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 ReadingThe Selling Sales Manager Paradox
We here at The Hire Sense are diehard hockey fans so pardon my analogy. Jacques Lemaire is the head coach of our Minnesota Wild. As head coach, he is obviously in charge of running practices, developing players, coaching during the game and, ultimately, winning games. He does all this without ever scoring a goal for the team. He does it by coaching his players and holding them accountable. It is a full-time job. Now imagine if the owner of the Wild decided he was going to measure Lemaire’s performance by how many goals he scored in the games. Lemaire would have to change his whole strategy to allow himself to… Read More
Continue ReadingFree Tools for Researching Leads
I follow some of the career articles that the Star Tribune writes and found an interesting one titled New Year, New Career: Nine Tools for Researching Leads. You are probably wondering why would I reference a career newsletter? Well, let me tell you it has some great free resources for your salespeople to use in researching their business leads. Please allow me to highlight those that would be relevant to almost any sales team. Just Sell – Sign up to receive detailed information on at least 50 companies that have experienced a major event in the last 5 business days which will lead to future growth… delivered straight to your… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Fine Art of Stalling
“Let me think it over.” “I’ll get back to you.” “We’ll take a look at it.” If you have been in sales more than a day, you are familiar with these sayings. They are the prospect’s attempts to “stall” a buying decision. These comments are trouble for any salesperson who does not get these fuzzy phrases qualified. And yet often the salesperson accepts these stalls and presumes a close date for the deal. This approach is almost always the explanation for a prospect making it through the sales funnel but never closing. These are the deals that hurt because they have been forecasted with a high probability to close. And… Read More
Continue ReadingCoaching Salespeople With Focus
All sales managers must coach their salespeople. Many do so in a cursory manner, but that is typically not the most effective solution. I’m catching up on Selling Power articles today and kicked up this one – Coach Early and O.F.T.E.N. I’m typically not a fan of acrostics, but anything to remind sales managers of effective coaching has some value. The author provides solid advice for effectively coaching salespeople: F is for Focus Coaching interactions should be focused, specifically on one or two tasks or activities. Too often, however, coaches allow themselves to be distracted and get off track. Give too much feedback that’s all over the board and employees… Read More
Continue ReadingPlanning For Turnover
Salespeople will leave your company – it is an undeniable truth. Selling Power offers this short article – Recruitment Planning 101 – that covers the basic points that all sales managers should be aware of. A couple of strong points: Keep your pipeline full of qualified candidates. Determine the skill sets for each sales position and keep your search open for candidates with these special qualifications. However, remember that top candidates aren’t usually available for long and you need to be upfront with them about what you’re doing. “Let them know that you are building a candidate pipeline composed of individuals that your company may have an interest in hiring… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Turnover Is Good
We met this morning with a sales manager from one of our clients and had an interesting discussion about turnover. This company is in an “old-line” industry and has an established salesforce. In fact, the newest salesperson has been with the company for more than 5 years. Most have a 10 to 20 year tenure – retention is not a problem since this is a good employer. The problem is this – their business has had to change over the past year to match the marketplace. There has been no layoffs, but some restructuring and new management has been added. These changes, according to our sales manager, have caused much… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat, Not How – Part 2
Just caught up to this SM&M article – Advise from the Field. A couple excerpts: Rather, Feldshuh, the president of the merchant-services company, tries to gear agents to move from the lagging 80 percent into the top 10 or 20 percent of sellers. He does that through concentrated, thoughtful, in-the-field strategies, warming reps up to clients first with short, non-pitching meetings. Then he asks them to “open their mouths” and deliver a pitch just days after they’ve gotten their feet wet from dropping off BPS materials at prospects’ offices. The tactic works, he says, and boosts their performance through gradual sales improvement rather than a do-or-die approach to closing the… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat, Not How
A quote from JustSell.com’s daily email: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” -George S. Patton (1885-1945) U.S. Army general during WWII It is a good reminder for sales managers. One thing we discuss with sales managers is letting your salespeople fail. I’m not referring to big deals, top prospects. Instead I am referring to smaller opportunities where you know the salesperson is going to get a lesson. Here is why it is key. We have a customer who has a sales manager who has become the closer (for lack of a better word). Essentially, he has… Read More
Continue Reading7 Deadly Sins of Salespeople
From SM&M – The Seven Deadly Sins of Salespeople: 7. Chattering 6. Gourmandizing (never heard this word before) 5. Inactivity 4. Obliviousness 3. Shallowness 2. Presumptuousness 1. Ignorance You will need to follow the link to read the description of each “sin.” It is well worth the time as the author has laid these out in detail. I agree with all of them though I would have swapped the order of Presumptuousness and Ignorance. My reason is this – a salesperson can effectively close a deal without having a spy (to use the author’s word) within the organization. A salesperson who presumes to know critical pieces of qualifying information will… Read More
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