I know, lame title, but I couldn’t resist. ManageSmarter.com offers up this article – Compensation Complexity Hinders Sales – regarding current compensation plans. Here are some numbers they quote within the article (my editing): Only 41% of sales leaders were satisfied with their current compensation plans (down from 59% two years prior), and only 46% believed their plans were promoting the correct behaviors for sales success. Nearly half (46%) of sales force leaders believe their sales compensation programs have become more complex since 2006. I always found the compensation plans to be more “complex” when I wasn’t at quota. Successful selling definitely alleviates many problems. But there is this: The… Read More
Continue ReadingI’m Too Busy To Coach Salespeople
Coaching in many organizations is an after thought at best. What we see all too often is that the quotas are set and salespeople are expected to reach them on their own (to some extent). These are the organizations in which we see far too little coaching by the sales managers of their teams. Why is this? In a post from Dave Stein’s blog he asks you to name one professional athlete that doesn’t have a coach. Even amateur athletes have coaches, so why do organizations not require and equip sales managers to be coaches? Dave makes some interesting points and I recommend that you go read the entire post. He may get you to change your… Read More
Continue ReadingOverqualified
The layoffs that have occurred in this weak economy have led to a larger percentage of overqualified candidates responding to lower-level positions. We are presently seeing this effect in our sourcing efforts. Clearly some companies that are looking to cut costs are laying off experienced salespeople who have 1.) higher salaries & benefits and 2.) are not delivering top-end numbers. That’s not to say they are not being successful, but they are performing at a level where a financial decision maker may decided to release them. This downsizing happens frequently to sales departments in weak economies. The follow up move is this – hire a younger, less expensive salesperson for… Read More
Continue ReadingDictionaries Save Cover Letters
Killian’s Cover Letters from Hell are out again with some highly entertaining fare. This one does it for me: I’m looking for work because even though my company was profitable last year, this year they are expecting a large defecate.
Continue ReadingSales 2.0
I read often about web 2.0, recruiting 2.0 and sales 2.0. Math was never my forte so numbers scare me. But I did come across a very informative article in Sales & Marketing Management article titled A Step-By-Step Overview of Sales 2.0. The first pull quote: With instant access to corporate Web sites, search and social networks, your customers have company and product information at their fingertips, which give them much more control over the sales process than they had in the day when brochures and pricing were only available from a sales rep. Many prospective customers postpone talking with a sales rep, believing that they’ll get a better deal… Read More
Continue Reading10 Mistakes Companies Make In The Hiring Process
The title of this post caught my eye from US News & World Report. The insightful list made me laugh; I believe I have watched companies make all 10 of these mistakes in the past 12 months. The 10 mistakes are: Flakiness. Making hiring decisions that aren’t based on the right criteria. Not distinguishing between what can be taught and what can’t. Not asking the right questions in interviews. Letting candidates get away with superficial, stock responses. Hiring too quickly. …Not moving fast enough. Not getting back to candidates. Conducting intimidating, high-pressure interviews. Not giving an accurate portrayal of the job. Author Alison Green has this to say about #2 Employers often overvalue particular types… Read More
Continue ReadingDegrees=Dollars
This is from the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link): According to the U.S. Census Bureau the difference in lifetime earnings between a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree is a million dollars. Add on a master’s degree and you can expect to earn an additional half a million dollars in earnings. Those with professional degrees earn much more – about 4.4 million dollars during their working life. Jennifer Day, Chief of the Education and Social Stratification Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau says, “In 1999, average annual earnings ranged from $19,000 for high school dropouts, to $26,000 for high school graduates, $45,000 for college graduates and $99,000 for the… Read More
Continue ReadingWeekend Hangover…For Ads
The days of posting your employment ad on the weekend are over. I think the whole weekend approach is a hangover from the Sunday paper days of job hunting. Nowadays, few – few – people look for a job on the weekend. According to The Career News newsletter (sorry, no link): In a trend that has held true for three years, job hunting takes off on Monday, peaks on Tuesday and is still very busy on Wednesday, according to Monster.com. Job hunt traffic on Tuesday is 28 percent higher than on Friday, said Steve Sylven, a spokesman for Monster. EQuest, which manages job boards for companies, used to see Tuesdays… Read More
Continue ReadingA Fundamental Lack Of Communication
The more companies we work with, the more we see communication breakdowns being the root of most problems. Our work with our clients spans more than just recruiting. We assist them in onramping their new salesperson. This function places us in the unique position of working with both the salesperson and the sales manager. One of the more dysfunctional situations we encounter is a communication breakdown between the manager and salesperson. One manager complained that the salesperson wasn’t doing what he asked, but he never confronted the salesperson. Another time we had a salesperson who would not submit his weekly call report. Ever. Yes, he was let go (even we… Read More
Continue ReadingYou Get What You Pay Salespeople For
We have really come to enjoy Dave Stein’s posts. They are timely and cut straight to the heart of the issue. Today’s post is no exception. Working strictly on the sales side of organizations, one of the areas we look at while profiling their sale is compensation. Most importantly, we look to see if the compensation structure rewards the behaviors the company expects of the salesperson. More times than not it won’t and from one of Dave’s comments, he sees the same issues: I am bringing this up because compensation is another dysfunctional area within many companies. During the past quarter, I’ve been engaged with several clients where “errors of commission” are preventing… Read More
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