We post ads in many locations as part of our sourcing activities. Those ads usually lead to solicitations for services as a set response to new listings. We received one email today that caught my eye. Here is an excerpt: We can have qualified candidates available for you to interview, hire or work within 24 to 48 hours. Our extensive database of qualified candidates and team of experts enable us to provide you with candidates who exactly match what you are looking for. An interesting proposition, don’t you think? Here is the rub for me – how do they know what I need? 1 to 2 days and they’ll have… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Skills Always Trump Style
There is a myth regarding strong salespeople that they have to be outgoing. I contributed a short piece to an article earlier this year in regards to this exact error. And then I read this quick blurb for Selling Power’s Identifying the Skills You Want in a Candidate: Sure salespeople need to be outgoing and driven €“ those are a given, but what about qualities that people need to have to fit in your particular position? No, that is not a given and not a truth. Writing in such generalities is not accurate because selling style is not as important as sales skills. Style is simply a matter of how… Read More
Continue ReadingInvest In Hiring, Save On Firing
We often speak of the costs of making a bad hire especially in sales. One bad sales hire can send prospects to your competition and sully your company’s reputation in the market all while you pay this salesperson. But what if it goes even further than that? In our litigious society, what if an employee decides to make a run at a discrimination lawsuit? BusinessWeek online offers up some incredible examples in Fear of Firing: -Many of the lawsuits may seem ridiculous. IBM is currently defending a case filed by James C. Pacenza, a plant worker it dismissed for visiting an adult Internet chat room while on the job. In… Read More
Continue ReadingQualify or Just Bring Cookies
Through our recent assessment work, we have noticed a number of candidates with traits that are not considered desirable in a sales role. In particular, those who have high Social and low Utilitarian motivations. Often, these people have a need to be liked, accepted and helpful even to their own detriment. Those traits are desirable in many positions, but not sales. The main reason is this type of salesperson’s inability to qualify prospects by asking strong questions. A sales person that doesn’t qualify opportunities wastes valuable time, energy and company resources. They typically will take any meeting they can get, return with no particular purpose in mind and spend way… Read More
Continue ReadingIncreased Pay or Better Benefits? That Is The Question.
So which is more important to employees, pay or benefits (specifically health benefits)? In last week’s Workforce Management’s newsletter, a nationwide survey was recently conducted by the National Business Group on Health that asked 1,619 employed people that specific question. They found that employees in the U.S. consider their health plan to be their most important benefit. Furthermore, in a world of rising health care costs, employees would rather give up wage increases and other benefits to preserve health care coverage. More than 50% said they would accept fewer choices in order to keep their premiums low and roughly 75% would rather receive employer health benefits than get paid more… Read More
Continue ReadingDefining The Battle For Talent
“The biggest challenge employers face in recruiting new hires is the competition between companies for talent” notes Worldwide ERC, the association for global workforce mobility management. According to an article on their website, more than 90% of the companies surveyed are having problems recruiting the right people and more than 20% consider the problem severe. They were asked to give the reasons why they have been running into difficulties in hiring talented people – here are their responses (including percentages from the 2002 survey): 2002 2006 Competition with other companies 47% 59% Lack of qualified candidates 48% 50% Cost of living/housing issues 26% 38% Undesirable areas 22% 32% Dual career/family… Read More
Continue ReadingTitle Interpretation
Just read this title for a sales position: Major Regional Account Sales Representative That almost reads like the author was attempting to stuff keywords into the position’s title. As you know, I am finicky about titles since they are so important for online ads. Here is my first impression of this wordy title: Major = big accounts Regional = I’ll have a geographic territory Account = B2B, no consumer sales Sales = understood Representative = warning – mouse nuts position Now when I reread the title, I suspect that they were using “Sales Representative” which didn’t generate much interest. Their solution was to add title words that carry more clout.… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Concrete Organization
Complex sales require complex skills and traits to be successful. This week we look at a somewhat abstract capacity that pays tremendous dividends in long, complex sales cycles. Concrete Organization This capacity deals primarily with the salesperson€™s ability to properly allocate resources to accomplish a goal or plan. It includes the ability to understand the immediate, concrete needs of a situation and to establish an effective action plan for meeting those needs. These resources are not limited to only physical components. This capacity takes into account a person€™s ability to evaluate and utilize both human and physical resources. A salesperson with strength in this trait will be able to systematically… Read More
Continue ReadingTitles Equal Opens
We’ve had a very busy Q1 which has led to many sales positions for which we are actively sourcing right now. Hence, sourcing is foremost on our minds. We are not part of the “anti-online job boards” crowd. We actually find the boards to be quite efficient and effective for finding strong sales candidates. Our approach incorporates other channels simultaneously to broaden our candidate pool, but the boards should not be ignored. That being said, there is a critical piece of information to placing ads that should be maintained. Titles equal opens, plain and simple. I know this fact isn’t a revelation, but many companies still ignore it. We have… Read More
Continue ReadingMore Bad Ads
The opening line from a sales employment ad placed by a recruiter (edited to remove industry) : Must come from _____ Sales Related To ____ Products Manufacturing! Please, only do this if your primary goal is to recycle mediocrity from your industry. Remember, this is the opening line with their bolded text -the only bolded text in the ad. There are plenty of recruiters who dabble in sales positions and it shows. This ad is a cut and paste job from a typical internal job description. Unfortunately, someone pasted twice so the description is listed twice in the ad. Nonetheless, it is far more effective to list the intrinsic traits and transferable… Read More
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