The salutation from another email cover message:

Dear All Hiring,

Cover emails are difficult to write without starting it in this manner.  I’m not a big fan of using “To Whom It May Concern,” but at least it doesn’t draw your attention in a negative way.

Comments(0)

We never, ever phone screen a sales candidate without asking some form of this question:

Why are you looking for a new opportunity?

This question is revealing especially if you drill down a bit on their initial response.  You will learn much about the candidate.  We also ask it of previous positions – why did they decide to leave those positions.  Listen closely to their response.

Just in time comes this line from an email cover (emphasis mine):

The company is closing their doors in Minnesota and abolishing all positions. Therefore that is why I am seeking new employment.

Dramatic.  This respondent certainly gets right to the point on the above question.  Yet, I think this may be a case of overusing a thesaurus to sound like the Queen’s English in the letter.

Comments(2)

I graduated with a degree in psychology and I have a coffee addiction so abcnews.com’s article was irresistible: Starbuck’s Psychology. The article points to some specific, subtle marketing principles incorporated by the ever-expanding Starbuck’s chain:

It has everything to do with the marketing strategy behind this designer coffee chain, which devised a clever way of creating its own community. It also pinpointed one key aspect of caffeine shoppers: They want their coffee immediately.

“Designer coffee” for certain. Knowing this fact, they devised their strategy:

Across the United States, there are 9,814 stores with a total of 13,728 worldwide. The Starbucks management has watched coffee drinks, and figured out exactly what people will and won’t do for coffee.

“We actually study traffic patterns,” said Starbucks CEO Jim Donald. “If it’s in a downtown area, we study foot-traffic patterns.”

“Not everyone can shop at Tiffany’s, but everyone can afford a cup of coffee — even if it’s $2, $3 or $4,” Blumenthal said. “You can do something nice for yourself by buying yourself a good cup of coffee every day.”

While 80 percent of the sales are takeout, they’re still delighted to have customers stay and sit with their computers for hours to make the place feel lived in.

The tables are also rounded to give it a comfortable atmosphere. As Blumenthal explained, round tables are more welcoming than those with square edges, and people look “less alone” while seated at a round table.

It is remarkable to me that this company with a clear market-leading position has placed such an emphasis on the minute details. Is your marketing program as finely tuned to your customers’ expectations?

Comments(0)

One client of ours told me a sales hiring story that led them to us. The sales manager followed the conventional hiring process – post an ad, sort the resumes, interview the candidates from the “yes” resume pile. He chose a salesperson with a glowing resume who absolutely won him over in the interview.

He knew he had made a mistake a couple months into her employment. It turns out that this salesperson could not handle making calls in the presence of other people. What I mean is that her phone-intensive position was located in a cube farm with her peers all around her. She was incredibly uncomfortable talking to prospects within earshot of her fellow salespeople.

Her solution – only make calls in the conference room with the door closed. That’s right, away from her phone extension, her computer and her email. Obviously, she didn’t make nearly the number of calls as her coworkers and her low sales numbers revealed the outcome.

Not surprisingly, the sales manager had to let her go. This was an expensive lesson.

Pre-qualifying sales candidates based on their resume is a high-risk proposition. There is an effect that occurs where hiring managers make a determination that a candidate can or cannot succeed in the role. Of course, that is the purpose of hiring, but the subjective decision occurs without enough data. Since the next step in the process is a significant investment of time in interviewing, the hiring manager reviews resumes with the intent of disqualifying candidates from consideration.

We see this decision process play out with our new customers, too. We complete our lengthy sourcing process which includes multiple phone calls, emails, a structured phone screen, 4 different online assessments and a review of the candidate’s experience as stated on their resume (with consideration for the fact that resumes are basically embellished…greatly). This strong filter ensures that our determination that the candidate can succeed in the role is supported by more than just a resume.

Conversely, sales candidates who do not have the finest resume money can buy are still considered. Our emphasis is not on the resume but rather on their ability. We prefer to make our determination that a candidate cannot succeed in this role based on their interaction with us and our objective assessment of their abilities in relation to the role’s needs.

This approach can be incorporated into your hiring process today. Do not over-value the resume. Talk to the candidates on the phone and listen to their sales strategy and tactics. Drill down on their responses for clarity and you will vastly improve your hiring successes.

Comments(1)

Yesterday I posted on communication blindness.  Today, I stumbled upon CareerJournal.com’s Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy?  A stunning thought that I have never considered.  Yet, I suspect Gen Y has some ideals that favor this approach.

Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary’s 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited.

Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year.

At first blush, this approach seems as if there is too much communication, too much anarchy and not enough command-and-control structure.  We’ve never encountered a company that incorporates this management approach.

The article references some skepticism for this approach also:

Harry Katz, dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, doubts a system like Ternary’s could work on a large scale. In bigger companies, “there’s an inevitable conflict of interest between managers and employees,” Mr. Katz says. General Motors Corp.’s Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., for instance, experimented with giving employees a strong voice in management, but later moved back to a more-traditional structure, he says.

However, it is quite a testament to communication, isn’t it?  Well, I was hooked until I got to this section of the article (my emphasis):

The repeated changes to Ternary’s pay scale last year demonstrate employee empowerment in action. The company shares financial data, including everyone’s salary, with all employees. In 2005, Bill Schofield proposed cutting the salaries of senior programmers, including his own, by 15%, and boosting compensation for junior programmers. The council agreed.

Then, last summer, Ternary ran into a cash crunch because some customers weren’t paying their bills on time. The strategy council slashed salaries by 22%. That rattled Chad Wolfe, a 29-year-old Canadian programmer who told his representative on the strategy team that he would have trouble paying his personal bills. So the team devised no-interest loans for needy employees.

That’s it for me.  As a Utilitarian I would fail wildly in this company.  However, if we were helping them to hire more team members, we would certainly stress the Social motivation in all hires.

Comments(0)

This week’s trait focuses on an important sales manager trait.  The aptitude to lead others works in concert with many other traits and motivations, but the natural ability to lead can be identified and measured through our assessments.

Leading Others
The ability to organize and motivate salespeople to get things accomplished where everyone feels a sense of order and direction. Effective leadership depends on a fine mixture of capacities that must match the environment in which the sales manager is asked to perform. Regardless of that mixture, every leader must be able to gain the trust of others and be able to solve problems among/for the group.

A sales manager with strength in this trait will effectively combine such capacities as empathetic ability, problem solving ability, self-esteem, role confidence and motivating others into a cohesive approach to guide them towards a mutual goal.

A weakness in this area is most likely indicative of a lack of empathetic and problem-solving abilities.

Comments(0)

I have a weakness for this topic so I was pleased to read today’s ERE.net article titled Results-Focused Interviews.

Remember, these are all questions that people submitted to the website as their best questions to use in an interview.

I am not making these up:

1. “If a spaceship were to land outside this office and you were asked to get in, would you? Why?” (Is an acceptable answer, “Because they had a ray gun?”)
2. “Am I a good interviewer? Why or why not?” (Well, if you have to ask me, maybe we ought to switch chairs.)
3. “If you were a part of a car, which part would you be and why?” (Gee, I was all prepared for the tree question. Lemme think.)
4. “What do you enjoy most about your current/last position? What did you enjoy least?” (Boy, I never saw that second question coming!)
5. “If you had the opportunity to participate in a circus performance, which role would be yours?” (Well, I wouldn’t be the clown because clearly, that role is taken.)
6. “What makes you difficult to work with?” (Is the correct answer, “Stupid questions that are not job-related?”)

In all my years of interviewing and being interviewed, I have never heard question #2.  Absolutely brutal in an entertaining way.

Comments(0)

Anyone who has managed salespeople knows how difficult a task that can be.  We see it often in companies where clouded communication occurs daily.  I think  most of you could name numerous situations throughout your career where management communication simply broke down or worse, did not even occur.

SellingPower.com’s article – There€™s No Communication Around Here! – dives right into this topic.  Clear communication covers many transgressions.  We’ve posted about this topic numerous times since it is so important.  In case you had doubts:

The latest Watson Wyatt Communication ROI Study found that companies with effective communication practices have a 19 percent higher market premium and a 57 percent higher shareholder return over five years than companies with ineffective practices. That€™s because ineffective communication practices lead to conflicting internal goals, blindness to what other divisions are doing, turf wars, low morale, and more, says Dianna Booher, CEO of Booher Consultants and author of The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know (McGraw-Hill, 2007).

I’m not sure what determines “effective” vs. “ineffective” communication in this study, but the principle seems valid.  There are 3 wise tips within this short article.  Here is a shortened version of each one:

1. Are you correct?
Do you communicate with truthfulness every time? If not €“ if you spin the truth to make things sound rosier than they are, or omit information, or outright lie €“ then you destroy your credibility and your reps€™ trust in you…

2. Are you complete?
Managers withhold information for many reasons, but the number one reason is because they believe it gives them power. On the contrary, managers who withhold information are usually resented and regarded with mistrust…

3. Are you clear?
People generally assume their communications are clear and that any misunderstanding is the fault of the listener. In fact, misunderstandings are usually the fault of the speaker or writer. That€™s because the three main culprits in confusing communication are lack of specificity, excessive jargon or wordiness, and burying the key message…

To quote Billy Joel, “It’s a matter of trust.”  Some of the best managers we have assessed have not possessed the greatest sales management skills.  However, they have been strong communicators with their team (obviously amongst other traits).  Conversely, we have also seen managers with strong skill sets but poor communication abilities – and they are rarely as effective as the former managers.

Focus on clear communication and your team will be far more cohesive and based on the aforementioned survey, more successful.  Please contact us if you want to understand your team members’ preferred communication style.

Comments(0)

SellingPower.com offers up an interesting article in their CRM newsletter – Is CRM Really Improving Sales Productivity? The short answer is no for a handful of reasons. One item resonated with me:

Mike Bosworth, author of the bestseller CustomerCentric Selling (Wiley, 2005) argues that the sales process must be adapted to customer buying processes prior to being automated. But that€™s not what€™s happening. Instead, when sales managers see sales productivity dropping, they€™re likely to turn to CRM in an attempt to make their existing, traditional process more efficient. That€™s like stepping on the accelerator when you€™re heading for a cliff.

He’s right – there is no reason to automate a “traditional” process if it is not adapted to modern-day realities. I have personally seen this approach fail at previous employers (full disclosure – I spent a couple years selling CRM software back in the ’90s). Adding a CRM system to a sales department without a clear selling system (approach) institutionalizes existing problems. I particularly enjoyed this description of the changes in today’s market (emphasis mine):

The report explains that because of the availability of information on the Internet, the buying process often starts long before the sales process, as prospects access product facts, pricing, reviews, existing customer feedback, etc., without ever talking to a salesperson. When sales reps are eventually brought into the process, buyers are now expecting the reps to bring much more to the table than just a rehash of product knowledge, features, and benefits. Instead, they expect the reps to have done the homework on their needs and be able to describe how the product/service offering will meet and exceed their expectations.

Any selling system that does not adjust for this tremendous shift in the modern marketplace is woefully inefficient.

Comments(0)

Today marks The Hire Sense’s first anniversary so without much pomp and circumstance, let’s get a proper perspective:

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

-Oscar Wilde

We may have to use that quote every year on this date! Thanks to all of our readers and to the acquaintances we have made through this expanding channel.

Comments(0)