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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Top 10 Sales Manager Mistakes

I find it interesting that when I search the internet for articles on sales the focus is generally on the sales person and not the manager. I do appreciate the importance for sales people to improve their sales skills but who is improving the manager? Let's look at what I believe are the top 10 sales manager mistakes:

1. The Sales Manager/Account Rep who has to wear two hats. To be a successful sales manager you must be a manager of your people and focused on their success. If they succeed, you succeed. Give up the account rep role even if it is a plum account. You can still be involved with the account but you should be there to support or help close for your rep.

2. The Let Me Sell Sales Manager; a great Sales Person does not always mean a great Sales Manager. Some of the most successful sales people I have met over the years were the best closers. Aggressive, talkative and very social. However, many of these people when moved to a managers role began to fail. Why? Because they spent their career focused on their success. It is very difficult to turn that switch off. It requires EI, Emotional Intelligence. I believe a measure of a persons EI is nurtured over the years and also has to do with how they are wired. In other words, they are naturally empathetic and care about the success of others.

3. The I Can Do But Can't Teach Sales manager; a great sales manager must be a great sales trainer. Too often I see sales managers who are great communicators but don't know how to reverse engineer what they do to teach others. Send them off to a seminar or get additional training outside the company is their mantra. My suggestion is for this sales manager to get some training on how to train.

4. The Ivory Tower Sales Manager is the manger who is not accessible. They have the "I've made it" attitude and hide away in their big office sending emails and planning golf games and taking trips. Sure the sales manager needs to do this but not if their objective is get as many perks out of the job as possible. In other words, their rep or the reps client could care less if they were there or not and in fact, would prefer if they were not there because it is effecting the nurturing of the relationship started by the rep.

5. The Harping Sales Manager is the person who never upgrades their experience and knowledge of sales and is stuck in an old school mentality. They believe if they answer any question with a standard response or sales management spin or use a strong arm bully approach this will work on their reps. All this does is churn out sales reps causing a low retention rate and from the outside looking in, your clients and prospects don't want to work with a company that can't even keep employees or keep them happy.

6. The Sales Manager With "I" Problems is the person who takes credit for all the teams successes and passes mistakes and failures onto their team or an individual. If you want to be a leader, a sales manager, then you must take responsibility publicly for all failures and pass the accolades onto your team. The respect you will garner from your team will be inspirational and they will climb the highest mountains for you to make you proud of them. In some respects you are assuming the role of a parent and they are the child. Your vocabulary should then change from "I" to "We" or "Them". Try it and see how good it feels.

7. The Grunter Sales Manager is the person who never listens to his reps and shows their lack of interest in many ways. For example; they keep working on their computer with their head down responding with a grunt on occasion. When a rep has a problem, stop what you are doing and listen. Now I know we need to manage by effort but if they are in your office then we must assume you gave them permission to enter and therefore speak to you, so listen to them.

8. The Talker Sales Manager is the person who loves to hear his own voice and never truly listens to his reps. "Seek first to understand before being understood" is Stephen Covey's 5th principle from his book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This essentially means we need to listen with our ears and our heart. We need to connect by understanding the other persons view point before having them understand our view point. Listen, but NOT with the intent to respond. Which means don't be deaf because you are thinking only about what you are going to say next.

9. The MBA Sales Manager is the person with very little real life experience but has a wealth of education that abounds with theory. I pity the reps with this person. This sales manager answers every problem with a book answer. Throw the book away and get some real sales experience under your belt.

10. The Numbers Guy Sales Manager is the person who tries to manage the rep by the Statistics but has no clue on how to interpret the numbers. In the old days maybe a poor rep could be motivated to work harder by the numbers but reps are smarter and more educated today. One thing we all know about stats is they can be interpreted to mean what ever we want to say. As sales managers we do need to be on top of the numbers but don't use them as a big stick to get your reps to work harder. The numbers should be used to isolate problem areas in your sales process unique to the individual and the team. Then once isolated you work together to fix the weakness.

Ray MacNeil writes in his Blog daily for New Entrepreneurs and those people considering the move into Self-Employment. His blog can be found at: http://franchisefun.blogspot.com

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Are Your Sales Lagging Because of These 7 Big Mistakes?

Selling is a skill that some have mastered brilliantly while others may need some help. Let's be honest, everyone is in sales, but not everyone gets direct compensation for their selling efforts. The people who get direct compensation are called salesmen, saleswomen, sales' associates, etc. Selling is a skill that some have mastered with brilliance while others may need some additional help.

Many times the reason for lagging sales is not just because of poor selling skills, but due to some other reasons that affect sales. After 30 years in sales, I have discovered that these are the top 7 mistakes for lagging sales.

Mistake #1 - Can't Do Attitudes

Negative attitudes evolve from a foundational belief system. This belief system is the total sum of all experiences. The negative conditioning from early childhood turn don't 5 year olds into can't 21 plus year olds. Can't do attitudes within the sales person can translate into the potential prospect or even referral. For example, I recently left a voice mail with someone who asked me to call and I heard the following "I will get back to you within 2 hours." Three days later, not receiving a returned phone call, has established within me a "Can't do attitude" about this person. Can't do attitudes are contagious. Would I refer this person given that she cannot fulfill her honoring her word? Honestly, no.

Mistake #2 - Confuse marketing with sales and sales with marketing

Marketing is the actions connected in getting your message out to your prospects, suspects and centers of influence. This may include website, elevator speech, position statement, paid advertisements, etc. Sales is a process that begins when you have identified a need, a decision maker and a budget. This reason supports the need for the creation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to measure how many times a potential client has been touched by marketing and then to track the progress of the sales cycle.

Mistake #3 - Lack of a consistent sales process

Successful sales requires a consistent sales process so that when a sale fails to materialize, the failure can be analyzed specifically as to what part failed within the process. Analyzing requires measurement such as call or sales to close ratio. How many contacts did it take for me to secure a sale? Again, the CRM system is a tool to help manage the sales process.

Mistake #4 - Confuse motion with progress and activity with results

Many sales people are busy, but are not making progress within the sales process. This business generates activity, but lacks measurable results. An example would be a general networking where there is a lot of motion, but not necessarily progress and a lot of activity with no to little results. (Collecting business cards is an activity.) Compare a general networking event to a quality networking event where there is progress in securing actual cards from pre-determined prospects and setting appointments which is a result.

Mistake #5 - Selling ain't telling

So many sales people are so anxious to tell what they do that they fail to sell what they do. No on loves to be sold, but everyone loves to buy. This reason addresses the sales training skills necessary to be an effective sales professional. The result of this mistake is no relationship with the prospect and potentially creating can't do attitudes within the prospect. See Mistake #1

Mistake #6 - Ignoring the value of referrals

Research suggests that up to 80% of all new business comes from referrals. However, many sales professionals ignore this valuable resource when looking to reverse the trend of lagging sales. Additionally, an effective CRM is critical tool to keep touching past customers and tracking new referrals.

Mistake #7 - Failure to Ask

Failing to ask to business, for opportunities, for referrals is a common mistake. This is the culmination of all previous mistakes. As one of my mentors has shared with me. We drive by more business than we will ever have. Until we develop the habit of asking for business, our sales will continue to lag.

These 7 mistakes are big, broad mistakes. In future articles, each mistake will be explored with some proactive solutions in how to correct the mistake. Until then, hopefully, these mistakes will begin to help you discover and correct why you are experiencing lagging sales.

Free sales skills assessment by Results Sales Coach Leanne Hoagland-Smith who helps with sales coaching, leadership to sales management development.

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