of more than 500 full- and part-time employees surveyed nationwide, 35 percent said the company they worked for was ineffective at rewarding strong performance, according to OfficeTeam, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based staffing services firm. At the same time, 30 percent of 150 senior executives surveyed admitted that employee recognition wasn’t a high enough priority. The reason I mention this survey is that that Gen Y/Millenials have a different take on employment. They value… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Quality Orientation
Quality of standards is an important aspect of successful selling. A salesperson who does not ensure quality has a tendency to appear inaccurate, or to the extreme – sloppy. Since salespeople are initially the face of the company, this quality disconnect can present a poor view of the company’s quality as a whole. Quality OrientationThis trait is a measure of a salesperson€™s affinity for seeing details, grading them against a preset standard (internal or external) and identifying flaws. This is directly related to a person€™s preference for paying attention to detail. Whereas attention to detail is more a measure of how capable a person is to appropriately see detail, this capacity… Read More
Continue ReadingMore Americans Are Working From Home
Foxnews.com offers a story regarding the booming trend of working from home. I hope no one is surprised by this trend since it has been prevalent for many years now. Obviously, $3 a gallon gas is driving even more people towards this model. Yet, I think the gas prices are exacerbating the increasing commute times around the country. To my point, think of how much time is wasted each work day when commuting: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2005 an estimated 3 million Americans commuted more than 90 minutes to work each way €” almost twice as many as in 1990. Fifteen out of every 100 Americans traveled… Read More
Continue ReadingTop 5 Candidate Lies
CareerBuilder offers up the 5 most common candidate lies in this article. They bring up a good point in that 85% of all companies perform some type of candidate verification. Surprisingly, candidates continue to embellish or falsify their information. The top 5 lies: Exaggerating Dates of Past Employment…as many as 35 percent of all resumes include discrepancies related to previous employment Falsifying the Degree or Credential EarnedWith roughly a 20 percent discrepancy rate in information provided by candidates regarding their education qualifications, it’s important that companies understand the variety of ways applicants lie to claim unearned degrees.Even if a candidate has earned a legitimate degree, the applicant may lie about… Read More
Continue ReadingCustomers Don’t Walk
Here is an urban legend we encounter frequently in our sales hiring activities – customers don’t walk with the salesperson. What I mean is customers rarely follow a salesperson to a new company. If the salesperson quits one company and goes to a competitor, it is a rare occurrence in which the customers move their business with the salesperson. Yes, everyone can provide an example of when it happened, but we deal with many salespeople in many industries and it just is not common. Sales candidates, on the other hand, will go out of their way claiming that they can bring the business with them. Unfortunately, many companies who do… Read More
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