Sales Management, Select Metrix

Creeping Mediocrity In Your Hiring Process

October 12, 2018May 16, 2019Derrick MoeNo Comments

Past behaviors are the best indicator of future success. This point is crucial when hiring salespeople for your team. The difficulty lies in deducing if the candidate has the right set of skills to be successful in your specific sale. Here’s the ugly truth – “bad” salespeople can still have good interpersonal skills…skills good enough to get past your hiring process. Every sales leader, and I mean every, has a sales hiring horror story. The sales leader thought they were hiring a superstar and they ended up with a dud. These fantastic flame-outs are memorable and disappointing for sure. But there is a more odious error that eats away at… Read More

Do Not Clone Your Style

May 30, 2016May 17, 2019Derrick MoeNo Comments

This Forbes article addresses one of the most important aspects of an interview – the communication style alignment between the hiring manager and the candidate. The article is written from the candidate’s perspective, but offers great insights into the hiring manager’s mindset. A supervisor isn’t going to hire someone that he doesn’t believe he can work with. Managers come in all shapes and sizes–some are hands-off and expect their employees to do what they need to do with little or no supervision. Others like to receive daily updates, religiously review timecards and schedule regular check-in meetings with their staff. This style topic is important in hiring, but should never be… Read More

A Mission-Critical Sales Metric

May 6, 2016May 11, 2016Derrick MoeNo Comments

Seems simple, but here it is: Let me offer up some definitions of each box: Connects: Cold contact from a list or similar resource Suspects: Contacted and have general need or use for your product/service Prospects: Qualified for need, budget & buying time Quotes: Formal proposal to do business Close: Completed order in response to quote Again, this is a simple concept, but it is of great consequence when hiring salespeople. We call it the Connects-to-Close ratio and it defines many of the parameters you need to use in your hiring efforts. There are many layers to the ratio that impact the sales skills, selling style and aptitudes to measure… Read More

One Third Of CEO’s Are Worthless In Sales

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015Derrick Moe

Those aren’t my words but rather the findings from a Selling Power survey. From the article: A recent Selling Power online survey found that 29 percent of sales leaders judged their CEO useless when it comes to creating a sale. Almost one third and I think I have worked for all of them! The savvy sales CEO is a rare bird indeed. Of course there is more to the article than just this survey. The author focuses on the customer experience as seen through your salesperson representing your company in the market. This representation is critical in making a successful sales hire – you have to envision the salesperson selling… Read More

Do Great Salespeople Make Great Managers?

August 4, 2015August 4, 2015Derrick Moe

That is an age-old question, isn’t it? You can insert your favorite sports example here which typically involves a superstar/Hall of Fame-caliber athlete who fails as a coach because the game came too easy to him. But does this analogy work in the sales arena also? This Sales & Marketing Management article approaches the topic with aplomb. The pull quote (emphasis mine): Sometimes great salespeople aren’t as good at coaching and managing other people – they’re excellent at being individual contributors, they’re great at building relationships with customers and working deals from start to finish, but they lack the patience or coaching ability or intangible interpersonal savvy to be responsible… Read More

9 Phrases Emotionally Intelligent People Don’t Use

July 17, 2015July 17, 2015Derrick Moe

This list will make you cringe, especially if any of these phrases are in your common parlance. 1. “You look tired.” 2. “Wow, you’ve lost a ton of weight.” 3. “You were too good for her anyway.” 4. “You always…” or “You never…” 5. “You look great for your age.” 6. “As I said before…” 7. “Good luck.” 8. “It’s up to you.” or “Whatever you want.” 9. “Well at least I’ve never _______.” Ha! How good is that list? As a father of teenagers, I am constantly correcting them for using #4. I was a little surprised by #7 so I’ll close with the author’s explanation (which is a… Read More

Does Job Jumping Matter Anymore?

July 13, 2015July 13, 2015Derrick Moe

I would answer no. I have the opportunity to look at many resumes on any given day and there is a definite sea-change in the job jumping area. Millennials are far less loyal to their employers than any generation before them. In fact, I would say “job” jumping isn’t accurate, they are actually “skill” jumping. These employees are often looking for personal skill development and once they sense they have tapped out their growth curve in their current role, they leave. I spend a fair amount of time explaining this skill jumping behavior to old-school hiring managers. Companies must have a plan for ongoing development of their Millennial workforce otherwise… Read More

The Importance Of Accountability

June 3, 2015June 3, 2015Derrick Moe

I harp on this topic frequently, but it is a foundational need for all strong sales leaders. You must hold your people accountable to reach goals, close deals and follow your system (a broad word that entails your requirements for performance). The key is to simply do it…you don’t have to be “good” at it, but you do have to do it. Many sales leaders miss this important point. So I give you this Selling Power article with a comprehensive view of this accountability need for all sales leaders. The author makes a significant point that often gets overlooked by sales leaders who like to use the stick before the… Read More

Tracking Sales Reps 24/7

May 14, 2015May 14, 2015Derrick Moe

A sales executive was fired for deleting an app on her cell phone. The details from the Fox News story: A sales executive was fired after she deleted an app on her phone that tracked her every move, allowing her employer to know where she was 24/7. It was only a matter of time until this type of issue surfaced. My personal take is that tracking her 24/7 is an incredible invasion of privacy and her actions were the same ones I would have chosen in that situation. However, let me throw this at you from the former Judge quoted in the article: Judge Andrew Napolitano said that in the… Read More

How GPA’s Matter In Hiring

July 1, 2013July 3, 2013Derrick MoeNo Comments

They don’t. That is the conclusion from Google based on their own internal research. Some info from the New York Times article: “One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation,” Bock said. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything. Mind you, this is research from inside Google – they know… Read More

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