Selling Power provides an excellent article regarding a sales ability that is often overlooked – The Art of Asking Great Questions. Listening is an important sales skill that leads to qualifying success. But as the article points out, listening ability it not worth much if you cannot ask the right question. You can€™t simply walk in a prospect€™s door and say, €œWhat are the issues you are struggling with?€ or €œWhat keeps you up at night?€ Today, you€™d be jettisoned out of the office by savvy executives who demand more researched, intelligent, and thought-provoking questions. This approach is true no matter what you sell. The ability to ask good questions… Read More
Continue ReadingWords That Make You Wince
Ok, as a blogger I find this Yahoo story downright insulting. From ‘Most Hated Internet Words’ Revealed: “Blog”, “netiquette”, “cookie” and “wiki” have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published Thursday. Topping the list of words most likely to make web users “wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard” was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system. “Blogosphere”, the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; “blog” itself was third; “netiquette”, or Internet etiquette, came fourth and “blook”, a book based on a blog, was fifth. They have got to be… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Decision Making
This week we look at an insightful trait that has become more important for salespeople in today’s market. Sales requires a certain “feel” for a situation even though all of the data is not obvious. You could call this trait sales intuition. Decision MakingThe ability to accurately compile intuitive perceptions about a situation into a decision or action. This ability allows one to be €œintuitional€ as opposed to intellectual (requiring data and logical reasoning) in effective decision making. This capacity requires a good deal of understanding of people, the outside world and the ability to visualize the whole picture in a mental scenario. A salesperson with strength in this trait will… Read More
Continue ReadingTips For Extending Job Offers
I am going to chime in here a bit on the Velvet Hammer’s post from below regarding the 1 week window for making offers to candidates. Last week, Selling Power had an excellent article in their newsletter that contained some great tips. Dan Miller, vice president of Talent Acquisition and Retention at Monster.com made this smart suggestion (my emphasis): “Don’t just talk about the base salary; talk about the ability the candidates will have to achieve the upside,” says Miller. “Candidates may take a lower offer on the base salary if they feel that they have the tools and opportunities to exceed quota. If you’re trying to build a world-class… Read More
Continue ReadingA Lack Of Productivity Overseas
We don’t work in the international hiring arena so this may be old news to some of you. I just read the latest Herman Group enewsletter regarding the Global War for Talent (sorry, no link). Apparently productivity is a real problem overseas (emphasis mine): In some countries, notably Mexico and China, the productivity simply isn€™t there. According to fellow futurist Edward Gordon, €œthe productivity of China€™s workers is only 14 percent of their United States counterparts.€ When Joyce spoke at the first Human Capital Conference in Japan, back in 2000, the VP HR for Intel Asia complained that his productivity was one-third that of their US operations. … Advancing technologies… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling Value Over Price
Many salespeople choke on money discussions when qualifying price with prospects. The easy move is to simply discount the price, but this is a slippery slope. The inherent perception of straight discounting is that your product or service is over priced to start. This perception metastasizes into a consistent challenging of any and all future prices. JustSell.com offers a couple of excellent points in their current newsletter to counteract this desire to discount: Here are the hard-dollar points to better negotiating… Remember that negotiation success depends more on the work you do early in the sales process than on the negotiation moment itself. It’s all about the perceived value of… Read More
Continue ReadingThe 1 Week Window
There is a subtle psychology to working with sales candidates in a hiring process when you get to the offer stage. The ideal time frame for an offer is approximately one week after the final interview. This 1 week window provides enough time for both sides to contemplate the position and the salesperson’s fit to it. Now understand, I’m talking about a hiring process where a phone screen, assessment and multiple interviews have occurred. This candidate has been fully vetted and found to be a strong fit to the position’s requirements. Unfortunately, we have seen a couple of clients work past this ideal window into an extended time period after… Read More
Continue ReadingPhone Screens – See The Candidate In Action
Selling Power offers a quick article titled Successful Phone Interviews (the headline writer must have had the day off). I’m not aligned with all of the suggestions, but I cannot stress this one item enough: She also says to pay close attention to candidates’ phone manners €“ especially if they’re going to be using the phone on the job. How does their voice and tone sound? Do they project energy and enthusiasm or do they ramble on, putting you to sleep? How do they answer the phone? The key here is to talk less than the candidate. If you are talking, you are not qualifying. Paying attention to the candidate’s… Read More
Continue ReadingHow To Make Employee Orientations More Effective
In a recent article on SHRM’s weekly Newsletter (membership required), a survey of 597 organizations found that 86% of organizations have an orientation program (14% don’t?), but most said they lacked real impact. Here are some other findings of the survey: 81% of the organizations turn to HR to administer new employee orientation, 23% involve multiple departments and 21% include the department in which the new employee will report. Orientation usually takes a day or less for about half of the employers and 26% take two to three days. Nearly half use employee surveys to measure the effectiveness of their orientation program, 22% don€™t track it at all, 20% measure… Read More
Continue ReadingA State Of The Industry Speech – Mobile Devices
CareerJournal.com pens an article titled Mobile Workers Tie In With Hand-Held Devices. I hope most of the information in the article is familiar to you since mobile PDA phones are more than a passing fancy. The article reads like a state of the industry address with a couple of notable points. First, the sheer size of this industry (my emphasis): There are an estimated 50 million “mobile” workers in the U.S., those who have no desk or spend more than 25% of their time outside the office, according to Frost & Sullivan, a business-research and consultancy firm. Catch that? No desk – totally mobile. This new format is more than… Read More
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