Peak Sales Recruiting

Next month, we will be publishing a new guide entitled The First 90 Days – How to Get Your New Sales Hires Producing, Fast. Here is a teaser from the introduction. Most companies take months or even years to determine whether a new hire is successful, but often all the evidence to indicate whether a [...]

This morning I had breakfast with friend and President and CEO of Stratford Managers, Jim Roche. They are a progressive group, helping companies achieve growth and profitability through a mix of consulting and acting executive engagements. They are a sales savvy bunch as well. In a recent blog post, When It’s Time To Rebuild Your [...]

The Vice President of Sales is the hottest seat in any company, and one that turns over most often. When a company hires a new VP Sales, he or she is more than likely taking over a sales function that has been underperforming and there is a usually a mandate to turn things around as [...]

I read somewhere that only two thirds of sales teams set sales quotas which is generally consistent with my experience. That means about a third of companies are not setting sales quota’s for their reps – and here’s why that is a recipe for failure. People tend to do what is asked of them. If [...]

Twitter has only been around since 2006, but already it has over 200 million users. Despite the enormous adoption of Twitter, many sales managers tell me that it is a time waster. And let’s be honest. What’s the point of trying to make sense of a stream of consciousness containing updates like the latest celebrity [...]

As we wrap up Q3 and head into the final quarter of the year, now is the time to look across your team and make sure everyone has the right attitude for a strong finish to the year. “99% of failures come from people who make excuses.” ~ George Washington I recall one September a [...]

If you are like most sales managers at this time of year you have a few sales reps who are falling behind in their numbers. You are optimistic that the fall will mean a bounce-back but you don’t want to carry dead weight on your team either. While successful sales hiring is matter of science, [...]

We are responding to a question from one of our readers: We are an early stage, growth oriented company where performance is critical. I share our sales numbers with the whole company as part of monthly updates. Do you think it helps or hurts to share details on how each individual rep performed against quota? [...]

Companies that aren’t serious about hiring sales people don’t succeed. It’s that simple. You can’t train a farmer to be a hunter. You can’t train someone suited to transactional sales to sell complex solutions. You can’t entice someone that isn’t self motivated to be highly successful. Dave Anderson agrees and shares this perspective in 5 [...]

In most companies, when it comes to sales hiring, the Human Resource group finds candidates while the sales organization makes the hire. To build successful sales teams, obviously the sales and HR departments must work closely together, but in the majority of organizations, only one of these two departments is measured on the success of [...]