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What does it take to be successful in sales?

Love this post by Anthony Iannarino on the most common difference between successful and unsuccessful sales people: the willingness to do whatever it takes. While we can ruminate on this trait or that trait that will make a sales person successful, at the core it is the ambition, drive and ability to execute that is the hallmark of being successful in sales.

He ends the article with a question on how to determine theses characteristics when recruiting sales people and I might add to his post by offering this suggestion. To determine whether someone has the willingness to do whatever it takes to be successful, investigate their past behavior to see the lengths they went to in order to win sales and achieve their goals. See the article here> It’s A Matter of Willingness (A Note to the Sales Manager)

 

 

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Eliot Burdett

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

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

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

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The 3 Minute Sales Interview (Requires 45 seconds to read)

Finding salespeople who will perform exceptionally well is a big challenge for many sales organizations. When dealing with sales people who are trained at selling themselves, it can be tough enough simply knowing who to speak with so it can be extremely valuable to have a method of quickly deciding who is worth your time and who is not.

Here are three simple questions you can use to quickly divide a group of potential hires into those you want to interview in depth and those you will pass on:

Question: Tell me about yourself.

Notes: This open-ended question is intended to see what kind of frame of mind possessed by the potential hire. If they start by expressing a passion for selling, followed by summary of traits and achievements, this is a good sign. Anything else is an indication they aren’t focused on a sales career.

Question: Why do companies hire you?

Notes: The right answer to this question depends on the goals of the job you are trying to fill, but the short answer from anyone who is successful in sales is that they are hired because they make their employers successful. If you hear a list of traits, it implies the person either doesn’t understand the question or the bottom line in sales.

Question: How do you consistently exceed your sales targets and the results of your peers?

Notes: Another open ended question that gives insight into how seriously the person takes their success and the degree to which they have influenced the successes they claim to have achieved. Successful sales people are typically very structured, motivated to do what it takes to be successful and highly self aware when it comes to their success.

If you are not asking these three questions up front in your interview process, it may make a world of difference on your hiring record not to mention time if you start asking them today.

To your success!

Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

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

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

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Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Should you be nice to sales candidates during the recruiting process?

Some interviewing guru’s believe that the best way to evaluate a person’s suitability for a high pressure sales role is to put them in stressful situations during the interview process to predict how they might react in real world sales scenarios.

If you are accustomed to recruiting perennial top performers who are gainfully employed, then you face a challenging dilemma: do you roll out the red carpet to make them comfortable with you and want to work for you or do you put them through a series of hard tests which may result in a loss of enthusiasm about joining your company?

The answer is both. To make sure you hire a top performer you need to perform an accurate and objective assessment and you need to “romance” the candidate so they choose to leave their current job. How do achieve that balance?

Here are three ways to deal with this:

1. Use Assessment Tests – leave the tough profiling to someone else, by using personality/behavioral trait assessments that will independently and objectively characterize your candidates. Compare the feedback to your own notes to make the right hire.

2. Hire a Recruiter – Candidates know that companies that can afford a retained recruiter are often the ones you want to work for so they will let the recruiter perform their various assessments to qualify candidates. Once that work is done, you get a fully qualified candidate and you can focus on enticing them to leave their current role.

3. Develop Rapport and then Perform the Evaluation – When a candidate is inducted into your screening process, start with a warm somewhat neutral stance, build the relationship and let them know this is a competition and you want to know why they think they should be selected to join your company. Most top sales performers will react positively to this challenge and see this as an opportunity to sell themselves at which point you get to ask them tough questions or put them through hoops.

You have to walk a fine line to properly assess a candidate while developing a relationship with them. It can’t be all roses, but on the other hand almost all great candidates are going to be working and have other options and won’t want to join your company if you alienate them, so unless you have an excess of great candidates beating down your door, you will probably want to work on making them want to join your company.

To your success!

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How to Find More Inside Sales Reps (Requires 45 seconds to read)

Inside Sales Job boards are one of the first places most organizations will search when they want to hire inside sales reps, but while job boards are a huge source of resumes and entry level candidates, relying on them can be a frustrating experience. As one customer explained to us, just sorting through the volumes of unqualified candidates can be exhausting and you are lucky if you find any qualified candidates at all.

The level of position often makes active recruiting cost prohibitive, so beyond placing ads and mining job boards, companies often wonder where else they can turn to find inside sales reps.

Recruiters are another option to consider, and companies can also look inwards for competent people in other functions that might be better suited to perform a sales role. For instance, customer support and field services might have employee with an aptitude for handling inbound sales calls and the outside sales team may have staff that are better suited to performing outbound sales and new business development activities on the phone.

In all cases, your challenge will be to evaluate the candidates to ensure they have the traits and experiences required to be successful in your inside sales position. For junior hires in particular, where there will be limited employment history to study, sales competency and behavioral tests can be useful. As always, the more structure in your hiring process, the more sales success you will experience.

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.

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Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

How to Hire the Right Sales Leader (Requires 60 seconds to read)

Sales leaderWhether you are a CEO or a executive level sales leader in your company, hiring the right sales leader for your organization can make or break your business. Get it right and they will build a strong team of achievers, increase company morale, and generate revenues profits and growth for the company. Hire the wrong person and in a best case scenario, company growth will stall. In a worst case scenario, targets will be missed, customers will leave, staff turnover will increase, and you will have a mess that could take years to clean up.

Here are the five things you can do to hire the right sales leader:

1. Consider the Right Candidates – Do you need a manager who will execute a plan leader who will bring vision and charisma to the organization. If you are seeking the latter, you will be faced with the fact that very people are leaders, which will require a more extensive search.

2. Don’t Get Sold – Great sales people sell. You need proof that the person you hire has delivered the results you want in a similar environment to the one they will be coming into – otherwise its an experiment.

3. Plan Ahead – Ask your potential candidates to show you the plan they will implement if they join your organization and what results will be achieved. The plan can always be tailored once they are on-board, but if your challenge is familiar territory for them, Pareto’s Rule will apply and they should be able to give you a good sense of whether you will be aligned.

4. Get the Compensation Right – Align the comp plan with the corporate plan. If you are trying to achieve rapid change then a highly leveraged plan might be the right approach, but might backfire if you want steady change and a long-term view from your sales leader. If you need profits, growth, and/or new customers, consider creating bonus schemes for these.

5. Give them the Autonomy – You are hiring the new sales leader to deliver results, which means they will bring in ideas that break the status quo. This may create discomfort for some people in the company, for instance cutting deadweight staff and reallocating resources. If you want the results they are promising, you need to step aside, let them execute on their plan and provide them the support they need to succeed.

To your success.

 

Image courtesy of jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

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

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

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

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Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

What Type of a Sales Leader Are You?

We have all seen the different types of sales managers and probably even worked for a few. When we looked back over our own experience, we identified seven different types of sales managers, which we have affectionately named below. Which one are you?

  1. The Fire Marshall – This type of sales manager can trigger immediate results but they have no long-term sales plan, and focus on different deals and challenges from week to week.
  2. The Dreamer – This type can create exciting plans that upper management love, but sometimes lack a grasp on realities and risk the support of the reps.
  3. The Dealmaker – A sales person at heart, this type cherry picks the best incoming leads and drops into of the team’s accounts to personally close big opportunities. Can secure big wins, but usually can’t scale the sales function.
  4. The Dashboard Director – While they know all the metrics cold and can allocate resources efficiently, this type rarely spends time with customers, so doesn’t appreciate the hard work that goes on in the field and often fails in building true customer loyalty.
  5. The Dictator – This type doesn’t care for input from the team, but can drive direction and is very decisive (unfortunately they are often wrong).
  6. The Microprocessor – This type needs to review every detail of the sales team’s work, which prevents the reps from getting sufficient time for selling and, in turn, stifles growth.
  7. The Prodigy – Reasonable decisions, a good sense of reality, team support and strong sales results are the hallmark of this type, which is why they will likely get promoted to CEO at some point.

To your success!

 

 

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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)

When to Promote Your Top Sales Rep to Sales Manager (Requires 35 seconds to read)

Many moons ago, we blogged about the Six Reasons Not to Promote your Top Reps to Sales Management, and here are the top seven reasons you as the company executive or business owner *would* promote your top sales rep to a sales manager position.

  1. There is a common understanding between yourself the rep that this is not a promotion at all, but in fact a job change since selling and managing sales are two completely different jobs (managing involves overseeing, training, coaching, reporting, visioning, communicating)
  2. The rep has thought long and hard about their decision to effectively depart from sales and assume a new job – you don’t want to pay for their life experiment
  3. You can afford the loss of their sales production since they will no longer be selling at that rate if at all
  4. You have carefully considered the job requirements and objectively assessed the suitability of your top rep as well as other internal and external candidates who may be qualified (often the best sales people are hardwired to be anything but capable sales managers)
  5. You are prepared to work with them to help them be successful including coaching and training them, especially if they are a first time manager
  6. The rep has the respect of their peers on the sales team – they don’t need to be liked, but must be respected
  7. You have been very clear about the goals and expectations associated with the role – again if this is a first time manager, assume nothing
Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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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)

Outcomes by Design – Hunter vs. Farmer Sales Compensation Plans

The hunter vs. farmer categorization for sales roles is a crude way to segment the sales function, but it is often a useful distinction, particularly when it comes to comp plan strategy.

While new business development roles and existing account management roles both share the goal of generating sales, the roles are fundamentally different and such should is the strategy behind compensation (see Improve your Hiring Record by Learning to Spot Real Hunters and Farmers).

The Profiles

Just as the roles are different, so too are the characteristics of the different individuals that usually excel at hunter and farmer roles. Hunters enjoy the the novelty of pursuing new accounts and the excitement of the chase, and while they are likely to be impervious to rejection and it may be this trait that tends to make them a bit more mercenary than professionals in other sales roles. With a more risk oriented personality and appetite for excitement they also tend to like larger more leveraged comp plans and is fairly common to see a total packages which pays 50% or more in in commissions when target sales are achieved. At a high level, the account manager works at a different pace, is more nurturing and relationship oriented and drives customer loyalty. They typically have a longer attention span, are less money motivated and more security oriented. They will often trade-off total compensation for a higher base and 60/40 or 70/30 plans are more typical for account manager roles.

Outcomes by Design

What specific outcomes you want depend on your sales strategy and goals. To this end, the compensation plan is a very powerful tool for driving the behavior of your sales team. While everyone enjoys commission cheques, sales rewards and spiffs, the rewards need to be tied to the actions you want to see in your team. For instance, comp’ing your business development team on trailing business and business from existing accounts will diminish their focus on acquiring new accounts. If the strategy is to enter new markets, the commissions will need to be sufficiently high to justify the additional effort required to break new ground – otherwise reps will stick to what they know will put commission in their pockets. By the same token, if you want your account managers to truly service existing accounts, look for ways to compensate them not only for sales, but account growth. The variable compensation options are endless, but must all be tied to the sales plan.

The Total Compensation

Opening new accounts or sectors is tough work. It is not the kind of work that everyone enjoys or is even suited to performing well. For this simple reason, there are fewer great hunters than farmers and the laws of supply and demand dictate that hunters get paid more across the sales profession. Keep this in mind if you are trying to attract reps from other companies.

To your success!

Sales Contracts – Critical Elements


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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 Power of Not Having All the Answers (Honesty in Sales)

New research from the Boston University School of Management suggests that the best phrase a sales person can use to build trust and increase the likelihood of closing a sales is to respond with “I don’t know” when stumped by a question rather than making up an answer. Perhaps this has to do with the perception that sales people will say anything that they think gets the sales so therefore, any sales person who admits they can’t answer a question, must be telling the truth and be demonstrating honesty.

The phenomena is certainly true in interviewing. Often candidates sail through interviews with answers too good to be true until it comes to validating the answers with references and then the stories start to change. Few candidates know everything and it is a brave few that are prepared to admit this. These candidates are often the ones that end up being great team players and easier to manager…The ones you want.

See BNET Article The 3 Most Powerful Words in Sales

Image courtesy of Teerapun / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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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)

Where is the Sizzle in Your Hiring Value Proposition?

Hiring Value PropositionCompanies make huge investments in creating value propositions that will attract customers, but reading the typical job ad shows far less effort is put into attracting the top class sales talent that will actually secure those customers. Boring checklists of required credentials and bland mentions of the company’s mission statement will attract lots of candidates in this economy, but few if any of them will be the highly desirable types because these ads don’t speak their language. Forget about “competitive” compensation, benefits and management “that cares about its staff” – these are all important, but every company promises these things. Where is the sizzle??

If you want to hire top performing sales people, you need a hiring value proposition that compels someone to leave a job that is probably paying them well. The pitch needs to speak to the DNA of the top performer and must encompass the key reasons why they might choose a new employer such as the chance to join a passionate team of experts, sell an exceptional product, enjoy ecstatic customers, or be part of a fantastic voyage of success.

People with the “right stuff” are excited by challenges and are more likely to respond to your job marketing if it stands out and speaks to them.

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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)