I preach this point from the mountaintop as often as possible so I’ll continue here – sales is the single most difficult position to hire in any company.  The reason is simple, accurately predicting sales success by discerning candidate capabilities is…well, often a crapshoot.  This fact is why it is imperative to use assessments to gain an understanding of what the candidate has “under their hood.”

A prime example is emotional control.  Successful salespeople have this trait.  It is a broad term so let me put a finer point on it:

This is the ability of a salesperson to maintain rational and objective actions when experiencing strong internal emotions. This trait measures one’s ability to control their own internal emotions and prevent them from affecting their actions, logic, objectivity, etc. Emotional Control deals with keeping internal emotions in instead of letting them get the better of the salesperson.

I’ve seen this trait showing up more frequently among salespeople in this recessed economy.  My theory is that deals are hard to come by in most industries.  When salespeople do lock on to a solid opportunity, they need to stay focused and keep qualifying.  However, if they lack emotional control, they may get giddy, over excited, even panicky to get the deal closed.  This approach is absolutely uncomfortable to observe (yes, I have seen it first-hand recently).

The other facet of this trait, or lack of it, is an angry, desperate salesperson who reacts negatively to a stressful prospect interaction.  The salesperson can become infuriated with a deal not moving forward.  Even experienced salespeople can respond with a quick cut on the prospect or fire off a curt email that turns the prospect negative.

Whichever way this weakness plays out is highly detrimental to any company.  Salespeople must maintain objectivity throughout the most difficult of discussions to properly qualify an opportunity.  Failure to do so leads to the aforementioned problems.  This potential weakness can be identified before you ever hire a salesperson.  The tools are available so please contact us if you are ready to keep this weakness out of your sales team.

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Remember that great line from Frasier Crane on Cheers?  It is getting close to a holiday weekend so my mind is starting to drift a bit – my apologies.  I did come across this rather entertaining test from the msn.com/CareerBuilder website – Let Your Favorite Color Guide Your Career.  Take the test by selecting your favorite color from the top row and your favorite from the bottom row.  Scroll down and you will get your results.

I was blue-purple (can you tell from the website colors?).

All these years of selling assessments…maybe we overlooked something simple here.

Ok, maybe not.  Still, you have to admit it was interesting.

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Warning – psychology babble coming your way from Fast Company.  I encounter this effect often with clients:

That judgment is what’s called, in psychology, the Fundamental Attribution Error. Meaning that we tend to attribute people’s behavior to their core character rather than to their situation. So when somebody cuts you off in traffic, you think, “What a jerk!” You don’t think, “I wonder situation he’s in that’s causing him to drive so crazy.” Even though in those times when YOU have driven crazily, it was almost certainly because of the situation you were in—you were late for a job interview or a date.

May I make a suggestion?  The use of assessments introduces objective measurement into the situation which helps to limit fundamental attribution error.  Limiting subjectivity generally leads to better hiring especially with salespeople.

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I’ve been assessing many existing salespeople over the past couple weeks and have seen many different levels of abilities.  The ones that stick in my mind are the salespeople who are presently struggling with their revenue production.  Sales is one of, if not the most stressful positions within any company.  The overt issue with a lack of sales performance is that everyone in the company can see it.  The numbers are very visible.

One underperforming salesperson I talked to recently has hit a true low point.  He’s not certain where to start.  I thought about that discussion for quite some time afterwards.

The lack of performance becomes a spiraling nose dive like those old WWII videos of planes with one wing shot up.  The salesperson senses the spiral and over adjusts.  This is the pattern I have seen – the salesperson starts attempting to be someone they are not.

Generally, here is what I have seen in these salespeople:

-Less aggressive
-Less empathetic
-More data-driven
-More pessimistic
-More uncertain

These salespeople become unsure to the point where they do not move like they used to when qualifying prospects.  Instead, the salesperson requires larger amounts of data to make decisions.  They become uncertain in areas where they used to be decisive.  They tend to be less empathetic – they switch off their ability to read others as they become more robotic in attempting to close quickly.  They lose the natural aggressiveness that comes from being successful.

The key here is to get the salesperson back to their natural state.  This activity is supported by assessments.  In each of the instances I encountered recently, the salesperson’s assessments revealed a highly stressed state.  None of them were operating in their natural state.  This overshift was causing large amounts of stress and gross underperformance.

Each of the salespeople are operating well outside of their natural style which is neutralizing their abilities.  They are using energy to be someone they are not in an attempt to preserve their job.  Unfortunately, that approach is counterproductive to success in most cases.  My recommendation to each of these salespeople was specific actions to move them back to their natural style.  This has to be the first step in rejuvenating an ailing salesperson.

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We’re an assessment company so you can imagine how adamant I am about assessing candidates (not just for sales positions either).  However, in sales it is crucial to use assessments to cut through the sales candidates’ well-developed social skills.  Unfortunately, many assessment tools focus on personality only which is not a reliable or repeatable predictor of sales success.

My experience has been that most people focus on big personalities when it comes to selling.  If the person is a good talker, tells funny stories, lights up the room, etc., then they must be a good salesperson.  The bigger the personality, the more they will sell.  Ok, I grant you that is oversimplifying it, but you get my point.  I have encountered it for years when working with hiring managers.

The issue becomes more pronounced when these same hiring managers employ a personality assessment only.  Now they look for big personalities with highly extroverted assessment results to confirm their gut-level decision to pursue a boisterous candidate.  Sales is a listening profession – asking the right questions, gathering information and directing decisions are the core competencies of sales success.

I always tell prospects who are using personality assessments that it is good they are using assessments.  They do tell you something of the candidate’s style that hiring managers can use in interviewing.  But if you want to know how they will perform in the role, you have to measure their skills, aptitudes and motivations.  These items are predictive of success and provide a detailed view of a salesperson’s abilities.

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Yes, the title is a bit quirky, but it is true.  A significant portion of successful hiring involves being a good detective.  I have always taken that approach when helping our customers find the right salesperson for their position.  To be a good detective, you need to be a bit skeptical.

Sales candidates blow sunshine.  Few have ever missed quota, most state their primary weakness is being a workaholic and all have earned everything they have accomplished.  Right.  In reality, most have missed their sales quota at some point, many have real weaknesses discussing money and handling rejection and most have benefited from somewhere be it marketing, territory, company market share, etc.

Sales hiring is the most difficult hiring in which to succeed in that the candidates have interpersonal skills that disarm hiring managers.  In a way, this is a good thing since you want your salespeople to have this ability when qualifying prospects.  However, the hiring manager needs to focus like a detective during the hiring process.

I’m an old Hill Street Blues fan.  I watched almost every episode of NYPD Blue (it got weird at the end).  Even Magnum PI had some interesting tips.  Here are a few tips based on techniques incorporated by these detectives:

-Drill down – do not accept the candidate’s first answer as the complete answer.  Too often I see hiring managers accept theoretical answers to direct questions.  Ask for specific examples and then ask follow-up questions that require more detail from the candidate.  This approach will be most enlightening in regards to understanding if the candidate is being truthful or not.

-Interrupt – ok, don’t be a jerk, but interrupt the candidate gently.  The goal here is to shake them out of a canned, memorized response.  Prospects do this in sales calls.  I always do this in an interview.  Interviews should not be easy for sales candidates because selling isn’t easy.  This approach will show you how quick the candidate is on their feet.

-Wait – there is nothing quite like an awkward, pregnant pause to add some pressure to a discussion.  Silence is fine as it forces the candidate to work.  Their job is to impress you enough to continue in the hiring process.  Your job is not to make them completely comfortable.  At ease, yes; comfortable, no.  Use silence at times to force the candidate into a longer answer.  This approach will reveal how disciplined they are at controlling a conversation.

These are just a few techniques I incorporate.  Of course, one great tool for guiding you through an interview is a sales assessment.  If you aren’t using any such tool today, please contact us at your earliest convenience.  We’ll show you just what you are missing in making your hiring decision.

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I’ve been busy over the past week or two handling a myriad of business topics and tasks which has decreased my blogging time dramatically.  One item has come up during this time at one of our customers – a battle of wills amongst managers.  This is no small battle, it has turned into an ongoing war for which I am now in the midst of the battlefield.

Without going into specifics, I can tell you where we start in these situations – motivations.  The first place to look when there is interpersonal conflict within an office team is the motivation pattern for each individual.  In the instance with our customer, we have two people with almost polar opposite motivational patterns.

Here is why this matters – neither person can understand where the other is coming from, especially in terms of decision-making.  Each person finds the other one to be inconsistent, off-base and…well, wrong.  The relationship has deteriorated into acerbic communication.

Unfortunately, this customer did not assess this employee when they were in the hiring phase.  Instead, they made an emotional hire.  This employee has the skills to succeed in this role, but the hiring manager was never informed of the employee’s motivational pattern.  If he had been, he would have known the differences between the two of them and he could have managed through them.

I’m not sure the relationship is salvageable.  I am certain it was avoidable.

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I have recently come across the Social motivation when assessing some sales candidates for a couple different customers and now I just heard a sales rep on the radio revealing his motivation.  Here is what the salesperson said on the radio:

I just met with a company yesterday who was paying almost twice as much to our competitor for the same service.  They were getting ripped off and it isn’t right.

I don’t deny the nobility of his position, but the reality is that very few services are exactly the same (despite prospect’s claims).  A strong salesperson will define their value to the prospect who will make a decision about that value.  It may be that the prospect simply sees something in that company’s product/service that they require/need/value.

My concern for the salesperson on the radio is that he is unconsciously removing any differentiating value from his service.  He is turning the decision into one based solely on price.  That is a prospect move!

Here is where the Social motivation undermines salespeople.  Their natural desire to help others without expecting anything in return undermines their selling ability.  Again, it is a noble motivation and I personally wouldn’t want to live in a world without many Social motivations.  However, sales is not for the feint of heart.  Strong salespeople are consistently assessing the return on their investment of time, resources, money, effort, etc.  Salespeople need to determine if they have a strong prospect…and the faster they can make that determination, the more they can sell.

To be fair, there are a few sales positions where a Social motivation can thrive.  We once assessed a flourishing sales team at a company that provided a product for young mothers.  The team was successful and almost every salesperson was a Social.

But if you are hiring for sales, your best avenue is to hire strong Utilitarians.  If you are uncertain of your candidates’ motivations, we can help.

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The nature vs. nurture debate is one for which I am most intrigued.  My Bachelor’s degree is in psychology and this topic was a popular debate topic in my courses.  Yesterday I came across this article from CNNMoney.com – Are entrepreneurs born or made?  As I look at the stats, I tend to interpret the result as saying entrepreneurs are made:

Shane and his fellow researchers compared the entrepreneurial activity of 870 pairs of identical twins — who share 100% of their genes — and 857 pairs of same-sex fraternal twins — who share 50% — to see how much of entrepreneurial behavior is genetic and how much is environmental.

The mathematics behind quantitative genetic modeling are rather complicated, but the upshot was fairly straightforward: Entrepreneurs, the researchers concluded, are about 40% born and 60% made.

The 40% is a significant number; one that ties into salespeople also.  The article contains an excellent example as to where it derives its significance:

But he doesn’t totally dismiss nature’s role. “For someone without aptitude, I don’t think those things can be taught,” he says. “I can’t make a librarian into a Broadway performer.”

I believe strong salespeople are nurtured and developed within the right sales environment.  Yet, there is a nature/born component to strong salespeople also – the 40% born and 60% made split seems accurate to me.  The critical factor in the “40% born” side is their aptitudes.  We describe aptitudes as intrinsic talents. These are talents that salespeople possess – they are not learned.  They can be refined, but they cannot be created.  Salespeople either have these intrinsic talents or they do not.

For instance, it is difficult, almost impossible, to make a successful salesperson out of someone who lacks the aptitude Handling Rejection.  Few territory reps are successful without having a strong Personal Accountability aptitude.  Hire a remote salesperson with low Initiative and you will have trouble.

One facet of our assessments is to measure a salesperson’s aptitudes in comparison to their present sales skills.  This comparison reveals areas where they may have underdeveloped sales skills today, but they possess the aptitude…it simply needs to be refined into a skill.

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How about this quote from Stephen King’s Danse Macabre (h/t JustSell.com):

… talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force — a force so great that the knife is not really cutting at all but bludgeoning and breaking… Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

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