From BusinessWeek online’s How To Take The Reins At Top Speed: In today’s era of increasingly activist investors and boards, a heightened focus on fast results is making the first few months feel more like a trial by fire than a honeymoon. … “Many senior executives feel they have a much shorter time frame to prove themselves.” This accelerated productivity demand is common to almost all positions within a company. I am appreciative of CEOs finally having this demand placed upon them also. In sales, it has been this way for years . . . maybe decades. Despite having a name only a consultant or HR professional could love –… Read More
Continue ReadingJob Offer Etiquette
Call first, email second. There is no other way to do it safely. This BusinessWeek.com article – Hiring Companies Should Show the Love – got me thinking about this topic. The article is written to the candidate’s perspective, but it holds good advice for hiring companies too. For starters, if a company calls you with a job offer, they should have all the details ready to explain to you, including title, reporting relationship, compensation (salary, bonus, 401(k), etc.) and amount of travel. Now, much of this may have gotten sorted out during the interview process. But because the processes are often so fragmented, you may only have one shot with… Read More
Continue ReadingA Misguided Sales Ad
From a sales ad for an Account Executive role (emphasis mine): This person will play a critical roll in the sales process to help educate and market product offering to prospective customers. No. Please don’t do this. Here is what that one sentence implies – features and benefits selling. That approach to selling should be buried at the bottom of a tar pit with other dinosaurs. From a post last week – “people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” In other words, your ad should speak to salespeople who know how to sell solutions. This company would be better served speaking to the salesperson’s ability to… Read More
Continue ReadingFinding Dream Jobs
Foxnews.com offers this article – Workers Want Fun More Than Money When it Comes to Dream Jobs. This CareerBuilder survey states that fun is more important than money: “That fun was more important than, that was reassuring when you’re looking at the workplace and what defines happiness for people in their jobs,” said Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for CareerBuilder.com. Overall, 84 percent of respondents said they are not in their dream jobs, the study found. “Dream job” is certainly an emotionally-loaded phrase and one that most likely elicits a longing response. What I mean is most people believe there is a better opportunity out there. This longing explains why they keep… Read More
Continue ReadingQuestions Often Reveal The Skills
We’re working through some sales candidate sourcing activities this week for some new customers and uncovering some strong salespeople. There are many reasons why we incorporate a screening step in our recruiting process, but one of the most important reasons is the questions posed by the candidates. A crucial component of selling is asking the right questions. I laugh as I write this because a saying my father uses came to my mind – “If you want a better answer, ask a better question.” The question content, the question pattern and the follow-up questions are all highly revealing of the quality of sales candidate. A real-life example from one candidate… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling With Brand Power
First, a Foxnews.com article – Tech Companies Top Survey of Most Influential Brands with this ranking: Google Apple YouTube Wikipedia Starbucks Now the lesson we have learned over time – salespeople whom sell for the market/brand leader often have difficulty moving to a company in the same market with less market share. This fact has played out time and again. The issue is simple, when you sell for a market leader, getting sales appointments is never as difficult as selling for a mom & pop competitor. Hiring companies often think they have scored a coup by hiring a salesperson from the 800lbs. gorilla in their market. Most times, these salespeople… Read More
Continue ReadingProductivity From Presenteeism
A timely article from CNNMoney.com – ‘Presenteeism’ infects businesses. Timely in that some super bug has made it’s way through Select Metrix which has knocked yours truly down this week. For some background on this phenomenon: “presenteeism,” or going to work when sick, is a persistent problem at more than half of U.S. workplaces and costs U.S. business a whopping $180 billion a year, research shows. Think of it as the opposite of absenteeism. Let’s cut to the chase on the whole issue: As often as two-thirds of the time, sick people go to work because they feel they have too much work to do, according to the CCH study.… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Ads Gone Wrong
I just read a sales ad for an Account Executive that was 85 lines long. The font size was 8pt! The competencies section along covered 16 different topics. Don’t do this with a sales ad. I realize there are many people who want to be thorough, but this level of detail is extreme overkill. A couple of years ago we wrote an article in our newsletter describing the basic layout for an effective sales ad. We have tweaked the format slightly by adding a “Job Rewards” section to better explain the rewards offered for success in the role. One thing we should have added was don’t write 85 line ads!… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Drivers Of Retention Are Misaligned
I’m a little late to the party on this post from Spherion’s The Big Time blog. The post covers many interesting topics. To start (emphasis mine): 23 percent of companies are already dissatisfied with the talent available. One-third of HR managers mention turnover/retention as a key concern. On average, employers expect 14 percent of their workforce to leave within the next year. 31 percent of workers believe there is a turnover or retention problem at their company, and 39 percent of workers themselves expect to leave in the next year. Less than half (44 percent) of workers believe their company is taking steps to retain its employees. You can see… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Realistic Personal Goal Setting
This week’s sales traits comes with an anecdote. At a previous company, I worked with gentlemen who ran their own part of the business and had responsibility for their own forecasts. I remember submitting my forecast for the upcoming – it was a reasonable number. The 2 other business segment managers submitted astronomically-high forecasts. I took much heat for my forecast since it was much less than the other 2 managers. At the end of the year, I finished at 90% of my forecast. One of the business managers finished at 25% of his forecast. The other finished at 5% of his forecast. Honestly, it was that bad. Ever since… Read More
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