This article was originaly written by TTI Performace Systems, Ltd

“Many entrepreneurs hit the ground running with drive and determination, high energy and big goals. With this approach, they often find success as they watch their company grow and prosper. However, this approach can also fall short when the future of the company depends on satisfied employees.

This is exactly where the president of Apex Capital L.P. found himself. As a young, Texas entrepreneur, he had built a successful company with 91 full-time employees, double-digit annual growth and at least $50 million per month in financial transactions. Everything seemed great, but he was quickly noticing that his employees weren’t so fond of his hard-driving, impatient and direct style. With retention rates dangerously low and recruitment even worse, he knew something needed to change, he just didn’t know where to start—until he contacted Lori Link.

Link, president of Resource Link and a TTI’s Chairman’s Club member, showed Apex Capital L.P. how performance improvement, team building and individual development impact the bottom line. Link started with a personal and in-depth session with the company’s president that included TriMetrix® to help define behaviors, motivators and personal skills. From there, she used the same approach to help the Apex Capital L.P. team better lead and manage, as well as make effective hiring decisions. Ultimately, Link helped transform the organization. “If you want to talk return on investment, it’s unbelievable,” said the president of Apex Capital L.P.

• Turnover has dropped dramatically, from as high as 78% to a mere 16%.
• The company increased overall productivity, despite a 49% growth in personnel.
• Client retention improved 65%.
• The company was recognized as one of the top 60 companies to work for in Texas.

Although the numbers for 2007 are not final, Link expects another year of continued success. The future looks bright for both Apex Capital and Resource Link, as they are starting more in-depth position development and management training. The company’s president wants to lead a team of people who not only enjoy their work but are also naturally good at what they do. “As a result, they are happy employees. That means I have happy clients, and happy clients keep you growing,” he says.”

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This special offer is for hiring sales managers, HR managers, and Business Owners only. It is not for individual sales reps.

To take advantage of this offer email sclark@newschoolselling.com No phone calls please. Please include you contact information including company name and your title.

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The nation’s first baby boomer, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher from New Jersey applied for Social Security Monday, the start of an avalanche of applications from the post-World War II generation. Casey-Kirschling was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, making her the first baby boomer — a generation of nearly 80 million born from 1946 to 1964.

In 2007 Baby Boomers represent nearly one- half of the U.S. work force. The number of workers 55 and older is growing four times faster that the work force as a whole. As the baby-boomer generation retires from the U.S. work force, companies will have to cope with the fact that Generation X’s, who were born between 1964 and 1982 and number only 44 million, will not be able to fill the talent gap.

What does all of this mean for you or the company you own or work for?

If you are an employee it means that there will be an increasing demand and opportunity for your skills. If you are a hiring manager or business owner it means you are going to find it more and more difficult to find and retain good employees.

What can you do to maximize the talent acquisition and minimize the talent drain:

• Implement extensive communication and relationship building skills training for the management team
• Institute a training program that helps employees further their technical, personal and communication skills
• Improve personal and communication skills among all employees
• Provide coaching and career path development opportunities for key employees
• Make work fun
• Provide a flexible work schedule
• Allow employees to work remotely or from home
• Learn what motivates each individual employee and provide proper motivation and management

The astute manager realizes their best customers are in fact their employees and how they treat these “internal customers” is how these internal customers will treat the external customers / buyers.
 

Benchmark the Job, Not the People

Whether you are hiring new sales reps or trying to gauge the potential performance of existing ones the key lies in benchmarking the position.

But are you using the right benchmark?

Some managers might benchmark top performers in the position, hoping to hire a “clone” or coach everyone to that level. But when you benchmark the top performers of a C team, you get a C benchmark. Other managers benchmark the ideal candidate, looking to hire the perfect salesperson. Like the goal of finding the perfect spouse, the goal of finding the perfect salesperson is an unrealistic dream.To get a true benchmark, you must know what skills, talents, behaviors, motivations and attitudes the job requires. You must let the job talk and determine the Key Accountabilities of the job.

• Why does the job exist?
• What knowledge is needed?
• What couldn’t be done without it?

With a job benchmarking process, you can determine what behaviors, motivators and personal skills are required by the job’s key accountabilities. The job benchmark then allows you to accurately match talent to the position and assess current performers. When sales reps match the behavioral requirements of the job, have the motivation for success and can provide the right soft skills superior sales performance is greatly increased.

A study by IHRIM and Knowledge Infusion found that over 82% of organizations cite Succession Planning as a growing concern of the future. Now they are looking at middle management and key talent in addition to top level executives.

Call Us Today

For more information on how your sales organization can benefit from New School Selling’s Job Benchmarking Process, call us at 800-250-3146.

The first 3 newsletter subscribers that call us will receive a FREE benchmark ($1,500.00 value). Call us at 800-250-3146 and we will be happy to help you develop your benchmark.

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If you ask the average person to describe salespeople, you’ll hear words like pushy, manipulative, slick, self-serving, phony, and a list of other things no mother wants her child to be. For as long as most of us can remember, the sales profession has been the butt of jokes. That’s a shame when you consider that a sales career offers high income, personal freedom, and limitless opportunities.

The reason those uncomplimentary images of salespeople persist is simple: Four out of five people currently employed in the sales profession should be doing something else because they are not hardwired for sales success. To compensate for their lack of natural talent, they try to fake it. They become the classic fast-talking salespeople, and perpetuate the image, the stereotypes, and the jokes.

Inept salespeople cause most companies to experience high turnover, complacency, mediocre production, and poor attitudes among their sales teams. These problems can all be traced back to ineffective recruiting practices and processes.

Fifty-five percent of the people now selling have neither the emotional nor the psychological talent to succeed in selling, says Herb Greenberg, CEO of Caliper and author of How To Hire Your Next Top Performer. They should leave the profession. Another 25 percent are miscast. They are selling the wrong product or service, or trying to sell a product for which they aren’t suited — selling an intangible when they would be better suited to sell a tangible product, etc.

With all that the sales profession offers, it should easy to attract, recruit, build, and maintain highly productive sales teams of the best and brightest talent.

So whom should we be recruiting? What does it take to succeed in selling?

The single biggest key to success is desire. Unless the candidate has an internal burning desire to succeed, nothing else matters. But in addition to craving success, there are five qualities that great salespeople have in common.

While these qualities can be subjectively observable by an astute student of human behavior, they are not easily quantifiable or measurable by interviewers. In order to objectively quantify and measure these characteristics, interviewers should have applicants complete a psychometric behavioral assessment prior to the interview.

Sales Managers and interviewers who follow this process will eliminate many false hires and save themselves and their company precious time and money.

Empathy

According to Herb Greenberg, “Empathy is the ability to sense the reactions of other people. It is the ability to pick up the subtle clues and cues provided by others in order to accurately assess what they are thinking and feeling. Empathy does not necessarily involve agreeing with the feelings of others, but it does involve knowing what their feelings are.”

The salesperson that is able to sift through and find the true meaning of what is being communicated is able to more accurately uncover problems and present customized solutions.

Ego Drive

Don’t confuse ego drive with desire or motivation to succeed. Ego drive is an emotional need to gain self-acceptance. Persuading others to our point of view fulfills that need. Top salespeople get their “fix” or “high” when they successfully persuade a prospect. When someone buys their product or service, it becomes a validation of self.

Salespeople with high Ego Drive are motivated and driven to achieve tangible results from their sales efforts. They will work long and hard to close sales and produce positive results.

Service Need

Salespeople who rate high in service need have a psychological need to serve and please others. Because of their need to be liked they develop relationships easily and are able to create trust quickly. This need makes them a natural fit for sales positions that require them to service and maintain ongoing relationships with buyers that they sell.

Self-Image

This individual possesses the ability to accept rejection and failure as part of life without internalizing or without emotional damage. Someone with a low self-image is paralyzed by failure and avoids any experiences that may produce failure. Salespeople with a strong self-image, however, are emotionally resilient. Rather than being crushed by failure, they are motivated by it. They can’t wait for the next opportunity.

Sales is a profession of constant rejection. The ability to experience rejection and not internalize it and take it personally is perhaps the most critical factor in sales success. Sales people who have a low Self Image are unable to tolerate rejection and will avoid making sales calls on prospects that may reject them.

Utilitarian Attitude

A person with a high utilitarian attitude is likely to have a great need to surpass others in wealth. He or she understands that wealth brings security for the salesperson, but also for present and future family.

A salesperson with this talent has a need to obtain a significant return on their investment of time and energy. Consequently, they will very jealously guard their time and energy and they will avoid sales situations that have low payoff or marginal profit.

Sales organizations that are ready to eliminate the high turnover, mediocre selling, complacency, and bad attitudes need to move away from both the traditional approach and the warm body approach to recruitment. These efforts have produced mediocre sales teams and incompetent salespeople. They reinforce the stereotypes of badly trained, high-pressure, unprofessional, fast-talking con artists.

Instead, companies need to learn how to effectively identify, attract, recruit, and retain winners. Perhaps then, the public will stop making salespeople the butt of jokes.

Good Selling

Steve Clark
PS Want to learn how to become a Master Prospector?

The following is an article written by Renee Zemanski of SellingPower.com on line newsletter published on Wednesday, November 15, 2006

“Companies need to view recruiting as a process, not a one-time event”, says Steve Clark, president of New School Selling, a business development consulting firm that specializes in helping businesses grow sales revenues and profits.

“Recruiting to the sales manager is what prospecting is to a salesperson,” he says. “Just as a salesperson should have a pipeline of qualified prospects so should the manager have a ‘bank of people’ he or she can engage in the recruiting process. It should be ongoing and continuous.”

Clark’s advice is sound. According to a Hay Group survey, the least committed employees to a company are its salespeople.

The Philadelphia-based management consulting company reports that 38 percent of salespeople surveyed planned to leave their respective companies within two years. It’s a race that never ends for recruiters.

“People responsible for the recruiting must realize that recruiting is really their number one job because regardless of what else they do they’ve got to have the right people promoting their product,” says Clark. “Companies need to advertise for salespeople on a consistent, regular basis; they never know when they are going to need someone. And if they find a top performer, they can always replace a poor performer or define a new position.”

“Companies need to be more like football teams – they always need to be looking to replace talent,” Clark continues. “The person who is the weakest performer on the team should always feel that his job is in jeopardy. It sounds ruthless, but it’s the way of life in business – if you’re not performing, then you become replaceable. Salespeople who really are mediocre and shouldn’t be in sales in the first place are usually the only people who will have a problem with this type of culture. Top-performing salespeople, who are rare, will thrive in such a competitive environment.”

Clark says that by establishing this type of environment companies can eliminate complacency and elevate the total effectiveness of the whole organization. He also adds that the companies who make the mistake of waiting until they have an opening to recruit will fall into an impulsive mode. They try to fill a position quickly and end up hiring a mediocre performer because they were under stress to fill that position. It’s these types of hurdles that companies need to be prepared for.

“If you don’t have a contingency plan, you’ll find yourself in a reactive position,” he says. “It takes anywhere from 30 to 90 days to find a good salesperson. That’s why you have to keep your antenna up. For example, if you’re eating dinner in a restaurant, and your server has a magnetic personality, you should be asking yourself, ‘Could this person make a contribution to our company?’”

Clark also recommends staying in the fast lane of the recruiting game by attending job fairs, recruiting fairs, using college placement services continuously, and by developing a sales profile of the positions you have. Determine the psychological, personal, and emotional characteristics that the people filling these positions should have – these aren’t traits you can train, says Clark. Use testing to determine whether candidates fit this template. Once these characteristics are outlined, it is a matter of recruiting someone who matches up to at least 80 percent of the profile.

“The bottom line to sales success is job match,” says Clark. “Sales winners win because they are doing what they are naturally programmed to do. Others fail because they are trying to perform in a role that they are not naturally programmed for, and no amount of coaching, training, or mentoring can change someone’s natural programming. That’s why the hiring decision is the most important decision a sales manager will ever make.”

Sales is a career with enormous opportunity. For those who are ambitious sales is an extremely attractive profession. A sales career offers high income, personal freedom, and limitless opportunities.

With all of these benefits why is it so hard for companies to attract, recruit, build and maintain a highly productive sales team? With all that the sales profession offers it should be easy to attract and hire the best and brightest talent. Why then do most companies experience high turnover, complacency, mediocre production and poor attitudes with their sales teams?

The reason that companies experience these things is that 4 out of 5 people now should be doing something else for themselves, for their company, for the profession and certainly for the sake of the prospects they encounter. Because these people do not have the natural talent, they try to fake it and in the fast talking process, sell themselves and the rest of us short. Of the 80% of people now selling - 55% of them should be in another profession because they have neither the emotional or psychological talents to succeed in selling.

Another 25% who are selling are miscast. That is they are selling the wrong product or service. They are trying to sell a product for which they are not suited, i.e., they are an outside sales person when they would be better suited to be an inside salesperson. Or they are selling an intangible when they would be better suited to sell a tangible product, etc.

So how do companies find themselves in this situation? It can all be traced back to ineffective recruiting practices and processes. Let’s take a look at the typical recruiting practices of companies.

Typical recruiting practices usually fall into one of two categories: the traditional approach or the warm body approach.

In the traditional approach companies emphasize such selection criteria as: previous experience, age, race, sex or education although none of these have been validated as any predictable indicator of success in selling.

So what does it take to succeed in selling?

Without a doubt desire is the key to success. Without an internal burning desire to succeed nothing else matters.

In addition, there are five qualities that make salespeople great. They are: Empathy, Ego Drive, Service Minded, Self Image and a Utilitarian Attitude. All of these can be measured and documented. Let’s look at each of them:

• Empathy - according to Herb Greenberg, CEO of Caliper and author of “How to Hire Your Next Top Performer”, “empathy is the ability to sense the reactions of other people. It is the ability to pick up the subtle clues and cures provided by others in order to accurately assess what they are thinking and feeling. Empathy does not necessarily involve agreeing with the feelings of others, but it does involve knowing what their feelings are.”
• Ego Drive - should not be confused with desire or motivation to succeed. It is an emotional need of gaining self-acceptance that is fulfilled by persuading others to our point of view. Top salespeople get their “fix” or “high” when they successfully persuade someone to their point of view. When someone buys our product or service it is a validation of self.
• Service To Others - is similar to Ego Drive in that the salesperson derives acceptance for having done a job well. It has more to do with receiving customer or manager approval or appreciation than for having made the sale.
• Self Image - This characteristic has to do with how much an individual likes himself or herself. It is an individual’s ability to feel good about himself or herself to accept rejection and failure as part of life. The person with a strong Self-Image has the ability to leave rejection behind and go on without being emotionally crushed or internalizing it. Salespeople with a strong Self Image are emotionally resilient. They are motivated by failure not crushed by it. They can’t wait for the next opportunity. Someone with a low Self Image is paralyzed by failure and avoids any experiences that may produce failure.
• Utilitarian Attitude - is characterized by an interest in money and what is useful. Someone with a high Utilitarian Attitude wants to have the security that money brings not only for themselves but also for their present and future family. A person with a high Utilitarian Attitude is likely to have a high need to surpass others in wealth.

In the warm body approach companies will hire most anybody and pay them little or no salary, promise them high commissions, provide little or no training and put them on the street. It’s the “throw a lot of mud on the wall” and see what sticks approach.

Using either of these two approaches is sure to produce mediocrity at best. At worst, because incompetent people are put on the street, it educates prospects that salespeople are unprofessional, ill-trained, high pressure, con artists. It is also the reason that the sales profession is the butt of many jokes.

So what’s the solution to this problem?

Companies must change their thinking. They need to view recruiting as a process, not an event. It should be on going and continuous. Recruiting to the sales manager is what prospecting is to a salesperson. Just as a salesperson should have a pipeline of qualified prospects so should the manager have a “bank of people” he/she can engage in the recruiting process.

Here are some steps a manager can take to keep the recruiting pipeline filled:

• Develop a sales profile of the position you are looking to fill. Determine what percentage of the job requires opening new accounts versus servicing existing clients. How long is the sales cycle of our product or service. Will the salesperson do the prospecting or will they be provided with leads. Who will they call on. How much technical background do they need. Will they sell a customer and move on or is it sell and customer development. How much sales management pressure will they receive. What is the compensation plan. What skill sets do they need, What is the emotional and psychological profile for a successful hire.Once these things are outlined it is a matter of recruiting someone who matches up to at least 80% of the Profile. The bottom line to sales success is job match. Sales Winners win because they are doing what they are naturally programmed to do. Sales Losers lose because they are trying to perform in a role that they are not naturally programmed for. No amount of coaching, training or mentoring can change someone’s natural programming. The hiring decision is the most important decision a sales manager will ever make.
• Set a goal to interview a specific number of people a month (even if you don’t intend to hire). This ensures that you always have a fresh group of people to talk with. This “practice” will help keep your interviewing skills sharp.
• Advertise on a consistent, regular basis. This helps to keep the pipeline full.
• Offer recruiting bonuses and incentives to your salespeople. After all they know what the job requires.
• Use Pre-Hire Assessments to identify the emotional and psychological makeup of a potential new hire.
• Develop more effective interviewing skills. Since most sales managers don’t interview regularly they don’t keep their skills sharp. Interviewing, like any other skill, requires constant practice to stay sharp.