Consider these stats [i]:

• In the U.S., average turnover in sales is between 20% to 30% annually. This means that for many firms, the equivalent of the entire sales team must be hired, trained, and socialized every 3 – 5 years.
• Depending upon the position, it now takes 3-4 months to hire a salesperson and,  once hired, getting to full productivity takes more than 9 months. That is more than a year without a fully productive seller, and each hire becomes a sunk cost for a longer time while a bad hire is very costly.

Hiring in sales is often more expensive than many companies’ cap­ex decisions, but typically treated with less rigour than purchasing software. How can you get better at this core task?

First, recognize the challenges inherent in sales hiring:

Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified resource pool or educational priors for sales positions.

If you’re looking for an engineer, you can go to an engineering school and find people who have studied engineering. For an accountant, finance person or software developer, you can find majors in those subjects. But few colleges and universities have sales programs or even a sales course. Yet, it’s estimated that more than 50% of graduates (in U.S. colleges) will work in sales at some point in their careers, regardless of their major.

Hence, most salespeople start with little preparation and must learn by doing on the job. And selling jobs vary greatly depending on the product or service sold, the customers a salesperson is responsible for, and the relative importance of technical knowledge during sales calls.

In dealing with these hiring challenges, here are two common mistakes to avoid:

(1) Hunters versus Farmers

Sales roles are far more diverse than that cliched dichotomy. Consider the difference between reps who sell direct to customers versus those who sell thru channel partners, those who work in highly automated inside sales models focused on SMB prospects versus those who call on enterprise accounts, those who sell individual products versus a bundled package solution, or those who sell multi­year software license agreements versus monthly SAAS contracts.

The Hunter/Farmer dichotomy is of little use in setting hiring criteria between those roles. In fact, hunters and farmers are, in my experience, usually used by managers as after-the-fact rationalisations for their hiring choices, not ex­-ante hiring criteria. Make sure your managers have relevant criteria before they make an offer, not just when they try to justify the decision.

(2) Chasing Stars

Talent matters and differences in individual sales performance are typically very wide in most firms. The top 20% of salespeople often account for ­60% of company revenues.

If 20% of your salespeople are making 60% of revenue, that’s a 3X multiplier; and since the remaining 80% bring in only 40% of revenue, the top sellers are 6X more productive than their peers. Sales is like other creative occupations where the stardom phenomenon is well documented. In areas like software programming, the arts, sports and others, the best are typically a lot better than the average. Performance profiles in those areas are (in statistics jargon) a “power distribution curve,” not a normal­ distribution bell curve.

However, stardom is not easily portable because it typically depends upon firm-specific qualities and resources—e.g., brand, training, team chemistry, and other factors—as well as individual capabilities. [ii] This is especially true in sales where tasks are determined by a firm’s business strategy and choices about which customers to focus on.

In turn, selling behaviours are affected by your control systems, culture and how you hire. Those are all firm­-specific factors and, when you hire someone from another firm, they leave all of that behind. Talk to the corporation who hires the high performing star from a competitor and finds that she does not perform the same way she performed there. Or consider startups who bring in an experienced big­ company rep and he flounders in the early-stage firm. Those people didn’t suddenly get stupid or lose individual capabilities. In business, there’s no such thing as performance in the abstract. There is only performance in each context—here, not there—and much of selling depends upon the relationships, knowledge, and mutual trust that the rep establishes with others in his or her company.

Sales is a performance art and salespeople exhibit a wide range in performance outcomes. Those outcomes depend upon innate talent as well as the context in which that talent is nurtured and deployed. Further, the effects of talent management are cumulative as people learn from each other. Reps get better by watching how the best of their peers perform key tasks. They pick up lessons about how to pitch, answer objections, and other aspects of selling that product at that price in that market.

Here are 4 tips for screening and hiring high performing sales professionals:

(1) Hire for the Task

Effective hiring starts with knowing what you need. Sales tasks are determined by buying contexts which differ greatly by industry. In computers and electronics, channel management is a key capability, but not in metals and mining. In the former, the products are often part of a package that customers buy at one-stop-shop intermediaries; in the latter sectors, direct bulk buys are the norm. Account management skills are important in chemicals where managing a portfolio of specialty and commodity products is a key sales task, but not so much in electronics where channel partners often perform account management tasks.

Every sales job has implicit required behaviours. Take the time to clarify and make that explicit in your job postings. When companies focus on the tasks, not job titles, the relevant labour pool typically expands. Coding boot camps, for instance, are now an accepted source of software talent because after a few months of task focused work the participants have job relevant skills without (and often despite) previous formal degrees. The same is true in sales. Relevant talent comes in all shapes and sizes but is dependent upon the job to be done, not some abstract ideal of undifferentiated selling skills.

(2) Avoid Behaviourally Useless Cliches

Ask sales managers what they’re looking for in candidates and you typically get lists of cliches like Sense of Urgency, Passion, Motivated by Money, Work Ethic, Coachability, Emotional Resilience, Communication Skills, Listening, Integrity, Humility, Efficiency, Commitment to Succeed, and so on.

These traits are behaviourally useless for doing what a hiring process must do: say yes or no to an individual applicant for a given job. When you’re speaking with someone at an interview, how do you unearth whether they have a “sense of urgency”? One author says, “Look for answers around impatience and 4th quarter comebacks.” Really? Confusing this stuff with job skills and evaluations is a waste of time and resources. In a job interview, who would not want to come across as hardworking, resourceful, efficient, and so on?

You’re hiring the person and not the interview version of the person. But only about a third of companies monitor whether their hiring practices lead to good employees or track cost per hire. Another problem with these lists is the assumption that a salesperson needs all of those qualities to be effective. However, it’s often advisable to shrink the span of sales activities. This requires understanding where the salesperson (versus marketing, service, or a customer success team) has the most influence. In many inside sales models, activities like lead generation and qualification are the jobs of Sales Development Reps (SDRs) and renewals are given to service personnel. This allows the firm to focus more precisely on recruiting for Account Executive roles where product demonstrations, pricing, and closing the sale with a multifunctional buying unit are the key tasks.

(3) Complement Interviews with Behavioural Assessments

Decades of research consistently show that managers overrate their ability to predict someone’s performance and fit for job tasks on the basis of a few interviews. Correlations between interview ratings and job success vary from about 0.1 to 0.4 — less than the 50/50 odds of a coin toss. [iii] In fact, some studies show a negative correlation between interview assessments and subsequent job performance: the firm would have been better-off selecting at random!

Judging a person’s fit for a sales job is, in most circumstances, a complex task. It involves evaluating the relevance of past experience, personality, fit with the culture, and so on. But people are inconsistent in making summary judgments of complex information, so always get multiple opinions and perspectives in evaluating candidates. Doing multiple assessments also often motivates people in your firm to discuss and communicate the tasks you’re hiring for and the questions and activities likely to elicit relevant skills. Conversely, this approach provides the interviewee with a better basis to judge fit.

Then, complement interviews with role plays, task assignments and, whenever possible, internship type hiring scenarios. Selling is about behaviour. Job performance from one time period to the next correlates at a much higher rate than interviews. So probationary periods are better predictors of actual performance. Meanwhile, technology is increasing options for behavioural assessments via game-like activities, video, and online media.

(4) Assume Mistakes Will Happen

Sales hiring requires judging people’s future performance in a changing market environment. Mistakes are inevitable, but the sunk cost fallacy—continuing to throw good money after bad—is not.

Consider Amazon’s policy of offering a voluntary severance package called “The Offer.” Annually, each service and warehouse employee are offered up to $5,000 to quit. The policy helps to deal with inevitable mistakes—by the hirer or the person hired—and with the reality that people change and their relationship to their work can change with marriage, divorce, sickness, the need to take care of an aging parent, or any of the other natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Amazon believes “The Offer” helps it shed less-committed employees while improving retention among others. [iv]

Sales reps represent your company to customers and prospects. A poor hire is not only costly but can also do collateral damage to your brand. It’s worth your time and effort to improve your sales hiring criteria and process.

Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School and is the author of six books. This article is adapted from Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing. Published by Harvard Business Review Press.

[i] See Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton University Press).

[ii] For a review of this research, see Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes, and Nathaniel Peterson, “Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion,” Judgment and Decision Making 8, no. 5: 512-520. 

[iii] For a review of this research, see Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes, and Nathaniel Peterson, “Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion,” Judgment and Decision Making 8, no. 5: 512-520. 

[iv] Alana Samuels, “Why Amazon Pays Some of Its Workers to Quit,” The Atlantic:  https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/amazon-offer-pay-quit/553202/.

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Ordinary is something you are taught. You may have been infected with the idea that you are not to make waves, not to stand out, and not to draw attention to yourself. The people around you likely shared a set of common goals and beliefs like: go to school, get an education, get a good job, and work towards retirement. Even the people who love you will want to keep you safe, perhaps even telling you that using your gift is too dangerous, that you may get hurt.

what to do with under performing sales people When salespeople are not producing results?

#1 Not Enough Activity

The first reason you aren’t producing the results you want right now is because you aren’t taking enough action to produce them. There is no harvest in Autumn if you do not plant in the Spring.

Activity is what produces results, not desire, not intentions, and not luck. If you really desire a certain result, you’ll do the work necessary to produce it. Otherwise, it’s just talk. Intentions are important, but only when coupled with action. You can grow old waiting for luck to find you; she only looks for hustlers.

If you aren’t where you want to be right now, it’s very likely that you aren’t doing what is necessary to get there. If you were, you would already have what you want.

#2 Not The right Activity

Maybe you are taking massive action and still aren’t where you want to be, even though that’s less likely to be true.

You may believe that the activity you are taking isn’t the right activity. Before you decide that this is the case, you have to honestly determine whether or not you’ve done enough of that activity to get the results you want. Have you gone all in? Would some impartial party know exactly what you were trying to accomplish by looking at the actions you are taking, believing it to be an extraordinary effort?

You also have to decide whether you’ve done enough activity for long enough to get the results you want. Some outcomes you want require persistence, and that’s why so few produce those outcomes. It rarely makes sense to switch strategies and tactics without first executing against what you believe to be right.

All that said, if what you are doing isn’t working, treat each failure as feedback, and then change your approach. Find a model, someone who is already producing the result you want, and look for clues as to what they are doing differently. Repeat this until you find something that works, and then go all in.

The obstacles to success are almost exclusively internal. Even when they are not, with enough energy and effort applied consistently over time, the obstacle will yield.

6 Steps in the Right Direction

Step 1: Compare Yourself to Others

I don’t compare myself to anyone else. I just want to be better than the person I was yesterday.” This is one of those statements that sounds good on the surface, but is harmful when it comes to success (whatever that means to you). Comparing yourself to other people is necessary if you want to be more, do more, have more, and contribute more.

Lacking Knowledge

Without a point of comparison, you have no idea how you’re doing. Do you do excellent work? How do you know? How can you know without a point of comparison?

Do you have impeccable character, the kind of values that make you someone people want to work with, want to know, and want in their life? Do you know what impeccable character is without knowing what it is not?

How is your family and your health? How are you doing financially? To define how you are doing, you need some way to measure where you are.

The risk in trying only to be better than you were yesterday is that maybe you aren’t doing well enough for that to be a useful measurement.

Lacking Vision

When you compare yourself, you get an idea as to where you fall on some scale of measurement. Without that comparison, you would not know what’s possible. Without making observations as to how other people are doing, you don’t have an informed idea of what is possible for you.

Have you ever met someone and thought, “If that person can do that, so can I?” Exactly. You just needed to see it done, recognizing that the person succeeding in some area is really no different than you. Or at least the version of you who is willing to strive.

Comparing what you are doing to what other people are doing can help you develop a bigger vision of yourself.

Step 2: Spend Time with People More Successful Than You

You can’t see your potential from where you are now. It isn’t visible to you.

First, success is personal.

It isn’t measured on a curve. Your definition of success and my definition of success might be vastly different. They may even be at odds. In fact, you living my definition of success might make you miserable, while me living your definition of success might not make me the least bit happy.

There is a reason that you should spend time and develop relationships with people who are more successful than you are now. But before we get into all the reasons this is true, we need to cover a few important issues.

Second, success can get a bad rap, and some people make the very pursuit of success a divisive issue.

Success shouldn’t be divisive, and the idea that you need to surround yourself with people who have a greater level of success is not a judgment of the people you love and care about that aren’t experiencing the same level of success as the people you will need to spend time with.

The reason you need to spend time with people who are more successful than you is because you can’t see your real potential from where you are now.

Your potential is far greater than anything You can imagine. The only limit on your real potential is the limit of your awareness of what is possible for you. Your potential isn’t visible to you.

Think about where you were years ago, when you weren’t as successful as you are right now in some area of your life.

Your beliefs and behaviours were different than they are now. And even though you weren’t conscious of how they were limiting you, they acted as a governor on your success. At some point, you gained an awareness of these beliefs and behaviours and changed them.

Someone standing higher up on a mountain can see further than you can. They can also more easily see the path that is available to you, even if it isn’t yet clear to you. They have a greater view of your potential. By spending time with people who are more successful, you start to become conscious of what you believe and how it limits you. You also gain the advantage of transforming faster by finding people whose beliefs and behaviours you can model.

Develop relationships with people who are more successful than you. Find mentors. Develop a mastermind group of people who have something you want, whatever that is, be it financial success or being a great parent, or whatever you call success.

If you are going to listen to
advice, first determine whose
advice is worth taking.

STEP 3: Avoid bad advice.

A lot of people will offer you advice. Most of it, you should avoid.

Avoid people who:

Part 2 will be published next month or you can download the e-book today.

The post What To Do With Under Performing Sales People Who Are Not Producing Results?(part 1) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

No matter who they speak with in your business – in their eyes they are all ‘the company’.

In a pre-digital world, there were salespeople and everyone else. Now a prospect can understand a business across a myriad of social media channels before they speak to anyone in your business. They read comments posted online, they judge the quality of your content, the reviews of your products and how the company responds. This is all before they speak to a ‘salesperson’.

No matter who they speak with in your business – the receptionist, customer service, someone in the delivery dock, an engineer – in their eyes they are all ‘the company’.

The client doesn’t care about the job titles of the people they come into contact with. What they will notice is whether everybody in the organisation is in synch with the ‘brand’ or not. Being consistent across every touchpoint builds trust.

So everyone in your organisation has a shared accountability for how the business is represented and how attractive the company is for people to want to buy from them.

When it is understood that every person in your business is in sales, it becomes obvious how customer experience and customer service is the new sales.

To be in synch means everyone in the business understands:

• Exactly what the business does,
• How it delivers value to its customers,
• The commitment the business has made to service its customers,
• How imperative it is to HELP a customer or prospect,
• What it means to BE the brand.

When everyone is ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ it supports:

• Customer satisfaction and retention,
• Staff alignment,
• Stronger teamwork and
• Business growth!

Imagine if every person in your business had the same training as a salesperson. How valuable would it be if everyone understood the power of?

• Active listening
• Insightful, open ended questions
• Adaptability
• Accountability
• Negotiation
• Presentation
• Language
• Confidence
• Helping

Next time anyone says ‘but I’m not in sales’ – ask them what they think a salesperson actually does. Because salespeople don’t just sell, they build relationships, they build trust, they listen and solve problems. They help people. Isn’t that the philosophy that everyone should be adopting so customers want to buy from you and stay with you?

Sales training for the entire business. Now that is evolutionary!

The post Everyone In Your Organisation Is In Sales appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The past year has changed sales. A lot. The key question now: How much of this change is permanent?

“Everything,” says Julie Thomas, CEO, ValueSelling Associates.

LinkedIn’s “State of Sales 2021: United States & Canada Edition” dives into these changes that are challenging the world of sales. Based on survey data of more than 400 buyers and 400 sellers, analysis of LinkedIn platform data, and interviews with dozens of sales leaders, the fifth annual State of Sales report identifies seven key trends, which have only been intensified by COVID-19:

1. Virtual selling is good for sellers; it’s even better for buyers. 

During the pandemic, virtual selling essentially became selling. It was the only way to reach prospects. Buyers don’t seem to mind this new reality. In fact, our survey found that 50% of buyers say that working remotely has made the purchasing process easier.

“The digital world is here to stay. The inefficiency of travel, of in-person business meetings, and of late-night dinner appointments will make face-to-face meetings less common and not necessary in many cases. Organizations will use more data, more video, and more telesales. I do not believe we will go back to the world that was.” — Shaan Hathiramani, CEO, Flockjay

2. Sales organisations are preventing their sellers from putting buyers first.

Almost two-thirds (65%) of sellers say they “always” put the buyer first. However, only 23% of buyers agree that sellers “always” put the buyer first. Sellers know they should be putting the buyer first, but in our survey data, they indicate that their sales organizations are a barrier to implementing buyer first behaviors. For instance, only 39% of sales professionals say their sales org delivers the buyer first behavior of providing free and easy access to product reviews “all the time.” Similarly, just 43% of sales professionals say their sales org stays actively engaged after the sale to ensure value delivery “all the time.”

3. These are the sales behaviors that are killing deals.

In our survey, buyers also identified a number of behaviors from sellers that were immediate deal killers. Each of the top three revolved around the seller providing accurate information and having a clear understanding of the situation:

· 48% Delivering misleading information about a product, its price, etc.

· 44% Not understanding my company and its needs

· 43% Not understanding their own product or service

“Top performing salespeople spend far more of their time researching their industry, learning about their competitors, understanding trends, reading about ancillary things that affect their industry and being thought leaders and consultants in their space than they do pounding phones, sending emails, and prospecting.” — Sahil Mansuri, CEO, Bravado 

4. Sales orgs and sales managers must adjust — now — to a remote working world.

A significant majority (86%) of sales managers agree that the capability to cope with change is more important than it was five years ago. In the previous edition of the State of Sales, just 70% of sales managers agreed that coping with change was more important than five years ago.

Change is coming at sales professionals faster every day, and one change that is likely to stay with us is the rise of remote work, a situation that sales managers are finding difficult, with two-thirds (67%) of them saying that overseeing a remote sales team is more challenging than they anticipated.

5. Sales technology provides the key pathway to building trust.  

Historically, sales professionals have built trust with prospects by meeting face to face. The pandemic blocked that pathway, so salespeople turned to sales technology. Tools such as Gong or Chorus enable sales professionals to analyze transcripts of sales calls to understand the typical customer’s state of mind and to anticipate their objections.

It’s no surprise, then, that our survey indicated that investment in sales technology is increasing. In fact, 77% of sales professionals say their sales organization plans to invest “significantly more” or “more” in sales intelligence tools. 

“Overall, virtual selling has driven rapid digital transformation in sales. Early adopters were ready technologically for the sudden move to virtual, and now laggards are investing in technology infrastructure to support their reps. The early days of the pandemic were really the ultimate test.” — Craig Rosenberg, Distinguished VP/Analyst, Gartner 

6. For sales organizations, data is more crucial than ever.  

Research shows that about 25% of buyers change roles every year. It’s crucial for sellers to stay on top of any data about their prospects’ moving on or moving up. In our survey, 85% of sellers say they lost or delayed at least one deal in the past year, because a key client stakeholder had changed jobs. One-third of sellers say they had lost or delayed at least three deals due to a stakeholder leaving. 

“Data is table stakes now. I mean, you can’t sell without data.” — Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing

7. Buyers and sellers are ramping up their use of LinkedIn.

Since the start of the pandemic, sellers, who can no longer prospect at in-person conferences and events, are boosting their reliance on LinkedIn. Almost three-quarters (74%) of sellers say they committed to expanding their LinkedIn network in 2021.

“Posting content to LinkedIn and engaging with others on LinkedIn is my primary source of demand generation. So many people see LinkedIn as a waste of time or see LinkedIn as not an opportunity to drive true business development when, in fact, it couldn’t be more the opposite. LinkedIn gives me an opportunity to share my subject matter expertise on a daily basis.” — Sam McKenna, Founder, #samsales  

Keep your eye out for the Asia-Pacific (Australia, India, and Singapore) edition of the State of Sales schedule to be released in the coming weeks.

The post 7 Insights From The LinkedIn State of Sales Report appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The numbers paint a vivid picture: LinkedIn is the place to be for job seekers.

LinkedIn is a smorgasbord of opportunities. I’m sharing the best LinkedIn tips that will help job seekers to squeeze every last bit of value out of LinkedIn.

These are not my tips. I’ve opened the floor to some amazing Australians that live and breathe the careers space.

Here are 10 expert tips on extracting value from LinkedIn:

Angela Farmeary, Mindful Careers

Angela helps her clients navigate the highly competitive job market through individualised career coaching.

1. Create your hit list.

Write down ten companies you’d jump on the opportunity to work at. What do they have in common with you? Do your values align?

2. Follow company pages.

Head to each business’s LinkedIn company page and click follow. Now, you’ll get notified of new hires, promotions, changes at the company, and, crucially, job opportunities.

Rebecca Jarvis, Javrow

A recruiter for the tech industry, Rebecca was awarded LinkedIn Top Voice 2020.

3. Stand out with your About section.

A recruiter looks at five-plus people, all with similar skillsets. How will they decide who to call? I call it “getting your character off a page.” If your character seems interesting, you are more likely to get the call.

Clare Phelan, Persuit Consulting

Clare is a career coach and job search strategist that guides you in becoming the CEO of your career.

4. Utilise LinkedIn messaging with professionalism. 

Being CEO of your career means having the systems in place to enable you to efficiently and effectively promote your value to potential employers. Messaging is part and parcel of communicating effectively throughout the job search process, however, getting this right can be overwhelming!

5. Utilise LinkedIn recommendations. 

Aim for three strong recent recommendations. When asking for recommendations, reach out to those who been privy to your great work. If you are searching for roles with a particular skillset, ask your referee to focus the recommendation on your positive traits relevant to that type of role.

Gillian Kelly, Outplacement Australia

Gillian is a Forbes Council career coach, keynote speaker, and award-winning master resume writer.

6. Analyse your profile through the eyes of a hirer. 

Hirers want people who offer value to their business. What does your target hirer see when they look at your profile? What shared connections do you have? How relevant are your skills to their business? What impression do your headline and photo make on them? How credible are you in your subject area or field? What does the tone of your past posts say about your communication style and values?

7. Don’t confuse visibility with credibility. 

Use LinkedIn well, and your actions can help you stand out to potential hirers. Abuse it, and it can damage your job hunt. Be strategic with what you post and how you communicate. Don’t damage a relationship by asking for favours too early. Respect others’ time, opinions, and rights. Consider how posts or comments may impact your brand. Visibility is not the same as credibility.

Shilpa Kulshrestha, Scintillate Coaching

Shilpa is a career strategist, coach, and best-selling author and speaker that helps people who are stuck create impactful careers.

8. Do not try to be someone that you are not.

It will come back to bite you in the face. Or it will push you towards the restlessness of being an imposter. Your authenticity can be your biggest magnet on this platform.

9. Do not ask for help.

Instead, add value without any expectations. You will create some beautiful relationships. I have got my best employees and 90 per cent of my clients from LinkedIn.

Jo Green, Jo Green Coaching 

Jo is a career change coach helping people work through career transformations without stress.

10. Look for people, not jobs.

Lead with your curiosity by finding people on LinkedIn who work in companies you are interested in or careers you want. Get in touch to organise a quick chat or send them a few questions when you connect. Be honest and authentic about why you are reaching out.

The information they give you will help you understand the job market, the companies you are interested in, and new areas you might want to move into. And your new contacts will know you are looking for a role. They may even let you know if they hear of anything.

Thank you Angela Farmeary, Rebecca Jarvis, Clare Phelan, Gillian Kelly, Shilpa Kulshrestha, and Jo Green for your contributions.

The post 10 Expert Tips To Stand Out On LinkedIn appeared first on Head Of Sales.

For many years the legend of the 600lb sales gorilla or Alpha Hyper Masculine ‘sales superstar’ has been strutting the hallways and boardrooms of businesses. Often revered for achieving top of the league ladder sales results, yet feared by many for their aggressive, manipulative, ego centric, demanding, intimidating antics, countless CEO’s and sales managers have allowed these sales prima donnas to remain in their sales teams but at what cost to their sales team and their business?

Too scared to confront them about their behaviours or sales tactics for fear of losing their sales contribution, many sales managers and their sales team have simply suffered in the presence of these sales bullies. In my many years of working with sales teams and sales managers I have met my fair share of Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies and their distressed managers and sales teams. Here’s what I have observed:

1. They have the ear of the Managing Director/CEO who thinks they can do no wrong.
2. They won’t let the business anywhere near their customers.
3. They tell tall tales about their legendary sales conquests.
4. They refuse to be coached, counselled or trained.
5. They are very demanding, always complaining about the lack of resources and taking up the time of countless people to do their bidding, leaving the other sales people to fend for themselves.
6. They often exhibit bad behaviour, and may be heard swearing or making inappropriate comments to their colleagues or other staff who are often too fearful to report them (see point 1).
7. They can engage in questionable sales tactics, yet claim that they are pristine and operate with the utmost of integrity.
8. They claim to know a lot of people and be very well connected.
9. They use actual or implied intimidation to get their way with internal team members.
10. They use charm and manipulation to get their way with key stakeholders.
11. They act with righteous indignation if you question anything about them.
12. They don’t think they need to comply with company policies so often refuse to complete paperwork or keep up to date CRM’s if they think it’s a ‘waste of time’.

You only have to watch the movie ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ to see your fair share of Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies. This type of sales culture was revered by a number of industry sectors in the 70’s and 80’s, including real estate, car sales, stock broking, etc. Watching it makes me feel ill, but many sales teams got off on this and even use ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ as a model of how they should sell in some quarters today.

Yet most people watching ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ or meeting their very own Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies feel repulsed by them. Often very wary of them, others wonder why they have to tolerate them and why management won’t act. Truth is these sales bullies have never been pulled into line. Their outstanding sales results have somehow bought them immunity from behaving in a civil manner. The smell of money they can bring in has condoned behaviour that has often outweighed the need to act ethically and uphold team values and respectful behaviour. Their bad behaviour has been allowed to manifest without restrictions, ‘oh let him get away with it. Look at the results he pulls in’. These sales gorillas are the direct result of poor quality leadership, lack of clear standards and bad decision making.

What most businesses do not know is that these sales bullies, for all their so called sales success, actually fall well behind the real sales superstars in terms of achieving high level and sustainable sales results who, by contrast, are open minded, curious, collaborative, team oriented, open to learning and aim for partnerships on every level. And these real sales superstars are humble too which is a direct contradiction to the behaviour of the sales bullies.

• So are you currently letting fear hold you and your team hostage by allowing your Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies to persist?
• What would happen if you got rid of the sales bullies?
• How would the rest of your team respond when they left?
• What would happen to sales and the clients?

In my experience when the sales bully – the Alpha finally departs, there is an initial sense of shock which quickly gives way to relief and the opportunity for the sales team to really pull together and prosper. The biggest fear of losing the sales bully’s sales power and their clients doesn’t eventuate in the vast majority of cases. In fact it is often revealed that the clients are happy the sales bully has left and look forward to a more open and prosperous relationship with the company concerned and sales grow even more.

I am not suggesting that most leaders intentionally hired these sales bullies or intended for them to manifest however, without clear codes of conduct or values and a proper understanding of what you want by way of ‘ good sales performance’ ‘ you cannot hire or develop the right salespeople to do the right things in the right sales culture.

In his book ‘The No Asshole Rule’, Leigh Buchanan writes about bosses behaving badly. Its thesis – don’t hire jerks, has become public policy in many companies around the world. I would suggest we think clearly about what we want manifested in our sales teams and take a leaf out of Leigh’s book and make sure we employ ‘The No Asshole Rule’ and don’t hire sales jerks.

The post Hiring A 300kg Gorilla Is A Big Mistake! Why? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Sound familiar?

Your business is growing and diversifying. You’ve experimented with bringing in an inexperienced sales person (who did not work out). You realise you need a more experienced direct sales person, but you don’t know where to go or what to look for. All you know is you need a sales person who is able to prospect for, and win, new business opportunities on a consistent daily basis, however you are not really able to detail anything else. You know your recruitment approach is haphazard at best. And what’s worse, it’s costing you big time.

Or you’re an established business whose been hiring sales people with industry experience from your industry for years but that’s not working any more. You just seem to be getting the same old idea and results.

I’m very familiar with these scenarios. Many businesses, large and small, still find it very difficult to recruit effective sales people.

You see, before I started my own business in 1995, I used to work in sales recruitment where I interviewed over 8,000 B2B sales people and sales managers in the technical, industrial, medical, scientific and building sectors. I have had a lot of experience helping to determine what good sales people and leaders need to have and have researched much better ways of assessing sales talent.

Many people who know me know that I’ve been going on about having a more disciplined structured sales recruitment process and strategy for years. Many people are cynical about sales recruitment. You can hear the sighing or see the eyes rolling, can’t you?

The problem is most people are not trained in effective recruitment practices and yet it is one of the most critical jobs in your business, especially for sales. They often give it to someone else and then blame them when it doesn’t work.

So who is in charge of your sales recruitment process?

You are! Whether you go direct to market or use a recruiter, you hold the key. If you do not own the sales recruitment process you and your business are in big trouble.

I went out on a limb a few years ago and set about building effective and user-friendly sales recruitment processes because they weren’t satisfied with what options they were using. I wanted to give them control so they were in the driver’s seat.

Many sales leaders feel at the mercy of the market when it came to sales recruitment. Especially when using recruitment companies. It was all a bit “black box”.

Now you might think I have an issue with recruitment firms (I am an ex-recruiter myself). In principle I do not, but my advice is “recruit your recruiter”.

Make sure they really do know how to recruit what you need. I am not entirely blaming recruitment firms (sure there are a few shonky ones out there, just as in any industry) but I do believe there is work to be done on both sides.

Here are some of the issues I see plaguing businesses when it comes to having poor sales recruitment outcomes:

Issue 1: The Right Sales Approach Or Sales person

You do not know what type of sales approach or sales person you need to deliver your sales strategy. Ask: Has your strategy and/or marketplace changed recently? If so, how do you need to sell now? Not all sales roles are the same. Be clear about what type of sales approach you need to make your business successful: For instance do you need:

• An ‘expert’ who is bringing new products, ideas or concepts to the market versus an ‘organiser’ working in an established ‘educated’ (about what you do) market place?
• A sales person who can develop long-term viable business relationships with clients or a person who can get around to many people in your customer market and make quick one-off sales?
• An account manager who maintains accounts or someone who can develop new business with new or existing accounts.
• A sales person who can sell expensive quality value products/service or a person who can sell commodities or cheaper price sensitive items?

Issue 2: Sales Competencies

You do not really know how to clearly define, articulate and compare what qualities you want in a good sales person. What skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours do your sales people need to demonstrate to be competitive and successful in your marketplace?

For instance, latest research now reveals that high performing sales people also display high levels of emotional intelligence (EI). Know what sales competencies you need.

Issue 3: The Recruitment Process

You do not use or have a logical structured recruitment process to objectively assess, compare and select candidates. Providing structure is probably the single technique most likely to help in improving the reliability of a selection method or process. Use a structured recruitment process to follow that allows for you to compare and contrast applicants in a more disciplined and consistent manner.

• Use the Key Selection Criteria (competencies mentioned above) as the framework.
• Standardise all selection activities.
• Rank the criteria: Are they essential, desirable or nice to have? And select in that order.

Research shows that the average percent increase in output from using a structured multi-assessment selection approach (structured behavioural competency interviews, relevant psychometric assessments, simulation exercises, structure reference, etc.) is approximately 2.5 times greater in sales jobs than in low-complexity non-sales jobs

Issue 4: Outreach Approach

You do not have or use an integrated recruitment strategy to find good sales people. How do you find the “right” sales people for your business and how do prospective sales candidates find out about your business?

Just like sales, in today’s market you need a combination of “push and pull” contact strategies for finding the right candidates for your business. Advertising alone is not likely to yield the candidates you seek. You are always recruiting sales people even if you do not have a vacancy.

Issue 5: The Usual Suspects

You continue to recruit from your own industry, recycling the same people and do not look outside your industry to refresh the gene pool with new talent. Same old people, same old ideas, same old results. Need I say more?

Issue 6: Benchmarking

You do not screen your recruiters for “best practice” nor do you brief them properly. It is a very costly exercise to get recruitment wrong and many people so not have the time to do it themselves.

However many are equally sceptical about the real value of using recruitment consultants. It is as difficult to find a good recruiter, as it is to find a good sales person. If you are going to use a recruiter, ask them what processes they use to source and select candidates.

Check them against the processes recommended above to see if they use “best practice” methods or just “wing it”.

By giving the recruitment consultant a clear job and person specification and competency profile you are able to clearly articulate and request what you need and what they need to deliver.

No more “bums on seats”, thank you very much. The good ones will tell you who is available in the market place, what each type of person is attracting salary wise, and most importantly help you find the right sales person for your business.

Being in control of your recruitment process is very important. Not being able to articulate what and who you need to perform the job well is very risky. As you can see it’s all in the preparation. Putting in the work on getting it right up front and then sticking to a plan really pays off.

The positive feedback I am getting from sales managers and senior managers when they do follow the process is so rewarding. For instance:

• “It really works! I was able to make a selection decision based much more on the evidence not my emotions or prejudices.”
• “I’m not getting caught up in my own dialogue and can really concentrate on them.”
• “I didn’t think it would, but it saves me so much time and money.”
• “I don’t take any one out of desperation and more.”
• “When we follow the process, my co-interviewer and I come to the same conclusion time and time again and we have the evidence to prove it.”
• “I feel in control and are able to make more informed decisions.”
• “I know how to work with my recruiter to my best advantage.”

I hope this helps.

The post Sales Recruitment – 6 Issues You Need To Address To Get It Right appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance tells the story of a road trip taken by an unnamed author and his son Chris, from Minnesota to Northern California on their motorbikes. The book holds the Guinness World Record as the most rejected bestseller in history, racking up a staggering 121 rejections by publishes all over the world. It went on to sell more than 5 million copies.

This book had a profound impact on me when I first read it as a 16 year old. As the books main protagonists debated the essence of ‘quality’, the balance between romanticism and rationality and the pursuit of ‘pure truth”, I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was way out of my intellectual depth. But at the same time I was intrigued. The book opened my eyes to concepts that still impact me to this day, like the search for meaning, enlightenment and purpose in our lives and in our work.

Sitting in a weekly sales forecast call, discussing the ‘close potential’ of a long list of deals, is about as far away as you can get from the search for truth and enlightenment which Pirsig so elegantly portrayed in his book…or is it? Once you start to peel the onion a little, some interesting parallels begin to emerge.

• The practice of Zen Buddhism often takes the form of intensive group meditation: That certainly holds true for most forecast meetings
• Zen Buddhism requires weekly if not daily dedication from its practitioners: In many B2B sales organisations, forecasting is now a daily ritual as well
• Zen Buddhism focuses the mind on removing doubt and uncertainty to expose truth: In theory, so does sales forecasting.
• Zen Buddhist meditation usually takes place in a seated position: With one notable exception, every sales forecast meeting I’ve been in I was sitting down.

“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses” Robert M. Pirsig – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In my experience, and I must stress this is only my experience, these are some of the best and worst sales forecasting practices I have observed over the years:

Sales forecasting – The Bad

• Over or under forecasting (also known as ‘bottom drawering’) – There are many reasons this behaviour occurs, including inexperienced salespeople, a poor sales culture in the business and the lack of a consistent sales process.
• Lack of lead housekeeping (especially common with in-bound web leads and event follow-ups) – Duplicate data, deals which aren’t updated, lack of notes in relation to a deal, these and many more factors lead to poor lead housekeeping.
• Zombie deals that never die (deals that last longer at a company than you do!) – Lack of forecast accountability by sales managers often lead to deals which hang around for months or years, constantly being pushed out to the next quarter, only to pop up again like the undead.
• Naivety or happy ears (it can be tricky to balance optimism with pragmatism) – Most sales people are optimists, however a healthy dose of sales paranoia is also required, to avoid falling into the trap of believing everything you hear or want to hear.

Sales forecasting – The Good

• Consistently accurate forecast (usually within a few percent of your commit figure) – Sales people with an in-depth understanding of their opportunities, who have established strong lines of communication with the customer or prospect and manage expectations on both sides of the fence.
• Attention to detail (many salespeople struggle in this area) – Knowing your deal, the possible road-blocks, the compelling drivers, the sign-off steps, the competitive landscape etc. will invariably be the difference between accurate and inaccurate forecasting.
• Asking the right questions (objection handling is a critical skillset to master) – Intelligent and ongoing discovery questions throughout the sales cycle, coupled with active listening, objection handling and problem solving skills are key to hitting your forecast.
• A healthy dose of paranoia (the perfect antidote to happy ears) – Optimism is important in sales. However constantly testing, questioning and refining the information at your disposal is absolutely critical. Avoid making assumptions or using out of date information to infer outcomes

So how do you fix a broken sales forecasting process?

Step 1 – Start by creating a consistent sales process. Sounds simple doesn’t it? I wonder how many of you reading this post have a written down or visually represented sales process that the whole sales team follows, which you can share with your customers in some instances?

Step 2 is a tricky one because it involves having honest conversations, both internally and with your customer. In order to forecast accurately, you need to understand where they are at in their buying cycle and overlay that onto your sales process to determine the gaps. This single step should lead to a significant reduction in the confusion and misinformation which exists in the average sales forecast.

Step 3 – Once you’ve completed steps 1 and 2, things begin to get a little more interesting. As a sales leader, the onus is on you to create a culture of trust and honesty. Your sales team have to be allowed to provide an honest assessment of an opportunity, rather than feel they are being painted into a corner.

I was a classic ‘bottom drawer’ sales rep during my years carrying a quota. This became my default setting for some years, because I often felt forced to commit a number I was uncomfortable committing to. So I managed expectations downwards, assuming I needed a buffer to protect against a forced uplift on my commit number. This sort of game playing, creates a culture of doubt and uncertainty in a sales team and creates forecast inaccuracy

Step 4 – Make your sales team accountable for the number. It seems like an obvious statement, so let’s drill down on it. The symptoms are easy to spot:

• Lack of detail or understanding around key opportunities in their pipeline,
• Deals which regularly slip or are constantly pushing out to the next quarter,
• Consistently missing their forecast commits (either over or under).

A good sales manager creates an environment conducive to an accurate sales forecast. They foster a culture of trust and honesty within the team, provide advice and support, whilst ensuring each member of the sales team is held accountable for their own forecast accuracy.

The post Zen And The Art Of Sales Forecasting appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Sorry if that offends anyone but it’s the truth. Leadership sets the tone and creates the focus in every organization; and culture is nothing more, nothing less, than the behavior of the leaders. Sales meetings often reveal short-term or lazy mindsets and sadly waste the time of most of the participants.

First a confession. I’ve held roles as sales manager and director of sales for public corporations and then Managing Director of global technology companies where I ran the Asia-Pacific region. I’ve been part of the problem in years past so this is a mirror just as much as a floodlight.

We all need to recognize that we cannot manage by results; only by activities and actions. If your sales meetings are dominated by the CRM on the big screen and blowtorch accountability sessions on forecast commits, then you’re focused on the wrong thing.

“83% of sales management metrics do not measure sales activities” – Jason Jordan, Cracking The Sales Management Code

In a group setting we need to inspire, educate and create the right focus. Individuals need to be encouraged to share their wisdom with others. Publicly embarrassing anyone is a sales meeting is a form of bullying. Weekly one-on-one sessions are where strong accountability should be driven and direct feedback given but even these private sessions are not the forum for any Gordon Ramsay style of coaching. There are no excuses for bullying… ever!

It’s almost always a mistake to fire-up the blowtorch and apply pressure to your sales people to go and explode a deal by applying clumsy pressure or making ill-conceived discount

offers or announcing hollow threats. Instead acknowledge that opening is far more important than closing and that understanding the customer’s timing and process is how to achieve accurate forecasting. We should always be asking the right questions of sales people at the beginning of the quarter and help them identify and execute the right actions that create progression. Applying the flame-thrower with just days to go in the quarter after neglecting the inputs that create success is a sure-fire way to damage relationships and drive-down price and margin. Pic in this paragraph by Jeff Warren (mike-lin-blowtorch).

In a sales meeting; by all means discuss key deals if multiple stakeholders are there and the group can contribute or learn. Here are some important principles for making sales meetings an effective use of everyone’s time:

• Motivate and inspire by celebrating success with individuals and recognize those who are over-achieving in their KPIs that ultimately create revenue. Highlight corporate wins and new customers. Always emphasize team effort along with the commitment of key individuals.
• Ensure that your marketing team is part of sales meetings and that you drive sales and marketing alignment and collaboration. This is a critical success factor for strategic social selling where sales people are content amplifiers and potential content creators. Sales people can learn from marketing to improve their messaging and branding on platforms such as LinkedIn.
• Collaboratively share market intelligence concerning competitor activity and tactics. Insights from both loss reviews and win review insights should be shared including trigger events that created interest with prospects early and then workshop how to create the most powerful conversations.
• Foster information sharing and train a skill or technique that can help people improve their skills to drive results. Invite a guest to speak or present briefly create better understanding of other parts of the business or how to best engage with partners.

I phoned a fellow sales leader, Wayne Moloney and asked

him for his thoughts as he just published an excellent book on sales management and here are his thoughts. He agreed with my list and offered additional thoughts.

Sales meetings should be about the team, not an individual,  and meeting should be more about the customer than your company.  The objective should be to ensure consistent communication of company messages.

Consider the teams overall performance and address any issues to get back on track. Seek feedback on what assistance the team needs to over-achieve their targets but don’t allow this to become a complaint session. Provide the team with something of value to help them succeed and be specific. Share examples of how a sale was won.

The meeting agenda should not be around the performance of individuals and limit it to one hour. Always start and finish on time. Don’t get stuck in a rut, change the order around and don’t have the same people talking each week. Ask one sales person each week to share something they have tried that’s working for them. It could be a way of getting into a new account, a way of presenting a new service/application (max 15 minutes including questions).

Ask individuals to present on a competitor or a new product, service, technology, process or solution. This will enable the manager to assess their skills and provide feedback and coaching later.

Tip of the Week – the sales managers chance to earn some ‘street cred’. Identify a weakness and provide suggestions on how to address, provide some market intelligence that they would not be aware of and could help them address a problem. It doesn’t need to be complex, just a positive to finish the meeting and help them leave thinking they got something they wouldn’t have if they didn’t attend.

Wayne’s book is excellent and the key point in all of this from me and Wayne is that sales meetings should inspire, educate and equip sales people to execute better with customers. Sales meeting should foster collaboration and serve the sales team, not the sales manager. Wasting everyone’s time going through individual deals may help the manager avoid 1:1 sessions with sales people but it’s not best practice.  If you run forecast updates then call the meetings exactly that. Preserve the title of ‘sales meeting’ for sessions that sales people want to attend and that provide value for all in attendance.

And now… the classic movie sales meeting from Glengarry Glen Ross with alec Baldwin.

The post How [Not] To Run A Sales Meeting appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Get off the 3rd appendage. If aliens descended they’d be confounded with why humans have only one hand. The entire society is glued to a piece of plastic, silicon circuits, and flashing light through gorilla glass. It’s unnatural, unhealthy, and sociologically inept.

We’ve already ruined society so why ruin Modernized Selling too? What’s wrong with this picture? Probably everything!

When I walk through a company from startup to corporation, my first mandate is to listen: not to the platitudes of executives asking for cutting edge new “closing techniques” but for the tenor and tone of the sales floor. If the culture is a closed door, sanctuary, with an “open office layout” oxymoron of nobody talking to colleagues or prospects on the phone, I know that something has truly gone awry in Denmark.

Sales floors should be loud. No exceptions.

This image looks like a blast, but this is not selling. This is leisure people!

If you are sitting near a strategic seller, and it sounds like a zen spa in the background, be wary. That rep is not busy or doing their job. Top reps that prospect like Terminator are crazy busy. Top sales floors are filled with the noises of hustle and bustle, not the thump of muted techno while the keys fall like acid rain. Top sales establishments have their own conference rooms packed with clients. Their reps are either pounding the phones standing with headsets, or out in the field face to face with customers.

What I’d really like to construct is something like an Applause-o-meter from old black and white TV game shows. A Sales-o-meter where I can monitor the sound from 1 to 10, from a traditional church to Monster Truck Rally!

It’s really easy to immediately challenge the organization I’m consulting.

If you’re having a problem with revenue, why does your sales floor sound like a funeral procession?

Energy, this is what’s missing in modern sales. Passion! Try as you might to convey this with your next spammy email, InMail or DM on Twitter but it gets lost in translation of the white wall of noise enveloping the modern prospect.

YOU will separate yourself from the next 999 reps if you always err to the phone.

Dig through the deadwood in your CRM and call all the numbers. Don’t ping your warm opportunities in the funnel with “touching base” and “checking in” emails. Get on the phone and call them. Call them again. Leave them tailored messages that are short and sweet, and that focus on them and their industry rather than what you’re selling.

I’ve got one rep I coach who got reprimanded for disrupting the sales floor with outbound prospecting. The CSO asked him to book a calling pod and ensure that any time in the POD is logged on the Google calendar.

Constraining when reps can call and forcing them to book time on calendars is the absolute height of inanity insanity! STOP the madness!

If you’re reading this and agree, get up and let out a Billy Idol rebel yell at your desk now. Start standing up while you make outbound prospecting calls. Get live and loud! Tell your boss you’re going to double your pipeline by using a phone strategy. Then get ahold of phone numbers, as many as you can – from business cards, from autoresponders, from Data.com, ZoomInfo, Google Searches – WIT – whatever it takes! I dunno, even open the cobwebby CRM thingamajig!

Always err to the phone. Inbound lead… Call. Email follow up… Call. Top, Middle, Bottom of funnel… Call. Step one… Call.

If I ran a modern sales team again, I’d buy a Polycom for every rep and put a few per room and they’d round robin making prospecting calls with headsets and coaching each other as they sharpen the sword of value and insight.

It’s remarkable to me that SDRs are not on the phone. It’s remarkable to me that modern Strategic Sales Executives show up to work, get coffee, complain about the leads, check the sports scores and never once even pick up their cell phone. (Yes, the one the company is reimbursing for primarily Facebook and LinkedIn fluff.)

Late addition from comments made to this post by the legendary Mark Hunter: “I had an inside sales manager tell me he had to get rid of the gong he had on the floor. Each time one of his team members made a sale they got to ring the gong. He was asked by HR to remove it because another sales manager said it was too noisy for his team. Note to HR…fire the other sales manager! Note to the CEO – fire HR!” I agree Mark! They should install a ‘rock concert grade amp stack’ to play this cowbell track every time someone wins a deal.

Now I’m not denigrating Social Selling; I’m advocating making the PHONE the central pillar of that strategy too. Pull up Sales Navigator, check your common connections, school in common, contacts in your own company that know them, triggers like press releases, expansion, M&A, product innovation, job changes but then pick up the phone to tell them about it. Google their name, pull a quote and call their cell phone to talk about how the quote links into a business case.

This is why I absolutely love video-based email like BombBomb. Record a video that shows you did even 30 seconds of social stalking (research) and send the image of you speaking, inflection, body language and all. This is the undiscovered country, the next frontier. You need to be more human than a human. You need to crack the cyborg “digitalfication” of everything in sales and become organic matter again.

There’s a counter culture movement happening right now in sales that reminds me of CrossFit. Sellers just can’t guzzle the corn syrup like gerbils on the spinning wheel of Social anymore. It’s time to get real, get live and get loud. Are you with me? Come on feel the noise!!!

The post All Sales Floors Should Be Loud!!! appeared first on Head Of Sales.