ManageSmarter.com offers up an interesting article titled Do You Have the Right Talent?  First off, I love the fact that they advocating the pursuit of talent - that is the key to a successful sales hire (read:  not experience).  Second, the author strikes a chord that resonates with us:  There is no one-size-fits-all salesperson.  The right approach is to look at a salesperson’s abilities and see how well they fit into your sales model.  This approach is talent/skill-based, not experience-based.

Here is an excellent example of this principle in action (emphasis mine):

A client of ours is a partner in a construction company specializing in commercial ventilation systems. They have a good reputation and they bid on, and win, many commercial installation jobs.

A few years ago this company took on a new “product.” They felt that annual maintenance contracts for commercial building ventilation systems (not unlike an annual maintenance contract for a home furnace or central air conditioning) would be a relevant addition to their offerings. And they were right. But from a “need” point of view, these two sales jobs are completely different.

When the salesperson tries to illustrate why her company is the best choice for the construction side of the business, the need is known. That is, we already know that there is a building project going on. Without having to ask, we know there is the need for a ventilation system. The prospect does not have to use my client’s company necessarily, but they do have to have a ventilation system. The need has already been established before the sale even begins. But this is not true for the maintenance side of the business. Although there may be tremendous value to purchasing a maintenance contract, it is not essential. The need must first be created.

It is of course very common to have related product lines like this—it’s just good business. But in this example, the two sale types are very different for the salespeople, and certain things must be structured accordingly. This is why you have heard me say that you may well have several different sale types in one company—requiring different talents—and why many of you have had experiences where your salespeople just don’t do well with certain products or services that you feel are such “natural companions” to your core products.

The fact that the need has already been established is a subtle, but powerful differentiation in the sale.  This principle is true when hiring salespeople that have worked for a market leader in your industry.  The similarity is that the salesperson’s company has name recognition and market capitalization.  This market strength makes prospecting much easier.

Now imagine a smaller competitor hires a salesperson from the larger company.  The smaller company thinks they have scored a coup.  Yet, they find after a few months that this new salesperson is not getting appointments and, consequently, not closing new deals.  The skill set required at the smaller company is different than the larger, market-leading company. 

This hiring error occurs often in companies that believe they must hire salespeople from their industry.  Big, big mistake.  Yet, this conventional wisdom is ingrained in many hiring managers.  Talent and skill should be the first measuring stick for any sales hire.

If you're new here and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Comments(1)

We haven’t seen this trend yet, but I suspect it may show up on our front stoop at some point.  From The Career News (sorry, no link) comes this abridged story from MSNBC.com:

The first step to acing the interview: Show up! I know this sounds obvious, but apparently not to everyone. “It happens all the time lately,” says Emmanuel Conde, director of recruitment for Alliant Technologies, an information-technology staffing firm that estimates about 50 percent of entry-level IT professionals they try to place don’t show up for interviews. Among senior level folks, about 20 percent skip it.

The no-show phenomenon is a growing problem for many recruiters and hiring managers, and it’s pervasive in a host of industries from high tech to health care. Career experts believe an increasingly tight labor market and the deterioration of common courtesy is contributing to the trend, but it may also be that job applicants are also being treated as commodities today.

“Companies get thousands of resumes, and no human being can read them all. So everyone is a cog in a wheel, a commodity,” says Seth Godin, author of “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).”

Nonetheless, not showing up can come back to haunt you. You’ll risk being labeled unreliable, and word could get out that you flake out.

It has been a while since I last read “flake out” in any text.  Funny to see it here.

Comments(0)

When sourcing and phone screening, we tend to come across salespeople who have been laid off from a previous position.  Layoffs are obviously a common occurrence in business, but they are problematic in sales.

Most companies do not lay off salespeople who are closing profitable business. 

Granted, some companies view salespeople as an expense and assume the customer relationship will remain - big mistake.  Some smaller companies are family owned and keep the family members employed as the business contracts.  There are always exceptions, but they are not the rule.

When we encounter a salesperson who has been laid off, we immediately look for logical specifics regarding their shortened tenure.  The candidate needs to clearly define the circumstances and the rationale behind the company’s decision.  If these items cannot be explained, the assumption has to be that the salesperson was not performing at the expected level (fair or not).

This item isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for a candidate so please don’t take me out of context.  My suggestion is to drill down thoroughly on this topic when talking to the candidate.  Make sure you are confident in the circumstances and keep your focus on what the candidate could bring to your company.  The candidate may simply have been misemployed in the previous role.

Comments(2)

How about this thought - many bad salespeople are good interviews because they have much practice. We have seen many salespeople do well on the phone but once we dig into their history, we find a consistent pattern of 2 year stints.

But man do they say the right things on the phone.

For this reason, we tend to run a difficult phone screen to weed out the pretenders. In fact, just this week we received a resume from a candidate with whom we are familiar. He worked for one of our customers 3 years ago and displayed flamboyant incompetence. As they say in the Wall Street Journal, it wasn’t long before he was “free to pursue other opportunities.”

The interesting point here is that this guy’s recent approach to us was notably strong. We were impressed, but his name was naggingly familiar. We dug through our files and, sure enough, found his information from 3 years ago. Yet, one thing was very different.

His resume.

He had omitted some positions and glossed over his time at our customer. I should say he glossed it over by taking his previous job and doubling his tenure there to twice what it actually was. Instead of being at the previous employer for 2 years, he simply made it 4 years as to hide a large gap in his employment record.

Remember, this guy sounds quite impressive on his approach. According to our customer he interviewed well, too. They finally flushed him out when they ran a background check/employment verification. Yes, after he was on the payroll which is another post for another day. His employment history on his resume was a complete fabrication.

This candidate was basically a con man who used an elaborate scheme to secure a sales job and then hang on as long as he could. He was a bad salesperson who had mastered the art of interviewing well.

Comments(1)

From Yahoo Finance comes this BusinessWeek article - When an Employer Just Is Not That Into You:

Here are some signs that they’re just not that into you, and you’d be better served pursuing other opportunities:

1. Silence After Initial Contact

2. Difficulty Scheduling a Phone Screen

3. Last-Minute Interview Changes

4. Delay in Post-Interview Contact

5. Too Many Changes in the Process

6. Slow Follow-Up After Second Interview

7. Delay in Extending the Offer

There are paragraphs written under each of these 7 topics and I strongly encourage you to read them.  Do you notice any pattern to the 7 topics?  A lack of structure and a lack of communication.  The author is accurate in her topics in that these are the very items for which we struggle, at times, with our clients.

Unstructured, unsure hiring practices are a huge red flag for candidates.  Silence is also a good way to derail a strong candidate.  We consistently monitor the frequency of “touches” (email, phone call, meeting, etc.) we have with a candidate to keep the process moving.

Finally, a great point from the article:

With corporate rigmarole being what it is, it’s hard to get an offer letter approved these days. There may be a few days’ delay between the call that says, “We really like you! Let’s talk terms!” and the arrival of a written offer letter. A few days means three or four days, max. If you’ve been waiting a week-and-a-half and you haven’t heard an update, you’re being insulted. They don’t think it’s worth their time to pick up the phone and explain what obstacles they’re running into — or maybe they’ve lost interest.

You’ll just have to cool your heels and wonder about that. That’s a terrible sign, and a big signal to find a more communicative employer.

I couldn’t agree more as stated in this post from June.

Comments(0)

I have been sourcing sales candidates the last couple of weeks for several of our clients and received a phone call from a recruiter. Normally, I don’t get a lot of calls from recruiters. It was an interesting call so thought I would share the exchange with you.

To set the stage, the recruiter did not ask if I had time to talk or if it was a convenient time for me. In fact, his call came just a few minutes prior to a scheduled screening call with a candidate.

Recruiter: Hi, this is John Doe from XYZ Recruiting. I’m not sure you know me but XYZ has filled numerous positions with your company. Have you filled the Account Executive position?

Rock Star: No, we have not. We just ran a couple of ads this past weekend and I am in the process of working through the responses.

Recruiter: Good. I have a very strong candidate for you and would like to get her resume over to you. How can I send it over to you?

Rock Star: I’m sorry, but at this point I am still working through the applicants who have called-in and emailed me their resumes. I’m not interested . . .

Recruiter: (cutting me off) I think you would be very interested in this candidate as she is an extremely strong candidate for the position.

Rock Star: Can I ask what makes her a strong candidate?

Recruiter: She has many years experience in your industry calling on your types of customers and is always above quota.

Rock Star: Again, I apologize but I am still working through applicants who have responded to the ad . . .

Recruiter: (cutting me off again) This candidate heard you were looking for an Account Executive and is very interested in exploring the possibilities with you and I would like to submit her resume to you.

Rock Star: At this time we are not looking for additional recruiting help, but I encourage your candidate, if she is truly interested, to follow the lead of the other applicants and reply to one of our ads.

Recruiter: I think you would be extremely interested in her because she is a very strong candidate.

Rock Star: I’m sorry, but I have a conference call scheduled in a few minutes and need to get prepared for that call. My recommendation would be to tell your candidate to respond to the ads as we have what looks like several strong applicants that we are running through our process. Thank you for your call.

I ended up having to hang up on him as he would not respect my time constraints and kept repeating his strong candidate speech. You might be thinking that I was a little hard on this recruiter. Maybe, but the only way he could have gotten my number for this position was by seeing the ad. And if he would have read the whole ad he would have seen that my email address was not from the client company and the ads also asked for only applicants to respond (no recruiters).

So why wasn’t I interested in this candidate? Let’s assume that this candidate did learn about the opening on her own as the recruiter said. My question is if she is a strong sales candidate, why would she have someone else make the contact for her?

This position’s primary focus is to open new accounts. If she was strong, she would be making the call, herself. Which brings me to one of my pet peeves, why does industry experience mean she is a strong candidate for the position? If you run this out, what the recruiter was saying was that the person with the most understanding of the industry would be the most successful as a salesperson. Wrong! This is an urban legend and certainly not the basis for successful sales hiring.

My advice is to stop extrapolating abilities based solely on industry experience. Screen, assess and interview. That approach is accurate and repeatable. The aforementioned recruiter’s approach is not.

Comments(0)

In the past several weeks I have been working with one of our clients on a sales position that they are desperately trying to fill. On numerous occasions they have said it needs to be filled quickly. I can appreciate this approach, however the actions of the client are not congruent with their words. Let me explain.

We have a strong candidate that has interviewed several times in-person and on the phone. Unfortunately, he has been waiting 2 weeks for a follow-up call from one of the managers to set up what he was told would be the final interview. Before you pass judgement think back over your latest hires. Have you always followed through on your statements to candidates?

Now this instance might be a little extreme but I felt that this was a great example to illustrate a point. Remarkably, there is one area for which it seems we are often stuck prompting our clients - keep the process moving by following through on their promises.

If you tell a candidate you will get back to them in a few days, make sure it is within a few days. It is easy to let normal business activities overwhelm you, but the candidate is watching you through this process too. The candidate assumes that this is the company at its best. They are thinking if it takes you several weeks to set up an appointment to meet with them, how long will it take you to get back to them when they need something from you when a big order (heck, even a small order) is on the line? They want to work for a company that follows through on its word.

Comments(0)

If you have been sourcing salespeople recently, you have probably noticed some short tenures among the Gen Y candidates.  We are sourcing for an intermediate-level sales position that has garnered a noticeable response from Gen Y (or young Gen X) candidates.  The remarkable trend is that many of the candidates have 2-4 years in each position before they move on to the next opportunity.  Many of our Baby Boomer managers are questioning that “job-hopping” history.

This concern is valid but it is also systemic in the younger generations.  They are looking to move up in their career and loyalty to one employer is far less frequent than just 20 years ago.

The strength in this job-hopping approach is that these salespeople have had to adapt to different cultures, approaches and managers.  There are many less-than-spectacular sales positions out there.  Oftentimes, young salespeople have to do their time in those roles before moving up to a more challenging position.  If the candidate has the skills and talent we are looking for, we move them through our process.

The underlying issue in this youthful approach is retention.  The strong salespeople will still be looking to expand their abilities and grow into greater responsibilities while maintaining their desired work/life balance.  The modern-day manager has to juggle these variables while meeting department goals.

The days of task-focused management are gone.  The new generation will require managers who are adept at handling a wide range of personalities while adroitly rewarding these salespeople beyond a simple paycheck.  The perks of telecommuting, horizontal org structures, vacation time, onsite gyms, etc. will all become an integral piece to top performer retention.

Comments(0)

One guy closes with this line:

P.S. - I haven’t taken a sick day in years - I don’t get sick.

I don’t know why, but that line caught my attention and made me laugh.  Not a bad technique to stand out in a crowd.

Comments(0)

Here is an urban legend we encounter frequently in our sales hiring activities - customers don’t walk with the salesperson.  What I mean is customers rarely follow a salesperson to a new company.  If the salesperson quits one company and goes to a competitor, it is a rare occurrence in which the customers move their business with the salesperson.

Yes, everyone can provide an example of when it happened, but we deal with many salespeople in many industries and it just is not common.  Sales candidates, on the other hand, will go out of their way claiming that they can bring the business with them.

Unfortunately, many companies who do not have a strong sales hiring process will get caught up in the possibility of gaining new business for little investment.  This blinding desire often masks the obvious weaknesses the sales candidate possesses.  Beware of this pitfall!

The best approach is to assess sales candidates based on their abilities, aptitudes and performance within your hiring process.  The strongest candidate may not be directly from your industry which will not be surprising if your run a talent-based process.  And if your final candidate is from your industry and brings a customer or two with them - terrific, they are the exception not the rule.  Just don’t make your hiring decision based on that hope.

Comments(2)