I’ve written about this phenomenon in the past and I continually encounter it in many sales areas – the allure of experience. In fact, I just talked to a recruiter from a different part of the country who focuses on sales hiring. We talked a bit of strategy and I was just dumbfounded. This gentleman focuses solely on finding someone with as much industry experience as possible. His primary motivation – find candidates who can bring accounts with them. No discussion about skills, no behavioral-based questions, no attempt at learning their style and motivation…just simple experience. I am not even sure if he asks if it was successful experience. My… Read More
Continue ReadingObvious Red Flags In Employment Ads
Don’t do this: If you have the contacts in these areas with such customers, let us know! That line is from a sales employment ad I read this morning and it is a tremendous red flag to savvy salespeople. The ad is also from a recruiter and not the hiring company which makes it worse. It is this approach that makes sales recruiting so difficult. Clearly this recruiter is less interested in ability and more interested in an existing network. Fair enough, but having a network is one thing, getting customers to walk over to a new company is another. It rarely works in spite of what the salesperson thinks… Read More
Continue ReadingPreparation vs. Execution
SellingPower.com’s article – Help for Your Pre-Call Prep – makes a bold statement in the opening sentence: When you get right down to it, sales are won or lost on preparation. I would argue that sales are won or lost on execution. Give me a salesperson who executes flawlessly any day over one who prepares flawlessly. Again, the context is in terms of where deals are lost. Be that as it may, the article has an interesting statistic found in one of the later graphs. At a time when relatively few initial discussions with a client are progressing further into the sales cycle (40 percent of organizations say only 25… Read More
Continue ReadingEven Airlines Use Assessments
Short background here is that Delta bought Northwest Airlines and now I am in the process of switching my frequent flyer program to Delta. Being a free miles junkie, I completed Delta’s online travel profile. I thought it was simple background info/preferences for me. At the end of the 15 questions I receive this information: Speed Racer Comfort Seeker Opportunist Grand Planner YOU TRAVEL IN THE FAST LANE, WITH MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY. As one of those rare, special people who gets things done quicker when there’s more to do, you prioritize your time to your advantage. You always find a way to be more efficient, and you never met an obstacle… Read More
Continue ReadingDo Values Change In A Recession?
That is a tough question since I think values are primarily hardwired into each of us. We assess this trait in sales candidates – call them motivations. Each person tends to have two of these motivators that drives their behaviors (some people have 3 primary motivators). We have assessed salespeople who were in slumps, who were unemployed and who were candidates. These are stressful situations that should impact their values. When we had the opportunity to assess the same people at a later date (years later), we did not see an appreciable change in their values/motivations. Granted, this was no scientific study, but rather a consistent observation. BusinessWeek.com provides this… Read More
Continue ReadingA Simple Interview Rule
If you (hiring manager) are talking, you’re not interviewing. I know, simple in concept, but for some it is difficult in practice. I sat through an interview recently that involved a sales manager who spoke for 75-85% of the time! The candidate was simply caught in his wake for the entire interview. My take on the interview was that we learned next to nothing about the candidate and his fit to the position. He may have been strong – we’ll never know. What we did learn is the frantic, scattered approach of the sales manager makes for an interview that did not go deep on any topic. The fault here… Read More
Continue ReadingBite-Sized Selling
I have come across many articles recently that promote selling tips in this recession. One common thread runs through all of them – chase smaller deals. Here is an example from Inc.com – 5 Tips for Selling a Service Now: “The big change for us in 2009 is that we are more flexible on minimum amount of an engagement that we’ll pursue,” says Gay Gaddis, the founder and CEO of T3, an Austin-based advertising and marketing agency that specializes in digital media. In years past, her firm only went after client engagements that were worth between $1.5 million and $2 million. Now, “some larger clients are breaking RFPs into smaller… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat Sells In A Recession
Here is an interesting story from abcnews.com – What Do iPhones and Designer Jeans Have in Common? The answer is found in the subheading – They Keep Selling, Even in Recession. Here is a list from the article in regards to hot-selling products during this recession: The iPhone Designer jeans Wal-Mart and Costco McDonald’s Internet access High-definition TV sets An odd list, wouldn’t you say? The low-price options are logical, the other ones not-so-much. The explanation from the article: “Even in down times,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret LLC, “people still have some discretionary income. What happens is that they spend it more carefully.”… Read More
Continue ReadingPersuasion Through Scarcity And Fear Of Loss
I was a psych major in college which seemed to be the perfect preparation for a sales career. I believe it was. To this day I am still intrigued by the psychology of selling which could truly be described as persuasion. That background helps explain why I found this ManageSmarter.com article completely gripping – Mastering the Psychology of Persuasion. You will have to read the entire article to appreciate the depth of it, but let me pull out a couple of points. First one of the set-up questions: • Are left-handed people more prone to some mental illnesses, accidents, or seeking positions of power? And from later in the article:… Read More
Continue ReadingElectronic Layoff
The news stories are flowing about layoffs, downsizing and closing in this brutal economy. One such story from abcnews.com shares stories from readers regarding extreme situations for being let go. This one was amusing: After a traditional face to face layoff session, my company tried a new kinder gentler approach. They called a big meeting and announced that every employee had e-mail back on their computer that would tell them if they still had a job. I didn’t! I’ve been let go during layoffs before and there isn’t any easy way to do it. However, it seems to me that if your communication strategy is to use some form of… Read More
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