As a coach and consultant of entrepreneurs, owners and managers of sales organizations, I continue to be amazed at how little they know about how their sales people spend their time. When I ask managers the question, “where do your people spend their time”, the response I most often hear  is, “I don’t have a clue”.

Accountability is the most difficult and second most important job of a sales manager. Only hiring and recruiting is more important. The gathering of real information about what is going on in the field should be at the top of every manager’s daily activity.

Why is this so important

Truth be known most sales people are undisciplined, lazy, and notoriously poor planners and managers of their time. This has been confirmed by a study at Columbia University, in which, thousands of sales people were tracked, and it was determined that the average sales person was productive only two hours out of an eight hour work day. If this is true, then what in the world are they doing with the other 75% of their work day? And more importantly how much more productive could they be if they got organized and had a plan?

Why does this issue exist

It exists for several reasons: first, managers are oblivious to what is going on in the field because they spend most of their time shuffling papers, compiling reports and attending meetings instead of getting out in the field with their reps on a daily basis. Secondly, many managers intuitively know this is going on but they don’t have the courage to confront the issue and deal with it. They would prefer to ignore it and hope it goes away.

Third, most managers are poorly trained and ill equipped to skillfully handle this and a myriad of other important sales management functions. Fourth, many managers themselves are no better at personal discipline, planning, organization and time management than the people they are trying to lead.

What’s the solution

The big picture solution is that companies need a sales management operations manual that spells out the roles and responsibilities and gives each manager the tools to do their job. Secondly, managers need intensive training on how to perform their job.

A simple solution for the time management issue is to have each sales rep keep a time log and account for their use of time. This log should be broken down in fifteen minute increments and sales reps should be required to turn this in to the manager at the end of each day or each week.

I realize that many managers will resent having to do this because they perceive this as baby sitting or micro management. If you have any of these feelings you need to get over it, and realize that most of your people are incapable of self management at this point. 

If managers fail to accept this responsibility they will continue to have poor or mediocre production from most of their sales staff.

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.”

Click here to see a Sample TriMetrix™ Sales Assessment

Want A FREE  Evaluation of One of Your Sales Reps to Find Out How to Help Them Increase Their Sales Production by 37% in the next 6 months?

Be one of the first 7 companies to contact us and we will give you one complimentary TriMetrix®  sales assessment and a 30 minute phone consultation. ($Value 447.00)  We promise no sales pitch. Guaranteed.

Why are we doing this?

 It’s simple really. We are trying to bribe you with an incredible free offer in hopes that after experiencing the power of this selection and coaching tool that you will see the value in the TriMetrix® Sales Assessment Sytem. Pretty straight forward don’t you think?

We know that you are skeptical, wary and don’t believe  in something for nothing. But this really is something for nothing. The only cost to you is your time and frankly if you don’t want to invest a few minutes of your time this isn’t for you.

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.

Be one of the first four companies that contact us and receive 3 special bonuses (valued at more than $224.00)

 Bonus #1

“Unlease Hidden Sales Potential: How to turn average salespeople into superstars” 2 CD set that includes the powerpoint presentation and full audio. This program was originally broadcast live via the Kiplinger Washington Editors Virtual Seminar on August 29, 2007. (Value $197.00)

Bonus #2

Golden Keys to More Effective Sales Management CD

In this no-holds-barred live CD, You will discover:

• The Four Pillars of Effective Sales Management
• How to Improve Your Recruiting Process
• How to Implement Effective Accountability
• How to Genuinely Inspire Your Team

Motivate your sellers to new heights. Teach them to truly work smarter. Prepare to be amazed at how simple and real Steve’s techniques are and how well they work. (Value $37.00)

Bonus #3

8 page Recruiting and Hiring Interview Tool Kit. This tool kit contains startegies and dozens of powerful interview questions that will help you become expert at peeling away the veneer that applicants give you. This stuff is not for sale and is normally reserved as part of our sales operations tool kit for our corporate clients. I need my head examined for giving it away free. (Value $ Priceless)

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.

Call 1-800-250-3146 Today to Connect with a New School Expert Research-Based Assessment Solutions!

In a recent study conducted by Target Training International, an international assessment firm, 7 Subject Matter Experts for sales were asked to identify which 7 Personal Talents and Skills were most critical for sales success. Look over the list and see if you can pick which 7 they identified. If you would like to know which 7 they identified email me sclark@newschoolselling.com your answers and I will send you the results.

Pick the 7 top Personal Talents and Skills you think are necessary for sales success.

• Accountability for Others
• Conceptual Thinking
• Conflict Management
• Continuous Learning
• Customer Focus
• Decision Making
• Developing Others
• Diplomacy and Tact
• Empathetic Outlook
• Flexibility
• Goal Achievement
• Influencing Others
• Interpersonal Skills
• Leading Others
• Objective Listening
• Personal Accountability
• Planning and Organizing
• Problem Solving
• Resiliency
• Results Orientation
• Self Management
• Self Starting
• Teamwork

Before you hire your next sales person you may want to consider using the TriMetix™ Sales Assessment System to determine if your sales candidate has the Magnificent Seven Personal Talents and Skills for sales success at your company. If you are a hiring manager and are looking for an instrument that will help you improve the results of your hiring and recruiting Contact Us and we will provide a complimentary TriMetix™ Sales Assessment for your next sales candidate.

Good Selling

Steve Clark, MAT, CPBA, CPVA

“Do or do not. There is no try.” 

              -Yoda, Jedi Master

How do you react when you are unsuccessful in your attempt to make a sale? Do you blame external factors or do you accept personal responsibility for your lack of success?  In selling you can either make sales or you can make excuses but you can’t make both. Here are the top 25 excuses sales people make for poor performance. How many of them are you guilty of?

1.  My quota is too high.
2.  My territory is too small.
3.  My company doesn’t advertise enough.
4.  Our marketing material is out of date.
5.  Our price is too high.
6.  We don’t get enough leads.
7.  I got undercut on price..
8.  The gatekeeper won’t let me through.
9.  Money is tight.
10.  The economy is slow.
11.  Businesses are not spending money.
12.  My prospects lie to me.
13.  We have a long sales cycle.
14.  Prospects need time to think about it.
15.  I don’t like making cold calls.
16.  They are happy with their current supplier.
17.  Rejection wipes me out.
18.  We’re not competitive.
19.  They’re comparing us to the competition.
20.  They just signed a new contract.
21.  I can’t get through voice mail.
22.  They won’t return my call.
23.  They have to take it to the committee.
24.  They were just shopping price.
25.  They used my proposal to get competitive pricing.

 In this modern era of increased competitive pressure, globalization and technology old school selling methods and processes are not good enough. If you want to join the ranks of the sales elite quit making excuses for poor performance and accept the fact that your sales skills are not good enough; not nearly good enough. When you accept this truth you can begin to make real progress.

Want to know how to get started?

Like the optimistic goal of finding the perfect husband or wife, the hunt for the perfect sales person goes unfulfilled.

For as long as sales people have roamed the earth there have been “winners” and “losers.” For just as long, sales managers have been searching for the elusive “perfect sales person.”

Sales managers perspectives must change. Instead of looking for the perfect person, they must learn to identify and hire sales candidates that have the basic skills and talents to become successful, and then apply superior sales management practices to compensate for the shortcomings new hires have. The ability to recognize, communicate, coach and motivate each of the four types of sales personalities will ultimately determine a manager’s success.

Let’s take a look at the four types of Account Executives and how to manage each:

Hunters

These types are resilient when it comes to rejection. They have a sense of urgency and close hard and fast. They push for the sale, collect the check and move on to the next kill. They’re competitive, positive, high energy, dynamic, fast passed, results oriented and they have very high egos.

They are not good relationship builders or team players and they are demanding.

They have a psychological need to convince others to their way of thinking and their greatest strength in selling is closing new business. They can be your biggest advocate or your worst nightmare.

Management Key: Have them stay out of the office and work on their own where they won’t have to interact and upset the rest of the staff.

Farmers

Farmers have a retail sales mentality and would rather respond to customer requests than initiate contact. When they do respond it is in a low key-key friendly manner. They do not really consider themselves to be sales people. They take rejection very personally and spend a lot of their time trying to work through their feelings of rejection. Farmers will not cold call because they cannot psychologically tolerate rejection. They view cross selling or up selling as imposing on the customer. Their belief is that if someone wants to buy something they will initiate the contact. They value their customers and take wonderful care of existing clients. They are reliable order takers and make great customer service representatives.

Management Key: Give them accounts that require a lot of customer service and relationship building.

Account Penetrators

These sales people are superb long term relationship builders because they possess great patience. They are able to balance the sense of urgency to get new business with the patience to develop new relationships. Their emphasis is on creative problem solving and they excel in consultative selling environments.

They create customer loyalty because of their relationship skills. They are wonderful cross sellers and up sellers and will pursue those opportunities once they have penetrated an account.

Penetrators are political animals who can read who the players are and successfully navigate the political bureaucracy within organizations. They have boundless energy for socializing and networking and see themselves as consultants not sales people.

Their shortcomings are that they are not prospectors and will resist cold calling unless made to do so.

Management Key: Give them prospects and accounts that typically have long sales cycles and multiple layers of decision making.

Charismatics

These folks seem to be living on the edge and almost out of control. They have limitless energy and are in a constant state of movement. They are great initiators of contact or action. They are excessive in every thing they do. They start lots of things but never seem to finish any of them. They are well liked, friendly, social, and outgoing. These folks are master prospectors and will burn up the phone lines and fill up the pipeline. They appear a lot like a Hunter except they are lacking in the ability to close.

They lack focus, are impulsive and overextend themselves to the point of exhaustion. They have a tendency to over promise what you can deliver because they think any thing is possible. They continually shoot themselves in the foot by being totally disorganized and are terrible time managers.

Their sales forecasts are often not worth the paper they are written on. They are the company leaders in pending files and deadwood and they are the mortal enemy of the accounting and traffic departments.

Management Key: Provide strict accountability for their activity and provide plenty of structure and processes for them.

Each of these types of sales people need to be managed differently. A sales manager must not only be able to recognize who she has working for her but she must know how to manage each style and temperament for maximum performance. The management style that works well for one of these types will not work for the others. In order to become more effective, sales managers need to spend time upgrading their knowledge and skills of psychological typing, human relations, coaching and communication. Sadly, most of them are unwilling to do so.

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?

Hiring superstar sales talent is a lot easier than your managers will tell you. Their problem: they think hiring salespeople is the same as hiring for other positions. Wrong. Sales selection requires a completely different process.

Here are the ten most common sales force-hiring mistakes and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Not making recruiting and retaining great sales talent your #1 business priority. Solution: Make this a significant goal for all your managers, and tie a good chunk of their performance bonus to the goal.

Mistake #2: Lacking a system for recruiting top talent from outside your industry. Solution: Create a hiring process for identifying top talent from industries with similar sales environments, and include an on-boarding program to cut ramp time. Example: Sellers who’ve sold conceptual financial services by calling on CEOs and presidents can ramp up to sell other conceptual services, like advertising or consulting.

Mistake #3: Hiring salespeople who can sell instead of those who will sell. The ONLY criterion for selecting superior sales talent is: Will they sell? Not “can they sell?” Sales teams are full of imposters who know how to sell, but won’t.

Mistake #4: Not knowing how to IDENTIFY superstar sales candidates. How do you? Pick the best sales people in your industry, or your company and perform a benchmark evaluation of the behaviors, attitudes, skills and environmental fit to make them champions.

Mistake#5: Hiring managers conduct traditional interviews, and fail to ask the right questions to unmask the “real” candidate. Solution: Conduct audition interviews, which simulate the tough environment to which a real prospect would subject them.

Mistake #6: Hiring to availability instead of to excellence. Solution: Hold your hiring managers accountable to hiring only “A” players.

Mistake #7: Hiring people based on “impressions” instead of hiring those they know will sell. Solution: Change your hiring criteria.

Mistake #8: Failing to learn the five hidden weaknesses that neutralize selling skills. Solution: Learn all five and how to spot them.

They are:

1. Need for Approval: An emotional need to be liked (common in 85 % of sales people in the United States.)
2. Emotional Involvement: They lose objectivity and forget what to do in the heat of battle.
3. Money Weaknesses: Are uncomfortable talking about money, or have a low money tolerance.
4. Buy Cycle: They are indecisive when buying, or shop around on price. As a result, they’re vulnerable to prospects that want to do the same.
5. Self-Limiting Beliefs: If you cannot believe it, you cannot achieve it. These missing beliefs about themselves and selling predetermine their outcomes.

Mistake #9: Failing to measure and reward your employees for referring great candidate employees. Solution: Make it a priority. Set goals for candidate referrals. Pay handsomely, half on hire, half six months later.

Mistake #10: Advertising for positions, instead of for people. The magic is to write ads to describe your superstar. How? Write ads that cause superstars to remark upon reading: “That’s me.”

Many of the world’s best sales forces are the best because they have developed and use a systematic sales process. Having a map of the things we as salespeople have to do to make a sale provides a framework for sales planning and activity that reduces mistakes and shortens new hire ramp-up time.

However, what is conspicuously absent from most of these process maps are the things that our prospective customers have to do each step of the way in order to buy. The truth is that the things we do at any particular step or stage in the process could be a complete waste of time if the client doesn’t do what they must do to move forward to the next step or stage in their buying process.

As sales professionals, you and I don’t retire quota or earn commissions for anything that we do. We get paid on what our prospects do. When they sign a contract or issue a purchase order, then we make some money. This is the root of one of the major challenges of selling. We have to accept that we cannot control our prospects.

As sales people or managers we often ask, “What do we have to do to close this deal?” That, in fact, is the wrong question. What we should be asking is, “What does the prospect have to do in order to buy?” and then the follow-on question is, “What do we have to do to get them to do those things?”

Whether or not we have or follow a systematic sales process, we should endeavor to understand and document our client’s buying process. We must understand not only the things that have to happen throughout the selection and approval process, but who will be involved along the way.

Armed with a thorough understanding of the steps and stages of our prospects buying process, we can plan our work accordingly. Then every single move we make can be made with the specific intent of enabling or empowering our prospect to take the next step they need to take in order to buy.

If you think about it a minute, before we speak to a prospective prospect on the phone we should know and understand exactly what has to happen next in their buying process, and what we’re going to do on this call to make that happen. And if we spend the time and money to go visit a prospect without a plan of what we intend to say and do to help them take the next step in their buying process, then we are little more than a professional visitor.

Defining and documenting a useful map of our prospects buying process will take time, it will take effort, and it will require that we reach, qualify, and sell to all of the people who will play a part in the selection and approval process. We will need a lot of input and perspective because simply accepting any one person’s opinion of their process leaves too many variables to chance and ultimately leaves us with too much exposure and opportunity for failure. Taking the time to thoroughly understand all of the things that the prospect needs to do in order to buy often makes the difference between the very successful and those who simply get by.