Hire A Sales Superstar

Regardless of whether you’re a completely new sales manager, a tenured sales manager, a business owner, a VP of Product sales or a sales trainer, you actually may well discover that leading salespeople is one of the more tough sales management training jobs a person encounter.

The explanation for this difficulty is the fact that salespeople don’t really like to be “led” in the traditional sense. Salespeople generally speaking, are a fickle lot. These people like to think of themselves as fiercely independent spirits who want to do things on their own. They’re typically extremely opinionated, and frequently combative.

And as a result, they only “follow” a sales leader that they feel is competent, has their interests foremost in their minds and even more importantly of all a sales manager they trust.

The true secret to excellent sales leadership is in building trust with your front line salespeople.

The unfortunate part is the fact that the vast majority of “leadership” books don’t actually make an effort to teach this concept. Nearly all feel it’s a given.

How wrong they are.

Instead there is an art as well as a science to leadership and it all starts off with initially developing a firm foundation of trust. It’s an incredibly critical principle to master. And it is critical to the long term wellbeing of the organization.

In fact, think about trust building with your sales force just like constructing a house. Trust is the foundation of that house. You can’t start laying down floors adding walls until you have that foundation set first, right?

It’s exactly the same thing with leadership and trust. A sales manager can’t lead a sales team to spectacular sales heights, let alone merely make sales quotas without initially developing that “trust” foundation.
There are actually about three established tactics that will allow you to not only build trust with your sales force to help you drive your company’s sales revenues:

1. Evoke the Law of Reciprocity.

The law of reciprocity states when one does something nice for someone, and then human nature requires the receiver will really feel obligated to do something nice for you in exchange. It’s especially powerful because human instinct dictates that at the exact instant that you do something nice for an individual that person feels obligated to return the favour.

Consequently if you continually do nice things for your sales person, then they feel required to do something nice for you in exchange. That nice thing in exchange is usually increased sales. Don’t manipulate this concept; simply utilize it to your advantage. Additionally, don’t count on the favor being returned the moment you perform it. Be very discreet. Yet take advantage of the natural laws of human psychology to acquire what you desire which is good results for your organization and your sales team.

2. Let The Salesperson Take All The Credit

Men and women always operate better if they never have to worry about who gets the credit. If perhaps a sales manager is on a call with a salesperson who generates a sale and following the call the sales manager returns to the office and explains to everyone exactly how HE made the sale, how do you suppose that salesperson would feel?

Don’t be concerned with who gets the credit. Sales managers are compensated for precisely how effectively their sales people do. A sales manager should never take the credit for the good work of his sales people

Making sure that each and every salesperson receives the proper credit will just help develop more trust and will inspire them all the more at the exact same time.

3. Don’t Tell, Advise Instead

There will probably be lots of times in which you’ll have to tell your sales representatives, in no uncertain terms, what they need to do in any particular situation.

However, the remainder of the time stay clear of giving direct orders at all costs.

For instance, rather than saying: “I want you to see the O’Neil account and provide them with the new prices.”

Modify that a bit and say: “You may really want to consider taking the new pricing to the O’Neil account.”

Your salesman listens to that and thinks, alright, he’s not dictating to me what to do, but he’s giving me a recommendation and I’m going to decide whether it is appropriate to execute. This particular method encourages and motivates, and does not manipulate.

Employ these trust building techniques to lead and inspire your sales reps and you’ll start seeing rapid gains in your sales leadership.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get more great information on sales management.

When training sales managers, the most important issue to not forget are to teach your sales managers the importance of building and supporting the absolute best sales team. A robust team – backed by superior sales training and capable leadership – can elevate a corporation to new heights of success. At the same time, a badly prepared and underperforming sales force can prove to be a company’s downfall. Either way, the glory or even the blame rests squarely on your shoulders.

Encouraging and keeping a high-performance salesforce is a vital enterprise. You have to start with the right people, establish attainable goals, find successful methods to motivate your group and confirm that everyone – including you – completes proper sales training. These kinds of key actions will get you and your group moving in the proper direction:

 * Hire internal sales staff instead than outsourced workers.

Even though it may be attractive to consider outsourcing as a way to spend less money, it’s best to get a sales force that is focused exclusively on your products instead of one which is keeping up with numerous customers. An in-house sales staff will allow you greater command over the sales function and make it easy for you to set tactics for the entire sales group.

 * Use both financial and non-monetary rewards to motivate your sales team.

While a commission-based compensation program delivers powerful motivation, such as base pay can help you entice and retain great sales people. This strategy assures a bare minimum income during lean times, which helps keep morale high and lessens the risk of losing skilled sales personnel. A comprehensive benefits program can help you compete for the very best salespeople, and public recognition is another way to inspire and incentive spectacular performance.

 * Obtain formal sales training for your team – and sales management training for yourself.

Make an investment in some form of professional sales management training for your entire staff, to make certain that all staff members have a consistently high level of expertise and expertise. Consider online sales training that your particular reps can register for in together but finish at their very own pace and on their own schedule. An online certificate program provides the added benefit of official sales qualifications, which is often a powerful motivator. But don’t neglect your own sales management training needs, because even the best sales managers have room for improvement. If you’re new to your role, consider sales management training made to aid in making the transition into a supervisory role. If you’re a veteran sales manager, seek out expert-level sales management training.

By pursuing these steps, you’ll be able to place your sales team – plus your vocation – firmly on the pathway to success.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get more great information on sales management.

OK, you need to hire a new sales rep.

Maybe, the one you just let go couldn’t cut it…

Or maybe your company is going through an expansion and you have to hire an entire sales force at once…

Or perhaps your best rep just got promoted (congratulations by the way – even though it does kinda suck for you) and you have to hire quick…

So what do you do?

In our next series of blog posts, we’ll be going through some of the essential steps required to hire top salespeople. In this first series, we touch on screening sales candidates prior to the interview phase.

When you’re under pressure, the tendency is to do a “one and done” interview and hire. These are the “one interview – one offer” kind of sales hires. If you go this route, you’ll regret this later…trust me, Ive done it and it’s the worst thing you can do.

What you need is a strategy to screen resumes, determine which ones you want to either phone screen or interview, then interview, then hire.

You’ve go a lot to do…but you’re busy trying to get sales going in the right direction.

Well for the next few posts, we will be gong through this entire process step-by-step so you make the right decision, minimize the chances of making the wrong decisions, and hire the next sales superstar for your team.

So let’s get into the first step in the entire process of interviewing: resume screening.

Step 1: Examine your hiring criteria

The first real step is to identify what your hiring criteria really is.

Like many companies, you most likely have a job posting somewhere on your company’s website for all to view to the world. It may go a little something like this:

Currently, we seek a Sales Executive in our East Bay, California territory.
As part of our highly visible sales team, Sales Executives target and secure profitable new business to build relationships as aligned with regional and national marketing strategies. You will provide overall support and expertise to new accounts to ensure the highest level of quality service and provide customer education on ABC Corporation’s processes and procedures.

A Bachelors degree in Business, Marketing or the Life Sciences

• 5 years successful front line sales experience including strong “closing” skills
• Knowledge of the healthcare industry and the general economics of business
• Ability to develop and sustain strong customer relationships
• Strong business planning and organizational skills
• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills
• Solid PC skills including knowledge of Microsoft software
• A valid driver’s license

Well there you go, all you need to do is find all that and you’re on your way to hiring a sales superstar!

Hardly. I’m guessing that this is not the exact candidate you’re looking for….

The problem is that with most postings looking like this, there is really nothing in the posting that will help you to screen out the resumes you don’t want and help you bring in the ones you do want. Nor does it give you any indication of the types of talents that you are actually looking for.

However, at this point, its okay because all you want to do is just have the bare minimum requirements of the job laid out.

Remember, this isn’t the core characteristics you are looking for…we get into that later. All you want to write down is the job description and the bare minimum qualifications you need to hire.

Write out the complete job description. For example, put in writing the following:

• The leg work that must be done prior to making a sales call
• What kind of sale is it: transactional vs. consultative
• How you expect existing customers to be serviced
• What essential personality traits are required
• How you expect records to be maintained
• How many calls should be made in a week
• Talents needed to be successful in the role
• Determine if industry experience is essential
• How many years of experience is absolutely required
• Education level

Think through the entire sales process and detail how you want it to be done, what tools will be used, and your expectations for their results.

This exercise should include not only what you want sales reps or account managers to do, but how you want them to approach it. Think about the style of selling you want them to use.

The profile and ad you create may change over time – that’s okay because its sole purpose is to screen out and attract in, at a very rudimentary level, the candidates that could be most well-suited for the job. All it really is a first step in a lengthy process.

With all the work you have to do…you’re gonna need to get some help sifting through the bad resumes so you can focus on the good ones.

And to save you TONS of time, we’ll give you a big clue how to get someone else besides you to do this for you – so you can stay focused on other things, like sales…in our next post.

In the meantime, get writing.

To learn even more about sales training, get our free ebook.

Do you have your own hiring criteria? Please leave a comment after this post.

When you were interviewing for your current job, you probably prepped yourself for days, making sure you did all your research on the position, spoke to the few people who know the job well, maybe got a little background information on your boss-to-be.

On the day of the interview you woke up that morning, you might have rehearsed your answers to some of the potential interview questions while you were in the shower.

Maybe you made extra sure that you got a nice haircut was just so and wore your best suit and even shined those beat up Bostonians.

The point is this, when you interviewed, you made every possible attempt to represent yourself in the best possible way.

In short, that day, unless you were sick, you presented yourself in the best possible way you knew how. It was the best that you had.

By the same token, when a sales manager is interviewing sales candidates, think about this: what the sales manager sees in front of him is the absolute best that you’ll ever see of them.

If they don’t blow you away in the interview and sell you on them, chances are slim that they will sell any sales prospect they are presenting your product to.

In the interview you have with them, you’re observing them at their very best. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Don’t convince yourself that maybe they’ll do a better job when they’re out in the field, because they won’t.

If anything, they’ll be worse in their daily sales calls than they were in the interview. Just like you dolled yourself up as best as you could for your current job interview, they did the same thing when they interviewed with you. Everything else will be a steep drop off.

You may tell yourself, that some people just don’t interview well right?

No! Not salespeople. If a sales rep cannot sell you or your sales manager in an interview on their best day, they cannot sell effectively when they’re not at their best. And let’s not kid ourselves, there are plenty of days that a sales rep doesn’t have it all working in your favor.

So don’t settle. Don’t make excuses. If the interview candidate is anything less than stellar…then keep looking you and your sales manager can do a heck of alot better.

To learn more about sales training, get our free ebook.

Tell us what you think. Should you hire a sales interview candidate that just has a bad day interviewing?

The best, high-performing sales managers are a different breed.

They notice stuff.

They notice what their salespeople are good at…as well as what they’re not so good at. They then leverage the stuff they are good at to coax even greater performance out of their salespeople. They largely minimize the weaknesses.

The average sales managers sees those same weaknesses and thinks that he can fix them. He spends all his time doing just that.

That’s why he’s an average sales manager.

Let’s show an example…

Here we have two top performing salespeople, both having achieved the highest sales awards in their companies:

Jane

Jane has has an incredible talent for building rapport, easily weaving pleasant conversation with the true sales pitch. Her manner is easygoing and laid-back, but hides a profound inner drive.

She’s completely in control of the situation at all times and asks many layered questions of the prospect to uncover their needs. Instead of being “all business”, she talks about jewelry, kids and other non-business activities; easily mixing in rapport building with selling through out the process.

She doesn’t take herself too seriously, taking time for some self-deprecating asides, but constantly driving towards the sale. She uses no real reference pieces, instead relies on her easy, trustworthy manner to build credibility. When it comes to the end, she doesn’t really “close” per se as much as she just assumes they will be moving on to the next step.

Tom

In contrast, “Tom” is incredibly persistent, although a little bit awkward in his approach, people respect him due to his aggressiveness and “never taking no” mentality.

When he is in a sales call, he’s all business, no rapport building whatsoever, but asks few precisely worded questions to uncover his client’s needs.

When he hears objections, he aggressively asks the reasons behind the objections. He then pulls out reference materials to overcome the objections and validate his claims. At the end of the sale, he asks “alternate close questions”, awaits responses before proceeding and aggressively pushes for the next step, and is very successful in doing so.

In our little hypothetical scenario, let’s say Tom and Jane report to your sales managers. Would they look at the above scenarios and think: “If I could just get Jane to use more reference materials and ask more hard close questions and Tom to just lighten up and build some more rapport, both of them would be even better!”

In both cases, the sales manager would be falling into the most common, yet well-meaning trap that average sales managers make.  They would be trying to perfect them both.

I have news for you…they’ll never do it.

Instead, get your sales managers to get more out of your salespeople by harnessing their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses.

Not only is it a far easier (and more fun) way to mange…but its a far more effective one too.