SellingPower.com has released their monthly sales management newsletter which is usually filled with insightful articles. How Long Are Ya€™ Gonna€™ Be New Here? is a client study on one company’s efforts to shorten their sales ramp time. One of the universal problems all sales managers face is getting new hires up to speed quickly. It€™s simple math: the longer it takes for a rep to learn the €œins and outs€ of your company, your product, and your sales process, the longer it will take him to stop dragging down the average performance of your sales team and start producing meaningful results. Another universal problem is sales managers hiring salespeople with… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Self-Assessment
This week we explore an important aspect of a salesperson’s psyche. If you are a sales manager, this trait will explain your salesperson’s view of himself and how best to manage to that view. Self AssessmentThe ability to practically and objectively identify one€™s personal management strengths and weaknesses. This is the ability of a salesperson to take the skills and techniques that they have gained in evaluating external situations and apply them to evaluating their own performance and abilities. A salesperson with strength in this area is capable of accurately evaluating his or her own strengths and weaknesses. They see themselves clearly. A weakness in this area indicates a salesperson who… Read More
Continue ReadingBe Specific In Your Requirements
I just read an employment ad for a company looking for a top-level salesperson. The over-written ad lists “Required Qualifications:” A bachelor’s degree in business or marketing and a minimum of 5 yrs of related experience; or, in lieu of the degree, a minimum of 9 yrs of related experience with ____________ and/or consulting is required. Avoid this nonsense – successful selling has more to do with hardwired abilities than it will ever have to do with degrees and years of experience. There is no formula for experience equaling sales ability so a statement like the one above screams HR dept. instead of the sales dept. The last bullet point… Read More
Continue ReadingFocus On A Salesperson’s Strengths
Great article from SellingPower.com titled Don’t Fix Weaknesses; Build Strengths that discusses salesperson development. The core tenet of this article is to focus on building strengths and not in transforming weaknesses into strengths (it won’t happen). The entire article is worth the read, but this is the pull quote for me (my emphasis): In fact, while talent will get you to a certain point, developing and strengthening that talent is what brings the greatest success. Consider this experiment, conducted by the University of Nebraska some years back. To study the effectiveness of its speed-reading courses, the school evaluated students€™ natural reading pace and placed them in one of two groups… Read More
Continue ReadingMental-Health Day
I love that turn of phrase. And here from Inc.com is another good example of how we have far too many surveys taking place in this country. From When Warm Weather Arrives, More Employees Call in “Sick”: Of 1,077 full-time employees polled, 39 percent said they’ve called in sick to take a day off in the past, and 30 percent said they planned to do so again this summer, according to the “Summer Absenteeism” survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Among employees who faked sick days, most said they used their time off to go to the beach or go shopping. Not surprisingly, the most popular days to skip work were… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Path To Sales Improvement
When you boil it down to the basics, sales departments are measured by profit increases. Simple, yes, but that is the crux of the goal. Operational efficiencies are part of the equation, but the focus here is on increasing profits via increased revenue. So how do companies go about achieving improvement in their sales-driven profits? Profile Your Sale Too often sales gets muddled by general tactics, inconsistent value propositions and rogue selling systems. Understanding your ideal sale is the first step to repeatable results. The output is a definition of what your ideal sale looks like from this day forward. This clarity provides direction and consistency to all sales efforts.… Read More
Continue ReadingPlace Your Job Ads Online
I’ve mentioned before that I have talked to prospective customers who are adamant that newspaper ads are the best media to place job ads. I couldn’t disagree more with them. Along comes this quick-hitting article from Inc.com: The number of jobs posted online rose by 9,000 in May to 4,374,400, an increase of 0.2 percent from April, the Conference Board reported Wednesday. Online job vacancies were up 29 percent from the same period last year, the New York-based private research group said. I cannot understand why any company would choose to advertise in a printed newspaper.
Continue ReadingSmall Companies Continue To Hire
Private-sector hiring is occurring in the small companies around the country and has been so for the past 6 months. From Inc.com: Businesses with fewer than 50 employees continue to outpace all larger businesses combined in creating new private-sector jobs, a new report shows. Small businesses added 58,000 new jobs in May, with gains in service-sector jobs offset by slight losses in goods-producing sector, according to Automatic Data Processing reported, a Roseland, N.J.-based employment services firm. Overall, the increases are consistent with a three-month average of 56,000 jobs, the report said. By contrast, larger businesses in May accounted for just 39,000 new jobs. The results mark the sixth straight month… Read More
Continue ReadingTV Shows Discussed At Work
This seemed like a good Friday topic from Working Wounded: List of the Week Look who’s talking €¦ What TV shows are most talked about at work. “American Idol,” 44 percent “Grey’s Anatomy,” 28 percent None, 21 percent “CSI,” 11 percent “House,” 9 percent From: Spherion I particularly enjoyed “None.”
Continue ReadingSales Is More Than 5 Things
Top five traits you gotta have to sell! The top five traits of a successful salesperson! Discover the 5 key behaviors of sales superstars! You have probably seen these amazing statements across the web. Isn’t it interesting how “5” seems to be the magic number for sales traits, behaviors or attitudes? I say that is hogwash. There are two main reasons why hiring strong salespeople is more than just these marketing-laden headlines. The Ideal Sale.Processes that focus on the salesperson without understanding the sale are flawed. The issue is simple – how company A goes to market (value proposition, market share, key competencies, etc.) is not the same as company… Read More
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