Sales Tips For Sales Managers - Hiring Sales Representatives in a Down Economy

As the economy trends downward we are seeing multiple companies shrink their sales force and cut the fat in order to save costs. Most companies right now are looking to eliminate their lowest performing sales representatives and even their sales managers to ensure a higher return on investment on their sales team. This scenario leads to hundreds of thousands of sales representatives and other sales professionals hitting the bricks for one of the biggest sales of their life; their employment. So with all the salespeople in the job market today you would think that this makes it easier to recruit top level, high performing sales talent, right? Believe it or not, it actually makes it harder and more time consuming. Not only do you have way more applicants than you would usually have, you have a much higher percentage of underperformers. It takes longer and requires more attention to see past the smoke screen put off by your applicants. Keep in mind that you are interviewing professional, job hungry sales people, even bad ones know what you want to hear.

So what sales tips can I share with you to help ensure that you aren't hiring sales representatives that have been cut due to their performance?  First, you'll need to look at past sales history. Did this individual obtain their monthly quotas, are there any awards or spiffs that have been given to the individual. Do they have anything to back up their claim that they were a top performer at their last place of employment? Believe it or not, I once ask this question to a sales representative who was interviewing for an online advertising sales job that very question. He opened his wallet and took out a paystub for a $10,000 bi-weekly commission check. This check was 8-10 times what a usual representative would make at the candidates previous employer. Another thing you can do is role play with the sales representative to get an idea of their sales process or sales techniques. I've asked sales people to try and sell me the pen that was in their hand. I would off objection after objection and listen to their rebuttals. It also let me know if they were taking the interview seriously, if they wanted to job and how they acted under pressure. As silly as it sounds this was often one of my favorite interview tools for sales people.

Even with the most elaborate sales testing or career testing it is absolutely impossible to predict how a sales representative or sales manager will perform in your company. These interviewing techniques for sales representatives only help so much. In the end it will come down to the sales representative's personal drive, ambition and talent, among other things.  On the other hand these tests will help you discover the sales representatives with "red flags" or obvious warning signs. 

Oliver Feakins is a sales and marketing oriented entrepreneur from Lancaster County, PA. Oliver also maintains a sales blog called Quick Sales Tips (http://www.quicksalestips.com) which offers selling help to the sales community. Oliver also consults for area businesses on internet marketing and lead generation both on and offline. His past include executive level positions in the healthcare and internet marketing industries. Oliver can be reached via email at: oliverfeakins@hotmail.com

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Recruiting Sales People - Tips For Recruiting, Hiring & Retaining Sales People

Recruiting sales people should be an ongoing and never ending process. You may not be hiring but you should always been recruiting for sales people. Because sales is such a critical role to every company, you should always be on the lookout for top sales talent.

The biggest challenge for most companies in recruiting sales people are:

Where do I find good sales people?

How do I pay them?

How do I keep good sales people once I have found them?

Finding Good Sales people

As we said before you may not be hiring but you should always be recruiting sales people. You should have a recruitment strategy in place to provide you with a steady stream of qualified sales people to interview. They can come from a number of sources:

Employee Referrals

Sales Recruiters

Job Postings On Your Website

HR Department

Industry Conferences & Events

It is best to use a few if not all of these sources to find sales people so when an opening comes up, you will be able to fill the job quickly.

How Do I Pay Sales People?

From our experience, the biggest reason sales people don't work out or don't stay with a company is the design of the sales compensation plan. Pay a sales person too little and they're not happy...too much and the company isn't happy. Here are a few things to keep in mind when reviewing your sales compensation plan:


What is the desired level of income for a sales person in your industry and what sales volume is necessary to achieve this income?

Is the plan tied to gross sales or gross profit?

In most cases, it is not advisable to pay commission of more than 20% of gross profit (this may vary by industry and product). Any more than this and you are paying too much.

How does your sales compensation plan compare to other firms in your industry?

Will sales commissioned be uncapped or limited?

These are just a few of the issues that can come up and if you don't know the answers to any of the questions above, it may be time to review your compensation structure for your sales team.

Retaining Sales People

You've recruited and hired a great sales person. You've spent a lot of time, money and resources to find this person...now what? How can you ensure that they will be successful and stay with your company for years to come?

A common mistake is to hire a sales person and hope they have contacts that can bring in big sales. The reality is that even experience, well connected sales people need help to be successful. Here is what your company needs in place in order to ensure a successful sales person:

A good sales manager - A big reason sales people leave or do not live up to expectations is they have no one to rely on to coach them, mentor them and help achieve their goals


On boarding process - What happens when this person starts? Who is responsible for teaching them about the company, products and services? What kind of support is available? What type of training will be done? These are all important steps to ensuring success.


Sales Training & Coaching - Tiger Woods uses a coach not because he doesn't know how to swing a golf club. He uses a coach to fine tune his swing and improve his performance. Sales is no different. Even experienced sales people need reminders and refreshers on how to approach new business and how to move potential clients along in the sales process. Investing in ongoing training and development will go a long way to securing more business.

Good companies should always be on the lookout for top sales people. Once you have found them be then prepared to hire, train and retain!

Matthew Cook

SalesForce Search

SalesForce Search is a recruitment company specializing in the placement of sales professionals across North America. http://www.SalesForceSearch.ca

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Hiring & Retaining Great Sales People

When companies are looking to hire new sales people for their organization, most concentrate on hiring the person with the most experience or with a solid history of sales success. As a sales recruiter, our job is to find the best business development, account manager or sales rep for companies. However, many companies are not prepared to make even the best sales person successful once they begin their new sales job.

Many company specific factors go into making sales people successful. Companies who have had a hard time retaining top sales talent usually have a few things in common:

1) A well designed Sales Compensation Plan

2) Ongoing Product and Sales Training

3) Coaching, Mentoring and ongoing support from their Sales Manager

Sales Compensation Plan

From our experience, most small and medium sized businesses do not have a well designed sales compensation plan. We find the plan either too generous for the sales person or too generous for the employer. Either way, if the compensation plan is not set up properly, either your business will suffer or you will not be able to retain good sales people. As a rule of thumb, you should not pay your salespeople more than 20% of gross profit. Any more than that and your business is paying too much.

Ongoing Product & Sales Training

Having worked for and with many large companies and it never ceases to amaze me how during training 90% of the time is allocated to the product. Sales training and the process of how to sell a particular product is usually a small component in corporate training sessions. While product knowledge is important, it is irrelevant if your people do not know how to sell its features and benefits. Invest in ongoing product and sales training to ensure your sales people have up to date knowledge on new products and services and so they have the sales skills to sell it!

Coaching & Mentoring

Hiring a salesperson is a big commitment of time, energy and money. Making a hiring mistake with a sales rep can be costly on all fronts, not to mention opportunity cost, damage to key accounts and missed opportunities. We talk to dozens of sales people on a daily basis and one of the main reasons sales people leave their job is lack of support, coaching and mentoring from their sales manager.

Ensure your sales managers are equipped with the skills to effectively coach and mentor your sales people. Most sales managers are promoted because they were the top sales rep and do not necessarily possess the skills needed to be a coach and mentor. Invest in sales management training for your sales managers to ensure their skills are up to the challenge.

The important thing to remember is that finding a great sales person is only half the battle. You need to invest in their selling skills, product knowledge and their sales managers to ensure you have sales people that are successful and stay with your organization for years to come.

Matthew Cook,
President
SalesForce Search

Where Great Sales Teams Begin
http://SalesForceSearch.ca/

Hiring great sales people is one of the most important hiring decisions companies make yet few companies have a process for identifying top sales talent.

That's where we come in. At SalesForce Search our unique Hiring Process combination of sales specific interviews, role plays and sales skill assessments will help you make the best hiring decision for your sales organization.

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Sales Hiring - How to Hire Sales People Who Were Born to Sell

Does your organization struggle with hiring great sales people? Does your sales department suffer low productivity or high turnover? This article is designed to provide you with some useful tips for hiring sales people. Specific job requirements may vary; however, the following information includes helpful and important guidelines from which every sales organization can benefit.

There are few organizational challenges that compare to the difficulty of recruiting and hiring a successful sales force. Sales people have the greatest impact on your bottom line and when they don't perform, your business suffers. That's why effective sales hiring is so critical.

Have you ever wondered why it's so difficult to hire people that can sell consistently, year after year?

The short answer is this: the selling profession requires qualities and skills that not everyone possesses. All too often, previous experience, a clean resume and camaraderie in an interview are the primary predictors of success, which often leads to sales hiring mistakes that can cause high turnover and ineffectiveness in sales teams.

When a sales force fails to meet their goals, most companies react by implementing sales training programs or by replacing the employees who display the lowest level of performance. This can be a never-ending cycle if your sales hiring and selection process is based on instinct and a good resume alone.

So how do you rank your sales team? Do you believe you've hired the best sales people for your organization? Here are some things to consider:

- 54% of sales managers believe they have the right people in their sales teams

- 56% of sales managers believe the people in their sales teams are in the right positions

- 54% of sales managers recognize the need to improve their process for leveraging the potential of strong performers

- 29% of sales managers admit that the talent in their sales force isn't being fully utilized

A little more than half! That's it?! A little more than half of sales managers believe they're hired the right person for the right job. Wouldn't you like to make that number closer to 100%? Wouldn't it be great to say that almost every person in your sales team is a top performer who belongs in their respective position? You're probably already familiar with the "80-20" rule in sales, in which 20 percent of the sales people make 80 percent of the sales. What if you could take that 20 percent of your top-performing sales team and hire more people that have the same skills and characteristics that make them successful? The good news is that it's possible with the right sales hiring tools.

Sales Hiring: Job Fit

There is no greater tragedy in business than putting competent employees into jobs in which they are destined to fail. When this happens, their potential is wasted. The classic example of a poor job fit is when a company picks its best salesperson to be a sales manager and then finds that he or she is unsuccessful, unhappy or unproductive in the new position. The qualities that make for a great sales person are different from those of a great sales manager. It is extremely rare that an individual can do both well.

Job Fit is the single most important factor in sales hiring success.

To download the rest of this guide, visit our site listed below.

Nancy Ness is Vice President of Profiles Incorporated, authorized dealer for Profiles International assessments. Profiles is the world's leader and innovator in designing human resource management tools for selecting and developing high-performance workforces. Visit us online at Sales Hiring Strategies.

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Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring Their Next Sales Superstar

When faced with declining sales and missed targets, many companies opt to hire a "sales superstar", one whom will do the wonders and rev up sales single-handedly. Unfortunately, most companies almost always end up with mediocre results at best, and sheer disappointment in most cases.

In fact, the notion of trying to hire a "sales superstar" is a mistake itself. Here's why:

The Elusive Sales Superstar

Usually, the term "sales superstar" refers to an ultra-aggressive sales person who simply doesn't take "no" for an answer, and is just fantastic in generating great sales results real quick. This kind of sales person represents only about 1-2% of the entire sales population.

As such they are very difficult to find. But finding them is just the beginning of more challenges. You will face issues such as:

Sales superstars are highly paid individuals, and to entice them to work for you will mean you will have to pay even more, for both fixed and variable pays;


As most sales superstars are currently happily making money with their current employers, and hence that means you will have to proactively reach out to them. The usual employment ads won't work, and even most headhunters don't go around poaching candidates. In worse scenarios, you get candidates who claim to be sales superstars, but are far from it;


The sales superstar you hire may or may not fit into the way you sell, or into your company culture. If that happens, and it quite frequently does, you simply end up with a very expensive dud!


Even when you hire THE sales superstar who's producing good results for you, you'll still face 2 possibilities:

Despite your sales superstar's Herculean effort, you still are not able to stem the tide of declining sales;


Due to your sales superstar's good efforts, you have now seen sales increasing as a result.


Most companies who have hired a sales superstar will eventually find that to increase sales and profits on more sustained basis, you will need a lot more than an individual's effort, and thus diminishing the sales superstar's impact on the bottom line.

However, it is the 2nd consequence that poses the most danger to the company. If you have one sales person who can single-handedly turn the tide for you, then you may have a situation where a significant amount of sales are held in the hands of just one person. If that is the case, your company may be taken hostage by this individual easily, i.e. whatever he/ she demands, you'll have to oblige, or else he/ she will just bring all your major customers to the competitor.

Why Not Build a High-Performing Sales Team Instead

Rather than hoping to find an saviour in the form of a sales superstar, what companies can do is to make sure that all sales persons hired are first equipped and then train in the skills that make them good sales people in your unique sales culture.

While you are highly unlikely to groom sales superstars in your own company, you may actually build a team that collectively produces much more than a superstar ever will. Here's how it works:

Compare the best performing sales person(s) with the rest (the middle and worst performing) in your company. Find out what are the qualities or behaviours that are ONLY present in the best people, which the rest are not doing;


Structure the interview processes where you look for past performance whereby the candidate has demonstrated such ideal qualities or behaviours;


If the qualities or behaviours can be learnt, structure your sales training such that everyone on your team can learn and internalise them.


In doing so, while you may not have sales superstars eventually, but you will get a team of sales people who are performing well above average.

Now, what if you are unhappy with the performance of the entire sales team, and in your view, there really isn't any quality or behaviour that you want your staff to emulate from your best sales person, there's still hope.

The HR Chally Group is a leader in the field of sales staff research, and they have identified the ideal qualities and behaviours that are needed for each of the separate pre-determined 14 sales and 8 management position categories.

The Sales Superstar Isn't Going to be Your Next Sales Manager

Some companies may now be thinking that if they haven't got any good sales people that they want to emulate, then perhaps they can hire a sales superstar and get that superstar to be their sales manager so that all can learn from him/ her.

Unfortunately, the sad story is that only 15% of sales superstars will be competent managers. Here are the reasons why:

Selling is about getting things done through the customer, while sales management is about getting things done through the sales team;


The sales superstar is a highly skilled specialist in the former, but not in the latter;


When the sales team faces difficulties in getting better results, the sales superstar tends to fall back on what she does best, i.e. to take over the sale. In the long run, you'll end up with a sales team of one, the superstar herself;


Sales superstars know that they are good, but they usually don't know why they are good. hence, they will find it difficult to reflect and analyse what makes them successful, and how to make others be as successful as well.

Indeed, sales superstars can be trained to become good managers. However, in doing so you are depriving the superstars to do what they do best, which is closing those deals!

Interestingly, the best candidates to be the sales managers that are required to coach the sales team to better performance tends to sales people who had shown drastic improvements over the course of her career. These people are usually not "naturals" when it comes to selling, but have improved their performances by analysing, learning and applying the skills that make other sales people successful.

As a result, they are more likely to understand the dynamics behind what made them more successful as compared to their past performance, and are likely to flesh out the learning points of others once they settle into a coaching role.

In any case, if you would like to build winning sales teams where each team member is an above-average performer, simply e-mail info@psycheselling.com or call +86-13671902505 or Skype: cydj001 and arrange to buy me a mocha. All information shall be kept in confidence

c.j. is an Affiliate with HR Chally Group in China. Founded in 1973 through a grant from the U.S. Justice Department, the HR Chally Group provides predictive and compliant assessment system for management, sales, technical, customer care, and administrative talents. Unlike other assessment tools that just conducts personality profiles, Chally profiles what is exactly required by specific job descriptions and responsibilities and predict if these talents can succeed in these roles. The resulting effect is you'll get:

* Up to 40% reduction in turnover

* Up to 30% increase in employee productivity

* 85%+ accuracy in identifying effective performers

Prior to this, c.j. was Asia Marketing Manager for a Fortune 500 logistics company, as well as Corporate Training Manager for Ringier AG, Switzerland's largest media group, in China, where he was responsible for sales team development, and helped increase the % of new hires to close their 1st sales within 2 months by 30%, as well as increase overall sales targets by more than 50%. Visit http://www.psycheselling.com for more info.

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Stop Hiring Under-Performing Experienced Sales People and Start Developing Competent Ones

Mark has just finished his day interviewing his 20th potential sales recruit of the day. Being the Sales Director of the company, he is also responsible to make the final round of interviews of the shortlisted candidates to make sure only the "high-potentials" are being hired.

Being the Sales Director, Mark has a lot of other things to do besides interviewing sales candidates. However, due to the extremely high sales staff turnover, Mark has been getting a lot more involved in the sales staff hiring process, sometimes getting involved even in the preliminary interviews.

Still, despite his best efforts to make sure only the sales people with the relevant experience, the best track records and whom had made the most impressive impression during the sales interviews are hired. 6 months later, most if not all sales hires have failed to deliver according to expectations.

When Mark asked his Sales Managers why the new sales hires are not performing, the answers somehow centre around the following:

• "These young people are simply not motivated to work hard enough"

• "They just don't have the 'sense' to do business with the customers"

• "They just cannot fit into our kind of business", etc.

Somehow, Mark feels rather helpless as no matter what he did, his new sales hires are just not performing. Now Mark needs to find some ways that will give him some indications of future success, or he might as well implement a hiring freeze since his company has been wasting a lot of resources hiring under-performing sales people.

Mark is not alone in his predicament. Many companies are making a lot hiring mistakes when hiring new sales people. If these mistakes can be rectified, these companies can see significant improvements in their sales results.

The Fallacy of Hiring Experienced Sales People

When most companies hire sales people, the major criteria usually includes having some years of experience selling in the same or a similar industry, and a good track record of good sales results.

However, if you were to look closer, these are not the critical success factors that will determine if the sales person will deliver results for you.

One key reason is that the market place that we are operating in is constantly changing. You will notice that:

• Customers are getting more and more demanding and knowledgeable;

• Competition is getting more and more intense;

• The things you sell are getting more and more complex, etc.

In some markets, the changes within a 5-year period can be so drastic that it's beyond recognition.

So if you are hiring based on past experience, how do you know that what worked in the past is going to work in the future? The same factors that gave you success in the past are getting less and less relevant for today's and the future's challenges.

What about a good sales track record, you might ask. Surely, if a sales person has been consistently producing great results will still continue to produce great results.

Unfortunately, unlike many other professions, the sales profession is one where dealing with failures is essential to becoming a successful sales person. No successful sales person can claim that he or she has never been rejected by customers, or has never lost deals in an ongoing basis. In fact, just like in many negotiations, the better sales person knows when to "walk away" and seek other better prospective customers, while the weaker sales person hangs on too long to customers that are never going to buy.

Hence, if you see sales people who seem to have "perfect" track records in the sense that they always reach or exceed sales targets could be:

• Selling in a monopoly where customers have no choice but to buy from them;

• Entering the market in an early stage so that they got the biggest customers in that market;

• Selling for a well-established brand to loyal existing customers that really need little persuasion to buy

This is not to say that having the relevant experience and a good track record is not important to a sales person. It just means that having some years of sales experience and a track record is no indicator of future performance.

The Critical Behaviours that Drive Sales

While companies are always looking at sales figures to determine the success of their sales force, most of the time it is the sales process (i.e. how you sell) that determines the results you get. How well the sales process is being executed depends largely the habits and behaviours of each sales person.

Different companies will have different sales processes for different customers in different regions who are buying different product lines. Hence, the critical behaviours that drive sales success will vary from case to case. The sales processes that companies have can include:

1. Selling only to a few Strategic Accounts, and sales people will have to work through complex relationships so as to gain buy-in from all levels in the customer's organisation;

2. Constantly generating new leads and getting new customers to buy frequently; or

3. Having a balance of new business development and key accounts management so that sales people are getting both new and existing customers to buy from them with varying complexity, etc.

In reality, sales processes can get a lot more complicated as different customers in different markets have different needs that have to be satisfied in different ways. So what if you aren't quite sure what is the sales process for the next sales person, here are some "generic" critical behaviours that apply to most sales processes (and which are found lacking in most sales people too):

• Constant prospecting to make sure the sales person fills up the pipeline. Most sales people, no matter how experienced, will prefer to deal with existing customers than to look for new ones. However, if the sales person shows the disciplined behaviour to keep on prospecting for new prospects, that is a sign of a good hire;

• Constantly exploring what are the customers' "pain" or problem areas, and pro-actively seeking to provide solutions or suggestions to customers to help them overcome those challenges;

• Making sure that the relationship with the customer are developed with all major key influencers in the customer's organisations, rather than relying on one single contact. Such sales people are also usually good developing relationships with less influential "informants" who can provide critical information

• Learning from mistakes and customer rejections so as to do better next time. In a similar vein, knowing when NOT to pursue a customer when it's not worth the time or effort, AND spend time looking for new and better customers instead, etc.

Hence, during your interviews with candidates, you can ask the following questions:

• "If I were a prospective customer, and you want to do business with me, how would you go about making that first contact?" (Do a role play, and also ask the candidate what is his usual modus operandi)

• "What makes your customers buy from you instead of anybody else? Why have some other customers chosen NOT to buy from you?" (Note: if the candidate gives general answers like "because I provide good service", probe in deeper by asking "what is good service")

• "Typically, how many people do you have to communicate with before you can get your sale? Can you cite an example where you need to work through many contacts before getting the sale?" (Get the candidate to draw his customer's organisation chart if need be)

• "Are there any instances that you thought you probably have won the sale, but somehow lost it in the end? What do you think you can learn from such cases?" (Beware the candidate who's very confident and tells you he knows his customer real well)

• "Are there times when you need to give up on a specific sale? What happened and what did you do then?" (Watch out for the candidate who claims "I never give up any sale!" It is a sign of poor priority management and qualifying skills)

Developing Competent Sales People

It may not be surprising that most if not all of your candidates fail in ALL of the above questions. It could well possible that even some of your existing experienced sales people fail some of those questions too. (Or else sales consultancies like us will be out of business very soon!)

The next question will be: if we then set such high standards that no candidates actually display the required critical behaviours, does that mean we don't hire anyone?

The good news is that such critical sales behaviours can be taught and learnt. In fact, high-performing sales people learnt to become high-performers throughout their careers. Only a handful few high-performers are "naturals".

Hence, while most candidates are unlikely to display the critical behaviours that will drive sales for you, you can pick those who display some of those behaviours, AND are willing to learn some new ways to make more sales, you then may have a winner in the near future.

Some companies are unwilling to invest time, effort and money to develop their new sales hires because of the following reasons:

1. "We expect the new sales hire to perform immediately, that's why we hire them for their experience!";

2. "We don't have the time and resources to hand-hold these sales people who can't perform";

3. "If we teach them too much, they may turn around and work for our competitors."

What these companies have to realise is that if they could hire the sales people who can produce immediate results, and don't need any form of training or coaching, that's great. However, such sales people are rare, and those few who are available will probably ask for a very high pay package. In any case, since prior experience and track records are never guarantee of success, companies might just have to train and develop their new sales hires so that they form critical sales habits and behaviours.

by c.j. Ng

c.j. is the trusted sales advisor who have helped international companies achieve quantum improvements in sales profits in China and beyond. He is also the 1st-ever sales trainer and consltant to speak at the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) International Convention. So far, c.j. has helped:

* A leading international hotel to produce the equivalent of an additional 5,000 room nights in China in the lull summer months of 2007
* A global leading architectural hardware company to increase the sales revenue of a key account in Shanghai by 10 times within 3 weeks
* The world leader in PC sales to transform their sales force to be more collaborative and solution-focused, and helping them to regain worldwide pole position from their nearest competitor.

Prior to this, c.j. was Asia Marketing Manager for a Fortune 500 logistics company, as well as Corporate Training Manager for Ringier AG, Switzerland's largest media group, in China, where he was responsible for sales team development, and helped increase the percentage of new hires to close their first sales within 2 months by 30%, as well as increase overall sales targets by more than 50%. Visit http://www.psycheselling.com/page4.html for more details.

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