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Luxury Stainless Steel Pools Takes Business to Next Level

Pool

Teams with Peak, Transforms Sales Function and Achieves Double-Digit Growth

Taking your business to the next level has a literal meaning for the team at Bradford Products. That’s because creating the most beautiful pools for top resorts or dramatically transforming the backyards of homeowners – often in the most challenging above-ground or high-rise environments – are all part of the job. When it came time to execute the company’s expansion plan, the leader in the design and fabrication of stainless steel pools, spas and water features, was ready to dive in.

Based in Leland, North Carolina and a family-owned business since 1982, Vice President Mike Brodeur explains the company’s inception, “More than 30 years ago, my dad wanted a stainless steel hot tub at his house. With the lack of options in the market, he built his own. He wasn’t alone and people immediately wanted to model it.  A light bulb suddenly went off and our business was born that day.”

Rarely an ordinary day at Bradford Products, the company’s 3,500 projects throughout the world feature stunning water features in commercial facilities and homes. “The hospitality and commercial building industry are looking to create the ultimate guest and client experience. And on the residential side, people are trying to create a resort atmosphere and integrate pools or hot tubs right into their existing outdoor space,” says Mike. “These are not appliances that you plug in. We bring the innovation, customization, and integration to create something very special.”

Peak Sales Recruiting delivers crystal clear waters

While Mike wears a lot of hats at Bradford Products, when it was time to execute the company’s growth plan, he knew recruiting was not something he wanted to manage directly. “With the stainless steel, high-end installations we do for commercial and residential projects, we always hire from within. But for this role, our first senior sales leader, we needed a fresh perspective, a different talent. And this, coupled with the fact that outside of filtering through resumes and running ads, we didn’t have the right resources to identify and find the best people, we chose to use a recruiter that could provide excellent guidance and great results.”

Mike began working with Peak Sales Recruiting and the process kicked off right away. He explains, “Working with the Peak team was very easy and it raised our level of awareness as to what a world class recruiting experience really looked like. Peak made us really think about what we were looking for, including things we may not have considered yet. All of this helped us shape our criteria and expand what we needed for the role.”

For Mike, Peak’s structured process really stood out.  “The process was very well-organized and structured. I was impressed with the quality of candidates and how they were presented, the communication and conversations throughout the process, and the interview prep. Peak provided a strong point of contact and guidance.”

Peak’s 4-step sales recruiting methodology evaluates candidates using a process that includes behavior-based interviews and role playing, psychometric profiling, and benchmarking. Through its proprietary P95 assessment method, Peak takes the process one step deeper and evaluates candidates’ selling behaviors through three phases of advanced assessment that are critical in determining whether candidates have the sales DNA to perform in a client’s selling environment.

New sales leader improves processes, surpasses total annual sales  

Just days after discussing the candidate criteria, Mike Sage was hired as the company’s new Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Nearly one year later, Mike Sage’s impact on the company and the results are truly impressive.  “Mike Sage has been a great addition to the team. We couldn’t have hoped for something more than the way this has worked out,” he shares. “The whole process was fantastic, from the level of candidates presented to the structure and communication throughout.”

Under Mike Sage’s leadership, Bradford Products has a new sales department, sales strategy, and internal systems and processes to effectively support the company’s sales goals.

Here are just a few of the results:

  • Restructured sales team and the addition of three field sales personnel and one sales support team member
  • Established a completely new sales strategy to optimize the focus on Bradford’s target market verticals and valued clients
  • Implemented a new CRM system and sales process

The company is also establishing a new department focused on project estimating to increase the efficiencies of its new sales function and increase responsiveness to clients.

And sales? Bradford Products is on track for double-digit growth again this year. “From our bookings in the first quarter of 2019 and better sales funnel visibility, we’re projecting substantial double-digit growth year-over-year in 2019,” says Mike. “As of January 1, 2019, our company backlog of projects for the year has already surpassed total annual sales from just a year prior.”

The West coast is the company’s next priority and the team will partner with Peak again to support this plan. “With Peak’s level of recruitment expertise and specialized services, we have been able to rapidly execute our growth plan and surpass projections. More importantly, through Mike’s leadership, we have made significant improvements to our sales function that are competitively positioning us in our target markets. We will definitely partner with Peak again.”

Are you ready to take your talent acquisition to the next level?  Learn more about Peak’s services or contact us today to recruit top sales talent.

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Eliot Burdett

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3 Prospecting Issues these should keep you up

Sleepless Salesperson

Many sales people – and some sales leaders – will admit they struggle to get access to senior decision makers within ‘Must Win Accounts’.

The Mindset and Skills to reach out effectively to these executives are often assumed to be in place, and sales reps often won’t bring it up as they don’t want their leaders to know they need help.

Sales organizations believe this skill is “magically” developed in-house by osmosis, or that they are already getting these skills by employing experienced sales people.

Based on 20+ years of field work and hundreds of client engagements, I have come to the conclusion that there are 3 Issues that sabotage your sales force’s new business prospecting efforts:

#1: Your messaging is 180 degrees backwards

You’ve hired some great sales people. Experienced sellers with proven track records, or energetic inside salespeople in their first or second job. And yet for some reason, they’re taking a long time to ramp. They aren’t able to get enough meetings with senior decision makers, so a lot of your opportunities and proposals don’t convert into wins.

Here’s why your sales people are wasting their time talking with people who aren’t Executive Decision Makers. Your messaging and value proposition is backwards, perhaps even broken.

Here’s how this plays out in most sales organizations.

What you do is put your salespeople through an on-boarding program – if they’re lucky.

The onboarding program is often headed up by product marketing who talk about ‘us’. Our products, our solutions, our target market, our value proposition. It sounds like this;

WE help companies to…

WE are the most effective/cost efficient/fast…

WE are the market leader…

STOP “weeweeing” on potential customers. They don’t like it!

Your company and salespeople are not the hero. The customer is. Your customer is looking for an expert, a guide. Rarely will true Decision Makers respond to this kind of message, it’s mostly the tire kickers with no authority to buy.

What you and your salespeople should be focused on is talking about THEM – your buyer, your customer, what trends and challenges impact them, how others like them have solved these challenges and achieved their goals. It’s not about your company, product, service or solution… it’s about them.

Most sales people have never done the job of the person they’re expected to sell to. They don’t know what a VP or a CEO’s job is, or what their buying motivations are.

And yet, you’re telling them to go prospect and sell to those people, armed with nothing more than internally focused product marketing information, an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and a value prop that’s all about you.

If they’re experienced sales people, you expect them to know how to write messages and prospect to senior executives. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that nobody asks about, isn’t it?

And if they’re new to sales? Well, you expect them to ‘figure it out’. Learn by osmosis.

Lack of a customer focused value proposition is one of the greatest inhibitors of prospecting success.

What you need to do is “be intentional” about this critical part of the sales cycle – teach them about your prospective customers first. Most sales organizations aren’t and don’t.

What concerns does a Senior Executive vs a Line of Business leader have? What’s a ‘day in their life’ look like? How are they measured, what are the trends impacting their market, what challenges do they face, how are they currently addressing those challenges? What opportunities could they be taking advantage of…but they’re not? They’re doing this, when they could or should be doing that.

When your salespeople really grasp and understand your customers, then tell them how your products, services or solution links back to your customers’ issues and helps them improve their business.

58% of sales opportunities end in

And then show and teach your salespeople “how” to communicate this in writing AND in conversation to decision making executives at your prospects.

Unfortunately, most companies never do this.
And that’s why time to ramp is so slow, sales cycles are long and why 58% of opportunities end in no decision or are lost.

Sales people are spending their precious prospecting and selling time, writing and talking about your company to mid-ranking managers who defend the status quo.

So, do your salespeople and yourself a favour.

Go beyond “drinking the kool aid” and only exposing your sellers to your product marketing information.

On board them with messaging created from your buyers’ perspective.

And arm them with the written and conversational mindset and skills to sell “beyond their pay grade.”

You’ll be glad you did. Transformational sales results will be achieved.

#2 Your salespeople are prospecting and selling too low

Your greatest threat to sales success isn’t your competition.

It’s the status quo.

Status quo is the internal inertia your sales people face with your potential clients. It’s the way potential customers are running and doing business today. Business as usual vs introducing a change (your offering).

Are your salespeople prospecting and talking to people who can say “yes”? The people who can mobilize internal resources and create or have access to budget?

According to The Chasm Group, 85% of budgets are already spoken for on existing initiatives

Too often sales people waste their time prospecting and trying to sell to mid-ranking executives who are “invested in the status quo, can’t say yes, but can say no.”

And, even if they are working with a mid-ranking exec who wants to drive change/improvements, the mid-ranking executive probably can’t push the deal up the chain of command.

This graphic summarizes the core motivations of functional and strategic executives and their ability to spend/buy.

Change & Growth

When I show this graphic to salespeople I get groans as they have an “aha” moment.

Many realize that they are wasting their lives – as they spend most of their time prospecting into and trying to sell to mid-ranking functional executives.

Quite simply, the motivations of the mid-ranking executive is to operationalize and execute – not to introduce change or buy (unless triggered/directed to by a senior executive).

95% of buyers are in status quo

If, as research shows, as much as 95% of buyers are in status quo and mid-ranking executives’ motivations are to execute/operationalize and not introduce new behaviour and process change (aka your offering) – then why do most sales leaders and their sellers focus their time and energy on such low probability activity? This shows up as lots of activity…but few opportunities in the pipeline.

What difference would it make to your business if your salespeople were prospecting and speaking to executives who are open to and interested in new ways of growing and running their business…and who create budgets?

In order to loosen the grip of the status quo, sales people need to prospect into people who are motivated to change, to impact top and bottom line – because that is what selling is – it’s changing from one state to another.

Who is motivated to make improvements to their business and open to change?

The executives of the company. The C-Suite’s role is to look for new ways of doing things that will give them a competitive edge.

This is where top sales performers start their engagements. The top down approach.

Here’s the proof of this approach.

If you’re a CEO or Sales Leader reading this, ask yourself this…

If you wanted to do business with another company, would you reach out to a mid-ranking executive with a Manager, Director or even a VP title?

The answer I get from most leaders is because they know that decisions to do ‘new’ and ‘different’ are made at the C-Suite level, and those decisions are made fast.

If that’s the case, then why are you letting your salespeople prospect into mid-ranking execs where they have low probability of success?

Research from SBI shows that as much as 58% of deals end in ‘no decision’. You’re wasting your salespeople’s lives and putting your company’s growth at risk if you allow them to prospect and sell too low.

#3 Your salespeople (and sales leader) have never been taught how to WRITE prospecting messages to C Level executives

How many of your salespeople can start a sales cycle with the CEO or another C Level executive? If you are an executive or sales leader reading this, think back in your own career.

Did anybody ever teach you how to WRITE a letter, email or LinkedIn Inmail to a CEO, President or C Level executive – that compelled them to begin a conversation with you?

I only ever get a few hands raised to that question…This is an ‘‘invisible elephant” in most companies I’ve ever spoken to or worked with.

Most sales people have never been taught how to write executive level prospecting emails, letters or LinkedIn Inmails…they are left to figure it out on their own.

Nor do they have the mindset or confidence to write and ‘go high.’ And yet, that’s where decisions to change are made – as executives are focused on new initiatives that drive growth or efficiencies.

The ability to write effective prospecting messages helps salespeople get appointments with the right people, at the right level at target accounts in minutes, hours and days…not weeks, months or never! Consistently.

And this delivers transformational increases in pipeline and sales results.

To learn more about Matt Conway’s methodology, visit his website at https://www.matthewconway.com/

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How ProofID Ramped U.S. New Business Sales Pipeline from 0 to $1M

Proof ID sales recruiting

Identity and Access Management Leader Teams with Peak, Increases U.S. Sales Forecast by $1M

With a focus on making the benefits of identity management – security, productivity, compliance, and revenues ­– well in reach for every modern business, ProofID has continued to stay ahead of the competitive identity and access management (IAM) market.

Headquartered in Manchester, UK, with an U.S. office in Colorado Springs, ProofID manages the security of millions of identities in over 150 countries and works with top enterprise brands across finance, technology, retail, and education sectors.

As Co-Founder and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Lorraine Worrall explains, “We started the business in 2014, charting a course that we hoped would pay off strategically, and at the same time, provide enterprises an easy way to secure identities and put modern scalable IAM strategies in place. Now we are one of the few independent companies left in the market after others were acquired by bigger players in the space.”

Market consolidation hasn’t stopped ProofID. With its mature managed services business, strategic partnerships with Ping Identity and Thycotic, and industry-recognized ProofID IGA product, the company has put the right elements together to drive global growth.

Peak Sales Recruiting delivers ProofID’s first U.S. sales leader

For Lorraine, successfully executing on ProofID’s growth plan required ramping ProofID’s U.S. sales immediately. She turned to Peak Sales Recruiting to find the right sales leader to jump start U.S. operations and build a sales pipeline in North America for the first time.

“We wanted a better recruiting process than what we have traditionally experienced. Typically, you are inundated with CVs that you have to work your way through to see if your criteria is met. It’s very time consuming and not always effective,” says Lorraine. “Being based in the UK, it would also have been difficult to access the right candidates on our own.”

Lorraine met with Peak Client Manager Anthony MacKay to understand the process and discuss her criteria. “When we set the scope of the project, Peak presented me challenging questions that really made me think about what I wanted in a candidate and how this team member would fit with our sales environment and overall culture,” she shares. “As I went through the qualifying questions with Anthony, I realized it was beyond recruiting just a salesperson, but finding the right type of person that would fit with our sales and company culture. Anthony made me think a lot harder about what a good fit would really look like.”

Anthony and the Peak team went to work identifying top candidates based on Lorraine’s criteria. Through Peak’s 4-step sales recruiting methodology, candidates are evaluated using a process that includes behavior-based interviews and role playing, psychometric profiling, and benchmarking.

“The way Peak approached recruiting and the ability to recruit without a focus on just resumes, really ‘jelled’ with me,” she says. “Working with Peak gave me the confidence I was going to get the right people.”

U.S. sales effort kicks off with eye on managed services

Five weeks later, Scott Montgomery was hired and joined as ProofID National Account Manager with a focus on building a new business sales pipeline from the ground up, moving existing customers to managed services, and working with the Ping Identity accounts to generate new business.

“Scott has been a great fit and was exactly what I was looking for. Identity management is quite specialized but Scott brings a background in the market and understands what we are trying to sell and just gets it,” says Lorraine. “We had no pre-sales support for him in the U.S., so he needed to be able to manage himself and get out there without hand holding – and he was just on it.”

2019 forecasted as year of growth

For Lorraine, Scott’s hire has enabled ProofID to move forward at record pace this year. “In less than two months, Scott has already closed sales. We have a measurable U.S. sales pipeline now and have taken this from 0 to $1 million.,” adds Lorraine.

As ProofID grows its managed services business, revenue projections are high. “Through our managed services business, we are poised for big growth this year. We have increased our sales forecast by $1M in the U.S. alone, and are also executing new reseller channel strategies around our identity governance and administration business. It’s a very exciting time and Scott’s hire has been a critical element in all of this.”

According to Lorraine, working with Peak has made a positive impact to the ProofID business. “The Peak process was strategic and very smooth, resulting in a frictionless experience that helped us move quickly toward our goals. We would definitely recommend Peak and work with Peak again.”

Are you ready to take your talent acquisition to the next level?  Learn more about Peak’s services or contact us today to recruit top sales talent.

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Sales Management Trends: Sales Agents or Full Time Sales – The Pro’s and Cons of Hiring vs. Outsourcing

Hiring vs. OutsourcingThe economy is creeping along.  Revenue is down, the pressure is on to reduce overhead and the CFO is looking at the way you sell. You can choose from a variety of job candidates: full time staff, freelancers, independent contractors, temps and consultants.  Now the big question, do you continue with a full time sales staff or outsource for sales agents?

Full Time Sales

Control.  That’s what you get with a full time employee.  You recruit, train and manage the staff.  You can supervise their work environment, hours and production.

Unfortunately control comes with a hefty price tag.  Recruiting and training is a significant investment.  Managing a full time team also means the expense of benefits and HR management.  It may be costly to hold on to exceptional talent, and legalities may make it impossible to dump the underachiever.

Sounds expensive and challenging to manage your own staff, so why do it?  A seasoned full-timer is deeply rooted with the company.  Long-term relationships with customers are developed and revenue is strong and steady.  Company employees know your value story and can easily solve problems.  A full time employee is vested with your organization, and is loyal to the cause.

Sales Agents

Sales outsourcing is the strategy of using an outside agency to staff your sales department.  You have an abundance of talent to choose from without the typical recruiting time and expense. With a contracted sales staff, significant overhead is transferred outside of the company and you have the option of a short-term commitment when the long term is uncertain. Outsourcing allows companies to cut back spending without cutting back on productivity. Love your company but hate selling? Lack sales skills?  Are you a start-up or entering a new market? Free up time to focus on mission-critical core business functions while your experienced sales agents increase revenue.

Downside?  Well, sales agents work for themselves or an agency. Since sales professionals tend to concentrate on those sales with the highest commission structure, the sales agent may choose to invest more time to the client with higher compensation, not your business. It’s much easier to ensure that your own sales team is trained properly, consistently pursuing every opportunity and closing deals, than it is with an outsourced firm.  In order to be successful, resources are needed to find the right outsourcing vendor and you’ll need to manage expectations around results. If not administered properly, contracting your sales department could end up costing more than what you’d spend on an in-house team.

Which Strategy is Right

The decision of hiring vs outsourcing sales really depends on your sales strategy, goals, what your customers want and ultimately, the availability of the right sales resources. Either way, make the choice carefully as it will have an enormous impact on your results.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

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How Nordics Innovator MapsPeople Tackles the Hyper-Growth Challenge

MapsPeople Sales Recruiting

MapsPeople teams with Peak Sales Recruiting to grow U.S. sales and doubles sales projections

At this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, we were reminded of the power behind the Nordics startup community. Danish MapsPeople is a great example. With established markets in Europe and North America, MapsPeople is making the world more accessible by creating easy-to-use, innovative software to help you virtually find your way. Through MapsPeople’s Indoor Navigation product and Google Maps platform, the company makes the transition from outdoor to indoor navigation seamless. From virtually navigating your way through hundreds of exhibit booths at one of the largest women’s lifestyle events to checking out stadiums in advance of hosting sports events, the consumer and business use cases are endless.

MapsPeople is a spinoff of the original, traditional mapping company founded in 1887, but as Chief Operating Officer Jonas Berntsen explains, “Our heritage in mapping goes back more than a century but today we operate as a fast-paced startup that is literally five-years young. Our focus is leading the future of mapping through constant innovation.”

 

MapsPeople teams with Peak to grow U.S. sales

The company’s operational plan for 2019 includes a major focus on growing U.S. operations. For Jonas, building MapsPeople’s first U.S. salesforce was a key element and timing was critical as significant projects were underway with several Fortune 500 clients. “To land these bigger deals, we normally need a team of 3-4 people, including a regional manager, sales engineer, and project manager,” he explains. “We didn’t have this type of team established yet in the U.S. and with my limited bandwidth, I really needed to work with a B2B sales recruiter who I could trust to quickly bring the structure and process to find the right candidates.”

Jonas turned to Peak Sales Recruiting.

 

Proven sales skills + customer lens were top criteria

After meeting to understand MapsPeople’s criteria for the hires, a dedicated Peak client manager was assigned to work closely with Jonas on all aspects of the project. The mission was to identify, recruit, screen, evaluate, and help hire three top-performing regional sales managers and a project manager.

Jonas had very specific criteria for the sales roles.  “We never look for the classic sales type,” he explains. “We need people who really understand the psychology of the clients and take the time to understand their business and needs. At the same time, we want people who can challenge the clients. Ask why they are taking a certain direction or strategy and gain new insight about their needs. This also engages the customer and builds a better foundation from the start. This experience doesn’t always happen using a traditional sales approach.”

 

Structure, communication, and results

Jonas had worked with other recruiting firms in the past and high on his list was one point of contact. “For me, it’s about the quality of my 1:1 contact and the structure, organization, communication, and trust throughout the process.”

Peak’s talent acquisition process relies on a  4-step sales recruiting methodology that includes determining corporate objectives, identifying the profile of an ideal candidate, targeted headhunting to find the top candidates, and scientific assessment.

“Working with Peak, I had the advantage of one dedicated client manager who was well-structured in her approach, organized, and reliable. This made the ultimate difference in our results. When you outsource something as critical as employee recruitment, you need to ensure you have a quality process and one that you can trust. Our Peak client manager proved that every day.”

– Jonas Berntsen, COO, MapsPeople

Within a very fast timeline, three regional sales managers and one project manager were hired, all aligned with Jonas’ criteria and the MapsPeople culture.

 

What’s next for MapsPeople?

If you ask Jonas, MapsPeople is now well-positioned to support large U.S. deals in the works as well as global growth. “It’s an exciting time for our company,” he says. “I believe we now have the right team to take MapsPeople to a new level this year and beyond.  We are doubling our sales estimates each year and proving our projections through the work we are doing with major brands like JP Morgan, KPMG, and Kohls, along with new product innovation.”

On the heels of hiring its U.S. sales team, Jonas reflects, “It was very important to build the right foundation in the U.S.  If we don’t have the right people, it takes a lot more time for onboarding and results.” In the coming period, MapsPeople will be hiring 20 sales, marketing, engineering, and administrative positions to support new deals in the works – and at the same time, moving some of its European team from its Aalborg and Copenhagen offices to its Austin office.

As for those deals with the big brands, watch for news very soon.  For now, MapsPeople’s U.S. sales team has hit the ground running through a great partnership with Peak.

 

Are you ready to take your talent acquisition to the next level? Learn more about Peak’s services or contact us today to recruit top sales talent.

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Joseph Joseph Drives Double Digit Growth Through US Sales Leader

Joseph Joseph Sales Recruiter

International household products brand recruits NYC executive, drives double digit growth

Twin brothers Antony and Richard Joseph founded Joseph Joseph Ltd in 2003 with a vision of applying innovation to bring problem-solving products to as many households as possible. Today, Joseph Joseph is a global, award-winning international houseware brand sold in over 100 countries with offices in London, New York, Paris, Dusseldorf, and Tokyo. Known for 99% customer satisfaction, the company has continued to earn worldwide recognition for producing new and innovative products that transform everyday household essentials.

“Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Joseph Joseph,” explains company Chairman Roger Crudgington. “That’s why we make it our mission to identify everyday household problems and solve them by designing functional solutions.”

As yet another testament of success, the company has earned the prestigious Queen’s Award twice –including a visit from her Royal Highness Princess Anne of Edinburgh with the award in hand.

While awards and recognition seem almost easy for this market leader, it wasn’t always smooth going expanding their team globally. Over the last ten years, the company had struggled to recruit and retain a president in the New York City area to head U.S. operations and deliver on its North American growth strategy.

This came to a head two years ago when Joseph Joseph faced new growth goals, requiring growing the business by as much as 60 percent over the next four years. In order to achieve this goal, it was critical that the company acquire an emerging leader in the U.S. to increase American market share and implement a sales strategy to deliver maximum revenue potential.

As Roger shares, they had typically used third-party recruiting services to fill senior management positions but despite leveraging recruitment agencies with teams on the ground in the U.S., Joseph Joseph failed to hire and retain a President for North America. “This was our third search in ten years,” says Roger. “We couldn’t risk getting it wrong this time.”

 

Peak steps up to the NYC executive recruiting challenge

After researching and evaluating recruiting firms in the U.S., specifically those with successful experience recruiting executives in New York City, the company made the executive decision to partner with Peak Sales Recruiting.

“We decided to partner with Peak because of their methodology. Peak had a more proactive approach and the science behind their assessment process made us more confident we would get the right hire this time.”
– Roger Crudginton, Chairman, Joseph Joseph

Peak approached the search project using its 4-step sales recruiting methodology that includes determining corporate objectives, identifying the profile of an ideal candidate, targeted headhunting to find the top candidates, and scientific, psychometric assessment. The Peak team started first by building a robust understanding of Joseph Joseph’s corporate objectives and culture. Using these insights, Peak worked collaboratively with Joseph Joseph to build an ideal candidate profile that detailed the necessary skills, experience, and DNA that the ideal executive would require to achieve the growth plan goals. Each candidate was put through Peak’s assessment methodology, leveraging a unique mix of advanced tools, including track record verification, behavior-based interviewing, and psychometric profiling and benchmarking.

Working with Peak enabled Roger valuable time to focus on other mission critical aspects of the business. “What I really appreciated about Peak’s process is that they took care of the sourcing and vetting upfront,” he shares. “The fact that I only spent my time with a short-list of fully vetted candidates who were all fully capable of being successful in the role made a huge difference. It comforted me to know I could trust Peak to handle the recruiting efforts so I could dedicate my time to running the business.”

 

President of the Americas joins, drives double digit growth

After a decade of attempting to fill this role using multiple recruiting services, Joseph Joseph was finally able to make the right hire working with Peak. “Hiring Marc has improved business substantially and both top and bottom line are good,” says Roger. “We believe the perfect recruitment agency finds the exact person who fits the company culture and can obtain the objectives set out for the position. And that’s exactly what Peak did. Under the direction of our new President of the Americas, we’ve exceeded plan and achieved double digit revenue growth – we couldn’t be more pleased.”

Following the success of this initial hire, Joseph Joseph has continued to consult Peak for U.S. recruitment projects and sales recruitment advisory services. “Peak is my go-to recruiting partner because the team gets you results,” says Roger, “Peak is effective, efficient, and delivers upon the objectives you give them. That’s all I can ask for.”

 

Are you ready to take your talent acquisition to the next level?  Learn more about Peak’s services or contact us today to recruit top sales talent.

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How Pioneer DJ Recruits the Right Senior Leadership Talent

Pioneer DJ sales team recruiting

Premier DJ and Music Equipment Industry Brand Increases Total Sales by 8%, Latin American Sales by 27%

For nearly 25 years, Pioneer DJ Corporation has been the premier hardware and software brand for DJs and the music instrument industry around the world. With a focus on understanding and predicting the future needs of DJs, clubs and the dance music community, Pioneer DJ is known for providing products and services that enable, excite, and provide total enjoyment. The company, with subsidiaries in California, London, and Shanghai, has the highest market share (60%+) in the industry.

As VP of Operations of Pioneer DJ Americas Ann Szilagyi shares, “We have built a worldwide trusted brand with a mission of being the leader in creating music entertainment culture by staying ahead of our customer and employee needs. We have a special culture here and each team member brings special talents that influence our vision and results.”

Pioneer DJ’s brand awareness and team culture were key elements when the company sought a senior sales leader in 2016 to drive an aggressive revenue plan in the U.S. and Latin America.

“In order to meet our targeted sales growth, we needed to build out our sales team – starting with finding the right leadership talent,” explains Ann.

 

Peak steps up to the challenge

The success of Pioneer DJ’s growth initiatives was highly dependent on the acquisition of top sales talent. The decision was made to reach out to a third party recruiter specializing in B2B sales. “We decided to reach out to an external recruiter because this hire was so crucial to meeting objectives that we couldn’t risk hiring the wrong person,” says Ann.

“We decided to partner with Peak because we trusted that their methodology would get us the best fit for our team. We were very impressed with their scientific assessment process and overall approach to sales hiring.”
– Ann Szilagyi, VP of Operations of Pioneer DJ Americas

Pioneer DJ was assigned a dedicated Peak recruiting team with extensive experience recruiting software and hardware salespeople on the U.S. West coast. Peak’s team took the lead in evaluating Pioneer DJ’s organizational needs and gained a deep understanding of the type of sales talent needed to achieve their company-wide objectives. “Peak’s recruiting team really took the time to listen to our requirements and help us develop mandatory hiring criteria,” shares Ann. “The fact that they were so accessible and committed to working with us really assured me that this project was going to be a success.”

Using the competency profile of Pioneer DJ’s ideal sales leader, Peak headhunted gainfully employed sales executives who met each defined mandatory criteria. The detailed list of criteria included a focus on proven sales success, leading all aspects of sales team management, and expertise driving results through partner, distribution, dealer and direct sales channels with experience selling solutions in the music instrument industry.

Peak’s recruitment process ensured every candidate had the right sales DNA for Pioneer DJ’s selling environment and organizational culture. Peak assessed each candidate using its

4-step sales recruiting methodology that includes determining corporate objectives, identifying the profile of an ideal candidate, targeted headhunting to find the top candidates, as well as scientific, psychometric assessment to determine if the sales DNA was a fit.

 

Time to hire cut in half, impressive sales gains

Peak cut time-to-hire in half, driving candidate flow who had proven experience in Pioneer DJ’s industry with the skills, experience, and DNA needed to be successful in the company’s environment. “Peak gave us a lot of great choices and they were all spot on,” says Ann. “We had a really hard decision to make but we know we got the best guy for the job.”

Pioneer DJ America’s new Senior Vice President of Sales has already made a profitable impact on their business – within his first year, he increased total sales by 8 percent and Latin American sales by 27 percent.

“Through our partnership with Peak, we hired exactly the kind of senior sales leader we needed to disrupt the sales function, and lead us to record sales. We have been very impressed with his influence on the sales team,” shares Ann “He has acted as an amazing mentor for our sales force and even exceeded targets within his first month. He is exactly the kind of leader we needed to disrupt the sales function and lead us to record sales.”

What’s next for Pioneer DJ and Peak?  According to Ann, Peak has continued to play a strong role as Pioneer DJ’s strategic talent acquisition partner, providing consultative services on recruiting efforts including compensation, onboarding, and retention. “Peak’s my recruiting partner because of their ability to work with you, understand your organization’s needs and culture, and deliver candidates who are going to be successful in your environment. They bring tremendous value.”

 

Are you ready to take your talent acquisition to the next level?  Learn more about Peak’s services or contact us today to recruit top sales talent.

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

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Millennials are Killing the Business Development Role (in a Good Way)

Millennials Killing the Sales Industry

Recent graduates and older millennials are quickly becoming one of the most valuable workforce opportunities for sales-focused firms. In fact, nearly 6.7 million young Americans graduate each year without having a job lined up. The result is a massive untapped pool of talent with some of the most sought-after demographic characteristics for successful sales outcomes, especially as it mirrors the ongoing sea change in consumer behavior.

Not everyone is cut out for sales. So how can a manager capitalize on the energy and momentum of young professionals to produce top-notch business development representatives, or BDRs without compromising their business? Let’s take a closer look at the hiring landscape below:

Why hire younger millennials?

A younger salesforce provides fresh perspectives, and your new hires can develop the complete sales “toolbox” you need for your business under the tutelage of experienced mentors.

Research suggests that millennials are more decisive than previous generations, place an emphasis on entrepreneurship and data-driven selling, and are acutely sensitive to the minute tones and attitudes of interpersonal communication. This hypersensitivity can prove to be an asset in new BDRs. Researching and validating sales prospects, establishing rapport with new leads, and strategizing new opportunities for sales growth are all capabilities that can produce huge results when undertaken by BDRs that bring a data-driven, communicative, and entrepreneurial millennial mindset to the job.

You might naturally be worried about employee retention since voluntary turnover accounts for more than $11 billion in reported U.S. business losses each year. However, comparing 25-year-olds to 40-year-olds won’t accurately represent the possible flightiness of your potential hires. Generation X changed jobs more frequently, not less than millennials when they were the same age. Today’s young workforce is more likely to stick around, provided they’re offered the proper incentives.

How do younger employees want to work?

Millennials are intrinsically motivated to seek opportunities that personally appeal to them in their job hunt. In fact, if a brand or company isn’t in line with their personal values, or if the benefits package isn’t appealing to them, 72 percent won’t even apply for the job. Marketing your company to a younger cohort of employees involves more than listing job qualifications or placing ads on LinkedIn. Today’s young workers want to know their organization’s identity, and they want to know that their work has real-world significance.

Millennials are also notably more informal than their older counterparts. This doesn’t mean they’re impolite — on the contrary, they’re more conflict-averse than older generations — but they typically favor a more casual demeanor and communication style, in stark contrast to the more scripted salespeople of old. This makes them great candidates for sales roles, especially those built around the discovery and development of new business relationships.

Since millennials are now the most populous generation in the American workforce, BDRs that can speak their language, in their preferred communication styles, will be much more likely to form the connections necessary to close new deals. The first millennials were born in 1980, and many older millennials have by now ascended to management and the C-suite.

What can you do to attract younger workers?

The generational divide certainly has the potential to create a clash of cultures. However, the opportunity to learn and grow is appealing to both sides, from both intellectual and financial perspectives. It’s no wonder big-name brands are actively recruiting college graduates to their sales programs in a variety of ways.

Tech giant Oracle is one standout example. CEO Mark Hurd’s groundbreaking “Class Of” program recruits recent college grads and even provides housing in a luxury apartment complex, complete with an on-site fitness facility, sited on Oracle’s Austin campus. Facebook also jumped on the millennial-hiring bandwagon recently by constructing a similar all-inclusive living space for its new hires on its Menlo Park, California campus. Other companies also push the envelope with the perks they offer, which we’ll touch on a bit later. Either way you slice it, recruitment techniques have become as fluidly diverse as the workers they’re attempting to attract.

How can you best manage a younger workforce?

Getting younger workers in the door is half the battle. Making them productive and shaping them into the best BDRs they can be proves to be the more difficult path, but it’s ultimately the most rewarding in terms of revenue and efficiency.

Focus on “hard skills”

Product fluency is critical to the success of the next generation of BDR all-stars. Getting up to speed on the full scope of any and all product offerings a rep needs to sell is easily one of the trickiest aspects of onboarding for any sales job, but it’s crucial to the strength of a compelling sales pitch, especially for BDRs in complex technology verticals or other highly development-driven industries, such as healthcare.

Younger workers tend to be extremely technologically adept, but they often lack experience in channels essential to new client generation. BDR core competencies, such as lead generation via cold calling, cold email outreach, and networking, as well as professional phone etiquette, are finely nuanced skills that take time and quality mentorship to master.

Luckily, the relative ease with which millennials adapt to new software makes them more likely to excel with complex CRMs or more comprehensive sales and marketing platforms that can help build their comfort with cold calling. Few younger people master the tried-and-true methods of business development early on now that where selling is pushed as an “easy” alternative. There’s just no way around it: your team needs to be able to use (and close on) the phone. There’s no one-size-fits-all sales strategy. A more well-rounded sales skill set will serve your BDRs well. That said, the social media acuity of younger generations can also be a powerful sales tool when appropriately utilized.

Provide perks that count

Free lunch is nice, but it doesn’t scream “long-term engagement.” The employee experience is key to retention for sales roles, which are often plagued by stress, burnout, and exhaustion, leading to high turnover. Millennial workers place greater emphasis on their personal affinity with a product, brand, or company, and a comprehensive benefits package that suits where they are in their life and career is a good way to build that connection.

The traditional 9 to 5 job is fading away in favor of flexible work arrangements, telecommuting, and paid time off. Health insurance is a baseline perk, but many companies are even offering student loan repayment and tuition credit benefits. While you don’t have to go as far as shelling out for pet insurance like Microsoft, it’s good to take note of what other companies are offering as various “trendy” perks become standard practice. The corporate world is changing, and in order to keep up, companies must be willing to make short-term financial concessions to build the foundation for long-term employee engagement and retention.

Foster a culture of positive competition

A little healthy competition never hurt anyone. Setting internal team goals, even outside of an established sales quota, is a great way to foster a friendly spirit of competition and camaraderie amongst your younger sales team. Giving your BDRs multiple goals to aim for can serve as great motivation to help them exceed your expectations.

Focus on incentivizing the right things. You don’t want to reward rushed or sloppy work. Establishing clear guidelines, offering group rewards for reaching certain quotas or targets, and recognizing top performers, are all key approaches to building a team of top-notch BDRs.

Offer continuous constructive feedback and a clear path for career growth

Professional development is a continuous process. One of the most important factors impacting employee retention is the feedback, positive reinforcement, and straightforward expectation of growth that you provide.

Millennials might seem like a different species to older generations, but when it comes to work ethic, they’re not all that different from anyone else. We all want the same things: to find fulfilling work, to be recognized for that work, and to know that there’s a path for us to move up in the ranks and positively impact the next generation of workers.

Recruiters are increasingly looking to millennials for top sales talent. But training the next generation of BDR superstars involves more than just a solid first-day speech and a free lunch. It requires a steady hand to shape and manage a talented, ambitious, a passionate, inquisitive workforce that will ultimately positively impact the bottom line.

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

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Building a Strong Sales Candidate Pipeline: 3 Steps for HR Leaders

Virtual Talent Bench

One of the central challenges for companies attempting to scale their sales teams is the ability for HR leaders and their teams to deliver qualified candidates in a timely manner. The time-to-hire gap is long—estimated at roughly 2 months—and once a rep is on the job it takes them 10 months to onboard. Put in context, in which the average tenure of a B2B sales rep is 24 months, this leaves very little time for a rep to deliver a return on investment.

All told, this leaves sales organizations with eroding revenue and a weak pipeline in times when they should be growing. The typical mad-dash recruiting approach, which tries to fill seats as soon as headcount opens, fails to bring in candidates fast enough and tends to attract low-grade hires that soon voluntarily turn over.

HR leaders and sales leaders must collaborate on a new recruiting strategy designed for top sales talent that uses long-term relationship building to prime them for an interview. This is called the Virtual Talent Bench strategy, which shortens the time-to-hire gap, shortens ramp-up time, and lengthens a salesperson’s tenure.

 

Why a virtual talent bench strategy attracts A-players

Think of A-player sales candidates as “customers” who require time to travel through a buyer’s journey. When you sell a product to a customer, you don’t expect them to purchase the moment they hear about your company. Instead, you might expect an average lead time of weeks, months, or even years where you build mutual trust through check-ins and nurture content, like eBooks, articles, and videos, to educate them about your brand and benefits.

Top talent requires a similar approach. Push candidate leads along a hiring nurture funnel with content and check-ins until you have a pool of talent that knows and trusts your employer brand.

Dr. Geoff Smart calls this the virtual talent bench strategy. He writes, “When the star pitcher pulls a muscle and has to leave the game, the coach gets the number two pitcher off the bench and play resumes immediately. No problem.” Hiring managers should think like a baseball coach: nurture candidates until you can put a rep in the game as quickly as you like.

The virtual bench strategy eliminates last-minute dashes and establishes a recruiting machine that predictably incubates high-quality hires. It decreases time-to-hire and gives A-players the time, relationships, and information they need to join your company.

There are three steps to the virtual bench strategy: Generate leads, put infrastructure in place to track your interactions, and nurture them with personal outreach and content.

 

Step 1: Identify A Players

Start with a workforce planning exercise to anticipate the number of reps you plan to hire in the next year. Then, build a picture of the ideal candidate with the specific attributes and skills needed to do the job. Because you are hiring salespeople, educate your team about the importance of Sales DNA, which are the intangible traits that help top salespeople excel. Sales DNA almost always beats the resume as a form of screening and selecting a candidate that will perform well on the job.

Next, find candidates. They will be more likely to act on a word-of-mouth referral from someone they trust, so mine your company’s extended network, starting with your top salespeople. Conduct an internal brainstorming exercise by asking key sales leaders and reps to make a list of 10 potential candidates in their network. Top performers immerse themselves in successful communities and have deep networks of other talented sales leaders. Ask them to browse their own LinkedIn networks to make sure they haven’t missed anyone.

You can do a similar exercise by identifying people in your network who are “connectors”—advisors, mentors, influencers, and other business partners—who can recommend candidates and make a connection.

Next, look at the competition’s sales force, as well as peripheral competitors and industries. These are companies and industries adjacent to yours that have similar buyers, sales cycles, and deal sizes, but don’t compete head-to-head. You can also participate in professional associations, network at trade shows, and even host events for education, networking, and industry interest presentations.

Consider creating a talent community, which allows top talent to submit their resumes to your company without committing to a certain position. People who are attracted to your brand can simply express interest, share contact information, and upload their resume, separate from any job postings. There are many benefits to this for both you and the candidate:

  • You can attract potential candidates year-round, even if you don’t have a job posting written.
  • You can see where they best fit within your company and have more flexibility to match them with a role.
  • For a top candidate, it’s less time-consuming to join a talent pool than to apply to a position. It’s low-barrier and low-commitment to begin with, and opens the door for a long-term nurture relationship.

Over time, you’ll amass a list of prospective candidates who are already genuinely interested in your brand and you will have the contact information to begin engaging them with nurture content via email, phone, and live events. Lockheed Martin, Santander Bank, and Carvana, an auto tech startup, are examples of companies that use talent communities to recruit.

 

Step 2: Create a tracker

Once you have a list of talent prospects, put them in a candidate CRM, ATS, or manual tracker—you wouldn’t keep lists of customers in your head, and you don’t want to do this for candidates either.

If you don’t have technology in place, a simple spreadsheet can suffice to hold candidate information and track your interactions over time. Share the document with your organization’s leads and any other team members involved in the recruiting process. Then, update it with new leads and set a ritual or reminder to repeat the lead brainstorming exercise from Step 1.

The tracker should at minimum have these fields :

  • Name
  • Priority ranking — To sort your dream leads
  • Current title
  • Source — Where you got the idea for the lead
  • Connectors — Your mutual “connectors” that can provide an introduction or reference
  • Timing of contact — We recommend logging the first outreach and the latest outreach at the very least. You can also log any in-between contacts and content sent to the candidate.
  • Selling Performance — Did the candidate hit quota the past 3 years?
      •  

(See Rob Kelly’s explanation of his candidate tracker for more background.)

 

Step 3: Plan your buyer’s funnel

Once you have a list of leads to reach out to, create a funnel that nudges a candidate through the stages of the buyer’s journey, similar to an inbound marketing funnel. Just as it takes consumers many touchpoints to purchase a product, top candidates typically need high-quality, repeated exposure to your employer brand before accepting an interview invitation. All the more so if they’re comfortably employed and doing well in their current job.

This is why your first outreach to a candidate should simply get your company on their radar, because they likely aren’t familiar with your company yet. The first conversation is a “meet and greet,” and ideally comes through a warm introduction. Do not treat it as an interview or an opportunity to pitch your company. Instead, it should entirely center around the candidate, their career aspirations, and their interests. Get a head start before the conversation: research the candidate to understand their career trajectory, recent increased responsibilities, patterns across jobs, and any associations they’re affiliated with or articles they’ve published.

After that first contact, let the candidate progress through a funnel of regular check-ins over email, phone, or coffee so that they can learn progressively more information about your company and the position. Even if they’re not ready to leave their current job, they’ll become more familiar with you over the long term, increasing the chance they’ll consider you for the next stage in their career.

What does this nurture funnel look like? It’s similar to the way a marketing team uses content like articles, webinars, and testimonials to push a lead forward. In the same way, an employer brand uses candidate nurture to slowly communicate selling points and build trust.

Sales teams can collaborate with marketing to create digital nurture programs using emails, ads, and videos that paint a picture of the career that’s in store for a candidate. They should highlight the benefits of the working environment, spotlight successful employees, and communicate key aspects of your company’s growth story, like new product developments and milestones. It’s a way to cut through to what really matters to millenials in a new job and illustrate opportunities for accomplishment, self-actualization, challenges and recognition.

Emails to candidates might take the form of:

  • Employee profile stories demonstrating their accomplishments, providing a model for career growth and an example of external recognition
  • Newsletters that include industry news and business milestones like new high-visibility partnerships and customers, helping candidates understand the exciting challenges they could experience
  • Stories about culture and sales team events
  • eBooks, blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, and videos about the industry or the specific team a candidate is interested in
  • Glassdoor ratings
  • Invitations to in-person events
  • Job alerts
  • Gentle reminders to finish an application
  • Thank you messages

Consider using personalization to improve candidates’ engagement rates (like any good marketing team would). This starts with collecting clean data about each candidate: use standardized forms fields and email questionnaires to collect their name, contact information, and the type of job they’re interested in, as well information about skill sets and areas of interest.  

Then, dynamically insert this data into emails—or segment your candidate database into major groups or personas that require different types of content. For example, junior candidates are more likely to identify with employee stories that match their experience level and early career goals, while senior candidates may be more interested in strategic content about the market and executive team. Other ways to segment a candidate database include job type, areas of interest, and geography.

Netflix is an example of a company that has invested in their nurture programs and employer brand. They cultivate candidates with content such as videos about their internal culture, podcasts about how they hire, and a Facebook page for their talent community called We Are Netflix. Bain & Company has invested in in-depth content to help candidates explore roles and navigate the interview process, complete with videos demonstrating sample interviews and tips. E-commerce tech giant Shopify also invests in automated email nurture campaigns in which recruiters partner with hiring managers to actively check in with candidates who are in the interview process.

Like these companies, persistent nurture will help you bring candidates through the buyer’s journey—all while they’re not actively searching for a job. When they’re ready to consider a change, your company will be top of mind.

 

A virtual talent funnel is a support structure for building deep human relationships over time. Courting excellent candidates requires a long timeline, but without the disciplined follow-ups of a nurture campaign, they’ll slip through the cracks and go elsewhere. A tracking and outreach system ensures that you’re intentional about building high-quality talent relationships—just as your best reps would for your dream customers.

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

The 5 Key Players Needed to Successfully Scale Your Sales Team.

Scale Sales Team - Roles

“In the digital age, where anything and everything can be bought from just about anywhere, there is little differentiation between products and services. It means a business’ greatest asset and biggest distinction are its people.”—Marc Havercroft

In Marvel’s universe, The Avengers are a team of Earth’s five mightiest superheroes, who come together to protect the planet from imminent destruction. In business, there may be fewer explosions and costumes, but there are still five key roles that come together to optimize talent and scale a high-performance salesforce:

VP Sales

VP HR

CEO

CFO

The Board of Directors

We’ll examine the responsibilities and special powers of each one—as well as typical pitfalls to watch for when it comes to talent.

Why pay so much attention to the talent-and-development skills of your highest leaders? One of the most important attributes of a modern business is the ability to attract and develop talent, and at Peak Sales, we believe that growing high performing teams is not an event but an ongoing business process.

The digital era has democratized access to resources and enabled copycats, making talent one of the only real competitive advantages left. Talent-driven companies win, meaning that talent informs strategy rather than the other way around.

According to Dominic Barton, talent is more scarce than financial capital, and the returns to employees have gone up dramatically. In the past, the difference in performance between an average and a top-notch production line worker didn’t justify a huge compensation difference. But today’s ROI on top performers justifies new ways of compensating, sourcing, nurturing, and retaining employees—and a “dream team” pull it off.

Sales organizations are no exception, where top performers produce a disproportionate return while below-average and average performers create drag on the team. Designing a talent management program that lets a top-performing sales organization scale up requires a team of Avengers … and each one plays a unique role.

 

VP Sales

A VP of Sales is the head of the sales organization and directly influences a company’s revenue, growth, and culture. And they are directly responsible for the talent acquisition, development, and retention of the company’s sales force.

Key responsibilities of a VP Sales:

    • People management—Create a culture and environment of success through coaching, a sales process, and by holding talent accountable for performance.
    • Talent acquisition—Drive hiring efforts year-round and personally recruit sales talent.
    • Customer management—Set high-level strategy by connecting to the customer’s needs as well as understanding the market and competition.
    • Business management—Align resources in the sales function, invest in technology and data infrastructure, and improve selling processes and channels.

A VP Sales’ typical talent-related mistakes:

Not personally developing a sales candidate pipeline. The VP of Sales should have an extensive network of sales professionals—ideally top performers—and must actively maintain relationships to identify potential talent to bring onto the team. They can identify needed outside talent and help them envision a career path at the company.

Spending too much time selling accounts personally, rather than leveraging their team. While some amount of oversight on high-profile deals is beneficial, a VP of Sales should free up their time to dedicate their time to high-level talent strategy.

Not allocating enough resources to sales support functions. It’s been found that dedicating about 50% of sales employees to support functions optimizes a sales team’s ROI.

Hiring by gut feel or “winging it” as soon as headcount is open. Successful long-term sales teams are built over time by using quantitative tests and rigorous, structured interview processes to evaluate candidates. A VP of Sales should collaborate with HR to design a rigorous program and contribute sales-specific insights to the process, such as interview questions and a list of skillsets, aptitudes, and characteristics that will set up a candidate for success.

 

VP HR

The thought of HR might conjure images from the 1999 movie Office Space, the perfect picture of HR gone wrong, with mind-numbing processes and employees who feel like prisoners.

But today, HR is no longer a sleepy administrative department and Chief HR Officers hold key strategic roles. Coco Brown, CEO of The Athena Alliance, which works to place talented women in corporate boardrooms, says, “Some of the CHRO areas of expertise, once considered ‘the soft stuff,’ have become ‘the strategic stuff.’”

Some even argue that the CHRO should be elevated to the same level as the CEO and CFO, creating an ideal leadership group that prioritizes talent as much as financial capital. “One of the biggest investors in the world is BlackRock,” writes Dominic Barton, “and you go to the seventh floor of BlackRock and the person sitting beside (CEO) Larry Fink’s office is Jeff Smith, who’s the Chief Human Resources Officer. That’s deliberate.”

Key responsibilities of a VP of HR:

    • Talent acquisition—Develop a robust talent acquisition strategy spanning employer branding to recruitment, assessment, and interviewing strategies.
    • Compensation strategy—Design compensation and equity structures that incentivize and align behaviors.
    • Retention—Implement mechanisms and initiatives to retain top talent.
    • Succession planning—Ensure a strong leadership bench and facilitate executive transitions.
    • People, culture, and the future of work—Keep up with shifts in the workforce and the changing nature of work.

A VP HR’s typical talent-related mistakes:

Focusing on the operational side of HR rather than the strategic side. An HR function can get lost in the weeds of transactional processes. A VP of HR should have the capacity and sensitivity to operate in the inner circle of the CEO and CFO, and advocate for talent being as central to company strategy as finances are.

Not delivering on sales hiring goals fast enough. A VP of HR must search for external sales talent with curiosity, tenacity, and outside-the-box thinking to meet hiring goals on time. They need to support the VP of Sales in developing a talent pipeline that’ll help them adhere to growth models.

 

CEO

The CEO of a company is responsible for its overall business performance, and acts as the highest level of authority for key decisions. The CEO can be a huge asset when it comes to recruiting sales talent—they have visibility with the community, press, investors, partners, and customers, and as such should act as talent scouts.

Key responsibilities of a CEO:

    • Own the company vision—Unite all company efforts with a consistent vision.
    • Balance resources—Allocate and prioritize resources between departments and initiatives.
    • Invest in culture—Actively cultivate culture, because like a garden left untended, a company culture will form regardless. A CEO must evoke core values and shared attitudes to help it grow in the right direction.
    • Oversee performance—Measure company performance, deliver on goals and vision, and implement strategies to increase shareholder value.
    • Communicate on behalf of the company—Drive messaging to employees, shareholders, partners, the press and public, and regulatory entities.
    • Lead executive team—Maintain responsibility for the outcomes of the executive team’s decisions and evaluate their work.
    • Scout talent—Identify and attract top-performing talent.

A CEO’s typical talent-related mistakes:

Not personally participating in talent acquisition. The CEO should actively scout for sales talent in their network, cultivating those relationships and contributing candidates to the sales hiring pipeline.

Blocking the VP of HR from the top circle of executives. For talent to be a central asset and competitive advantage, a CEO should elevate the head of HR to a strategic position in the upper echelon of leadership—rather than making it an afterthought.

Deprioritizing sales compensation and hiring forecasts. A CEO must work with Sales, Finance, and HR to create a sales hiring forecast that supports the company’s growth … and then adhere to it. To follow through on the plan, the CEO must allocate and protect resources to appropriately compensate top performing sales talent, which helps both hiring and talent retention.

 

CFO

A Chief Financial Officer is the company’s spokesperson for all financial matters and performance. When it comes to talent, a CFO manages a company’s investments in people. This means that CFOs and heads of HR should be highly aligned: finance oversees the investment, while HR delivers on it. Too often, they’re disconnected, but a talent-first company must have a CFO who is on board.

Key responsibilities of a CFO:

      • Financial performance—Report and analyze high-level performance.
      • Optimize use of resources—Perform cost-benefit analyses and identify strategies to optimize financial performance.
      • Managing the company’s financial risks—Identify risks and develop strategies to mitigate them.
      • Forecasting—Generate forecasts for finances, growth, and future risks and trends.
      • Regulatory compliance and taxation—Ensure that the company is compliant with government regulations and tax responsibilities.

A CFO’s typical talent-related mistakes:

Budgeting too few resources to support talent acquisition efforts. In a talent-first company, CFO’s must prioritize talent initiatives when allocating resources, invest in the sales force, and adhere to hiring forecasts. (ZS Associates found that organizations that hire sales teams based on analytical models exhibit higher short-term and long-term profits, while companies that hold off on expansion compromise their standing.)

Acquiring and retaining top-performing sales talent can be particularly costly, but the best sales organizations still design compensation plans around top performers, using competitive base rates as well as accelerator and product volume bonuses. CFOs must also budget for employee referral programs, outside talent acquisition specialists, and technology that assists in sourcing and vetting candidates.

Being resistant to releasing talent. A dilemma that CFOs often face is knowing when to let talent go versus wanting to “rescue” them. This is often evident in situations involving high performers who don’t work well in the team, or likeable individuals who just aren’t performing, or employees who have been passed over for a promotion. A CFO must decide whether to retain and develop the individual, or to release them, but a release often does not come soon enough, to the detriment of team productivity and morale—especially in sales organizations.

Staying process-oriented instead of shifting focus to growth. Too many CFOs are still process-oriented. Modern companies must recognize that the new role of the CFO is to drive value and strategy. CFOs should adopt technology that automates old processes, freeing them to think more strategically. They should also use their processes and models to give other departments, like HR, access to data-driven, high-level insights.

 

The Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is a group of individuals elected to represent the best interests of a company’s shareholders. They meet several times a year and have a unique responsibility to oversee important talent-related initiatives.

In the past, a board of directors’ involvement in talent was focused on electing a quality CEO and managing the people on the board itself. Today, with talent as a central competitive advantage the board’s talent responsibilities extend beyond a company’s highest leadership positions. They’re responsible for the company delivering on talent objectives as a whole.

Key responsibilities of a Board of Directors:

    • Review financial results—Oversee company performance and shareholder value.
    • Monitor leadership—Evaluate the performance of executives and managers.
    • Decision making—Vote on strategic decisions proposed by the leadership team.
    • Maintain integrity—Help the company demonstrate integrity at a high level.
    • Set direction—Participate in the creation of long-term goals and strategy for the company.
    • Governing talent objectives—Hold the company accountable for delivering on talent-related goals and mitigating talent-related risks. Boards must be directly involved in reviewing talent strategies and programs, as well as workforce KPIs, talent risks, demographic trends, recruiting pipeline, retention performance, and succession plans.

A Board of Directors’ typical talent-related mistakes:

Neglecting retention strategies. Talent retention is a huge risk that warrants board oversight. Externally-hired executives have a failure rate of 30 percent to 40 percent after 18 months—an incredibly high and costly risk.

Boards should mitigate this by evaluating onboarding programs, monitoring the success rate of external hiring, and ensuring that all employees have a clear idea of the company’s strategy and their own career growth opportunities within the company.

Forgetting that talent is a key risk area of the business. The risks don’t just stop with retention: businesses are vulnerable to reputational hits, legal breaches, and adherence to regulatory constraints. Boards should review talent-related risks and mitigation strategies twice a year. They should also compare retention and attrition to industry benchmarks, monitor talent pipeline, and make sure to do “talent due diligence” during mergers and acquisitions.

Not holding management accountable for talent KPIs. Boards should review talent-related performance regularly, including:

      • Pipeline for critical roles and sales talent
      • Strength of the succession bench
      • Leadership capabilities that will be required in the future, and how current capabilities match up
      • Employee engagement

Ignoring broader workplace trends and demographic changes. Boards must be aware of demographic changes and consider their influence on a company’s approach to talent. For example, has the company seriously considered the effects of:

      • The broad range of ages in the workforce. With Boomers staying in the workforce longer and Gen Y redefining the future of work, significant life events (like starting a family) can happen at many ages.
      • Different nationalities, cultures, and abilities in workplaces, and the need to make work environments inclusive and supportive of all individuals.
      • Gender equality, especially in terms of pay gaps and leadership gaps. Women today make up 50% of the workforce, but only 22.2% of Fortune 500 board seats are held by women.
    • Technology’s effects on the way people collaborate, work independently, and interact with confidential company information.

Under-developing board members. As market forces and workplace trends change, so do the required skills of the board. A company should bring in expert trainers for its board members and outside facilitators board discussions. It should also ensure that the board itself is diverse and inclusive.

Not being directly involved in succession planning. A board should have a process to identify and vet succession candidates, and ensure that the company offers training to develop and nurture internal candidates before they need to step up.

A company’s ability to scale its sales team depends on its leaders being focused on a talent-first organization. Are all executives allocating appropriate resources to talent initiatives? Are they thinking big when it comes to talent strategy, and measuring hiring performance? The most successful companies recognize that talent is the main way they can compete—and to attract and nurture that talent, they need to have their Avengers assemble.

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

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