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Welcome
to the November edition of @Peak, your
resource for building exceptional sales teams from Peak Sales
Recruiting. @Peak is about driving revenues and bottom line results!
Customers first!
 It seems obvious: without customers, there is no revenue; without revenue, there is no company.
Still, too regularly we encounter company founders and executives who don’t seem to understand this fundamental fact. They build product-focused companies, or worse, technology-driven companies.
This is a subject we have opined on in the past (here and here, and on our blog). So, how does a company go about putting customers first? Here are some of the lessons we have learned (sometimes the hard way).
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| November 2007 | Fourth Edition |
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News @Peak
Randy Whitcroft recently joined Peak, heading up Peak's newly launched Sales VP practice. The news was covered here and here. Randy is a seasoned tech sales VP with business building credibility
Eliot Burdett, our co-Managing Partner was quoted in this BizSavvy article on the Ottawa Business Journal.
The Globe and Mail included one of our tips in its Monday Morning Manager column, about techniques for interviewing sales candidates.
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About Peak
Peak Sales Recruiting is a search firm with a difference. We focus on finding sales professionals for technology companies; this focus helps ensure that our clients hire salespeople that hit targets. Come find out how we can help you!
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Could your salespeople be better team players?
Our friends Jill Geddes and Ruth Gmehlin at Trillium Teams make this observation: “Based on our experience working with teams, we see that the typical mindset is for each person to focus 100 percent on his or her own role. Working well as a team is rarely emphasized. This can create silos within the organization and results in people guarding important information from others. Successful sales teams recognize the value of not only working well with clients, but also working well with each other and with other groups in the company. These teams have higher returns, for both the individuals and the organization.”
For more on coaching sales teams to work more effectively, read about their Team Coaching Process.
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Set the team up to succeed. Few products sell themselves. Company executives should take a cold hard look at whether they have the ingredients in place to ensure success: real product that delivers on a promise customers care about; marketing support; and infrastructure (including compensation plans) and systems that support the sales effort. Team members should be carefully picked and rewarded aggressively when they go beyond the call of duty to drive customer success. |
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Stay in touch. The CEO and VPs should be talking to key customers, regularly. In addition, input from the sales team about the word on the street needs to be factored into marketing and product discussions. |
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Honor your agreements. Deliver what you promise. The whole company needs to be oriented around keeping your end of the bargain. Hire sales reps that only promise what the company can deliver, and then get everyone else busy delivering it. |
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Create a winning sales culture. Evaluate your sales team to determine who is producing and who is not. Cut out the dead-wood, and hire new salespeople based on the attributes and experience of top performers. |
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(For more on building winning sales teams, download our whitepaper, Hire to Win.)
A dose of our own medicine: We’ve been talking to our own customers recently. We will be putting together case studies in coming weeks. In the meantime, here is a taste from one executive, brought in to turn around an underperforming team.
“Peak was different in its focus on requirements up front. They helped me properly articulate what I needed, and then went out and got it for me. We will be using Peak in the future.”
Can we help you build your sales team? Contact us. |
| Learn more about our Services or contact us directly about how we can help build your sales team: recruit@PeakSalesRecruiting.com |
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