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Tips for Selling in a Downturn

I received an email about marketing in a downturn, from inmedia, a PR firm focused on the high tech sector. The article is about marketing tactics, but there is some good advice in here about selling tactics:

10 tips for marketing in a downturn

4. If you have channel or other partners, consider pooling budgets and activities to make your dollars go further
Can you share a trade show booth with partners? Can you initiate a co-op advertising program that sees you put up some of the cost while your channel partners put up the rest? Is the opposite available to you — are you a channel for an OEM with a co-op program?
6. Be transactional if there’s an immediate opportunity
As I’ve already noted, a downturn means different things for different companies. If there is good business that can be immediately secured, be highly transactional in going after it. Alter all your messaging to “Buy now,” and focus on tactics, like advertising and direct marketing, that communicate transactional messaging best.
7. If there isn’t an immediate opportunity, go long
It’s far more likely, however, that your customer’s buying cycle has stalled; it almost certainly has lengthened. So if your customers have hunkered down waiting for the storm to pass, there’s no point in blaring the hard sell at them or offering them discounts and other incentives to immediately do something they’re simply not going to. Does this mean you, too, should hunker down and draw the blinds until things blow over? No, it means your messaging should shift to support longer-term objectives such as awareness building, thought leadership and marketplace education. Tactics like media relations, trade shows and white papers that establish your authority and expertise are a better use of your resources if this is your reality.
8. In all communications, employ story telling that emphasizes how your product or service saves money or drives additional immediate revenue for your customers. Speak to the pain they’re feeling in a recession
Whatever the economic conditions, your marketing and communications messaging should be all about your customer, not you. You should always be speaking to the pain your customer feels that your product or service solves. In a recession, your customer’s pain is almost certainly all about revenue — making more of it or keeping more of it. Make sure you’re speaking to this.
9. Be overly attentive to your existing revenue base
“Love the one you’re with,” says the old song, and that’s never more relevant than in a downturn, when new customers are hardest to acquire. Your current customers are keeping you in business and it’s almost always cheaper to maintain and build business with existing customers than to find new ones. Lavish your existing customers with love, look for low-cost ways to improve the value you create for them, and communicate, communicate, communicate — let them know you love them.
10. Effective relationships never expire, so keep talking
Keep talking to everyone in your value chain, including suppliers, service providers, channels, influencers and, of course, customers and prospects. Even if they can’t use your services or you theirs just now, keeping those lines of communication open and full of useful information will serve you very well when the economy recovers.

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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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80% of companies don’t measure ROI on sales training – Dave Stein

Selling Power Interview with Dave Stein discussing approaches to sales training. His company, ES Research, helps sales management and corporate training organizations evaluate, select and implement sales training and productivity improvement programs.

Some interesting notes from the interview:

  • US companies spend $4B per year on sales training
  • only 20% of companies measure the effectiveness of the their sales training
  • there are many different types of sales training programs and methodologies, but sales training programs are typically selected based on subjective criteria such as charisma of the training company CEO, the look of the web site, level of advertising.

Dave suggests the right approach to selecting a sales training company involves:

  1. perform an objective assessment of your current situation and sales challenges
  2. create specific training requirements and goals
  3. request proposals from vendors based on the requirements

I agree with Dave’s advice. Not all sales training programs are equal and not all trainers are the same. The sales training market is highly fragmented. There are a few large recognized names, which are usually tied to a specific methodology which may or may not be suitable for your company’s selling environment and goals. Beyond that there are many local trainers/consultants who have either developed their own training program based on experience or add their own flavor to the name brand training which make evaluation even more complicated.

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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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Stop Hiring Poor-Performing Salespeople – guest post – Brian Jeffrey

 

Our friend Brian Jeffrey, President of Salesforce Assessments, recently sent out this articles on hiring superior sales people and we thought you would be interested in reading it as well.

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Nobody deliberately sets out to hire salespeople who can’t or won’t perform. But it happens, and it happens more than you might expect. In fact, in my view it happens far too often.

I’ve certainly done my share of hiring what I thought was going to be a real barn burner, only to discover that he or she couldn’t start a BBQ, even an electric one!

In one of my earlier articles, Luck is Not a Hiring Tool, I pointed out that most of us would have had just as good a hiring record if we had simply flipped a coin instead of taking all that time sifting through resumes, interviewing, etc.

Improving the Odds
Nowadays, 50/50 odds are simply not good enough. We need a way to improve the odds. Using a sales assessment tool is one of the things that can help. Another way is to understand the three main reasons why the next salesperson you hire is likely to be a poor performer.

Let’s explore these three pitfalls.

Reason #1: Can’t Sell
Sometimes the only thing some salespeople can sell is themselves and they’re good at doing it. These folks will sell you on hiring them by telling you what you want to hear and what they will do for you and your company.

They are charming, likeable, outgoing, pleasant folks, with a genuine affinity for people. They get along well with others. These are the people whose grade school report card always had the notation from the teacher reading, “plays well with others.”

They’re often good talkers, and that’s the problem. Too much talk, too little results.

Because these people are so likeable, once you hire them you’ll find it hard to cut your losses and let them go. Before it’s over, you’ll probably end up investing too much time and money trying to get results.

Chances are you may already have one or two of them on your sales team now. A good sales assessment test (like ours) can help you find out who they are.

These people have their place but if you need sales results, choose someone else.

Reason #2: Wrong Sales Environment
Then there’s the salesperson who has great credentials and a good track record but in another field. Beware! Just because the person was successful selling in another field doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll work out well in your sales environment. That’s because not every salesperson is good at selling everything.

The key for both the potential employer (you) and the salesperson is to realize that there are differences in selling environments and to know who fits where. Once you’ve done that, you have a better fit between the person and the position which improves the odds of making a successful hire.

Here are a few examples of what I mean:

The gal who’s great at selling tangible products may fail miserably when forced to sell intangibles and vice versa. It’s simply not her bag. It’s a person to position mismatch.

The guy who is great at making cold calls and opening new accounts may be poor at developing long-term relationships and getting more business from existing accounts. Yet another example of the wrong person for the position (or is it the right person in the wrong job)!

And then there’s the gal who’s loved by her existing customers but can’t find new business for love or money.

That’s because these people are in the wrong sales environment, selling the wrong things. You’ve got a square peg in a round hole and trying to pound a square, or oval, peg into a round hole damages both the peg and the hole.

A good sales assessment test will help you identify the square (and oval) pegs.

Reason #3: Won’t Sell
Finally there are the people who simply shouldn’t be in sales at all but they get hired anyway. What usually happens is the sales manager is desperate to fill a sales position and this person has come along. It’s a matter of the wrong person being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They are like a fish out of water. They flop around gasping for breath until they either die or move on. Even with proper training, these people will succeed only by forcing themselves to do the job. And you know how well that works. Selling is hard enough when you enjoy it!

No matter what training, coaching, and support you provide to these people, they just don’t seem to get it. They try hard but will never really get out of the starting block despite all your efforts.

Left alone, these people usually survive about a year before moving along to another unsuspecting company. In the meantime, you’ve been picking up the tab for their compensation, expenses, and lost potential business.
Any hiring tool that will help you identify these people before you hire them is worth exploring.

Been There, Done That
If you’re a bit long in the tooth like me or have had too much sales management experience, you can probably think back over your previous hires and identify people who fall into one of the three reasons we hire poor performers. I certainly can.

Bottom Line
There is no need to buy the “I Hired a Dud” t-shirt. Save your money and spend it on something that will help you make better hires. That way you’ll build even stronger sales teams. What’s more… your bottom line will thank you.

About the Author – Brian Jeffrey is President of Salesforce Assessments Ltd. His company works with sales managers who want to make the right hiring decisions and build a strong sales team. For more articles like this and your free copy of “The 8 Biggest Hiring Mistakes Sales Managers Make” go to => www.SalesforceAssessments.com

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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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Sales Powerhouse Presentation – Building a Sales Team that Delivers

Tuesday, I presented at Engage Selling’s third annual Powerhouse Sales Event and shared insights into building a winning sales team. Great turnout, sales managers from many sectors and some good questions from the audience. Here is a link to my presentation.

–)) Build a Sales Team that Delivers

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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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What Is the Cost of a Bad Sales Hire?

A lot more than you think. With so many reps currently below target, we thought we would show a quick and dirty calculation on what a bad sales hire costs. Let us assume we are speaking of an intermediate to senior position (depending on the company) with a base salary of $100,000 and a quota of $1,000,000. Assume that they achieved only 50% of their target (generous based on a typical “bad hire” these days).

Direct Expenses:

  1. Hiring – in-house or third party recruiting costs, background checks, (more if the position is more senior or travel involved)  – $25,000
  2. Base Compensation – year one $100,000
  3. Commissions (assume none paid since targets were not met) – $0
  4. Benefits – $12,000
  5. Travel and Expenses – $20,000
  6. Training – $10,000
  7. Overhead – desk,  supplies, infrastructure, admin, etc. – $20,000
  8. Severance – assume 4 weeks  + legal/HR costs – $10,000
  9. Wasted leads and/or lost customers– rep might have received leads and existing business in their territory that would reasonably have represented more than a third of their target – assume two lost customers and, or deals representing $150k to the company
  10. Lost margins – the rep failed to hit their target, falling $500,000 short – depending on company business model this could represent hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost gross profit which will have to funded from another source – if 75% of revenue is gross profit, then this represents $350,000

Total: $697,000!

Wait, there are typically other costs that are harder to associate with a dollar value, but equally or more severe:

  1. Additional management time associated with guidance and performance correction
  2. Loss of goodwill and damage to reputation in the market
  3. Loss of morale from peers who are frustrated that poor performance is tolerated

Your math might be different, but your categories will be the same and the point is, the cost is a lot higher than most people think.

A world-class hiring process prevents these mistakes and a well managed on-boarding process spots problems before they cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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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)

Quarter End – Dash to the Finish

It is a few days before quarter end and if you are like most sales leaders, you are in the final push to hit your number, so here are the top ways to squeeze as much revenue as possible from your team over the next few days.

1. Prioritize the Deals – If your business involves a number of key deals, run through the pipe and target the deals that must close (I assume you have already done this by now, but still worth mentioning so it stays at the very top of your list).

2. Ask the Hard Questions – Do customer stakeholders have all the necessary information to make a decision, do they have time in their schedule for necessary sign-offs? Be proactive, book their time in advance.

3. Line up Legal – has legal signed off on both sides of the deal? Again be proactive by scheduling time in advance (your legal and client legal) and identifying any potential showstoppers could kill the deal. Make sure your legal is aware of your deals and can give you upfront advice on potential issues so that you know what you need to negotiate and what to avoid.

4. Line up your Revenue Recognition – If you are a publicly traded company, you need to make sure you have enough time to get sign-off from your rev rec department. Your reps need to know in advance what potential revenue recognition issues exist – nothing hurts more than not being able to book a deal because something doesn’t line up with the paperwork.

5. Keep Pushing – Keep the motivation and energy levels high as you drive to the finish and don’t let anyone give up. Keep going with internal competitions and spiffs if your business involves short sales cycles/transaction volume. Stay in front and connected to all your reps.

And finally if you are lucky enough to have already hit your quarter, what are you doing to maintain your momentum going into next Q.

Good luck!

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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)

Sales Quarter End – 12 Point Checklist to Hitting the Number

Quarter End Sales 2014I love quarter end. Having spent many years selling myself, I remember the rush of the countdown and closing everything you can to hit your quota and get into accelerated commissions. I also enjoyed the competition amongst all the reps hustling hard and getting super creative to not only hit their own numbers, but to earn first place on the team. It is a very exciting time.

When I was managing sales, it was slightly different, but always exciting just the sames. For many companies, particularly those that are publicly traded, performance at quarter end is critical for many reasons – keeping budgets, maintaining stock price and investor confidence and perhaps even for earning an investment traunch. While sales performance should be brilliant every day of the year, the truth is that success is a marathon, not a sprint and sales leaders need to push the team hard to ensure there is a strong surge to the finish at each quarter end.

Here are my favorite ways to make sure your team charges hard to close out the quarter:

  1. Communicate the Importance of the Target – all the reasons for hitting the targets may be patently obvious to every senior manager in the company, but may not be obvious at the rep level – they are more focused on their own day to day work and deals. Even if the team has heard the message fifty times, it never hurts to say it again and like a coach cheering their team on in the fourth quarter when fatigue may be setting in, you need a rallying cry (or several) to keep the team pushing hard to the finish.
  2. Extra Focus on Major Deals – review the best deals with each rep (and not just what is in sales tracking system which doesn’t always give the whole picture) – determine which are the most important deals and make yourself available 24/7 to help close whatever needs to close – often reps can’t get the attention of senior management – now is the time to make sure they can.
  3. Don’t Forget the Big Picture – there are four quarters in a year and the highest performing teams maintain momentum throughout the year. Many teams expend an enormous amount of energy closing the quarter and then spend weeks afterwards, picking up the pieces. The team cannot stop prospecting for four weeks while they close the quarter without creating a problem entering the next quarter– a spiff for new qualified leads can help incent the team to do all the things that matter throughout the year.
  4. Keep the focus on the revenue target, not the doom and gloom in the news – the news just brings you down – it doesn’t put you in the right frame of mind to be positive in front of customers, and instill their confidence and trust. Focus on the customer and the sale.
  5. Don’t let anyone quit – often there are reps who feel like they won’t make their number with only a few weeks left in the quarter – you can’t afford for them to them give up and try to sandbag next quarter…..watch for defeatism on your team and work with them to stay motivated to keep pushing to close deals.
  6. Make sure everyone is practicing good discipline and work habits – as the mad dash builds up, reps might be skipping paperwork and saying they will get to it later (sure!) or staying later at the office and then coming in later missing key selling hours. You can’t afford to let them do this.
  7. Reach out to all existing customers – customers are often not aware of your targets, so now is a good time to let them know you are prepared to offer the best deals for repeat business and timely purchases.
  8. Watch out for Excuses – top performers don’t make excuses, they keep fighting to succeed all the time.
  9. Monitor Activity Volumes – are calls, meetings, proposals, etc. in line with typical ratios required to hit targets? This can be your clue to deteriorating effort.
  10. Monitor Forecast to Actual – is week to week accuracy improving or deteriorating?
  11. Track Deal Slide – what percentage of forecasted deals are sliding into the next quarter? Jump on these and work to keep them in the quarter.
  12. Have fun – nurture the friendly competition, the bonding that occurs across the team, and smile as much as possible knowing that you are doing everything you can to win. Your customers will appreciate it and reward you.

To your success!

Photo Credit: Arya Ziai via Compfight cc

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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)

Employment Contracts with Sales People – Critical Elements

In turbulent times, we are going to see higher turnover and layoffs – even in sales. A big issue for departing sales employees is entitlements to commissions.

We often see employment contracts that poorly define the conditions related to treatment of commissions after an employee departs (typically referred to as “trailing commissions”). For example, when someone’s employment is terminated by either party, they may have unpaid commissions and often leave developed sales opportunities that ultimately close after their departure. Are they entitled to any commission on a deal that was highly matured and closed after they depart?

A typical sales comp plan involves a large variable/commission component, so this can be a big issue, particularly when an the departing employee feels they are entitled to additional compensation and the financial amount is worth fighting over.

It is in the employer’s best interests to be proactive and ensure everything is clearly defined in advance, since the courts that are generally sympathetic to the employee in disputes.

While the rules are slightly different depending on which state or provincial laws govern the employment and which party terminates the employment, there are some general rules.

Almost all jurisdictions, consider commissions earned prior to departure as earned income due to the employee regardless of any other circumstances (even if it says otherwise in the contract).

In the absence of conditions in the compensation plan or employment agreement, many courts have awarded pro-rata calculations of commissions or bonuses.

You can avoid costly disputes if detail the how you will pay out commissions after departure.

For employers this means, that if the employee departs on their own will, they forfeit entitlement to commissions associated with any maturing opportunity.

If the employee is terminated, particularly without cause, you may want to consider paying a pro-rated amount based on past performance.

Whatever your company’s policy, we suggest it is fair to both parties, clearly defined and is consistent with the local employment laws governing the employee-employer relationship.

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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)

Miller Heiman Releases 2009 Sales Best Practices Study

mhLast week I attended the executive briefing from Miller Heiman which just released its Sales Best Practices Study for 2009. We covered the 2008 Sales Best Practices Study here. This year 3,900+ sales professionals participated in the research.

Some highlights from 2009:

“Successful sales organizations do not do one or two things well; they maintain a high level of performance across all of the selling and sales management activities required to support the sales process.” These include

  1. Opportunity Creation
  2. Opportunity Management
  3. Relationship Management
  4. People and Organization
  5. Support and Enablement
  6. Management Execution

Nearly a third of organizations think they have only a 50% chance of hitting their Q1&Q2 targets this year, and another 50% felt confident with concerns. 80% of World Class organizations expected growth this year and 65% of non-world class organizations. Given current economic climate, I would say that’s a fairly bullish crowd.

World Class organizations (7% of respondents qualify) were able to achieve a higher level of growth vs peers across these metrics:

  • Average account billing
  • Sales force quota attainment
  • Number of qualified opportunities/leads
  • Customer retention
  • Forecast accuracy

Characteristics of World class organizations that make them different than others:

  • high degree of alignment between sales marketing and customer needs (trending up for the last 3 yrs)
  • standardized processes for qualifying and selling
  • formal strategy for getting concessions in return for price reductions
  • clear understanding of client issues prior to offering proposals
  • cross department collaboration to manage strategic accounts
  • joint long-term planning with key customer,
  • knowledge of why top performers are successful and structured programs to share that insight across the team
  • sales metrics are aligned with business objectives,
  • CRM systems geared to greatly improve effectiveness of the sales organization
  • organization is highly structured to learn and adapt.

One interesting factoid as it relates to sales performance – was that top performers placed equal emphasis on the importance of discipline/planning as ability to access and influence senior execs, while average performers placed higher emphasis on senior exec access. There is a lot to be said for the science of sales even at the individual level.

Click here to access the full 2009 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study.

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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)

Find the Hidden Truth in Sales Resumes

There is a cliché that sales people don’t typically have the best resumes, so there is a tendency to dismiss or reduce the importance of the resume in sales hiring. And good selling is about the personal interaction anyway, right?

Well, most of us don’t have time to meet everyone to find our whether they are strong or not, so to protect your agenda, you need ways to screen candidates before meeting them.

Here are some of the top techniques used by those of us that do a lot of sales hiring. Here are the top ways to review a resume:

1.    Look for numbers.  In sales resumes, results are key.  Anyone can call themselves an “over achiever” or a sales “superstar.” If a candidate does not quantify his success in the resume, it may be an effort to downplay less than stellar results.

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

3.    Consecutive short stays are a warning sign.  If the candidate has a pattern of staying at companies for 1 year or less, she is probably not making quota, or perhaps she is repeatedly losing interest before building momentum.  Optimally, you are looking for someone who stays three to five years at most sales jobs.

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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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