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How to Hire the Best Salespeople – 7 Advanced Secrets


It will probably come as no surprise to sales managers, VPs of sales and business owners that a recent survey shows sales positions are the hardest positions to fill (see below – CareerBuilder Releases List of Hardest-to-Fill Positions). Yet, your sales force is your organization’s lifeblood. No matter how cutting edge your product or how on-point your marketing, without great salespeople, you will not be successful. Finding, vetting and hiring top performers is both an art and a science; there are innumerable methods and techniques. In this article, we’ll show you a few extra tips that are often forgotten in the urgency of hiring.

“…employers are struggling to find new employees for technology-related occupations, sales, healthcare and a variety of other areas,” said Brent Rasmussen, President of CareerBuilder North America

1. Study How to Replicate Success Within Your Own Sales Organization

If you don’t understand what is successful, it is unlikely you will be able to replicate it. Watch your top producers. Are there traits they share or activities they all practice? Maybe they are all very good at coming up with novel solutions to client problems. Maybe they are all extraordinary speakers or time managers. Write down the commonalities; these are most likely critical to be successful in your sales organization and environment.

Track the activities that led to your top performers’ winning results. Do your top performers make twice as many cold calls as your mediocre salespeople? Do they send twice as much follow-up information as your mediocre salespeople? Benchmark success.

Once you have your list, look for candidates who resemble your top performers, then purposefully interview for the desired qualities. There are many ways to do this, but one tool is giving them a list of the 5 to 10 skills and traits shown by your top performers. Ask the candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 as the highest rating).The best salespeople will rate themselves very highly, but beware. So might the misguided or the dishonest, so ask for quite a bit of detail. Self assessment is problematic, but may be insightful when combined with your own observations.

2. Search for Salespeople Who Will Only Get Better

A good way to determine a salesperson’s level of ambition is to delve into how they are trying to improve themselves in their chosen profession.  Ask what sacrifices is the candidate making to succeed. Are they real sacrifices or simply part of their jobs? What are they doing to improve themselves? What was the last sales book they read or sales video they watched or self-help seminar they attended.  Do they answer immediately, or do they stumble as they just spit out some names and try to come up with an answer?

As well-known business philosopher Jim Rohn said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” Hire the person who will make you a fortune on the way to making their own.

3. Calculate What Your Candidate’s Comfort Zone Means for Your Sales

According to author Brian Tracy, someone has earned at a consistent level over time, that could possibly be their comfort zone, and they may sabotage themselves before they exceed it. If they are a sales rep accustomed to making $70,000 per year, then they think of themselves as a $70,000 person. They may say they are interested in a move that allows the to make $150,000 per annum but are they prepared to do what it takes? If they start doing significantly better, they may remove their foot from the accelerator in order to return to their comfort zone and not even realize they are doing it.

This can be overcome by a persistent individual who is aware of the issue, but as a businessperson, you may be far better off hiring based on outstanding past performance than a hope the candidate will suddenly leap to the next level at your company.

Be meticulous in asking for a candidate’s pay stubs for the last year and verifying authenticity. Also ask the candidate what they have earned in the prior two or three years. Now look at your compensation structure and calculate how much the candidate would have to sell in order to reach the candidate’s accustomed income figure. This is likely the performance level you will get from this person, so if you are frowning at the figure derived, better take a pass.

4. Remember That Hiring the Best is a Two-Way Street

Demand for top sales talent far exceeds supply so the real top performers have many career options and tis point cannot be stressed enough. Yet another reason to get all the information you can about a candidate’s past earnings is so you can offer a competitive package to lure them to your company. Some employers forget that top performers are interviewing them, just as they are interviewing the candidates. You will need to sell top candidates on your company to make it worthwhile for them to change positions. The compensation package you offer is, of course, pivotal to luring top performers to your organizations. After all, if they are top performers, they will already be doing well financially.

5. Ask Other Key Personnel to Interview Your Top Candidates

As the hiring manager, you don’t need to make the decision alone, and, in fact, you shouldn’t. Others you may want to ask to interview your top candidates are people who are experienced in interviewing salespeople or who regularly interact with them. All should have a list of what the organization is looking for in a salesperson so you can discuss key points after the interviews. A good fit is critical to your new hire’s success, and fresh eyes may see things from viewpoints you cannot. For example, the head of marketing may be able to tell how experienced the candidate is using the kinds of marketing materials your company provides. A top performer in your company may be able to give you insights on how the candidate will hold up under real-life rigours in the field that are unique to your organization.

CAVEATS: – 1. Few people are experienced interviewers and understand both how to interview objectively and also stay within the confines of the law in your jurisdiction. Make sure anyone who is interviewing is properly trained to interview. 2. Any members of your team that are either weak or suffer from a lack of confidence, may feel threatened by a top performer. Make sure you are not sabotaging your sales recruiting efforts by having your top candidate interview with staff members who will not make an objective assessment or help you land a great sales person. 3. Great sales people want to join companies that are very selective in who they hire, but if your interview process seems unnecessarily long or challenging, then you might scare away top sales talent.

6. Expect Top Performers to Negotiate

Don’t be offended if a candidate wants to negotiate everything about the deal you offer. It does not mean they are not interested, assuming you are offering a competitive package that would make it worth their while to leave their current well-paying position. Top performers are also top negotiators, and you want someone who will be comfortable negotiating with your clients.

7. Take Your Time

Don’t jump to a decision just to fill an open position. It will cost you to hire a mediocre salesperson. It is more beneficial in the long term to keep searching for the superstar who has qualities similar to your current top performers, or, better yet, will raise the bar for your entire sales force.

References:

CareerBuilder Releases List of Hardest-to-Fill Positions

How Your Self-Concept Will Change Your Bank Account, Brian Tracy

More on How to Hire Top Sales Performers: Alternative Ways of Evaluating Sales Candidates

Image courtesy of pakorn | freedigitalimages.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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

5 Secrets for Hiring Sales Managers Who Are “Master Motivators”

Hiring Sales Manager secretsSales Managers are supposed to be kingmakers—their job is to inspire and guide sales superstars towards glory – and effective sales managers unlock the potential of their sales team, especially when rewards and retribution alone aren’t driving sales results. They boost their team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together in the pursuit of profit— and fulfilment. In the end, the best sales managers are not managers at all, but are guides, advisors, trainers, cheerleaders and coaches all rolled into one.

In order to be exceptional at their jobs, sales managers need to have one skill above all else— they need to be master motivators. They need to be able to drive sales results through the efforts of others.

Highly Motivating Sales Leaders

Master motivators abound in the sports. A coach who understands how to motivate people can transform a bunch of fresh-faced recruits into world-class athletes. And once-great teams can slump quickly in the hands of insipid leaders.

It’s a similar story in the sales world. As recounted in the Harvard Business Review, research conducted by Gallup shows that “having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”

The Dale Carnegie Training Institute also confirms the importance of managers who are great coaches. “Over 55% of employees who express confidence in their manager’s leadership ability and who are inspired by the communication with their direct supervisor feel engaged.”

“having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”  Gallup

The Sales Manager’s job thus, is not just to manage sales, but to also manage and coach the people who get the sales.

Unfortunately, most sales managers are abysmal at coaching others. According to research by the Objective Management Group (OMG), only 7% of all sales managers are effective at sales coaching (In fact, OMG research shows that Presidents and CEOs find 4 out of 5 sales managers ineffective overall – ouch!).

Six Reasons Not to Promote your Top Reps to Sales Management 

When to Promote Your Top Sales Rep to Sales Manager 

Clearly, sales managers who can coach well are rare. This means that companies need to be extra attentive when headhunting for potential sales managers. Here are a few questions to ask candidates to figure out if they are experts in the art of motivation:

1. How are they motivated?

Inspirational managers lead from the front—they are motivated to perform, and focus on constant self-improvement. They earn respect most often by simply living out the principles that they are trying to inculcate in their teams. If candidates cannot explain what motivates them, or how they continually improve, they will be unable to ignite passion in the hearts of their team members.

There is a wrong way to answer this question though. If a sales manager is overly coin operated, concerned only with numbers, and not with the people bringing in those numbers, then even if that leader can stimulate results in the short term, the numbers are likely to suffer over the long term. You need a charismatic leader, not a glorified accountant.

A great sales manager is almost always motivated by the opportunity to inspire and lead others. Great sales managers will always want to invest in their sales reps not because they expect returns for themselves, but because they thrive on watching others grow.

2. What’s their motivational style?

Experienced sales managers can often develop bad habits. They increasingly rely on either carrots or sticks to “motivate” their sales teams. The problem, as Dr. Paul Marciano points out in his book Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT, is that neither of these techniques is effective. People who are motivated by the fear of losing their jobs work with less drive and energy, and those who are enticed by big payouts quickly become complacent even when receiving the payouts.

What motivates people then? According to Frederick Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene theory, real motivation comes from within. John Baldoni, author of Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders, agrees that true motivation comes from wanting to do something of one’s own free will.

Master motivators realize this truth. They know that financial rewards or competition are not enough to motivate someone. Instead, salespeople need to be allowed to set their own targets and encouraged to be creative in solving their own problems. This is what will lead to a sense of fulfilment and self-drive.

The best sales managers, thus, believe in creating an environment of growth and appreciation which will spur their salespeople to develop a strong sense of internal motivation.

3. How do they motivate different types of people?

Ask your interviewees: “How have you inspired overachievers to continually excel? How do you motivate those who have chronically underperformed?”  The motivational tactics will differ in both these cases, and so should your candidates’ answers.

Truly exceptional sales managers make it their mission to discover what triggers each of their employees. They will be obsessed with helping each of their salespeople—hunters and farmers— realize their individual potential. If your sales managers have a “my way or the highway” attitude, or if they only focus on inspiring the top salespeople, you will soon have conflict on your hands.

“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” – Eddie Robinson

4. How do they give feedback?

Great coaches are supportive and approachable. They listen patiently before providing unconditional support and solutions to empower the person seeking help.

Unfortunately, such a supportive atmosphere is rare in sales. Most sales managers believe they are providing “constructive criticism,” but are usually just fault-finding.

Master motivators will instead approach feedback as an interactive process, by assisting their sales reps in figuring out how to improve their own weak points. For great sales managers, feedback is not a chance to point fingers, but an opportunity to refuel their team’s fire to succeed.

5. Is the person sitting in front of me charismatic?

In his best-selling book Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson illustrates a unique concept: the Reality Distortion Field. He describes how Steve Jobs, the most famous motivator in Silicon Valley, could distort others’ perception of reality through the sheer power of his personality and convince his team to achieve milestones that seemed impossible at first.

Bud Tribble, a software designer at Apple, is quoted in the book as saying: “Steve has a reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.”

Jobs would set out ambitious goals for others and use the force of his charismatic personality and self-belief to convince others to complete month-long, industry-leading projects in a few days. This is largely the reason why Apple managed to zoom to the top position in so many product verticals in the tech industry.

Of course, a reality distortion field isn’t a physical phenomenon, but it works! The best sales managers continually apply some version of reality distortion to break the mental barriers of their sales people and convince them to rise above and beyond what seems possible.

Such managers are interpersonal superstars, with unfailingly positive attitudes even in the face of low morale or negative experiences. Through their charisma, they are capable of changing both the skill sets and the mind set of their salespeople.

However, when you spot someone with an allure, a presence or the elusive X factor, make sure that they aren’t just all talk and no action. Consider how they measure up to the standards we’ve laid out above, and use multiple interviews, behavioral questions and panels to ensure that their charisma holds up in the long run too.

Download our free eBook: Make the Right Sales Hire Everytime to make your sales hiring process more effective today.

References

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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)

How to Interview and Spot the Traits of Top Salespeople

You may have hired a lot of B2B salespeople in the past, and probably some of them looked great on paper, but turned in lackluster performances. How can you skew the odds for hiring a sales superstar in your favor? Many hiring managers look at the resume, but the key to hiring well is to look beyond the resume.

Interviewing sales people can be tough because they are trained at being interviewed by customers and can sometimes be very good at telling you what they think you want to hear. There are a variety of tests that evaluate personality traits of salespeople, and we highly recommend such assessments. But effective interviewing can also go a long way towards uncovering the best sales people – and it can often be a lot like peeling an onion.

Here are traits to look for and solid tips for interviewing for those traits.

1. Goal oriented and ambitious:

You can train skills, but motivation and a good work ethic is more innate, and you cannot train that into people. Of course, no sales candidate is going to assess themselves as unambitious so you need to make your own assessment.

  • Tip for interviewing for ambition: High performers have a pattern of accomplishments and achievements. At Peak Sales Recruiting, we include questions in the interview script that probe what they are most proud of outside the workplace such as in sports or the arts. Look for signs of achievement and competitiveness as these are key indicators of someone who is a top performer.

2. Confident:

This is perhaps one of the most obvious traits you need to look for in a salesperson. Yet, a salesperson can exude confidence in an interview, and still wilt under rejection or criticism. At Peak, we see false bravado all the time, but the best salespeople believe in their products, and if they are told “No,” they are not defeated – they still don’t give up.

  • Tip for interviewing for confidence: Chet Holmes, sales guru and author of The Ultimate Sales Machine (Penguin Group, 2007), recommended what he called the “attack.” At the end of an interviews, he would tell a candidate that although he seemed nice, there was only one open position, and the candidate just did not appear to be a superstar. Holmes wrote, “You’d be amazed how many people crumble…Let that person go. Superstars never crumble.”

3. Optimistic:

The ability for a sales professional to look past obstacles and focus on the end result is a trait that all top sales pros possess. This does not mean that they only focus on the ‘bright side’ of things, that they wear “rose colored glasses” or are delusional in any way. On the contrary, they are actively on the look out for challenges that may come their way and focus on the positive steps that can be taken to overcome them.

  • Tip for interviewing for optimism: Ask the candidate to name two personal and two professional challenges they have faced in their life and ask them to describe what motivated them to take these challenges head on. Was it the fact that they had taken the right steps, and it was just a matter of speaking with the CEO one more time to close the deal? Was it the fact that they saw these as small obstacles that could be disregarded because the end goal was in sight? It is essential that the candidate demonstrates to you that they are positive in the face of adversity and don’t let rejection deter them from their goals.

4. Competitive:

Defined by Merriam-Webster as “having a strong desire to win or be the best at something” is one of the most vital traits that your new sales hire should possess. It is the fuel that powers them to hunt new business opportunities, cold call, get in front of the key decision makers, and close deals.

  • Tip for interviewing for Competitiveness: Have the candidate describe how they strive to be the best sales person possible. Do they talk about learning a new sales methodology to add to their arsenal? Do they talk about using their teammates recent big deal as a driver to start work early and leave late? Do they talk about the desire to surpass their best sales numbers to date? These are some key indicators of whether this candidate is indeed competitive by nature.

5. Sense of Urgency:

The sense that “time kills deals”, defines the top performing sales people. They understand that every minute not on the phone with prospects or meeting them face-to-face is potential lost revenue. Hence, these candidates should demonstrate to you that they understand the need to act in a timely fashion.

  • Tip for interviewing for Urgency: Ask the candidate to provide examples of how they used time to their advantage. Ask the candidate to describe their daily activities. How much time is split between prospecting, working the funnel, and closing accounts? Is it broken up 15%, 40%, 45%? These numbers will help you understand how they spend their time and how much emphasis they place on closing deals so that they can start pursuing new opportunities.

6. High Need to Interact and Influence Others:

Let’s face it, people like to buy from people they like. The best salespeople have an innate need to bond with and be respected by others. That is not to say they are categorically extroverts, as many great sales people classify as introverts, but they have a strong need to develop relationships with others and influence behavior of buyers.

  • Tip for interviewing for a people person: Does the candidate appear relaxed? Is their smile and handshake genuine? Do you get a sense they are trying to forge a real connection with you? Are they listening and asking questions that build upon what you are saying. Are they attempting to drive the discussion and qualify you as much as you are qualifying them? Ask the candidate how they bond with clients. If they are sending clients helpful information that has nothing to do with the product, asking clients over for Saturday barbecues and remembering to send them birthday cards, you may have a winner.

7. Persistent and Solution oriented:

Creativity is not a word that is always associated with salespeople, but the best are very creative in finding solutions to problems. When a customer describes a challenge, the top reps instinctively move towards solutions and when they run up against obstacles, they do not curse their bad luck, but they come up with creative ways to get around the obstacles and convince the prospects.

  • Tip for interviewing for creativity: Ask the candidate about times they had to develop alternative ways of doing things in order to succeed. Give them difficult scenarios and ask them to brainstorm solutions. Focus on how the candidate overcame the obstacles more than the actual situations.

8. Organized and disciplined:

There is a commonly held view that great salespeople are akin to Wild West cowboys; that is, they ride out hard, lasso them in, and don’t give a whole lot of thought to structure or paperwork. That’s for the administrators back at the ranch. Nothing could be further from the truth. Great salespeople are disciplined, work with a plan and get things done on time.

  • Tip for interviewing for organization: Ask the candidate how they strategize who they calls on first, how they decide to approach a specific prospect, what their structure is for follow-up, what kinds of materials they send to prospects before and after sales calls and when they sends those materials, how they work to improve their sales skills, how they manages their time and what efficiencies they have discovered to streamline paperwork. Insist on examples where they have done these things rather than philosophies of what they think should be done.

9. Fits into your organization and sales environment:

Culture matters and so does sales environment. There is a world of difference between working as a salesperson for a company with widespread name recognition and a lot of sales support and working for a smaller company. The former typically has a lot of marketing and sales administration support, while the smaller company or start-up may expect the salesperson to do a great deal of marketing and administrative work themselves.

  • Tip for interviewing for fit: Make sure the candidate has been successful in an environment similar to the one they will be working in. When you question the candidate about previous positions, ask if they were expected to develop their own leads and how, who developed and distributed marketing materials, and who did various types of needed paperwork. If a candidate comes with five star ratings from an organization that just handed he/she hot leads, don’t assume they will know how to cold call or to drum up leads on their own. On the flip side, if the candidate is doing well and making their numbers with very little support from the company, you may have a sales superstar.

10. Client-focused:

Client-focused salespeople are focused on bringing the client what they need, not just what they want. A global study by the Sales Executive Council and reported by The Harvard Business Review, calls these kinds of salespeople “challengers,” and says they outsell all other kinds of salespeople. According to the article, “They focus the sales conversation not on features and benefits but on insight… They come to the table with new ideas for their customers that can make money or save money — often opportunities the customer hadn’t realized even existed.”

  • Tip for interviewing for client focus: When you ask the candidate to give you a sales pitch, do they ask a lot of questions first and then come up with a solution that fits your needs? Now ask them for examples of when they were successful in convincing clients to invest in innovative solutions.

Resumes are important, but when you really want the best sales people on your team, you can’t stop there; you must take a deep look at the traits of the person behind the resume.

For more on traits of great salespeople, see The Traits of Top Sales Performers.

References:

Superstar-growth strategy, Chet holmes

Selling is not about relationships, Matthew Dixon

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Connect:

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)

Embrace Pressure to Drive Sales Results

Pressure and performancePressure can be paralyzing for some and energizing for others. Just as top athletes experience butterflies before an important event, top sales people experience nerves before a big meeting or negotiation, but what separates the elite level talent from the rest is how they react.

Stress is Linked to High Performance Author Dr John Eliot, has extensively studied top athletes and business people. His research shows that performance anxiety is a very natural and important part of overachievement. In his book, Overachievement, he notes that “the physical symptoms of fight or flight are what the human body has learned over thousands of years to operate efficiently and at the highest level…anxiety is a cognitive interpretation of that physical response.” Simply put, we need performance anxiety to have an opportunity to achieve at our highest level.

The best players in any high-stakes field – business, entertainment, law, surgery, as well as sport – recognize that pressure occurs at the moments when meaningful accomplishment is possible. In fact, that is the reason why performers perform: for the opportunity to tackle challenges head on, to do something significant, to demonstrate what their hard work and talent can produce. ~ John Eliot

A Double Edged Sword The problem with having a brain is that it tends to do a lot of thinking which can get in the way of not only performance, but even performing the most simple of tasks when required. As reported in the University of Chicago Magazine, “during the relaxed execution of a practiced skill, communication between the motor and reasoning areas of the brain decreases. A beginner’s brain, on the other hand, is abuzz with motor and reasoning cross talk, trying to translate newfound knowledge into action. When anxiety increases, experts can start to think like novices, and their performances suffer.” This is probably not news to former baseball player, Bill Buckner, who committed one of the most infamous chokes when he misplayed a routine ground ball while playing for the Red Sox during the 1986 world series.

Tapping into the Subconscious Research conducted by Sian Beilock, a Psychology Professor at the University of Chicago, and author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, indicated that athletes performed better when they were given tools that enabled them to stop analysing their acrtivities and trying to control their performance. Her team found that even something as simple as whistling can avoid the analysis paralysis that stands in the way of great performance…which reminds me of that scene in the movie Bull Durham where Crash, a veteran minor league baseball player, played by Kevin Costner, is coaching a rookie, Nuke, played by a young tim Robbins. Crash tells Nuke that in order to pitch well, “don’t think; it can only hurt the ball club.” Dr. Eliot’s research also indicated that while all high achievers are innately confident, it is not so much winning that creates the winning attitude, but the process of becoming a winner.

We tend to view confidence as a product of accomplishment rather than part of the process that leads there.

Preparation In fact, in all pursuits, whether it be sports, business, music and particularly the military, practice plays the important role of conditioning the the body to stress and creating familiarity with the situations that typically cause the body to feel anxiety. Athletes train and play sequences of events in their heads to visualize desired outcomes, while military personnel practice with live ammunition to get as used to battle conditions as is possible. In all cases, training is a big part of performance and ideally we are so familiar with an activity, we are able to operate outside our conscious awareness – like pedalling a bike. The more familiar something is the less likely we are to feel. I know from my own experiences and being involved in negotiations on a daily basis, what used to make me nervous, say walking into a room full of A-type executives, now hardly raises my blood pressure at all and I sometimes find myself coming up with ways to make meetings more exciting to create the uncertainty that gets me excited.

Public speaking, which I do often, but not as often as I am involved in business negotiations, is another personal example of dealing with stress. Obviously repetition breeds comfort and I have done a lot of speeches, but when I step up to the podium to begin a speech in front of a large audience, like most people who speak in public, I experience a sense of pressure from wanting to deliver a great presentation and make a positive impression – even if I have prepared well in advance. To use this to my advantage, I have a little routine that helps me achieve my goals and prevents the situation from controlling me. First, at the outset, I anticipate my anxiety coming on and when it does, I smile because after giving many speeches my nerves are as familiar to me as an old friend. To a large extent I stay focussed on what I am doing, how I am going to do the things I have practiced and give the performance I have prepared to give, but I also try to drink in the energy in the room and I want that nervous feeling because its a valuable tool for getting all my juices flowing and starting my speech with a bang. It excites me. Plus I know from experience how quickly nervousness subsides once I get rolling, so I can consciously ride the wave until I hit my groove.

Make Pressure Work to Drive Sales Whether it be cold calls, or important negotiations, there are many situations where sales reps, even the best ones, will feel pressure and performance anxieties. There are many ways we can prepare for these situations to improve outcomes.

  • Role Plays – Practicing activities such as cold calling or negotiating can help people get more familiar with situations that would otherwise be unfamiliar and stressful. Going through the activities over and over can help.
  • Repetition – One of the best ways to get over cold calling anxiety is to schedule time to do a while of them back to back. For me personally, I always found the first few cold calls on any given day were tough, but after a few calls, I warmed up, found a rhythm and was able to react effortlessly to all questions and objections that were thrown at me.
  • Scripts – Writing down meaningful responses to likely questions from prospects in advance of sales calls helps a sales rep visualize doing the right things when they have to which, aids in actually doing the right things when required. More importantly, it can help the right spend more time thinking about what to say, over stressing about saying the wrong thing.
  • Meditation – Beilock’s research showed that relaxation techniques such as singing or meditation, even in small amounts, allow people to separate themselves from over analysis, which in turn results in higher performance on high stakes tests.
  • Positive Thinking – If we think of all experiences as positive in that we always are learning and always building a foundation for future success, then there really is no way to fail. And if there is no way to fail, then there is less chance of analysis paralysis. Just act and trust that things will ultimately turn out well.
  • Keeping Things in Perspective – Unlike armed forces personnel, we in sales are not in life threatening situations, nor are we performing life saving duties like a doctor. Often we are not even in life changing situations. We need to keep in mind that the worst case scenario is often not as bad as we think it might be.

High performers experience pressure, which is both natural and necessary for high achievement, and the highest sales performers know the importance of embrace that pressure to win. But all sales reps can benefit from learning to manage stress and if a sales leader not only promotes these stress mitigation practices, but also demonstrates them in their own behaviour there is a high chance that the sales reps will also adopt them and experience better performance – which is great for overall sales force performance and numbers. To your success!   References: Overachievement – the New Model for Exceptional Performance University of Chicago Magazine – Performance Anxiety Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

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Connect:

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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Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

How to Avoid Overpaying Sales Reps

Overpaying Sales Reps

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Company leaders and business owners are often worried about overpaying sales reps. This is  especially true for the CEO’s who didn’t ascend to their leadership position through the sales ranks and who are not overly sensitive to how sales compensation is earned. The concern is legitimate if one were to look simply at the outgoing commission cheques on some sales teams, but chopping sales compensation based on number crunching is risky business since it enhances the possibility that sales morale will be affected and sales output will be disrupted. A bigger picture view on sales investment versus return is always more prudent, but there are also several ways for employers to approach sales compensation to ensure that sales reps are paid fairly for their contributions but not overpaid.

If a company’s sales reps can afford to drive Porsches, then the company’s leaders should be ecstatic…if the sales comp plans have been set up properly

Attracting the best sales talent in the business will require that an employer offers not only great career opportunities but also market or better compensation to its sales team. However, there are several important ways to mitigate overpaying sales reps.

1. Don’t employ reps who can’t sell – The notion of sales people who can’t sell sounds silly, but there are lot of them and many companies employ them. One of the key ways to ensure the return on your sales team far outweighs the investment is to employ people who actually meet or exceed sales targets. This is not the case on many sales teams where reps that consistently under perform and are effectively paid a salary for attendance rather than performance.  Under-performing sales staff are expensive on many levels including lost opportunity, management time, damage to company reputation – they need to be replaced with sales professionals who can and will contribute to company success.

2. Tie compensation to the right results – If the sales people are earning high commissions, it should be because they delivered on their goals which in turn should be explicitly tied to overall sales, profit and company goals. Then if the sales reps are happily cashing their commission checks, the company has also enjoyed strong results and the sales compensation will have a positive ROI.

3. High rewards for high performance – Top performing sales people should receive (and will expect to receive) superior compensation for their superior results. Compensating them in-line with their expectations can often be challenging, but since profits are often not linear as revenues and sales increase, the value of an high producing sales person cannot be understated. To ensure the top sales reps are highly motivated by compensation plans that don’t create problems for the finance department, employers can leverage accelerator mechanisms whereby the sales rep earns increasingly higher commissions on incremental sales above certain thresholds.

4. Put in Place Reasonable Parameters – We are not talking mechanisms that cap commissions here – these don’t help a company become an employer of choice and attract top sales talent – we are talking about managing the risk that reps will take advantage of their compensation plan by manipulating the time timing of contracts or chasing windfall deals. These are easily managed if the compensation plans include clauses that allow the sales manager to review unusually large deals or quarterly numbers that weren’t entirely a result of the sales reps efforts and adjust the compensation to a rate that is fair for both the company and the rep – but tread carefully here – the rep will feel entitled to earn full commissions on the deals they have closed and you never want to lose a top seller.

To your success!

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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)

How to Read a Sales Resume – 11 Secrets for Sales Hiring Managers

Reading a sales candidate resume
Salespeople sell. Sometimes they sell themselves best of all. Resumes are not the only way to measure the value of a salesperson and arguably not even the best way. However, given the volume of resumes recruiters typically receive for a posted sales job, recruiters and HR departments need to understand how to read between the lines on a resume and be able to focus their time and attention on the candidates most likely to succeed.

Salespeople sell. Sometimes they sell themselves best of all.

Peak’s customers engage us because we are adept at recruiting salespeople with a unique ability to meet or exceed sales targets in a certain sales environment. We consistently meet our customer’s needs by leveraging a structured search process and a bias for proof. We seek proof that someone will exceed expectations in a certain sales environment by finding salespeople that have excelled in a similar sales environment.

With that bias in mind, and based on reviewing millions of sales resumes and profiles over many years, we can share some of our inside secrets on what we look for in resumes and profiles.

1. Key Facts

A big aspect of a salesperson’s make-up is the role in which they are currently employed. Who are they working for and what are they doing which will be found at the top of the employment history and not in the objective statement at the top of the resume, which is more about the things the person wants to be doing than what they are doing. We also want to know what the person’s past two roles were. Have they advanced in one career stream or bounced around in different roles and sectors?

2. Stay Objective

Halo effect, confirmation bias,  prejudice and other subjective factors are real issues in the employment world and often impair hiring success. For instance, according to MarketingProfs, “on LinkedIn profiles, recruiters spent an average of 19% of their total time per candidate looking at the profile picture.” This creates an enormous risk that the decision to advance a candidate in a hiring process will be influenced by factors other than performance and abilities. To counter this and other human errors that stand in the way of recruiting the best candidate, we focus on the data in the resume that supports history of production and success.

3. Show Me the Numbers 

In the profession of sales, results are critical. Anyone can call themselves an “over achiever” or a sales “superstar” but only a small percentage of the sales population can point to empirical results and sales volumes that demonstrate success. Conversely, if a candidate does not quantify his success in the resume, it may be an effort to downplay less than stellar results and this would be an automatic red flag for us.

4. Look for Winners

Strong sales resumes often have an “awards and achievements” section. That’s because great salespeople often win awards and can list significant achievements like important wins and large deals. It is another way to demonstrate results.

5. Are They an “A” Player?

World class companies are successful because they hire high quality people. Has the candidate made it onto a big league team and been successful. Have they been hired to represent marquee employers?

6. “You should hire me because…”

In addition to results, a resume should have a succinct sentence in the summary that captures the essence of the candidate. Sales superstars know that their role is to produce revenue, profits and growth and that you should hire them because they do this for all of their employers.

Red Flags

Since we know that on any search we undertake, there will only be a very small percentage of salespeople that have the right experience and abilities, we are often looking for ways to narrow the field of candidates and exclude people that we know will not qualify. Scanning for these red flags is an efficient way to discard candidates that are unlikely to help drive sales success.

1. Consecutive Short Stays

If the candidate has a pattern of staying at companies for one year or less, he or she is probably not making quota, or perhaps is repeatedly losing interest before building momentum. While it is true that some good people have bad luck and could regularly be in the wrong place at the wrong time (and finds themselves laid off more than once), optimally, we are looking for someone that selects employers where they will be successful and stays three to five years at most sales jobs.

2. Words. Words. Words.

When candidates provide lengthy explanations of their “soft skills,” it is a red flag to the recruiter. Coupled with an absence of numbers, this screams “no results.” Not quite as bad are the resumes that have a big section of keywords at the top which are meant to attract the eye of a recruiter searching a database for resumes – this may be a sign the candidate is a regular job seeker – proceed with care.

3. Responsibilities

A focus on “responsibilities” signals a mismatch. Candidates who write anything more than brief descriptions of the companies they worked for in the past and what they were responsible for (ex. supervised a team of colleagues, oversaw initiatives) may be focused on things that don’t matter to super star salespeople.

4. Gaps in Employment

Missing months in the job history, unless credibly addressed (ex. took hiatus to spend time with new child, launched a business) can indicate a failure to reach targets. Top Performers are always employed and making money. If gaps show up repeatedly, put that resume on the reject pile.

5. Long and Verbose

When sales results and recent roles are the only relevant information for assessment purposes, it is not necessary to provide extensive detail on jobs that were held 20 or more years ago. An unusually long resume would indicate that the candidate is unable to be succinct or has included many unnecessary details in their cv.

References 
Eye-Tracking Study: How Recruiters View Resumes

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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)

How is Your Sales On-Boarding Program Working (or not working)?

Sales On-Boarding ProgramManagement consultants Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen, studied the hiring practices and staff retention rates at Fortune 500 companies and authored the book, Successful Onboarding, in which some startling observations were made about hiring:

  • Almost a third of employees employed in their current job for less than 6 months are already job searching
  • Almost a third of executives who join organizations as an external hire miss expectations in the first 2 years
  • With 10% to 15% annual attrition, companies turn over upwards of 60% of their entire talent base within 4 years

The authors argue (and we agree) that effective on-boarding programs achieve the following benefits:

  • reduce new hire time-to-productivity
  • improve overall level of productivity
  • increase satisfaction levels of peers and managers
  • raise staff retention rates
  • transfer corporate knowledge from legacy staff to new hires
  • improve reputation as an employer of choice by top candidates

That’s a pretty impressive list of benefits and yet in many companies we see, if there are on-boarding programs at all, they centrally driven by HR with limited involvement and or accountability associated with business units and departments, which in effect means that on-boarding is not a strategic priority. Furthermore, the programs are often one-size-fits-all programs, with a very short term-focus.

This raises some important questions about sales force development and the return on sales recruiting investment in many companies:

  • Does your organization have the buy-in for on-boarding programs at both the executive and department level?
  • Can your organization afford to lose 1/3 of the sales hires that required considerable effort and expense to recruit in the first place?
  • Can your sales department absorb that kind of turnover and still meet its goals?
  • Can you afford sales production from new reps to be less than optimal?
  • Can you afford new reps to hit their stride later than they otherwise could with proper on-boarding?

Important questions indeed.

Find Peak’s prescription for an effective new sales hire on-boarding program here:  The First 90 Days – Your Guide to Making New Sales Hires Produce Fast

Click here to read more about Stein and Christiansen’s book: Successful Onboarding

 

 

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Connect:

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)

6 Sales Compensation Secrets That Lead to Great Sales Hires

Optimized-iStock_93249581_LARGE
Great salespeople are comfortable dealing with money matters, but negotiating compensation is also a very personal matter, and since egos are involved it can be an emotional experience. After having spent many years hiring and recruiting salespeople and negotiating sales compensation plans, I offer these tips to help you land the sales person that will contribute to your sales goals.

Here are 6 compensation secrets that lead to great hires:

1. Don’t Be Shy

Salepeople are money driven. So it is important to address compensation expectations early when engaging any candidate, to make sure that their comp goals are in line is with your budget and/or to find out what it will cost to add that sales person to your team. Without making the conversation purely about money (because that is only one component of assessing fit), ask the rep what they are currently making and what base and commission at target would be required for them to consider a move.

2. Focus on the Target Income

Great salespeople do not work for their base. They meet or exceed their sales goals and in turn take home considerable compensation in the form of commissions. While it might be easier to focus on the base salary when making an offer to a prospective sales hire, the assumption is that you have properly vetted the candidate, that they will be achieving their quota and that they will be earning their full commissions at target, so the conversation during the compensation negotiation should revolve around the Total Target Income (TTI).

3. Offer Proof

It is one thing to tell a prospective sales hire about the high income they will make selling on your team, but the potential TTI has more credibility when you can show that other reps already on your team are making the same level of income. This sends a strong message to the sales person that you are trying to recruit.

4. Never Lowball

We were recently recruiting a high performing sales person who was fielding employment offers from two competing employers, one of which was our customer. During the compensation negotiations, the other employer offered the candidate a base salary of $75k, which was $45k lower than their current base! The employer justified their offer on the grounds that the target income was in line with the candidate’s expectations. I am not sure how the employer expected their offer to be received, but predictably, the candidate was incensed by the offer, feeling that it was an insult and that they had been misled by the other employer who claimed to offer “market” compensation.  Fortunately for us, the candidate accepted our offer almost immediately after receiving the other offer.

5. Don’t Go Quiet

Some employers will make employment offers and then not be available for questions afterwards. During any compensation negotiation, particularly after the first presentation of the offer, there will be questions. And since the negotiation can be emotional it makes sense to be available and responsive in providing answers. This keeps the negotiation positive and moving forward. And don’t forget the adage – “time kills deals.”

6. Negotiate Live

As the old saying goes “you can’t close in an email” yet many employers send an employment offer with compensation details by email. The downside of not negotiating compensation either in person or on the phone is that there is limited opportunity to gauge the candidate’s response to the offer. And it could be disastrous if the response is negative since there is no opportunity for recovery. The candidate may simply go silent, so it is always better to negotiate live, answer any questions in real time and confront any show stoppers before they become show stoppers.

To your success!

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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)

How to Conduct a 90 Day Review with a New Sales Hire to Improve Sales Performance

new sales hiresWith busy schedules and many competing priorities, 90 days passes in the blink of an eye for a sales manager. It is easy to forget to pay attention to how a new sales hire is doing – especially if the rep seems to be doing well – but after making a large investment in recruiting a great sales person, it is important to maximize the chances that they will be successful. No period has a bigger impact on sales performance than the first 90 days which is a critical period in setting up a new sales hire to succeed. A structured on-boarding program contributes to ensuring that a new member of the sales team is not only successful, but productive as quickly as possible.

In some companies, particularly those with a shorter sales cycle, it is immediately obvious that a new sales hire is contributing, while in others it takes longer to evaluate the sales person’s value to the sales organization, and the on-boarding process may effectively extend beyond 90 days. Whatever the case, it is important to do an in-depth review at the 90 day stage once there has been a decent run of activity and production to evaluate.

A 90 day review is a formal review that will achieve several goals:

  1. holds the rep accountable for what they promised to deliver
  2. allows the manager to correct behavioral weaknesses that stand in the way of optimal performance
  3. creates a context for the rep to be successful on an ongoing basis
  4. allows the sales manager to formally re-emphasize the company’s sales goals and agenda
  5. provides input into the sales manager’s forecast

See also The First Week With Your New Sales Hire

By the 90 day mark in a sales person’s tenure with an employer, a sales manager has monitored the sales person’s actions for more than 12 weeks and will have many observations to compare against the plan that was created when the sales person was first hired. Over the course of managing several successful sales teams, my 90 day reviews involved the components identified below.  Ideally a structured template is used so that areas for improvement are clearly identified and the rep has a guide that identifies the best practices and behaviors they are expected to exhibit.

  1. Metrics – How did the sales person perform against the key performance metrics and goals that were set when they were hired?
  2. Pipeline Review – Has the sales representative created a pipeline that is large enough to support future sales goals? Spend time investigating opportunities that are key to achieving targets and determine risk associated with the forecast.
  3. Communication and Reporting – Has the rep communicate regularly and openly? Have they maintained accurate reports and opportunity details in the CRM?
  4. Conduct – Has the rep carried themselves professionally and displayed the discipline and behaviors that contribute to success? In some cases, there will be a long list of critical behaviors and capabilities, such as account and call planning, prospecting, qualifying, closing, and negotiating.
  5. Customer Feedback – What constructive feedback has been provided by prospects and customers? How have customers reacted to the introduction of the sales person into accounts?
  6. Team Feedback – Has the new sales rep had a positive member of the sales team? What actionable feedback has been obtained from the new sales person’s peers on the sales team.

Once the 90 day review is complete, have the rep put together another 90 day plan and/or one for the balance of the year that will be used in future reviews.

To your success!

 

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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 Most Controversial Sales Management Strategies and Tactics

 Over the years I have been exposed to many sales management theories and strategies, some of them conventional and some of them less so. I have also seen many unconventional ideas evolve into mainstream practices as the times change, with varying degrees of success. Ultimately, challenging conventional wisdom is a smart move, if it results in taking a step back and looking at what approaches are really working or not working versus passively maintaining old habits or following popular trends.

In this article, we take a look at sales management ideas and approaches that spark vigorous debate over efficacy.

Sales Commissions Don’t Work – Arguably the most sacred of sales management thoughts is that commission systems are explicitly tied to sales results. In recent years, however, perhaps an outcome of the “everyone is a winner” cultural shift, there is a small but not significant and growing movement towards eliminating commissions from the incentive mix for sales people. Many pundits argue that commission systems prevent sales, including Harvard Business Review contributor and bestselling author Dan Pink who has written about sales teams that have increased production after dropping sales commissions. Norm Brodsky, a seasoned entrepreneur, Inc. contributor and author, has also been very vocal about the fact that commissions systems don’t work. Still there is much research to indicate that sales commission systems absolutely do influence the behavior of sales people and if designed and applied properly will result in increased sales. Whether this continues to be the case over future generations remains to be seen, however the balance of evidence today seems to support the usefulness of commissions in driving sales results.

For more from Peak on money motivation in sales people, see Money and its Influence on Sales Behaviour

Sales People Shouldn’t Cold Call – Another increasingly held belief is that sales people should not cold call. Driven in part by the Internet’s impact on buying behaviors (see Have we reached the death of the salesperson? Well, not quite) and by the general dislike for cold calling, there is a growing number of advocates that champion the notion that sales team should abandon cold calling. I have always been a big fan of cold calling, but the reality is that few buyers answer their phones anymore. It therefore takes  a high degree of persistence and creativity to generate sales leads these days and there are many more effective ways to develop these relationships. Former Salesforce.com sales leader and author of Predictable Revenue, Aaron Ross, argues that sales people should not do their own prospecting and sales results are better served by dedicated teams of highly trained outbound sales teams that identify and qualify new sales opportunities, but do not close deals and instead hand them off to Account Execs to close. As the sales landscape evolves and sales teams become more sophisticated, I expect we will see more of this (see more on how cold calling is evolving here Cold Calling 2.0).

Fire The Worst Performers Regularly – Arguably the most contentious sales management practice is to automatically turnover a certain portion of the sales team each year. High profile leaders like Jack Welch and Andy Grove, led with an iron fist and were very vocal about the need to turnover the bottom 10% of performers annually. Recently business owner, investor and Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran, talked about how she grew sales by dismissing the bottom 25% of her sales force each year. Critics argue that this practice is not good for morale and/or can negatively impact team work. Regardless of whether this practice is effective or not, in our experience it is the minority of companies that systematically terminate the weakest sales reps. It is intuitive, however, to think that the fear of being fired would have a positive impact on sales performance, and there is a multiplier effect of adding high performers to a sales team (see Building a Culture of Success in Your Sales Team).

Marketing is a Waste of Time – There is an insignificant contingent of sales leaders that don’t perceive value in marketing efforts. Some of this may stem from old school thinking when marketing did not play such a huge role in the shaping of buyer perceptions and behaviors. While I have been on sales teams where a common complaint was that the leads from marketing are useless, I have also been a member of teams where the reps stopped prospecting because the leads were so good. Marketing departments that are properly focussed on contributing to sales results can be extremely powerful and I think that as sales becomes increasingly sophisticated, we will continue to see better marriages between sales and marketing.

Leave Your Ethics at the Door – Perhaps most egregious of all sales theories, but surprisingly common, is the notion that to be successful in sales requires the absence of integrity. There is a reason why sales has a bad reputation in some circles and I have heard of more than one sales leader who told his reps to forget ethics when they arrived at work or to purposely lie to customers. Unfortunately, it is not entirely uncommon for reps to fudge on features that don’t exist, secretly channel kickbacks to customers, or even sell used products as new. To be fair, sales and all business interactions for that matter, involve a degree of manipulation by one or all involved parties, but while being dishonest might work in the short term, I have yet to see a sales leader promote shady practices and achieve long term success. As a top national sales trainer and Honesty Sells author, Colleen Francis points out that “top sales performers know that the real way to win a customer’s heart (and loyalty) is by building open, honest relationships with them.” Read more about sales and ethics here – Three Ways to Make Ethics a Key Part of Your Sales Effort.

What are some of the controversial sales management practices you are seeing? Add your comments below.

To your success!

References

Image by Craig Garner

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Connect:

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)