Mind Games and Money Making Tricks Used by Sales People When Influencing Customers to Buy

Mind games, money making tricks, and unethical selling techniques, are still used by many sales people despite being bad business practices. I've listed below some of the common tricks sales people use when influencing customers to buy from them. They are used by large and small business sales operations and can bring down or give a bad reputation to not just a company but a whole industry. Look at what happened with the vacation time share and holiday club marketplace. A whole industry tainted by a few companies using questionable sales techniques that were at best unethical and at worst illegal.

You can't build a long term large or small business sales enterprise based on money making scams. A successful sales operation should be built on relationships with your customers, repeat business, and customer referrals. Not one-off sales made with false claims and sales tricks to close the deal. So here are some examples of the sales mind games and influencing techniques that you should avoid.

Lying about who you work for

This is a common sales scam to gain a sales appointment with a prospect and to manipulate the buyer and close the sale. It was used by agency sales people trying to convert domestic power customers away from their existing supplier. In the UK they would start the conversation by saying they were from British Gas and were helping people find the best package for their gas and electric supply. This was to get them through the door and gave them some credibility. They felt it was more productive than saying they were from a competing company and were trying to get the customer to change.

There were cases reported in the media where elderly and vulnerable people were left totally confused. Some had signed contracts without reading them because the nice sales person said they needed a signature just to say they had called and completed the interview. Only when they received notification some time later that their power supply had been cancelled and was changing to a new supplier did they realize something was wrong. By that time the sales person had spent their commission and had moved on to the next money making scam. The power companies received bad publicity and lost trust and credibility.

False referrals

This sales scam is being used at the moment by off shore telesales and telemarketing companies offering to resolve all your outstanding debt problems. The reason they are giving for calling is that you have outstanding debts. This is a pure guess and in the current economic climate many people they phone will have debt problems. Some even claim to be calling you because your bank has contacted them. They ask who you bank with as a security question and then confirm that you answered correctly. Imagine a person receiving the call that has real debt problems. They think their bank has asked these people to call. All kind of thoughts will run through their mind, which is exactly the way this sales mind control trick works. They have a prospect at the end of the line that is now either panicking or thinks the sales caller has the credibility of their bank behind them. When the credit crunch eases and debt is no longer a hot prospect area, the off shore money making scams will move on to the next short term money maker.

My manager wants to know what I did wrong

Another bad business practice that some direct sales operations use is the manager feedback call. The sale person has presented their product and tried to close the sale, but the prospect has not agreed to buy from them. After several attempts to get the sale the sales person appears to have given up and the prospect relaxes and drops their guard. The seller then asks if they can use the phone and call their manager as he cares about customers and wants feedback on what the salesperson has done.

After a short conversation the sales person hands the phone to the prospect saying their manager would like a quick word and some feedback on how the sales person presented the product. The sales trick then used is for the manager to try and close the sale. One way is to ask what the seller would have needed to do to close the deal. The answer is then used to come back with another proposal. There are variations on this scam such as the sales person being reprimanded in earshot of the prospect in order to create sympathy from the prospect. Another way is for the manager to use his power to get the prospect a special deal, but only if they agree to the sales today.

These mind games and scams have been used in some industries for many years and the same ones are still around today. I often invite sales callers in just to see their strategies. I recently agreed to a sales appointment for double glazing. The presentation was very poor and objection handling came down to one stock answer, which was to offer a lower price with guaranteed credit if I signed today. After several attempts to close me the seller reached for his phone and called his manager. The manager asked how much I had been quoted and I answered. He said that was far too much and the sales person was new to the company and had given me the wrong price. That's strange I said, only a moment ago he was telling me what a great company you were and how he had worked for you for over twenty years so he knew all about the great products. There was a silence that I wasn't going to break. The salesman, sat in my living, room was going red with embarrassment. The manager at the end of the line couldn't come up with anything better than he was getting his staff mixed up.

Is it any wonder the double glazing market suffers from a reputation for poor sales ethics when these sales techniques are used? There are many very reputable companies in all direct sales markets, but many have to overcome the credibility issues created by a small minority that are more focused on money making scams than they are on providing a great service that will gain them repeat business and stacks of referrals.

I'm Stephen Craine a working sales manager and trainer. There are very effective and ethical ways to disguise your sales and appointment calls and make them appear more beneficial to the prospect. Using these techniques will increase your results while maintaining and even improving your credibility. You can see free sales training and ideas on how to put this into action at Telephone Sales Skills to make your call customer friendly. You can add these sales skills to the other training available on my website. There are free sales training courses and pages with sales tips and ideas on all aspects of the sales process. Start at the home page and have a click around the free sales workbook courses at http://www.Sales-Training-Sales-Tips.com.

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Sales Training For Small Business Owners People That Sell Their Own Products and Services

Sales training for self employed and small business sales people is often not available or overlooked. You can be an expert at what you do or know everything about what you sell, but do you really know how to use that knowledge when selling. Let me give you a real example that I recently experienced.

I had new windows fitted in my house by two very good and experienced window fitters. Throughout the day I saw many people that were passing my house stop and ask them questions. They wanted prices, information, and the benefit of their knowledge on windows and having them fitted. For a salesman these passing sales prospects would have been like winning the lottery. To actually have sales prospects queuing up to talk to you is every sales person's dream. To the window guys these people were just getting in the way. This is where small business owners and trades people can learn a lot from sales training by learning to see people as sales prospects and opportunities not distractions.

I overheard one lady ask the guys for a price to do the same job on a house similar to mine. I wanted to yell, stop! But it was too late, without further questions the window guy gave her an approximate price and then said nothing. There was a short silence and he gave her a business card. She said she would call him and she walked away. Will she contact them, who knows, and I didn't see him take any information to follow up this red hot sales lead. As a sales manager and trainer several thoughts rushed into my mind. Firstly, don't give her a price. Arrange an appointment and get round to her house. You want to make sure you are talking to all the decision makers. At her home you can do a really effective sales presentation and secure the sale. This is basic sales training on how to close a sale.

One of the other thoughts I had was, ask her some questions. Get her to tell you about her house, her windows, how she made her last decision on home improvements. Get her to build a picture of how great her house will be with bright new windows. She has come to you and she's a red hot prospect that wants your help. This is the advantage small business owners and skilled trades professionals have over the average sales person, they know their product, trade, or service better than anyone. The buyer wants that knowledge and experience. They see it as a benefit and will pay for it. Think about it, who would you ask about which new windows you should have fitted, a salesperson in an expensive suit and a flashy car, or a guy in overalls that actually fits them for a living?

Self employed and small business owners can take advantage of how they are viewed by potential customers. The customer sees them as a benefit to them, the buyer. Often buyers see sales people as wanting a benefit only for themselves or the company. To make the most of this great advantage you self employed trades professionals and small business sales people need to do two things. 

1. Maintain your image as a working professional that knows your products and services.  

2. Invest in effective sales training that you can use to increase sales, grow your business, and earn more money while maintaining your friendly non-sales image.

I'm Stephen Craine, I'm a working sales manager and sales trainer. If you sell your own products or services, or own a small business, and you want effective sales training that will increase your sales and grow your business, you can see more information on the sales training I give my working sales teams at Sales Training Workbook Course. My job is to manage and train working sales teams. To do this, and get the best results possible, I look around the world for effective sales training techniques and sales skills and share them on my website. You can see free sales training courses, free sales skills information on selling and motivation, and get the free newsletter packed with sales tips, by visiting http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com.

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Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - Sales Performance Coaching For People Development

Sales Performance Coaching is a function of 4 core practices of people development

1. Tuition This involves providing the salesperson with the direction, instruction and the knowledge they require in an effort to help them understand what they need to know in order to change their current approach.

2. Consultation involves identifying and analysing the specific issue or situation at hand and assist the sales person to clearly define the goal and map out a plan for their accomplishment

3. Coaching involves helping the salesperson to effect a change by self discovering the answers and thereby make adjustments to their current behaviour or approach. The Sales Performance Coach does this by providing them with regular guidance, feedback, insight and direction to ensure successful execution

4. Performance Management This involves ensuring the salesperson stays on track and holding them accountable to the measurable performance activities required to achieve the goal.

In addition to applying the above 4 core practices of people development there are 8 steps you as the sales leader need to take to implement and become an effective Sales Performance Coach:

The 8 Step Sales Performance Coaching Process

1. An execution focused plan.

Ensure you have a clear and well laid out tactical sales plan to achieve the required sales goals. The plan needs to specifically detail: who is doing what, by when, how, and with what resources.

2. Set clear performance expectations.

Before you as a sales leader can expect your salespeople to deliver what you expect of them, your first step is to be absolutely sure that, in your own mind and on paper, that you have clearly established what it is specifically that you expect of them. Once you have determined what you expect, now you need to have the expectation discussion with each of your salespeople.

3. Identify core behaviors for development.

Identify the key behaviors you and your individual salesperson have determined to be lacking in order for them to meet your expectations and execute their sales plan. These will provide you with the basis for and focus of your one on one coaching.

There are 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Salespeople. If you want your sales team to produce 20% more, the question you have to ask yourself is...are they 20% better?

Extensive research has identified the five Mission Critical Selling Skills that a sales professional must master to effectively move beyond their current limitations and to achieve your sales goals. When understood and mastered, these five skills will dramatically help you to increase your sales productivity and sell more, more often.

The 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Salespeople are:

1. Time and Self Management

2. Business Development

3. Diagnostic Acuity

4. Engage All Parties

5. Wrap Up

4. Set aside quality time weekly to debrief the week that was and the week that's coming up.

The fact is, that if you will invest the time to conduct a weekly debrief the week that was and the week that's coming up, over the next ninety days, you will completely turn your sales around.

5. Set specific behavioral goals, measure progress regularly

Change is a process, not an event and therefore you cannot expect to send your salespeople on a training course and have them instantly change behavior. Once you have determined the specific dysfunctional behaviors and strategies that are road-blocking an individual salesperson, set joint goals to improve and change the areas of greatest impact.

6. Collect Sales person behavioral data by engaging in joint sales calls and provide honest and data specific feedback.

70% of learning happens on the job. The most effective method for you to observe behavioral change is to witness the individual salesperson perform in their role. By careful observation you can gather specific data to provide them with accurate feedback. Now you can effectively challenge and guide them to improve their sales performance and behavior.

7. Offer training where applicable

- Demonstrate the 'ideal" way. Provide the salesperson with resources, books, CD's, online tools, seminars and workshops to accelerate their learning and reinforce your message.

8. Follow up; follow up; follow up.

There is one skill that as a sales leader you absolutely have to develop. If you haven't done so already, this skill will greatly determine your success or failure as a manager of others. This incredibly simple and yet powerful skill is the ability to effectively follow up. When your sales team knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by and when they can ABSOLUTELY count on you to follow up on their commitments to you....then you will achieve results that up and until now you have only dreamed of!

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team - The 5 Keys To Turbo Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work." Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

He can be reached via http://www.iansegail.com

Read Ian's latest free report - "The 7 Most Costly Mistakes Sales Managers Make" here http://www.bulletproofyoursalesteam.com [http://bulletproofyoursalesteam.com/free-report/7costlymistakes.html]

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How to Select the Best Sales Assessment Test Or Free Sales Test, and Hire Good Sales People

As an employer, how can you tell which job applicants can sell? Make them take a Sales Assessment Test, and you will know! Sales Tests have come a long way. Start with 100 FREE Sales Assessments to help you hire good salespeople, as explained below (www.DanJoy.com).

Hiring good sales people is one of the hardest things that a business owner or hiring executive does. Not any more! OK, so how can an employer tell which job applicants can sell? They can make the job applicants take a sales test online, and find out easily.

Common Hiring Mistakes:

A hiring mistake can cost an employer up to $100,000 or more. Many employers are deluged with sales resumes, but have no way of knowing who can really sell. So, they often tend to hire someone with whom they "feel comfortable", who is "like them", who "looks good", or has "industry knowledge". None of that necessarily means that the person can actually sell. A good Sales Assessment Test can help.

Personality / Psychology NOT Enough:

Sales Personality Tests or Sales Psychology Tests are usually not good predictors of sales potential. There is a lot more to selling than just psychology and personality. A well-rounded sales assessment test can reduce subjectivity and guesswork, and help employers make more objective hiring decisions.

Choosing the Best Sales Test:

Please choose a sales assessment test which is:

1. Accurate / Relevant: The Sales Test must go above and beyond the mundane psychological and personality tests by doing a well rounded sales assessment.

2. Efficient: Completely self-contained online system that you can use 24/7/365 at your convenience, without having to call the company every time you wish to test a new sales candidate.

3. Easy to Interpret: The sales assessment Report Cards must be clear, easy to understand, and preferably just 1-page long (some can be unwieldy -- up to 20+ pages per candidate).

4. Scored Instantly: Candidates' Report Cards (Sales Test scores) should be available online immediately after they complete a sales test (no waiting for the Sales Test Reports to arrive by fax or snail mail).

5. Robust: The sales assessment test should contain built-in safeguards against guessing, random answering and candidate substitution. Not all sales tests are created equal.

Recommendation:

The JOY Tests (tm) of Total Sales Ability meet all of the criteria above. These well rounded sales assessments go above and beyond the mundane psychological and personality tests by testing for Total Sales Ability (tm) -- the actual street smarts of Professional Selling (e.g., testing for Sales Prospecting Ability, Objection Handling Ability, Sales Closing Ability, Personality, Psychology and much more).

For a limited time only, employers can get 100 FREE Sales Tests (Screening Tests) to help them hire great sales people, at: http://www.DanJoy.com/

Dan Joy (BS Engineering, MBA Marketing) is an acknowledged Sales and Marketing scientist. For a limited time only, you may receive 100 Free Sales Assessments at http://www.danjoy.com/

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How to Motivate Sales People Without Money?

It is common knowledge that many sales people can calculate how much commission they have earned faster and more accurate than any super computer. Indeed, money is a key driving force that motivates most, and certainly for the more successful ones.

However, is money then the ONLY motivator, or are there anything else?

If you were to ask anyone why they want to be one, there will usually be 3 answers:

1. For the money (of course);

2. Being able to directly link their efforts to tangible results; and

3. Having the (relative) independence and flexibility in their jobs

As such, while money may be the key driver for most, it certainly is not the only one. They are also motivated by a sense of achievement, and the more successful ones usually have large egos as well.

If we were to look deep into what motivates people, here are 2 factors that we need to consider:

1. Are the rewards attractive (or punishment severe) enough?

2. Am I able to achieve it?

Avoiding Pain vs. Seeking Pleasure

While making money is a great pleasure for many people, including sales people, some are first motivated by avoiding the punishment of NOT achieving their monthly, quarterly or annual sales targets. Hence, it's a very common practice for sales people to "hide" potential contracts to "save them for the next financial period", rather than to risk NOT meeting the sales targets for that period.

Sales people are indeed masters of work flow optimization in this sense. However, this does not help you in getting results from your sales team, and sometimes deals may be lost due to the delays caused when sales people want to "save them for the next quarter".

When companies use money as the only motivator, it is also a riskier proposition. There's nothing to prevent competitors to use the same motivator to entice your best people (along with your best customers) to defect. While there may be some non-competitive clauses in employment contracts, these are seldom enforceable, especially in Asia.

As mentioned earlier, successful sales people usually have large (sometimes over-sized) egos. Nothing feeds the ego other than believing (correctly or otherwise) that you had singlehandedly contributed millions of dollars to your company's sales revenue. However, massaging the sales person's ego (either by making them superstars when they succeed, or "humiliating" them when they don't deliver the intended results) is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it will drive people to achieve super-human results. On the other hand, they may be so focused on their self-achievement that they become insensitive to issues such as:

Serving customer needs,

Maintaining healthy margins,

Ensuring cross department support and

other factors that will impact business results.

When the egos become over-sized, some people can have a false sense of "invincibility". Some live on past glories, even when current sales results are not as good or outstanding as before. To overcome this, Dell Computers have made sure that their egos are in check by just focusing on the present and future. Past performance mean nothing to Dell's sales managers, and a top performer is only as good as the next sale. They are as such motivated to maintain their "successful" status every single day.

Eventually, sales people get burnt out. Depending on the industry, they usually achieve their peak about 1 to 1.5 years after joining a company. How they perform beyond the peak period is a matter of how you motivate and nurture them.

Besides dishing out ever better incentives (usually money-related), many companies chose to promote their top sales to be sales managers. Unfortunately, both motivational strategies are not effective. When they feel burnt out, it's not an issue that can be resolved with money (or most incentives). In addition, only 15% of top sales people can be competent managers.

When they feel burnt out, it is usually they found that they are not further developing themselves or learning anything new anymore. Usually, they found they have reached some kind of plateau in getting better sales results, and the repetition of doing the same old thing is becoming boring to them as well.

This is also the phase when good people are the most vulnerable to defecting to your competitors. To overcome this, we will have to looking into other overlooked motivators.

Can I Do It?

As mentioned earlier, the other aspect of motivation is whether you feel you are able to do your job well.

In some industries where sales management practices tend to be Neanderthal (email me to find out which ones), the attrition of new sales hires are astonishingly high. These new hires are motivated by making more money, just like any successful sales person will be. However, due to the lack of proper training, coaching and guidance, as much as 90% of these new hires leave within 1 month. If they don't see brightness of the future, they'll just go.

While such companies do provide some level of sales training, as much as 87% of all sales training evaporates within 1 month of the training. And this statistic refer to companies with better sales management practices in place. For companies with weaker sales management, most of these training are outdated and don't really prepare the sales person to handle customers in the real world. Without a post-training supporting environment, the new hires feel overwhelmed and and helpless, and then they just leave.

When sales people find that they are not able to achieve better results, or net bigger deals, or improve margins, what they need now is support from management on how they can achieve breakthroughs. They know that if they can do better, the monetary incentives are all there waiting for them. What they really need is the right guidance and support them how they can do so.

Besides providing the usual training, here are other ways that managers can get their people proceed to the next level of performance:

Align sales strategies to market realities. Sometimes, due to rapid market changes, sales strategies mapped out 6 months ago may have already be outdated. A sales strategy re-alignment may help close more sales;

Provide recognition of improvements in sales process. While people are rewarded (or punished) based on results (sales targets), few sales managers actually recognize the improvements that sales people made in their sales process. If sales people made sales process improvements, it is very likely that this will lead to better results. Such improvements need to be recognized, reinforced and made as good examples for others to follow.

Motivating the Sales Force Without Using Money

In a nutshell, when people join the sales force, they may do so in the hopes of making more money. However, if you want to get them to perform to the next level of performance, you will need to improve their skills and abilities to achieve better results. In fact, management guru Ram Charan mentioned that if using incentives as the main means to get better performance from the sales team is an outdated approach

If you find isolated cases of poor performance from your team, then perhaps these few bad hats are just making excuses not to work hard. However, if you find that poor performance is widespread and pervasive in your sales force, then you, as manager, are making THE excuse for not providing the necessary support and guidance for your people.

Pls. see www.psycheselling.com/page4.html for explanation of some key concepts discussed here.

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 future. As such, you'll get:

* Up to 40% reduction in staff 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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How to Find and Hire Great Sales People - 5 Steps For Staffing Success

Riding on a wave of an advertising and marketing blitzkrieg, anybody can sell a good product or service. True "salesmanship" lies in selling an unknown or lesser known product that has an average or non-existent brand name. Only a few possess this talent. Sales staffing should be aimed at hiring the best, brightest, and most talented sales professionals.

Sales success for an organization hinges largely on the proper selection of the sales people. Paying enough attention to the selection of sales staff takes care of more than half of the sales job. Smart sales people are adept at highlighting the strengths of the product or service. Sales Professionals are experts in spotting prospects and swift in overcoming objections. They can sell well even in the face of adversity and cut throat competition. Also, efficient sales people have the internal drive to succeed, a great sense of urgency to get the job done and achieve their sales objectives, even when the conditions are tough. So how do you spot such sales winners?

Search at the Right Places

Depending on the type of the organization and their sales focus, advertisements for sales staff should be strategically placed. Newspapers are the obvious first choice in placing ads for sales staffing requirements. But the selection of newspapers for sales vacancies should be correct. Sales people working in the financial field read different newspapers and industry publications than sales people working in the automobile industry. Senior sales executives prefer reading industry specific magazines and journals.

If raw recruits are what you want, campus selection could be a workable alternative. Encouraging your sales staff to poll their contacts and friends from other organizations works well too if you are looking for sales people with some experience. Networking is an excellent way of getting to know senior sales executives working for other organizations. Their current salary, benefits and pay expectations can be determined through networking.

Look for Passion

It does not matter if the sales candidate you are considering is a "rookie" or a seasoned sales professional, everybody on your sales team should have that spark. The "fire in the belly" should be felt through the eyes of the candidates. Selling is a dynamic and competitive job and it has no place for sluggish sales people who can't deal with rejection and the stress the profession has. Active and self-motivated people make good sales people. Most importantly, they should have a passion for sales and a desire to meet new prospects and solve client's problem through creatively crafting their sales solution.

Sales people should love their profession. Apart from the resume, their body language will speak volumes about their interest for the job. Arrange for more than one round of interviews to scan candidates. This will weed out the least motivated sales people from the aggressive and motivated sales people.

Real Experience

A young hire can be a smart choice. But certain sales functions cannot be handled by young and inexperienced sales people. They are the domains of experienced sales people. Screening candidates on the basis of years of service alone is a dangerous practice. Many sales people have 10, 15, or 20 years of experience which could actually mean 1 year of real experience multiplied over 10, 15, or 20 times. Working in more than one organization in various capacities dealing with a range of products leads to a bank of knowledge that is diverse. A sales professional in the telecommunication industry is better positioned if he has worked with landlines and mobile phones in comparison to one that has worked only for a mobile phone sales organization.

Do Qualifications Matter

Yes it does if you are considering hiring new candidates. Candidates with little or no actual sales experience, but who possess a professional degree in sales and marketing are preferable to candidates without the aforementioned. But, if you are hiring experienced sales people then qualification can be overlooked. There are many qualified sales people that are just average performers as there are an equal number of unqualified super sales performers. Talent, achievements, and passion can take precedence over qualifications when hiring experienced candidates.

Adaptability

Probe deeply as to whether the candidate can adapt to your sales organization and culture. This requires honestly matching the candidate's expectations and career goals to the kind of compensation and career advancement that you can offer. Candidates with a strong and independent streak are more likely to desire a sales culture that fosters and engenders a sales culture of independence and freedom. They may be good performers, but there is a chance that they will quit sooner or later if their sales personalities and desires are not met. Similarly frequent "job changers" jump from job to job at unhealthy intervals. They should be avoided.

Some sales candidates are so set in their sales skills and behaviors from their last organization that it becomes hard for them to shed old habits and adapt to a new sales organization and culture. This may cause unnecessary friction. Make this clear from the beginning - which they may have to adapt and change if they are to be successful and enjoy their sales career.

In summary, when selecting a superior sales candidate for your organization you should have a clear picture of the type of sales people you want to hire. You and your current sales team should be prepared to ask some tough pertinent questions of the candidates to determine who best to hire for the position. Candidness and a professional attitude on your part would make the selection process a truly fruitful and enjoyable one for you and the sales candidate.

Doug Dvorak is the CEO of DMG Inc., a worldwide organization that assists clients with productivity training, corporate humor and workshops, as well as other aspects of sales and marketing management. Mr. Dvorak's clients are characterized as Fortune 1000 companies, small to medium businesses, civic organizations and service businesses. Mr. Dvorak has earned an international reputation for his powerful educational methods and motivational techniques, as well as his experience in all levels of business, corporate education and success training. http://www.dougdvorak.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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Why Can't I Hire The Right Sales People?

Candidate screening is one of the most difficult tasks that recruiters and managers face. Most will tell you that screening sales talent is the toughest of all. Why? Sales people are trained in the art of persuasion. They know how to provide the desired responses to the questions. Even more daunting is when you are interviewing sales people that worked for a competitor. These sales people know the language and industry buzz words making it even more challenging to screen them. Fret not! It is possible to successfully screen sales talent, but there is work to be done before you even look at a résumé.

The most important step a company can take is to develop a sales talent screening program. This helps bring focus to the initiative. The mission of this program is to provide data that allows for the measurement of the candidate pedigree versus the desired profile. Think in terms of formulating a marriage, a sales marriage, that is.

This program should be fully documented showing step-by-step the components of the screening program. It is best to define who will be interviewing the candidates and their role in the interview process. It should define the tools that will be used as well as their purpose. Below are seven key components of an effective sales talent screening program.

1. Ideal Sales Person Profile. It has always surprised me how many companies have fully documented profiles of their ideal client. Yet, few have a profile of their ideal sales person. How can you screen when you don't know for what you are screening? Many of you have a clear picture in mind of the profile of your ideal mate. My bet is most of your close friends can rattle off your profile in a heartbeat. The same principle applies to sales talent. If you don't know exactly what you are looking for, how will you find it?

This profile should be fully detailed. Some of the areas to address in the profile are the experience you expect that candidate to already have, the skills that the candidate should already possess, and the skills you are not willing to teach. Truth is, this is an extensive topic about which I have dedicated another article. (Send me an email and I'll send you a link to that article.)

The lack of a fully-defined profile of the ideal sales person is the most common cause of bad sales marriages. It is also the major point of frustration between sales managers and recruiters. Recruiters often tell me that they feel they are throwing darts while blindfolded because they have so little detail about the desired profile.

2. Always Be Recruiting. In sales, there is an old expression. "The toughest time to make a sale is when you really need one." The same holds true for recruiting. When a slot is open on the sales team, it becomes an all hands on deck exercise to fill it. While the seat is open, revenue targets are in jeopardy. This leads many to forget the profile of the ideal sales person profile in the interest of filling a seat. Playing this forward a bit, the seat becomes vacant again a short time later when either side determines that it is not a good fit.

Sales recruiting is a year-round exercise. The best sales forces are always on the look out for strong sales talent. Find a company that identifies a strong candidate that meets their profile who wouldn't find a way to hire this individual. It is a rarity to say the least. Sales teams have turnover either driven by the company or the employee. It is best to have a candidate portfolio at the ready than to begin a process of surfacing candidates when a seat is open. Poor hiring decisions are made out of desperation to fill a seat. The open seat is a cost to the company every day it is unfilled. Yet, the cost is more painful if the seat is filled by someone who doesn't fit.

3. Reverse Interviewing. Since the intent of the process is for both sides to be able to determine if a marriage should be formulated, a wonderful technique is reverse interviewing. This is an interview performed by a member of the sales team who would be a peer if the candidate was hired. It is important that the individual(s) selected to participate in this step are loyal to the company, knowledgeable, and make a favorable impression. However, the "interviewer" does not ask any questions of the candidate. As you know, it is very easy to get yourself in hot water if illegal questions are asked. Thus, you don't want untrained people asking questions. There are two purposes of this component of the sales talent screening program. The first is to provide the candidate with an opportunity to ask questions of someone who would be their peer if they were to be hired. In essence, it is a way for them to get a picture of a day in the life of this job.

The second purpose is to measure how the candidate prepares for a sales call. A debrief is conducted with the "reverse interviewer" to see what questions were asked. If the candidate took advantage of this opportunity, they brought prepared, insightful questions and wrote down answers. If they didn't, what kind of preparation will the candidate do for a sales call? How interested are they really in this job? Every once in a while, a candidate will ask a question of the sales person like, "Can you take off at noon on Fridays?" Needless to say, the lapse in judgment raises a red flag of concern?

4. Standard Interview Questions. Often times, many candidates are screened for one job slot. This creates a need to be able to compare candidates to each other, in addition to the profile. To do this, a standard set of interview questions are needed. The responses are documented during the interview and reviewed after a candidate leaves the office. These questions are not designed to provide right or wrong answers. They are designed to see if this candidate's thought process is congruent with the needs of your business and with the profile of the ideal sales person.

When formulating your list of standard questions, it is helpful to include some sales scenarios that are common in your environment. "Your client balks at the price of your proposal. What do you do?" It is also helpful to have questions that show what makes this person tick. Since few colleges have "sales" as a major, it is always interesting to find how someone arrived at a sales career. "Of all of the careers you could select, why did you pick sales?"

The hot topic in today's recruiting world is behavioral interviewing which is a powerful tool. Behavioral interviewing, also called competency-based interviewing, focuses on past behavior. As a doctor friend of mine always says, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. The idea here is not to ask arbitrary questions, but rather to ask questions that help to expose areas that affect the sales marriage. If your company is always changing, you might want to determine how the candidate handles change. "Please share with me a time where you had to adapt to change." Like with any good interview, additional probing is necessary to get to the root of the issue. "How did you deal with that? What did you learn from the experience?"

You can probably imagine just how hard it is to formulate questions that demonstrate if this marriage will work if you don't have a profile against which to compare. If it will help you, send me an email and I'll send you my favorite 28 standard questions when interviewing a sales person.

5. Mock Sales Call. What better way to see if someone fits into your company's selling environment than to put them right in it! To do this effectively, you need to create a scenario for the candidate. I've found it most beneficial to give the candidate the scenario with one day's notice so they can prepare. They should be provided with the same amount of information a sales person in your company normally has before making an initial sales call.

Those members of your company who participate in the exercise should be somewhat scripted. I say "somewhat" because you don't want it to be so dry that it is unrealistic, but without any scripting it can be hard to stay in character.

The last piece you need to do this well is a score sheet. Know what you are looking to measure in the process and score accordingly. Can they conduct a thorough needs analysis? Did they identify the challenges faced by this prospect? Would you buy from them?

It is best if the scoring is done by a non-participant of the mock sales call. It is very distracting for the candidate if someone jots notes while they are speaking. What happens is that the candidate spends the rest of the exercise trying to read what was written.

6. Online Assessment Testing. There are a myriad of tools that are very helpful in the screening process for both personality and skill. Where some err is in the application of the data from these tools. Few, if any, of the online assessment companies suggest that their tool should be used to make a hire/no hire decision. The most appropriate application is to treat it as an additional data point in the sales talent screening program.

Linda Moeller, Product Director of market leader Employee Continuum, has seen companies use this great tool incorrectly. "We have seen many organizations fail to take the context of an organization into account when deciding the most appropriate assessment to use. For example, many organizations assume that implementing a sales assessment will guarantee them improved sales performers. This is not necessarily the case. For example, the personality characteristics required for a sales person selling office supplies to purchasing agents are very different than those required for a salesperson selling everything needed for a dentist office. In order to be successful, an organization needs to consider the type of relationship they have with their clientele and the competencies that will make these relationships successful."

7. The Ultimate Screening Tool. Writing is a lost art. Yet, we are more dependent on written communication than ever before. Email! Is there anything worse than a poorly written email that is sent to a prospect? It doesn't matter how good your product or service is, your company now looks sloppy and unprofessional.

An effective technique for screening sales talent is the use of the mini-business plan. When the candidate has satisfactorily completed all of the other steps of the pre-offer process, the request is made for a one-page business plan that shows how they would approach the job. I mention three times that I'm only looking for a one-page plan and ask when they can send it to me. It is important that the submission date be asked of the candidate, not the other way around as you will see in a moment.

Of all of the techniques that I have used over the years, this is the one where I have the most candidate fall out and I was always happy to learn that this sales marriage wouldn't work, before it was formulated.

This technique allows you to evaluate a number of important areas:

§ Can they communicate in written form coherently? If you were a client receiving this document, what message do you get about its author?

§ Do they understand what the role entails? Since this component is performed late in the process, they should have a clear picture of the job and expectations.

§ Is their approach consistent with the expectations of management? It is best to know now if you don't feel comfortable with their game plan.

§ Can they meet a self-imposed deadline? If the plan is late, the candidate is no longer considered for the role.

§ Can they follow directions? I asked for a one-pager, not an epic.

Having a sales talent screening program has many benefits. The most obvious impact is a longer sales tenure of your sales team which means an increase in sales performance and a reduction in personnel turnover. This can do nothing short of helping the bottom line of any company.

Lee B. Salz is President of Sales Dodo, LLC and author of "Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager." He specializes in helping companies and their sales organizations adapt and thrive in the ever-changing world of business. Lee is available for keynote speaking, business consulting, and sales training. He can be reached via email at lsalz@salesdodo.com, his website at http://www.salesdodo.com or by phone at 763.416.4321. This article is reprinted with permission from ERE http://www.ere.net

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How To Make Sales People Change Their Bad Habits

The hardest part of a sales manager's job is perhaps getting sales people to change for the better.

In my Dec 2007 issue*, I mentioned that one of the root causes of poor price negotiation is sales people are poor, or lazy, in prospecting. Hence, they would rather give in to price pressures, than to prospect for more qualified customers.

Poor prospecting is just one of the many bad habits that sales people have, and the list may include:

1. Complaining too much and doing too little;

2. Talking too much and asking too little;

3. Not understanding customers' hidden needs;

4. Spending too much time on unimportant things;

5. Arguing with customers and badmouthing competitors;

6. Investing the entire relationship with the customers' organisation with just only 1 contact person; etc.

The challenge of sales managers isn't so much of identifying what bad sales habits that their sales people have. It's not even about coming up with solutions on how to break those bad habits. It's about getting their sales people to change those bad habits.

Why Sales People Don't Change Their Bad Habits?

Sales people stick to their bad habits for a variety of reasons. It's not purely because they are stubborn or resistant to change. It's more than that. Some of these reasons are:

1. They don't see a clear connection between changing those bad habits and better sales performances;

2. They are not given due recognition even when they change those habits (sales managers simply give recognition to the end result - sales, but seldom for improvements in the sales process);

3. They don't have anything to lose even if they don't make any changes (if it's NOT measured, then it's NOT done!)

First and foremost, sales managers would have to let their sales people understand why they will have to do something uncomfortable like making more phone calls to higher-level people, or to ask customers some sensitive questions or building more contacts within the client organisation.

To some people, especially those who are accustomed to some entrenched behaviours, making such changes can be a real pain. As such, sales managers can help by making them see the "brightness of the future", i.e. how making such changes will have some immediate impact on the closure or the profitability of the deal.

Giving Due Recognition

Traditionally, sales people are rewarded only when they close sales. However, the amount of sales closed is the result of the selling process of the sales person who had put into place prior to that.

Hence, if managers are convinced that by getting rid of certain bad sales habits, they will get better results from sales people, then managers will have to take a more active role in reinforcing the elimination of bad habits, and the adoption of good ones.

One way of doing so effectively is to give due recognition for any improvements made by sales people who have eliminated or reduce some of the bad sales habits. One thing to note is that giving recognition is NOT the same as giving someone general praises. The recognition has to be specifically addressing the positive change made by the sales person. An example will be:

"Sue, I have realised that you are having more appointments with key decision makers recently. I believe that if you continue this good work, and are able to find out what their real needs are, you are going to close some great deals!"

In this particular instance, the manager states specifically what the recognition is for, and also tells the sales person what else she needs to improve on, and what she can get if she makes those improvements.

Unfortunately, most managers tend to focus just on the negative aspects of what their sales people are doing wrong, and forgot about reinforcing what they are already doing right. This is not to say that managers should be "soft" on sales people; rather it's just to give recognition where it's due, and let he sales person know that someone is really watching over them.

What Gets Measured Gets Done

Ultimately, sales people are shrewd people, and will at times do something only if they know what punishment befalls onto them if it's not done.

Usually, sales people who complain too much and did nothing to help themselves tend to fall under this categories. Their complains include:

* "Our price is just too high";

* "If only we had more advertising";

* "Those key people would not want to see me";

* "You didn't teach us the 'perfect pitch' that will make any customer say yes";

* "I don't have the resources to provide those additional information in my proposal";

* "I don't have time to fill in customers' data into our database";

* "That's not my job"; and so on

Sometimes, some people complain just to vent frustrations. Others just find excuses of doing the things that need to be done.

If the latter happens frequently, it's usually a sign that the sales manager hasn't been putting in place certain measurements to measure sales people's behaviour (and not just sales revenue). If sales people would have to find out needs and justify value over price, then those behaviour would either be recognised more doing, or penalised for not doing. Leaving a desired behaviour to chance is not going to motivate any sales person to do what it takes to change for the better.

As such, there are times when the reason why sales people could not change their bad habits could be this simple - because the sales manager allows them to. Sales managers will have to be diligent and keep a good eye on what good sales habits they want from their team, and take appropriate action.

If you would like to find out how you can make your sales people change their bad habits, simply e-mail info@psycheselling.com or call +86-13671902505 or Skype: cydj001 and arrange to buy me coffee. All information shall be kept in confidence.

* See http://www.psycheselling.com/eNewsletter%20Dec%202007.htm for the December 2007 issue.

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. The resulting effect is you'll get:

* Up to 40% reduction in staff 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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Why Sales People Are Creating Their Own Objections

I'm about to reveal the biggest secret to growing any small business rapidly. This secret will also increase virtually all sales people's results almost instantly when you learn it and live by it.

The secret is how NOW to get objections in sales! Throw away your books on 'how to overcome objections in sales', you won't need them once you understand what I am about to reveal.

Here's the simple exercise you must answer truthfully in order to learn the secret...

Get a piece of paper if you want to make a huge difference to your sales, as you need to write down your answers. Go on! Get a piece now.

Okay, lets begin.

I want you to write down 5 answers to this question...

What do you believe to be true about SALES PEOPLE?

Okay, I hope you've written down your answer so you get the most benefit out this exercise.

Here's what I've found after 5 years of asking these questions... 80% of sales people believed in majority these answers about sales people...

They're pushy They tell lies They are only interested in taking your money They will tell you anything to get a sale They're too friendly They're not good listeners You can't trust them...

Now, what were your answers?? Did they resemble any of these? Did you have any on them on the list?

If you did, your answer was similar to 80% of sales people.

In regards to your beliefs about sales people, let me know ask you 2 more interesting questions...

Are you describing yourself with your answers? (Yes or no?) Are you a sales person? (Yes or no?) Ask yourself these 2 questions over again.

What I've learnt from my experience is that people don't usually describe themselves when thinking about their beliefs about sales people. And do you know why?

Because they have an identity problem with being a sales person! They don't honestly believe they are a sales person, even though they stand in front of customers, talk to them on the phone, or take their money every day. Question 2 is the reality check. If you truly thought of yourself as a sales person, why weren't you describing yourself?

What happens is, people don't want to become a person they don't like in order to sell and so they don't believe they are sales people, even though their role is talking to customers.

I guarantee you customers think anyone who can take their money, or listen to them talk at all on anything, should be trained in sales or customers service at least... don't you think this way when you're a customer?

What ever you believe to be true on any subject, you will have good cause to be right in thinking. That's the hardest part.

Are there pushy sales people who just want to take people's money, of course there are, but they are a minority, the vast majority of sales people don't even believe they are sales people!

So here's the lesson and the benefit to you in summary...

Until you believe you are a sales person you will never increase your sales, or selling skills, as you don't want to become a lowly thought of person. You won't truly learn anything effective about selling until you believe you are a sales person.

Now the news gets even worse! If 80% of sales people (which is the number I have found after 5 years of training people) think very poorly of sales people, what do you think the average person in the street thinks of sales people??

No, their beliefs are not the same... they're a lot worse!

The good news is, if you want to be a fantastic sales person there is a way. A unique way that when utilized and mastered can massively increase sales from 20% to 2,500% in weeks or months as I have proven with my own clients I teach sales to.

The key to your success is NOT to talk, gesture, act, move or dress like a typical 'sales person'. Do you know what happens then?

People actually compliment you on the fact that they were so relieved with talking to you because they were expecting you to BE a sales person... after they have given you their money!

So the way to NOT get objections that you have to try to overcome, is NOT to create them in the first place by being a sales person they don't like! If people like you or relate to you they will feel comfortable with you and tell you EVERYTHING you want to know. When you get really good at it you don't get a chance to recommend anything as they simply sell themselves before you get a chance.

Sales people give "opinions". In other words they make "statements". Stop making statements and educate people by asking them educational questions to raise their level of knowledge. Absence of knowledge creates fear. Knowledge removes the fear. Educate, don't opinionate! Don't create your own objections by being what customers think is a sales person.

The solution to the biggest sales objection they never put in the "how to overcome objections book", is how to deal with people that don't like you or relate to you because you're a sales person as they will never tell you that.

The magic secret is be everything a 'typical sales person' isn't... a great listener, understanding, patient... and your sales will go through the roof!

Tim Stokes - the Founder of Business Building Mentors is a master at teaching sales and specifically the art of how NOT to get objections. His gentle approach is based on his own proven principle, 'selling is 99% building rapport and 1% knowing how to sell. If you know how to build massive rapport you don't need to know how to sell. Anyone can love selling when they learn his formula.

Selling is just a small part of small business management. Find out how to manage your business so it gives you more time, more money and more freedom... go to http://www.7stepstobusiness.com.au

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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.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Why Some Sales People Succeed While Others Fail

A while ago, I was writing about how some hiring mistakes will lead to sales teams performing well. In fact, I quoted from HR Chally that:

o Less than 15% of superstar/ top salespeople succeed in managing others

o Only 19% of effective new business developers are effective at maintaining long-term customers

o Less than 15% of key account managers are comfortable developing new businesses

o Nearly 65% of salespeople who fail could have succeeded in the right type of sales position for their skills

o 60% of sales position failures are related to individuals with the wrong skills for the position

However, there has been a lot of inquiries lately that raise this question, "what if the same type of sales people are hired? Will they ALL be winners, or will some lose as well? At the very least, will some be performing better than others?" And if so, why?.

This really got me reflecting on my core business, which was to train sales staff perform better. Part of our training also inculcates sales people to change one key bad habit, which is to complain too much and work too little. This is especially so when the list of complaints (or bitching, depending how you phrase it) include:

o "The managers gave the best leads to the best sales people. That's why they did better than me!"

o "The best sales people happen to enter an untapped market very early. I came in late, and that's why I'm not performing as well."

o "I'm given a lousy territory. I would be lucky if I can make any sale out of this desert!"

While some of these complaints or feedback may have some truth in them, there will STILL be sales staff who perform better than others when most things are equal. The good news is that we have found some things that successful sales people do differently from the less successful ones.

The Winning Ways of Winning Sales Performers

If you made a search on Google, you can actually find a number of research as to what do winning sales performers do:

o Huthwaite spent over 12 years examining more than 35,000 sales calls in 23 countries conducted by the world's leading sales organizations, found that excellent sales performers ask questions regarding their customers problems, implications and "what will happen if those problems are solved". The average sales person doesn't do that.

o HR Chally's innovative research with 80,000 customers conducted over 14 years concluded that the one thing that matters in today's competitive marketplace is the sales person (NOT price, NOT quality, and NOT even innovation). Customers expect sales people to be personally accountable for customers' results and understand their businesses. The high performing ones do just that, and are always within easy reach by their customers.

o Miller Heiman's 2009 Sales Best Practice Report states that "Reaching ALL people who have influence over the outcome of your sale is a key activity that should be practiced with discipline in difficult times". Winning sales performers also understand their customers' issues BEFORE proposing solutions.

o Sales Excellence's research shows that the probability of a prospective client deciding to buy (or not) is determined by conditions that exist within their organisation, NOT by the steps the sales person takes. Hence, the successful sales person focus on the steps the client has already taken - as well as the steps still remaining - in their buying process.

o Ari Galper advocates that a sales person will have a lot less rejections if they call prospects without expectations of any sale, but start the conversation centered around the prospects' world, so as to build a relationship with no agendas.

o Finally, the "Professor of Professional Selling" Neil Rackham recommends that winning sales people are value creators. Rather than being mere "talking brochures", winning sales performers deliver as much value as the product by providing creative ways to solve customers' problems

In a nutshell, what all the above winning ways result in is: Trust! The more customers trust you, the more successful you will be. And there are only 2 aspects of building trust:

1. Customers trust you because they know you have great integrity in recommending what's best for them;

2. Customers trust you because they know you have the skills and abilities to provide what's best for them

Sounds simple? Well, applying these ideas may be a little less simple as it seems, due to the following customer challenges:

o Customers sometimes don't know what they want or their key challenges, let alone understanding the implications if their challenges are not overcome;

o Some customers simply refuse to refer the sales person to get in touch with their other colleagues in their organisation;

o Those customers who claim to be decision makers tend NOT to be the real final decision makers, and those real and final decision makers tend NOT to say that they are the decision makers.

Overcoming such obstacles and then build trust is exactly what some winning sales performers have done. Here are some real examples:

o My ex-colleague in Ringier Trade Publishing, Jessey, was our top sales person in Mainland China. What she did differenty from everyone else is to advise customers how to synergise their advertisements with their other marketing activities such as trade shows and conventions for optimum effect. Jessey built trust with her professional knowledge and delivering value to customers;

o The best sales people in the building materials industry, regardless if they hail from Philips Lighting, Häfele or Aldes Ventilation, know that if they involve the architects and designers early in the designing stage, they can exert greater amounts of influence later in the sale with the key decision makers;

o Successful sales prformers also know how to provide great service, AFTER the sale. Some of the best ones in Sofitel China actively solicit feedback from their guests after their first-night's stay, and followed up with the booker after the guests have left. In addition, they know how to make recommendations on how to enhance their guests' experience whether they come to the hotel for meetings, rooms or wedding packages.

Why Some Sales People Fail

Unlike what most sales managers would like to think, here are some behaviours that do NOT guarantee sales success:

o Hardwork. Not that successful sales performers are not hardworking. They are indeed very hardworking to respond to their customers' needs. However, average or under-performing sales people are just as hardworking. It's just that the latter work hard on the wrong areas;

o Aggressiveness, especially when it comes to price negotiations or closing the sale. Successful sales performers spend more time winning customers' trust so as to serve their needs, rather than "Always Be Closing" to try to close sales prematurely;

o Experience. In fact one of the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) parts of a sales job is that your past success (or failure) does not extend to the future. While you can have the right connections and relationships (or Guanxi)

While observing many sales people in action in Asia, and also having huge amounts of interaction with sales managers, we found the following mistakes that sales people make that cause them to fail:

o Selling on price. The historical baggage for China and other parts of Asia has been to produce cheap products and sell at low prices. Those who sell on prices will find that there will ALWAYS be a cheaper product somewhere, and competing on pricing is a bottomless pit;

o Leveraging on a single internal contact to make the sale. Increasingly, most buying decisions are made by a group of people rather than by a single individual. While it is getting lesser that any one single influencer can make the buying decision alone, any one influencer can make an objection and kill the sale. Hence, you will have to cover all influencers in case one of them may kill the deal;

o Leveraging on relationships or Guanxi ALL the time. While building relationships with customers and having a wide network of customer contacts is important, those who over-emphasise the relationship and under-emphasise the technical and business details will have difficulties creating value for their customers. Such sales people also have difficulties developing new businesses beyond their guanxi networks, and will face huge challenges when there are changes in the decision making structures of their customers

o Selling products and not providing solutions to problems. Customers buy conference facilities from hotels because they want a successful event. Customers buy media spaces because they want more people to buy their products. Customers buy computers because they want to boost productivity. Customers don't want the product, they want the results you can deliver instead.

o Putting their sales targets in the first place, instead of customers' interest. Many sales people are so focused on getting the money out of customers pocket to make the sale, and they forgot about customers' interests and needs. Not good in trust-building, to say the least.

Ironically, some of the sales training providers who advocate selling value and reaching all people who influence the outcome of the sale, simply contact only the training manager (and no one else) AND are "talking brochures" for their products without showing how they can help their customers achieve better results. I guess it is one thing to know these principles, and another thing altogether to apply them.

Why Not Build a High-Performing Sales Team Instead?

Does that mean that if you make the same mistakes as some poor performing sales people, that's "the end" for you? If you are a sales manager, does that mean you have to fire ALL sales people who made the above mistakes, and hire new ones?

Fortunately, not!

Not all sales people with good track records are sales people who can add value and win trust with their customers. Some of them may have just gotten lucky with the best leads, the best markets and easy-to-sell products. That means finding good sales people who can perform well even if the market is down, or if customers are tough and demanding, will be like finding a needle in a haystack.

On the other hand, most if not all of the winning ways of winning sales people can be learnt and applied, even by new sales people without prior experience. Whether you are a sales manager or a sales person, you can:

o Compare the best performing sales person(s) with the rest (the middle and worst performing) in your company;

o Find out what are the qualities or behaviours that are ONLY present in the best people, which the rest are not doing;

o Learn and emulate such qualities and behaviours!

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 consultant 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.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.