Making the wrong sales hiring decision has an enormous negative impact on a business’ finances. Often overlooked, but closely related, is the larger impact it has on a sales team’s morale.
The cost of a bad hire
SAP recently rounded up a series of statistics on the impact of a bad hire. Citing research from Mindflash and CareerBuilder, the articles show that 41% of survey respondents reported a bad hire cost them $25,000, while 25% said a bad hire in the previous year cost them $50,000.
Breaking down costs even further, Mariah Deleon, vice president of people at Glassdoor, notes in a recent Entrepreneur article that a bad hire costs employers dearly when it comes to productivity. Deleon shares a statistic from Robert Half International that shows 11% of companies reported a bad hire resulted in fewer sales.
Quantifying the cost of a bad hire in terms of time, the Robert Half study revealed that supervisors spend 17% of their time managing poorly performing employees.
In one of our previous articles, What is The Cost of a Bad Saes Hire, we calculated that a bad sales hire costs the typical sales department upwards of $690,000. Read the article to find out how we calculated this loss and you’ll get a better idea of the value of a good sales person and just how much a bad hire can detract from your year.
Measuring the cost of a bad hire in terms of time and money is one thing – but the ramifications of the bad hire extend much further…..the dark cloud that a bad employee brings into the office can impact the mood of the whole sales team. Deleon refers to the Robert Half study to note that 95% of financial executives surveyed “said that making a bad hire at least somewhat effects the morale of the team, and 35 percent said a poor hire greatly influences employee morale.”
Poor morale is an especially damaging drain on a sales team. It’s easy to see how a bad hire can creep into each aspect of your sales team and begin eroding team spirit – from a new sales manager who hosts horrible meetings, a top morale buster according to Soma, to a prima donna who arrives with the wrong set of expectations.
SAP points out that an underperforming employee places a burden on the remainder of the team, creating a situation where “good workers end up getting saddled with additional workload [which] eventually wears down the team spirit as the group is overburdened carrying a non-contributing member.” Underperforming sales team members are burning more than time – they’re also churning through good leads, converting far fewer than they should, and alienating potential customers. If other sales team members are burdened with trying to compensate for their underperforming team member, you’re creating even more potential loss.
Losing time and money is a bad situation, but gaining a cadre of now-unhappy sales team members is even worse. It’s natural to want to foster a bad hire into a better performer, and while there is such a thing as a rocky start, sometimes you just have to admit that the hire wasn’t a good one.
“Hire slowly, fire fast”
How to handle a bad decision
There are red flags to look for in a bad hire both in terms of results and attitude. Consistent inability to hunt and close new business, inconsistent use of your CRM, not giving the required hours or activity levels, poor planning, tardiness, no sense of urgency, not optimistic, lacking resilience after losing deals, interaction issues with other staff, and failure to embrace the sales strategy despite undergoing standardized training, all signal that a hire doesn’t belong on your sales team. Within 3 months you should know you hired the wrong person, and it’s important to remove them from your team before all of these bad qualities start taking a toll on other team members.
Fast action is warranted when you consider the ripple effect a bad employee can have on your sales team as well as your customer and vendor relationships. Consider indirect costs incurred by lost sales, or compensating for errors the employee made. In the worst-case scenario, there could be litigation costs initiated by the employee or by customers or vendors who interacted with the employee. As these problems multiply, the entire team – including management – feels the impact.
Making a better hire the next time
A structured and rigorous interview and assessment process mitigates hiring risk. A consistent hiring process for each and every candidate offers an “apples to apples” comparison, and allows you to determine with the highest degree of certitude who the best hire is. Multiple interviews involving all stakeholders in the hiring decision, combined with third-party psychometric and behavorial testing, and extensive background research should be used for each candidate.
Careful planning, strategic thinking, and adopting a disciplined sales hiring process can help you make better decisions in the long run and avoid the pitfalls that a bad sales hire can have on your team’s morale.
For more comprehensive insights on how to make the right sales hiring decision for your organization, get instant access to our eBook “Make the Right Sales Hire Every Time.”
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.
Typically, they are words of encouragement. Joyful, even enthusiastic. Designed to leave someone with pleasant feelings about the future.
They are NOT, however, designed to be the two words that describe the sum total of a company’s training program.
Really.
Back when I started as a sales representative for a west coast medical company, I went out to corporate headquarters for a 2-day, new-hire training session. Or so I thought.
My first day on the job, I went on a couple of sales calls with a sales manager. We said hello, picked up a couple of small orders (literally, we picked them up, they were written on a piece of paper and left for us), and headed back to the office. After lunch, someone spent some time showing me some of the company’s products and where to find them in a catalog. They were just showing me the products — not explaining or doing anything, you know, instructional.
Then we had a three-day national sales meeting. And I headed back home. “Good luck,” the boss said.
I’m gonna need it, I thought to myself. Training? You can’t be serious. It wasn’t training, it was a disaster. Disorganized. Disjointed. Dis-aster.
One week in and I’m thinking the decision I made to join the company was exactly that – a disaster.
What Does YOUR Training Look Like?
People often ask about sales leadership roles (National Sales Manager or VP Sales or something similar) and ask what it takes to be successful at that level. While there are a number of critical pieces in that puzzle, few, if any, are as important as a comprehensive training and development plan.
But I never cease to be amazed at companies that provide little or no training (initially or ongoing) for their salespeople or their sales management team — outside of product-related training.
Worse, they can’t understand why employee commitment and performance are lacking.
But when a company fails to provide comprehensive and ongoing training and development a couple of things happen, neither of which is good for the company.
First, employees that aren’t well-trained rarely perform up to their potential.
Why would they? Even elite athletes, singers, and stage performers train and train and train. In fact, research clearly indicates that the very best performers get that way through focused, purposeful, long-term training. They are constantly learning, and consistently honing their skills.
Remember, there is a world of difference between twenty years of experience and one year of experience twenty times.
Second, when a company doesn’t invest in training, it sacrifices employee engagement, which, in turn, translates directly in to increased employee turnover, less productivity, and declining morale.
Employees make the direct connection: you don’t want to invest in my training and development, but you do consistently ask me to improve my performance.
No contradictions there!
Recent research indicates that companies who ignore the development of employees at all levels do so to their own detriment. In Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce, researchers found that “offering training and career tracks to line workers led to lower turnover and easier recruitment, and served to make employees more efficient while they were with the company.”
Translation: investing in training saves you lots of money.
But We DO Train Our Salespeople
Many sales leaders get a little testy at this point. “We DO train our salespeople,” they say. Maybe they do; maybe they don’t.
In my experience, most employee on-boarding processes are random, disorganized, or incomplete. How would you answer the following questions for your sales organization?
Do you have a script for the first 60 days for new salespeople? Does that script include milestones, minimum expectations, testing, ?
Do you require salespeople to test regularly in the first six months for core knowledge acquisition?
Do you require salespeople to demonstrate proficiency in specific product or service sets prior to releasing them to make calls?
Do you provide selling skills training and test for proficiency?
Do you have a process for putting new salespeople in the field with senior salespeople or managers during the on-boarding process? Does the “trainer” have a checklist of specific skills/topics to review/demonstrate during that time?
Do you even check to see if salespeople can complete an effective sales presentation?
Yes, most people hate “role play.” Many “experts” argue against doing role play. They say that people don’t like to role play, and the scenarios don’t play out like the real world and on and on.
But they don’t have a leg to stand on. Very few people LOVE to practice. Most would rather avoid the scrutiny of their peers or management staff. But the truth is that you are guilty of sales malpractice if let your salespeople practice on customers. Unless, of course, you are more than willing to lose that opportunity. In that case, knock yourself out. Live role-play is even better!
Here is what I see consistently:
Few companies have an intentional and measurable approach to on-boarding new employees.
Few companies have a set of milestones and minimum standards established for testing during the first 60 days of a new employee.
Few companies provide purposeful career-development programs for their sales teams (managers and salespeople).
Few companies provide training to develop critical selling skills. Their “training” regimen consists primarily of product orientation and sales administration (CRM, placing orders, budgets and reports).
And very few companies train their salespeople to develop a comprehensive sales plan for developing their business. CRM is one thing; a sales plan (a business plan) is quite another. The first is retrospective, the second is prospective. Big difference.
But all of these companies say exactly the same thing: ”We train our people.” Sure they do.
Hiring an exceptional sales team is not only difficult, but also extremely expensive. And while an investment in successful salespeople will deliver massive returns, the fact remains that a sales hiring budget requires large amounts of starting capital. After all, truly exceptional salespeople expect—and receive—exceptional salaries.
Unfortunately, many companies looking for great salespeople simply can’t compete with the Fortune 500s if the size of their sales budget is the only relevant consideration. Does this mean that sales hiring is a rigged game? Does it mean that growing B2B startups, for example, are doomed to lose to bigger-name companies with deeper pockets every time?
Following traditional hiring practices—where a candidate’s history of major sales and lasting buyer relationships in relevant markets is the hiring criterion—the answer is probably ‘yes.’ However, this doesn’t mean that smaller companies with smaller sales budgets should give up and accept mediocre hires!
Instead, companies that can’t compete on budget alone need to change the rules of the hiring game.
How to change the rules for successful sales hires:
Without a budget large enough to offer competitive compensation, top salespeople are not likely to leave their current jobs—especially for a high-risk position at a company without strong marketing, brand recognition, buyer trust, and a well-oiled sales apparatus. However, by changing tactics and focusing on a different set of hiring criterion, startups and high-growth companies can make smart hires and build high-achieving sales teams.
Though there are numerous ways to attract and develop talent through creative deployment of a smaller budget, effective sales recruiters focus on two of the most crucial considerations: finding candidates that have the potential toconsistently sell successfully year-over-year, and investing in these employees to expedite development and reduce turnover.
1. To find the right candidates, look beyond the résumé
It is tempting to think that the top candidate for a sales position is the candidate with the most impressive career selling products similar to yours for big-name companies within your target market(s). But while a candidate’s résumé illustrates, to a limited extent, how well that candidate can sell—perhaps under optimal conditions—it may or may not reflect how well that candidate will sell for your company.
In order to get a better sense of how well a candidate will do, several additional considerations must be taken into account during the hiring process. These include a candidate’s deep-seated personality traits (or “sales DNA”), those personal/professional features common across the most successful sales people, as well as details about your company culture and its selling environment.
Sales DNA
Truly successful salespeople share certain characteristics or personality traits—those traits that help them get ahead no matter the circumstances. Such traits include confidence, perseverance, ambition, competitiveness, resilience, optimism, situational intelligence, a sense of urgency, the desire and ability to influence others, and more.
If a candidate displays the right sales DNA—even if that candidate has little sales experience, or has only worked in unrelated markets or on different types of sales cycles—that candidate has a real opportunity to outperform a candidate who has more experience but lacks some essential traits. This means that a potential hire with the right DNA (combined with the right sales environment and support) will quickly build an impressive track record—at a lower starting salary.
Company selling environment
Though top salespeople share many similar traits, they are not a completely homogeneous group: individuals have different selling strengths and weaknesses, different working styles and preferences, and different experiences across markets, sales cycles, buyer groups, etc. As a result, a quota-busting top performer at a Fortune 100 corporation, for example, might fail to convert a single lead for your early-stage startup—and vice versa.
In many cases, a candidate with less sector experience might be a better performer than the candidate who has spent the majority of their career in your organization’s sector—if that candidate has more experience working in sales environments similar to yours. Once again, by broadening hiring criteria to include candidates that aren’t established in your particular sector, your organization is presented an additional opportunity to stay within budget and also make a better hiring decision overall.
Thus, in order to optimize budget and hire salespeople who will drive sales, it is essential to thoroughly understand the myriad characteristics that make up your company’s selling environment. These include company culture and offerings, market and competition, average deal size and sales cycle length, available sales infrastructure, etc. With a complete understanding of your selling environment, it is easier to identify candidates who are most likely to succeed—even if they come with less overall experience and a lower salary.
2. To build a top-notch sales team, invest in your salespeople
When recruiting on a budget, world class hiring organizations understand the importance of spending more—wherenecessary. Candidates who have the right sales DNA, mesh with your company’s selling environment, and require lower starting salaries are ideal. However, making a mediocre hire rather than an exceptional one in order to cut costs is one of the most expensive mistakes an employer can make.
Invest in training and development
Along similar lines—and especially with a hiring strategy focused on less experienced sales employees—it is essential to invest heavily in a sales team’s training and development. As we’ve said before, “Self-managing sales people and teams are as rare as purple unicorns.” Keeping top performers performing while transforming high potential into selling machines requires exceptional leadership, training, and support. And exceptional sales infrastructure requires money.
A young company with a relatively young or inexperienced sales team depends on strong leadership: after all, only through smart management and training will new employees reach the sales potential they initially displayed during the hiring process. Again, when hiring a sales leader, successful sales recruiters examine personality traits and company fit alongside the candidate’s history of developing new teams into seasoned sales machines.
The necessity to invest in training time for new sales hires cannot be overstated. Even though weeks spent learning company and market best practices, for example, are weeks during which no sales are made, that investment will yield high returns when new employees do start selling. At the same time, a skilled sales leader will conduct rigorous monitoring and focus on accountability, helping to transform raw potential into ROI.
Invest in work environment
Salary is always important, especially in the highly competitive world of sales. However, numerous studies have shown that work environment plays a larger role in employee satisfaction than salary. Developing an environment where employees feel personally valued and highly motivated (rather than afraid) both increases current salespeople’s performance and attracts top sales talent.
An exceptional work environment comprises multiple aspects of interpersonal communication and interaction, employee recognition and commendation, effective management practices, and more. Salespeople who feel that their actions have a direct impact on their company and that they are developing their own opportunity for growth exhibit higher motivation than salespeople driven by the fear of missing an impossible quota. Thus, top companies encourage programs that highlight and emphasize the value their salespeople bring to the organization, that prioritize internal talent when filling leadership positions, and so on.
It is no coincidence that today’s massively successful corporations—Google, Apple, etc.—devote significant attention to employee happiness. For the same reason, many new startups are emphasizing company culture: from organizing weekly team events and setting up gaming tables in the break room, to allowing flexible work schedules and implementing personal employee-employer communication. Such benefits play a significant role in a startup’s ability to attract top talent at a lower price tag.
3. Keep an eye on budget—but beware becoming stingy
It’s an unavoidable part of the sales hiring game that startups and smaller companies must make do with smaller recruiting budgets than the Fortune 500s of the world. And while focus on budget is essential when working with limited starting capital, it is equally essential not to forget the reality that newly trained salespeople will have the opportunity to flee for higher salaries!
Investing to expand salespeople’s skill sets, actively building company loyalty, and rewarding top performers with commensurate commissions all mitigate hiring and costly turnover risk. After all, the better and more experienced a new sales team becomes, the more attractive your sales employees look to competitors: your employees are no longer the overlooked and under-resumed.
At the same time, though: the better and more experienced a new sales team becomes, the more they earn for the company—and it’s far cheaper to invest those earnings back into a winning team than it is to start again from scratch.
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.
The sales engineer plays a vital role on a sales team. Not only do they help interpret a customer’s technical requirements and communicate product features, but they are also given a level of trust that is often not offered to salespeople and consequently, the sales engineer is in a unique position to promote a vendor’s key benefits and value proposition.
While there is no mistaking that the sales engineer contributes to a company’s sales mission, the role is to support and technical competence is paramount. Typically, sales engineers must possess a bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering or a similar scientific area of study and work in fields such as software or manufacturing. Top performing sales engineers also have the communication and relationship skills to be able to work closely with team members and prospects to explain complex solutions and systems in easy-to-understand terms; the ability to alter their presentation style to meet the needs of their audience; and most importantly, build trust with prospects.
This expertise is rare, and it’s no easy task to recruit sales engineers that can connect with prospects while still being able to articulate their solution’s technical capabilities. Given the reality that the job description, or career opportunity as we call it, represents an important aspect in the recruiting process, world-class employers understand that a job description needs to succulently articulate the challenges that high achieving sales engineers crave, along with the right set of benefits that are attached to the opportunity. Sales engineers will be on the lookout for companies that foster the right culture, so incorporating an excellent description of your team, your corporate environment, and clear definitions for the sales engineer role will elevate your job description.
Overview Section
The best employers seize passive sales engineers’ attention with a brief but powerful overview of their company. They tailor the description of their company’s recent achievements, current growth structure, and corporate culture to a sales engineer’s interest in product excellence, highlighting technical achievement and recent innovations. Since high achieving sales engineers understand the potential they have in the marketplace, SE’s want to be assured of growth opportunities in a prospective company. Providing incentive and compensation information, including base salary and on-target expectations in the overview section provides prospective candidates with the ability to immediately recognize the opportunity’s value (note that a variable component to the compensation plan is common, but represents a much smaller portion of overall compensation than the typical compensation plan associated with a sales representative or executive role).
Goals
In order to give candidates an honest and accurate picture of what the expectations are for the role, hiring managers should provide a specific set of goals for the sales engineer position. Since SE’s are results-driven people, including plenty of information about how your company measures performance and the kind of challenges the candidate will face will help generate excitement in the opportunity while acting as an informal candidate filtering mechanism.
Leading employers state very specific numbers, percentages, and provide examples of the positions’ expectations in order to present the opportunity as honestly as possible.
Responsible for new business development of $___ per year.
Works with xx – xx number of clients each month to deliver sales presentations and close deals.
Responsible for increasing sales by ___% during the first year.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities are the elements that managers use to determine if a candidate can and will be successful in the role. Successful opportunity descriptions carefully outline the sales engineer’s responsibilities and take into consideration their everyday tasks as well as the relationship would have with the rest of the sales team.
Work with product and sales teams to interpret customer requirements and deliver solutions with the end-goal of sales in mind.
Demonstrate an understanding of what the customer will need in terms of on-going service, and manage expectations on the customer and sales side.
Develop and deliver product demonstrations and sales presentations that explain key technical aspects of solutions that will benefit customers and prospects.
Provide answers to client questions about our product, servicing, and other technical aspects of the product.
Successfully tailor demonstrations for customers, trade shows, and special events.
Work closely with the customer to set up and maintain a successful demo period, being available to answer questions and trouble-shoot as needed.
Be able to think critically and suggest improvements that might lead to cost savings or other client benefits.
Work with the client to problem-solve through every hurdle during the sales process.
Arrange and, in some cases, lead training for customers.
Work with compliance to ensure all legal requirements are met.
Research the industry on an on-going basis to know what changes may be on the horizon that will impact current and future sales.
Provide feedback to the team as well as R&D for process or product improvements as required.
Condense information into reports for a wide variety of uses from marketing and sales to engineering and R&D.
Provide clear and accurate responses for RFPs and/or contribute technical solutions directly to proposals.
Work in tandem with the sales team on presentations to ensure accuracy.
Willingness to travel and devote long hours to challenging sales projects.
Experience
Experience gives hiring managers a sense of a candidate’s ability to execute the activities required to drive sales. Companies seeking high achieving sales engineers focus on experience that is aligned with the desired selling tasks stated in the responsibility section of the job description.
Demonstrate a successful track record in the _______________ industry, (product/service or related product/service) to ______________ (group of buyers).
Background in supporting $___-figure deals.
Successful experience in working with sales and engineering staff to deliver high-quality presentations and information to clients.
Successful experience in developing and delivering persuasive presentations to audiences ranging from small groups of clients to large trade show audiences.
Fantastic written communication skills.
Successful experience in driving innovation as a way to increase sales.
Skills
Sales engineers possess a unique set of skills that require left- and right-brain expertise. Their ability to skilfully manage both will set them apart from the rest of the pack. Including details in the job description that articulate exactly what is required to be successful not only acts as a candidate filtration mechanism, but sets the foundation for hiring managers to assess if a candidate can fulfil these expectations during the interview process.
Strong ability to quickly comprehend and explain complex engineering concepts in simple, effective terms.
Ability to work in concert with team members to build the most effective presentations that blend technical facts with tangible benefits.
Proven sales skills with an eye for results.
Superlative communication skills with the ability to navigate a wide range of internal and external environments.
Coaching skills to help co-workers quickly understand and explain new and emerging technical concepts.
Strong networker who can reach out to customers and clients to offer support and assistance.
Industry insider who understands current trends and anticipates change.
Impeccable time management skills.
Ability to work in a wide range of software programs that support our business (Excel, SalesForce, PowerPoint/CAD, CSS, etc.)
DNA
There is a core group of traits that any salesperson has that will predict their success on the job. Incorporating these qualities into your job description enables experienced interviewers to determine if a candidate possesses these qualities:
Drive, energy, and ambition – the triumvirate personality traits that any successful sales professional should have.
A competitive nature.
Sense of urgency.
A sense of optimism, resilience, and perseverance.
Team player.
Solution-oriented.
Looking for an easy-to-use job description template? Get instant access by filling out the form below:
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.
We are approached by many companies seeking to hire their first sales person. This is an exciting time for young companies and often it is excess demand that seemingly requires the addition of a new sales person. In some cases, the founders are unable to effectively sell themselves and hope that hiring a new sales person will allow them to focus their time elsewhere. This is a grave mistake and we advise against hiring in these cases.
Hiring The First Rep is Usually a Huge Gamble
First and foremost, in most start-up companies, sales is the most important aspect of success. Hiring a new sales person is a huge gamble, so why would a founder want to take this risk and assign this most important aspect of success to someone else?
A fledgling company has no history of success that would dictate that the new sales person will be successful. Furthermore, customers dealing with a start-up, particularly if the offering is new, want to deal with company founders who know the offering intimately and can have meaningful conversations about the product benefits. A founder has to accept the reality that a sales person in a start-up is like a boxer fighting with one arm tied behind his back.
So what if the sales person is not successful?
If the founders have effectively resigned from the sales effort and placed all the responsibility on the new sales person, and that new sales person fails to sell at the required clip, the founders have no contingency sales efforts to support cash flow requirements. They also don’t have the key customer relationships to pick up things if they are required to react quickly and jump back into the sales effort. Furthermore, the founders will not have been exposed to valuable feedback directly from customers on critical missing features and benefits in the product or service.
Even if the founders do not consider themselves strong sales people, they are usually capable of generating sales and we always recommend that they stay very involved in the sales effort until at least the company has successfully launched.
To your success!
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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.
With less than 3,000 miles between New York City and San Francisco, there is an undeniable contrast in business cultures between these two business meccas.
While ‘the Big Apple’ is influenced by Wall Street’s power brokering, deal-making business strategy, San Francisco embraces the business utility created by fostering relationships.
It is no surprise that these differences impact the selling cultures in these cities. What may come as a surprise to hiring managers, however, is that these differences directly influence an organization’s sales recruiting efforts.
While both cities have a large pool of sales people, talent and career opportunities, organizations actively searching for B2B sales talent in NYC and San Francisco cannot embrace the same recruiting strategy.
Here are 3 techniques world class hiring organizations embrace when sales recruiting in New York City and San Francisco:
1) Focus on relationships in San Francisco and be concise in the Big Apple:
Cold calling and unsolicited recruiting pitches work well in New York, where aggressive tactics can yield surprisingly good results. The cut-throat sales world of New York dictates that sales reps who get straight to the point often win. Speak to a sales candidate in NYC and be prepared to make your pitch in 25 seconds or less or expect to hear a dial tone. Think ‘The Donald’.
Hard recruiting techniques on the West Coast, however, are likely to draw a blank response. Relationship-based selling wins the day in San Francisco and is why many of the best West Coast sales reps focus on establishing an active presence in their space and becoming trusted advisors to their clients.
Effective recruiters hiring in San Francisco, therefore, do not simply call on prospective candidates and start articulating a positions requirements. They educate the candidate about the opportunity and its benefits, frame the conversation around the candidate’s career, and become a trusted advisor.
So what about recruiting in New York City? For top sellers in NYC, utilizing every second the business day offers to hunt new business and close deals is what counts. They are too focused on hitting and exceeding their quota and tending to important selling activities than to be having lengthy conversations with sales recruiters about future opportunities.
In New York, hiring managers must appreciate the nature of the city’s salespeople and quickly present the career opportunity. They must focus on the elements that matter to candidates – the compensation package, office location, territory, travel, and the company’s reputation in the marketplace.
2) Focus on corporate culture and career growth in San Francisco and focus on immediate earnings in New York:
San Francisco embraces opportunities. The city is filled with visionaries and start-up founders who are convinced they are on the road to changing the business world forever. Therefore, top Bay Area salespeople appreciate a recruiter that instils enthusiasm and excitement as part of the recruiting process.
West Coasters aren’t afraid of a little risk, if they see the possibility of high rewards. While generating excitement around the opportunity by focusing on intangible benefits like corporate culture is an effective tactic, it is important for hiring managers to have their opportunity pitch remain grounded in numbers. Salespeople, regardless of where they live, will immediately dismiss an opportunity that has overstated earning and career growth opportunities.
This is not to say that there aren’t visionaries in New York, in fact, quite the contrary, but the East Coast, thanks to its legions of bankers and financial wizards, means that sales candidates typically assign less value to elements not tied to the opportunity’s “bottom line”. Hiring managers in NYC, therefore, need to tailor their pitch to the candidate by focusing on immediate earning opportunities.
3) Job titles matter more in NYC:
When Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows up to investor meetings wearing hoodies, nobody bats an eye on the West Coast. The world’s tech capital is famous not just for its innovation, but also for its “relaxed” business attire and flat corporate structure. However, wearing sneakers and a hoodie versus a $3,000 suit, and the difference between a Manager and a VP title are important aspects of the business culture in New York City.
These differences impact recruiting efforts in San Francisco and New York. Job titles matter more to candidates in NYC – the cornerstone of corporate America. New York’s traditional business structures are still pervasive and advancing up the ‘corporate ladder’ is a fundamental part of the ‘American Dream’. This has shaped the business and career psyche of many New Yorkers and impacts if a sales candidate will consider transitioning to a new opportunity. Effective sales recruiters in New York, therefore, will not only focus on a candidate’s increased earning potential, but on an upgraded title.
In short, hiring managers that tailor their approach to court candidates based on local market requirements will be far more efficient and successful. Adopting a specific plan on the type of information to share about the opportunity, and catering to the candidate’s mindset will help get the right salesperson onboard and lead to increased revenue.
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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.
EXCITING NEWS: We are about to launch our latest book, SALES RECRUITING 2.0 – How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast
That’s half of today’s news. We are putting on a FREE 30 minute, high impact workshop to preview the advice and insight in the book.
If you are a sales manager or business leader who is serious about:
• building HIGH PERFORMANCE SALES TEAMS
• consistently achieving BIG SALES TARGETS
• getting 100% OF YOUR REPS AT TARGET, and
• getting to 0% TURNOVER on your team
…then this workshop is for you
PROVEN SYSTEMS:Peak Sales® Recruiting Partner, Blogger and Author, Eliot Burdett brings more than 20 years success in building companies and sales teams. In this presentation, he will share systems that work: they are applied to successfully find hundreds of top performers for Peak Sales® customers each year.
We have a limited number of spots available for this event so sign up early to secure your space.
WHEN: Join us on Thursday May 27th at 11:00 EST to discover how you can apply these approaches to build better sales teams that drive bigger results.
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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.
After a few years of managing high achieving salespeople, I noticed that there are key differences between the best sales reps and the rest in how they conduct themselves. One of the most noticeable differences is what they did outside of the office.
Simply put, the top performing reps kept working while the majority of reps, come 5pm, would leave the office and not touch any work until 9am the following morning. While unplugging at the end of the day isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I noticed the best reps were unique in the sense that they did at least one and usually all of these 5 things outside the office.
Watch their email and voicemail – the best reps operate with the highest sense of urgency. They accept the credos to “strike while the iron is hot” and that “time kills deals”. They don’t leave anything to tomorrow if it can be done today. At night, they’re watching for messages from prospects, and checking for updates on deals. They understand the importance of momentum and respond to all communications within five minutes, literally 24/7.
Planning – the best sales reps don’t plan their day in the morning, they do so in the evening prior. They review their daily activities and identify what goals have been met and are still outstanding. They scrutinize these activities and identify the ones that best contributed to achieving their goals. They use this information to help set priorities and schedule for the coming day so they can get up early and hit the ground running.
Personal development – on-the-job training is critical but oftentimes there are additional skills that can only be acquired during personal time. Whether spending time with a mentor, researching online or reading books, the best sales reps spend considerable time working to make themselves better professionally and personally.
Rest – it takes an immense amount of energy to actively hunt and close new business. The highest achieving sales representatives understand that getting a sufficient amount of rest is critical in maintaining their edge. Whether playing sports, going to a museum, enjoying down time with family or catching up on much needed sleep, top performers make sure to recharge the batteries to get the fuel they need to be successful.
Keep their commitments – Trust is a key factor in selling success and the best reps understand that staying true to their commitments extends outside of the boardroom. High achievers work hard to be able to over deliver on their promises and often it takes work outside regular business hours to make this happen.
Success is seldom accidental – the best sales representatives have just as much discipline and commitment to achieving their goals when they’re not in the office as when they are.
To your success!
Photo by Joshua Earle.
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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.
Achieving big sales is no easy feat and doing it consistently is rare. A significant piece of the sales management success recipe and one of the most challenging aspects of driving superior sales results is hiring the the right sales people.
We extracted what the top sales experts had to say on sales hiring and building a high performance sales force. Their wisdom and insights bring stunning clarity for anyone interested in hiring the right sales people.
“You say it to your sales team all the time: “ABC. Always be closing.” Well, as a sales leader, I’d recommend that you adopt a slightly different mantra for yourself: ABR: Always be recruiting. Many sales managers settle into complacency when their team is performing well, or recruiting falls by the wayside when there’s too much else on their plates. But in reality, it’s essential to constantly have recruiting on your to-do list.”
“When you’re hiring – HIRE. Business is a full contact sport. Don’t ‘hope’ great people join the company. If you have them in your sights – land them. NOW.”
“World-Class Sales Organizations recognize the value of the talent they acquire and the importance of continued development. They have a core competency in identifying and hiring talent that will thrive in their environment. They also recognize that professional development is crucial to improving sales performance and helping them retain the best people.”
“How can sales leaders mitigate the danger of making an unwise hiring investment? One of the best ways to find out what’s really behind a stellar resume and great interview skills is to talk with people the rep has actually worked for or with.”
“Many people are under the mistaken belief that salespeople are born, not made. I wholeheartedly disagree – and I speak from personal experience. I’m an introvert who initially detested salespeople and their manipulative techniques.”
“I insist on background checks for sales (and any other) candidates. I don’t care how much they’ve sold, whom they worked for, who recommends them, and how well they do during the recruitment and selection process.”
Source – I’ll Never Make That Hiring Mistake Again. Ever.
“Hiring great Inside Sales reps has never been harder. Increased competition for top talent and supply lagging behind demand means that when we land that great rep we have to make their experience with us outstanding! It is as much about retention as recruitment, right? Sales and Marketing leaders are making a strategic investment in their hiring process and then undermining it with a tactical on-boarding process.”
“A question we should be asking and answering honestly is, “Are the people we have in sales today here because of what we did for them over the past two years, or in spite of what we did for them?” If you cannot tick off a half-dozen things you did to enable sales reps to sell in tough markets—increased levels of sales ready leads, on-demand and improved training, access to new sales tools, etc.,—you may have created an environment that will make your experienced, productive reps ready to consider alternative jobs when recruiters start calling.”
“Study your best employees to determine the characteristics that differentiate them from the average ones. Find out what drives your best people to be the best. Discover which talents and skills are crucial to success in your unique business environment. Then create interview questions that will reveal whether the candidate can be exceptional in your specific organization.”
“Top sales candidates are discerning. To land them, you have to know what turns them off. If they encounter certain signals, they may cross your company off the list. The hiring process contains many factors- any one of which could be negatively perceived. Then you lose the candidate.”
“Sales people are sales people. They are the lifeblood of many companies yet they are different than the traditional technology start-up DNA so the ways that you hire, motivate, compensate and assess performance of these individuals will be different.”
“Follow a multi-step process. It will keep you sane, ensure you don’t make dumb mistakes, and create a better experience for everyone involved – candidates, you and your team. Most importantly, it can help you avoid impulsive / impatient hiring.”
“When it comes to hiring sales talent, most companies prefer to “buy” instead of “build.” But experience alone is not a sufficient predictor of who will be successful in a sales role. You can develop competencies with the right training, mentoring, coaching, support, and motivation programs. But to get characteristics, you have to hire the right individuals. In the words of one sales leader, “You can’t send a duck to eagle school.” According to another, “Although you can teach a turkey to climb a tree, it’s much easier to hire a squirrel.”
“When writing job postings and emails, capture the magic in the job by emphasizing what the person will be learning and doing and what he or she could become if successful. This is how you attract the best people.”
“Many small to mid-sized companies live in “La-La Land” when it comes to hiring salespeople. They hire from the gut until they are forced by competition or frustration to hire quality sales talent on a consistent basis.”
“Think you just hired a great salesperson? You didn’t. You hired a salesperson with the potential to be great on your sales team. That potential is only achieved when a structured on-boarding program is in place.”
“Hiring ‘A’ players is difficult. But the reward is worth the pain. We estimate the cost of mis-hiring can range from $150,000 to $750,000. Using a defined method for hiring reduces this pain to hire. And don’t reinvent the wheel. Use a proven method for your hiring process.”
“Define your value proposition. Why should someone consider working for your firm? The better candidates have options these days, so you need to determine how to differentiate your firm from the competition. Can your firm pass the comparison test?”
“In most of the companies that I have managed, or consulted for, the top 5% percent of sales producers sold upwards of 35% of all revenues. Thus, *hiring* just one more super-star is worth the fee of a head-hunter that knows the industry. Before they are hired, get a behavioral profile to be sure that the salesperson will be entirely compatible with the company’s culture. On average, the performance of the candidates that were profiled and hired have been upwards of the top 85% of the sales force.”
“Organizations that really have their sales performance strategy together will be driving forward with both training and coaching working synergistically. Each plays an important role in maintaining competitiveness, motivation and retaining star players.”
“Do your homework.Salespeople are a big investment. Even a great performer who hits the ground running is going to take up a certain amount of your time and available cash. With that in mind, don’t skimp on relevant background information like skills assessments, references, W2s, and even outside interviewers.”
“It is not uncommon for sales managers to race through the recruiting process in an effort to quickly hire someone because they need a rep in place. After all, hiring reps is seldom a task that managers enjoy. In these situations, managers focus on the positive aspects of the applicant and neglect to see their possible shortcomings. This often leads to “hiring remorse” once they discover that the rep is not entirely suitable.”
“Sales people are money machines. Without sales you have no company. You need good salespeople. And like good technology and equipment, good sales people cost money. Focus on the big pictures, your vision to be a successful company. Build a top performing sales team. Build a money machine. Build it wisely with an intelligent compensation package and give the support they need to be the best sales team in your industry.”
“Here’s an idea to consider: what if I told you that the best salespeople for today’s complex sale are currently employed as teachers, engineers, or other knowledge workers? In fact, they have no inclination towards sales, but they love to share ideas, they love to challenge others’ thinking, they love to see the outcomes of their work, and help others. What if I told you that those characteristics rarely co-exist in the candidates you’re currently screening who are opting into sales roles? Would you believe me? It kind of gets you thinking doesn’t it?”
Source – 10 Trends Every Sales Exec, Leader and CEO Must Know for 2013
“In a recent survey most sales leaders reported that only two-thirds of sellers in their organizations have the potential to adopt insight selling behaviors. When you couple this with the issue of an aging sales force, hiring quality sales talent has become a pressing issue for most organizations. However, before you even get started on hiring Challengers, you first need to encourage them to apply. Most sales organizations’ job postings today fail to attract Challengers as they do not reflect the right skill sets or employee value propositions that attract candidates with Challenger potential.”
“I always ask for reference checks, but never of people who they worked for or with. Rather, I ask for references from people they closed. I will ask for the names and numbers of three people they closed in the past year to find out what type of sales person the candidate is. I have never had a hire who gave me customer references and a history of achievement who didn’t end up being a great hire.”
“Ironically, the very thing which has been proven time and time again to have the greatest impact on people’s motivation, trust, commitment, loyalty and work ethic is what people want most, even more than money. That is, recognition, acknowledgement, being part of something, being included, having a purpose; even more responsibility around something they value and feel is important to the company and to themselves. There’s no reason to be stingy with our acknowledgment.”
“What you need is a bit of excitement or sizzle in your sales training and on-boarding curriculum. Salespeople are very emotional. They love to be fired up. They took a new job for something fresh. Give them a new set of skills that will challenge them and get them engaged with telling your story right away.”
“One of the main reasons top sales performers leave organizations is the lack of opportunities for personal development. This is particularly true among younger sales professionals in the Millennial generation.”
Source – Are You Coaching You Tops Sales Reps? – An STC Classic
“In the first year of employment, the most common reason for turnover on a sales team is that expectations are not met. Either the salespeople quit or you let them go. On-boarding helps to minimize those instances, which impacts both the top and bottom line of the company.”
“One of the best ways to improve your interviewing results is to team up with someone with a complementary (read opposite) personality and approach. Partner up with someone you trust who is more analytical and less trusting than you are. While one of you asks questions, the other observes, takes notes, and then asks follow up questions. You will be amazed at what you uncover.”
“My experience as a recruiter and leader of sales professionals has taught me that your vision must be the centerpiece of your recruiting strategy. Vision highlights your long-term strategy as it relates to culture, key areas of development and major goals. Focusing your recruiting message on your vision and finding loan officers that are a match for your long-term strategy (rather than benefits alone) will decrease employee turnover and quickly connect new team members to your branch’s overall purpose.”
“When hiring a new sales manager, it’s easy to gloss over a candidate’s resume and LinkedIn profile and get excited about his or her past experience. But hidden in most resumes and online profiles are red flags that can eliminate candidates before the interview process even begins.”
Source – 5 LinkedIn Tips to Hire Better Sales Managers
“Don’t hire sales people too early. In the early days, the founders should be able to sell (and should be selling). Don’t hire several sales people at once. Your goal is to figure out the “pattern” of what kinds of people are best based on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. You need some feedback from the system so you can continue to iterate on your hires.”
“Studies show a quarter of salespeople shouldn’t be involved in selling at all, and almost half should be in a different type of sales. It’s tough to tell salespeople apart when so many look similar from the outside. Resilience is one of the biggest factors in a hunter’s success. The best way to determine resiliency is to have the candidate demonstrate the skill.”
“Choose your recruits carefully – make sure they are a “fit” for direct selling. Don’t compound the bad reputation of MLM companies by “recruiting” anyone who breathes. Select people carefully who really are a good fit for that business model. You will reduce your headaches by choosing people who are outgoing, self-starters, and have a track record of success.”
“The people make a sales team. Process supports them, but human execution is the key factor. Even if I am at a large organization, I want my team to be disruptive, admired and remembered for over-achievement. That means I have to assemble a team of “A” players. The “Andreessen Three” as I call them have become my guiding principals.”
“Prepare the desk, chair, computer, supplies and tools well before the new hire arrives. Save the HR paperwork for a few days and instead adorn the space with balloons and greeting cards from the rest of the team. A lunch celebration, and maybe even a welcome bottle of wine or suitable gift from the boss, is sure to add to an amazing first day memory that will get the employment journey off on the right foot.”
“It’s always good when you find somebody who has a chip on their shoulder and they can use it in the right way. You want that hunger without the vengeance though. The best sales people and entrepreneurs are those who came from nothing, with that chip on their shoulder, and have nothing to lose and everything to prove.”
“Harvard did a study a while back on the characteristics of great sales professionals, interviewing the best ones in the country and their hiring managers. One of the characteristics they identified was ‘impeccable honesty.’ This might seem at odds with most non-sales people’s perception of “sales reps” but it is absolutely necessary to be truly successful in this great profession.”
“Check references-I am continually surprised at how many people don’t bother to check references. ALWAYS check. Even if the other party requires a request in writing for legal reasons, do it.”
“If ever there was a time to be prepared, if ever there was a time for a top notch sales call plan, it’s in the interview process. So that’s why I ask for their sales call plan. If they haven’t thought enough to prepare for the most important sales call they could make, what are they going to do in their job for me? Are they going to prepare, are they going to be impactful?”
“Being able to pitch well doesn’t necessarily make a sales rep great. The best inside sales reps are terrific at listening to prospects’ pain points and understanding them before launching into a sales pitch. That means that often the best sales reps are the ones who talk the least. As a litmus test, see if reps just talk about themselves during an interview or if they ask questions and listen intently to your answers.”
“In hiring front-line sellers, organizations may flounder and fail when hiring practices are left up to a single department. Sales Managers frequently take short cuts. Recruiters and HR Business Partners often miss the mark because it’s challenging for them to assess selling skills. When selection responsibilities reside with one or the other department, costly mistakes are made.”
Source – Improve Your Sales Hiring with a Shared Selection Process
“Sales vets who seize the power of the new technology are willing to adapt it for her use – get her on the phone. If a sales veteran has a track record of learning and adapting their skill set to the current reality, give them a chance.”
Source –Addressing a Prior Post On Hiring Seasoned Vets
“A great best practice I witnessed was making hiring a team sport. Have multiple members of a sales team interview a prospective new sales candidate. Give everyone on the team a role in the hiring process and an area to go deep and investigate.”
“The aim of the decision making process is to rank the candidates on the best balance of all the requirements. What is the best method of achieving this objective? Quite simply, straight overall comparison between candidates, the total score for the weighted profile and the results of any scientific assessment from psychometric tests.”
“Finding good talent is getting harder – especially with the growing demands of the inside sales role. If you’re looking for your next sales superhero, then you need to be asking the right questions that get you deeper into the candidate’s character and reveal their secret identity.”
“Allow the candidate to control the conversation so that you can get a feel for their communication skills. Ask open and general questions to see how the candidate volunteers information. One item I’m looking for is not only the type of questions the candidate asks me as the interviewer, but also the number of questions they ask. This reveals the level of pre-work they’ve done prior to the interview.”
“If your people feel, even a little bit, like they are merely the objects you use to build your own success then they will not commit to you or your organization. That’s why it’s so incredibly vital that you show them how important they are as people. Not only as employees, not only as “team members” but as individual people.”
“Social matters when recruiting and hiring. When a savvy sales manager goes to hire a salesperson, they’ll check the candidate’s social media channels to monitor activity. They’ll not only look at the quality of the content posted and the frequency of how often that person engages, but will also consider their influence.”
“Recruiting top talent doesn’t happen overnight and doesn’t come easily—even for the top companies. Unless you are willing to offer a phenomenal package, recruiting the top sales talent requires building relationships that lead to bringing the individual into your company. Sometimes, when the employment gods are particularly kind, this process can be almost immediate. More often, the process requires time, patience and effort.”
“Much as popular athletes and movie stars are often forgiven for bad behavior, superstar salespeople often seem immune to the professional standards to which the rest of us are held accountable. Is this the right way to manage our revenue stream? Does it optimize the customer’s experience?”
Source – Would You Fire a High Performing Sales Jerk?
“Struggling sales managers often develop three core beliefs, which, as it turns out, are really three big lies. 1) You can’t find good people. 2) I can improve our sales Performance by working harder, 3) I don’t have time for training. First off, there are plenty of good people out there; plenty of top-quality, high-performance candidates that could dramatically impact your team’s performance. However, you don’t have a process for identifying and hiring those players – or you wouldn’t recognize them if they glowed – so you never seem to hire great players.”
“Before you hire your first employee, identify a “success profile,” a list of characteristics that will make a successful part of your sales team. Hire only people that match your success profile.”
“I have been working the best ways to recruit the best sales people for small to mid-sized companies, and have discovered in that effort why people do not stay even after they are hired, trained and begin working. Retention seems to be the biggest problem although it is usually blamed on the hiring process. There are several factors sales people are faced with once the smaller company hires them. The new hire needs to deal effectively with these factors or they will not stay, so if you can find a way to overcome some of these you might be better off than trying a million hiring techniques.”
“If you are building a new inside sales team or expanding an existing one, you know that recruiting good people can feel about as easy as qualifying for the Olympics. Given today’s challenging market for senior reps, it can take months of recruiting time to lure someone with this ideal background. You can spend the time, compete for the same reps as everyone else… or you can get creative. Consider this alternative: Hire a recent college graduate with a sales degree.”
“Start recruiting before you need to hire. The time to look for new talent is long before you have a gaping hole in your organization. Look for new recruits as a part of your regular routine, not as the rare exception to the norm. This simple habit helps you avoid the dreadfully painful experience of hiring substandard talent because you ran out of time to properly recruit a rock star.”
“Hiring a professional salesperson too early is like pressing Go on a GPS without first entering an address. How can you expect someone to take you to your destination when you’re not even sure where you’re going yet? Entrepreneurs generally have good reasons for hiring professionals. They don’t like to sell themselves. They need time to work on the company. They figure professionals have special secret sales-guy moves. But if the product and the sales strategy are still in flux, a professional can do more harm than good.”
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.
A recent Gallup poll found that 82 percent of the time, companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for a management position. The research looked at managers for a wide range of industries, and in a wide range of roles and found the data was fairly even across the sample. “If great managers seem scarce,” Gallup writes, “It’s because the talent required to be one is so rare.”
The key attributes a top performing manager possesses includes the ability to engage team members and customers, a knack for keeping high achieving staff from leaving for another employer, and the ability to create a culture that embraces high productivity.
In sales, managers are responsible for key metrics that drive a business forward. Getting the right person who can consistently meet and exceed the position’s expectations can make or break whether an organization achieves its revenue goals. So what makes a great sales manager?
Here are 3 of the top sales management skills:
1. Ability to Engage the team
Many attributes of great managers and inspiring leaders are difficult to measure, but a group of neuroscientists at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation are beginning to work on ways to discover how our brains are wired when it comes to leadership. An article in the Ivey Business Journal titled Neuroscience and the Link between Inspirational Leadership and Resonant Relationships outlines initial findings of tests they conducted. Executives volunteered for functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) tests to see how their brain centers would activate on hearing statements about feelings and episodes they’d had at work. The testing revealed that resonant leaders had the ability to unlock the part of our minds that are open to new ideas, while dissonant leaders actually deactivate the part of our mind that accepts new ideas.
Demonstrating that we are hard wired to be inspired by optimism and repelled by pessimism gives us a good starting point for identifying potential leaders and managers. Peak’s experience having recruited high performing sales managers over the years tells us that some managers can seem fantastic on paper, but they may also be loners or less inspiring as managers. Companies that place an importance on hiring great managers recruit master motivators who boost a team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together in the pursuit of profit— and fulfilment. Our experience in the field tells us that it’s easy enough to train an employee who has the right personality on how to do the job – but almost impossible to make an uninspiring manager alter his personality.
2. Ability to Retain Employees
Hiring an inspiring, motivating manager is the first, and arguably the most important, step in retaining top performing sales people. Gallup’s research revealed that managers account for at least 70 percent of variance in employee engagement scores across business units. “This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement,” notes the article, adding supporting statistics from other Gallup research which states that only 30 percent of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and only 13 percent are engaged worldwide. Mangers who can engage employees will have a much better opportunity to retain them when recruiters start calling.
Retaining employees, particularly in sales positions, requires more than just a good manager. As a recent report by the Society of Human Resources Managers found, it’s easier to retain employees who become embedded in their jobs and their communities. This supports Peak’s own experience in recruiting sales people for marquee employers.
Employees find it difficult to leave a job where they have friends and mentors, where they feel they fit well, and where they feel valued. A world-class manager will foster all of these traits within their team, but it’s also important to have corporate support all the way around – great manager’s work hard to rally for all the extras the sales team might need in order to foster a greater sense of belonging in team members. They try to get more budget for team building outings, for example, or better funding for team meals and entertainment.
Successful sales managers also know when to reach out to leaders within the company to help retain an employee – for instance working with HR to develop better incentive packages for top performers. And, following the old adage, if you love something, set it free, a good manager knows when it’s time to move a top performer up the ladder rather than out the door.
3. Ability to Create a Positive Work Culture
While it’s important for a manager to successfully oversee the large issues associated with managing a sales team, it’s a manager’s ability to successfully and consistently manage the everyday issues that will determine the long-term success of both the manager and the sales team. The Gallup poll outlines the mix of abilities a manager should possess in order to rally a team day-by-day. These managers have the ability to motive and they have an assertiveness to drive outcomes. They create a culture of accountability that’s easy to understand, and they build relationships with employees, co-workers and clients that foster an open dialogue. Finally, they make decisions based on what’s good for the company rather than what’s politic at the moment.
This is absolutely consistent with our own experience. The right culture leads to the right results and sales managers that understand this and can cultivate the environment for success are the exception to the rule.
It’s a tall order to find a manager who can shoulder the responsibilities that make a team excel, but there is hope. Gallup’s research showed that for every one manager in ten who possesses a natural talent for managing, there is another two people in ten who can function at a high managerial level if given the right kind of coaching and training. And with the right recruiting engine, these are not insurmountable odds.
Want more information on how to hire top performing sales managers? Check out these posts:
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.
EXCITING NEWS: We are about to launch our latest book, SALES RECRUITING 2.0 – How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast
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