If you’ve read The Hire Sense for any length of time, you know one of my favorite pastimes is reading cover letters/emails. There really are some bemusing, befuddling and bewildering approaches. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw this abcnews.com article – ‘Cover Letters from Hell’ Expose Poor Quality of College Grads. Ok, I’m all over that article and I have found my new hero – Bob Killian. And I thought I had some good examples but this guy is the king. This link takes you directly to the cover letter section of his website. It is excellent and amusing – I even had to subscribe to his… Read More
Continue ReadingTop 10 Tips for Prospecting Success
As you know, we are intrigued by lists and statistics and I came across this article in Sales Vault’s current newsletter. It is a quick read and I recommend that you read all 10 tips. To give you a taste of what you will learn: 5. Schedule your prospecting sessions for 3½ hours. Take a fifteen-minute break between each hour. That is more productive than five prospecting sessions of one hour each. Very interesting thought. If you are like most salespeople, being able to reduce the amount of time you need to spend on prospecting sounds most appealing. 7. Always be in a “Disqualification” mode. Be determined to spend your… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling Power Daily Video – 2
As I stated in my previous post I would keep you updated as to the effectiveness usefulness of Selling Power’s daily video clip. I have been watching them off and on the past couple of weeks and each time I find a usable tidbit in them. For instance, today Gerhard Gschwandtner is interviewing John Roberts – CEO Sugar CRM. As you would expect, the interview is on the effectiveness of CRMs. The one point that I pulled out of today’s clip is on what John Roberts sees as the biggest reason for CRM failure is user adoption. His clear point – quality of CRM training drives user adoption up. A… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Personal Drive
Last week we covered Self-Starting Ability. This week we look at a complementary aptitude – Personal Drive. Most salespeople work within the framework of a company but their actual performance takes place on a one-to-one level…salesperson to prospect. To be successful, salespeople have to have the internal drive to succeed without excessive, external, surrogate motivation from their manager. Personal Drive A gauge of personal motivation to achieve, accomplish or complete tasks, goals or missions. This drive can take many forms (e.g., tasks, knowledge, career, physical, etc.), but it involves the level of personal motivation a person is capable of bringing to bear on any given task which they feel is… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat’s My Password?
I found this story amusing – One in Three Workers Writes Down Computer Passwords, Study Says. For all the security measures taken by companies, a third of the works still undermine it. Staff still had a tendency to jot down passwords either on a piece of paper or in a text file on a PC or mobile device. Great analogy here: “This is really a lot like mom and dad buying a great new system for the house and junior leaving the combination under the door mat,” David O’Connell, senior analyst at Nucleus Research, told Reuters.
Continue ReadingA Good Time To Be In Sales
This article – The Hottest Industries For Sales Jobs – comes from the daily SM&M Magazine enewsletter. The market demand for salespeople is strong right now (we can attest to that fact) and is going to remain high: The trend for hiring shows no signs of stopping, according to Cindy Hazen, the founder of Sales Executives, a recruiting firm based in Nashville, Tenn. “We have been booming for the last two years in sales and project to be booming for the next five,” she says. And now for the hottest topic in hiring: The aging U.S. workforce is also changing the sales profession. Companies soon will need to replace a… Read More
Continue ReadingBest Buy’s Results-Only Work Environment
There has been a lot written on Best Buy’s Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) in articles and in the blogs. Everyone seems to have an opinion about this type of work environment and if it could work outside of Best Buy. One article specifically addresses the point of the adaptability of Best Buy’s culture in other companies. I found a couple of points of interest that I would like to share with you. “Best Buy’s culture is very young,” says Washington, D.C.-based flexibility consultant Paul Rupert of Rupert & Co., who has worked with clients ranging from Wal-Mart to Xerox. “They have a lot of significant managers who are still in… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Comp Potpourri – Part 2
A few days ago the Velvet Hammer provided some pointers on putting together offer letters and I wanted to chime in on the topic. I have just a couple of general reminders as you deliver the offers to your sales candidates: Your position is probably not the only opportunity they are looking at so keep the process moving along – timing is everything. Qualify the total compensation package with the candidate. Will the offer be in the candidate’s range or will it be out in left field? Expect to have some negotiation with the candidate on the offer. Again, this is probably not the only opportunity they are pursuing. Make… Read More
Continue ReadingWall Street Pay
Wall Street Pay Averages $300,000 Per Year. “Averages” is the word that hooked me into the article. The straight-forward article simply relays the stats and how an improved Wall Street helps NYC. Today’s news that the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 12,000 line for the first time ever bodes well for that average pay moving up. I enjoyed this rather dry statement from the short article: “Wall Street is recovering,” Hevesi said in a statement. I guess so.
Continue ReadingSales Managers – Manage and Lead
Selling Power has a short, but valuable article titled The Two Things You Must Do Well to Succeed as a Sales Manager. I’ll cut right to the chase: 1. Manage the Sales Process 2. Leading the Salespeople That is it. Sounds simple but rarely do we see it in action. Instead, we normally see some variation of this: …managers are compensated primarily on their salespeople’s sales revenue, which leads many managers to jump in and act as “super closers,” taking over the relationships in the most critical accounts – and in the process, often undermining the motivation of their sales reps. Super closers – I like that. Most sales managers… Read More
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