Sunday, December 31, 2006

Smashing Through Sales Goals In a Weak Economy! Imagine Me... Smashing Through Sales Goals In a Weak Economy! One of the most fundamental sales hiring mistakes is practiced by virtually every company. Companies only start recruiting for salespeople when they are "down" one or two salespeople It's Crazy That Every Sales Manager or Recruiter Doesn't Follow This Rule The time to start looking for your next salesperson is not when you're down one or two salespeople! In fact, there couldn't be a worse time to start looking Desperation and a sense of pressure to "fill the slot" cause Sales Managers and recruiters to do things in a short-sighted way. Worse, in most cases it prevents them from building a great team. Starting the sales hiring process after a salesperson leaves is comparable to the salesperson who tries to make their sales quota during the month. The time for a salesperson to make their quota is BEFORE the month begins. Salespeople that try to make their quota during the month will fail as sure as the sun will rise in the morning. Successful salespeople have their month's quota made going into the month. The Book On Who Runs the Best Sales Teams in the World Sales hiring works the same way. The smartest approach is to  have the position filled before the old salesperson walks out the door. How does the smart Sales Manager make sure this is how they manage? They ask themselves the following questions: 1. How many sales positions will I need to fill this year through attrition, replacing weaker salespeople and planned growth? 2. In order to fill this many planned positions, how many applicants will I need to find? (This number is the answer they arrived at in Question 1 times 20. It takes 20 legitimate applicants to make one good sales hire.) 3. How much advertising will I need to run in order to achieve the goal I've set in Question 2? 4. Who on my organization's support staff can I train to process the incoming flow of applicants? (Since at best 3 out of 20 applicants are worth taking time with, it is good strategy to not waste time with the other 17.) Now is the time great Sales Managers sit down to answer these questions -- in writing. 8:16:12 AM    comment []

Thursday, October 26, 2006

One Client Reports Checking on Applicant with "Flag Page" One Client Reports Checking on Applicant with "Flag Page" Here's a dialogue I had last week with a client who's followed the System to the letter. You'll be interested, I think, the hear what he found out: CLIENT: The above candidate (NAME WITHHELD) scored badly on the tests (his report produced the INSTRUMENT RESPONSE NOTE "Flag Page") and you said that despite his relevant work experience I should "bin" him. He has contacted me twice again since asking to be reconsidered. Do you feel it is worth running him through the tests again ? AHS RESPONDS: Based on the results, I'd be very careful -- he either tried to answer the tests the way he thought he should answer them (he attempted to mislead), or he is under a great deal of personal stress. As a rule, I suggest avoiding candidates who produce this kind of test result. Is the profile always 100%? No. Is the profile right in the vast majority of cases? Yes. Be aware, When clients have, in the past, ignored the Flag Page and moved forward with those candidates because of other data they perceive to be more relevant, they always report regretting the choice. CLIENT: Alan interestingly I also called one of this guy's former employers who I know personally and had a chat to him about this candidate. To cut a long story short he is a complete and utter lunatic !!! AHS: The Flag Page candidate rarely, rarely is worth your consideration. Remember the system is designed to help you focus your recruitment energy only on the best candidates for sales. 11:28:16 AM    comment []

Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Quantitative Theory in Sales Hiring The Quantitative Theory in Sales Hiring My friends have seen me through the years pursue a serious hobby -- being an investor Now, I don't want you to think I have illusions of being George Soros or Warren Buffett. I don't touch the rarified air that guys like that live in, but I do a respectable job. Sitting across the table from my good friend having a beer, we were sharing our views of the world. He's a Director of one of the largest banks in the world -- and my views weren't exactly lining up with his. But we're friends, good friends, and he asked, "So with this cockeyed world view of your's what kind of return have you gotten this year?" "I'm up 38%, net on my trading account this year," I responded. "I'm listening," he said. So how do I get those kind of returns? Simple. I have rules. And whenever I think I have a better idea, I ignore the idea and stick to the rules. Sometimes it is painful. Particularly when there's a drawdown -- and I am early to a position. But if I stick to the rules, the system takes care of me. Here's an excellent article from John Mauldin that explains Quantitative Theory. www.advancedhiring.com/docs/quant/otb_va_print.aspx.htm What does this have to do with hiring better salespeople? The AHS uses Quantitative Theory to predict who to hire. It is not always right, but it is right more often than gut feel. If you stick to the system you will double your sales hiring success rate. Simple 3:15:54 PM    comment []

Thursday, July 20, 2006

The Rules of Sales Hiring Have Changed If You Are Still Trying to Play By the Old Rules, Here's Your Notice: The Rules of Sales Hiring Have Changed In the old rules of sales hiring, managers went looking for half a dozen applicants with some previous sales experience. In the interview process they would pick the one who "interviewed the best." If they were really progressive, they'd use a profiling tool to find out more about their choice. These old rules probably didn't work then any better than they do now, but hiring salespeople was cheaper and profit margins were fatter. Managers had a lot more time because there were more management layers. Plus, profiling was slower and more costly. Today, salespeople cost more, margins are thinner in most businesses, layers of management have been reduced and you can profile all your applicants for less than the cost of a week's salary. Here are the new rules: 1) Get a MINIMUM of 20 applicants for every position you are recruiting for. 30 applicants might even be better when you are using Internet job boards. 2) Make sure your ads have the special psychological trigger words that top salespeople use to describe themselves to themselves. 3) Profile every applicant. Look for diamonds in the rough. Think of all of those new salespeople that have become top performers. They're out there! Have a minimum  of 20 applicants take the ValuesMatrix. 4) Run a Styles Test on those that "pass" ValuesMatrix. 5) Only interview applicants that score Persuader, Promoter or Conductor toward the outside of the Success Insights Wheel. 6) Use a structured, scripted interview (AHS 4-Part Hiring Interview). Hire the applicant who scores the best on the AHS 4-Part Interview. 2:12:35 PM    comment []

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Should We Consider Candidates Where Money and Power is #2? Should We Consider Candidates Where Money and Power is #2? It seems logical that if either Money or Power are Number Two instead of Number One on the ValuesMatrix that ought to be good enough. Why isn't an applicant who scores #2 on Money or Power considered in the AHS? Picture this: Applicant wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, "How can I today fulfill my highest value, to seek knowledge for its own sake? How today can I show people I am more intelligent and smarter than others?" Then, after they work on their Knowledge Value they switch to their Number Two Value, Money? In other words in a sales presentation, after they've subtly demonstrated to the prospect that they're really smart, they then switch to closing so they can earn a commission and get money. I don't see it. Most of us have a tough enough time staying focused on one goal for long. The chances that applicants are that disciplined to work on more than one value is pretty slim. And if that logic doesn't convince you, consider that 90% of top performers score with Money or Power as #1. Pretty strong evidence, I'd say. Use the system as it was designed, it will serve you well. 12:43:13 PM    comment []

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Finding the Sales Genii for Your Sales Team Finding the Sales Genii for Your Sales Team I'd like to talk with you about a good book I had read titled, "Uncommon Genius." I'd like to talk about the book in light of what we are doing together -- hiring salespeople. And, as well, in light of a conversation I had with a new client last week. The author, Denise Shekerjian, a former trial attorney, has interviewed 40 recipients of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award. Very smart, accomplished people win this award. Shekerjian has set out to find the common thread among the award recipients: What is it that these people do with their minds that has enabled them to be so accomplished? She does, in fact, identify specific characteristics in the way they think. I'm not going to go through them now. I'll save that for next week's letter to you... Understand, though, that brainy, super-accomplished people tend to have certain thinking strategies. That said, I had an interesting conversation with  a new client last week. Their company sells an enterprise level software solution. He said something that has been whirling around in my brain... This guy is very smart. (Aside from the fact that he is a client which means in itself he's smart), he happens to be a brainy guy. In our conversation he said to me he needs intelligent salespeople -- as in High IQ. I found this puzzling. In 15 years of looking at salespeople I never really thought there was a relationship between IQ and sales ability. Not that salespeople are dumb, but I never thought of them as super smart, like PhD smart. Where I think salespeople are smart and know how to use their brains is in being  Motivated, Focused, Persuasive and Money and Power-motivated. I think salespeople are good at doing THIS with their brains, not necessarily IQ smart. Salespeople are able to push themselves to do sales work well because of their ability to master themselves in these areas of Motivation, Focus and Persuasion. In having looked at salespeople who succeed for 15 years now, I think that good salespeople are Genii. They are Genii in the way they do these specific things. I don't think this is necessarily IQ. Many of you have managed salespeople for years. I'd be interested to hear your feedback on this. 10:01:00 AM    comment []

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Selling is a Low Compliance Sport Selling is a Low Compliance Sport Growing up I was frustrated because I had no hand-eye coordination. I was always being picked last for team sports. As a result of this, I started looking around for sports where I could participate. In college my roommate was on the school lacrosse team. On Sunday mornings he taught me how to “sweat out” the excesses of Saturday night by going to the gym to run or lifting weights. Since neither lifting nor running requires any real hand-eye coordination, success, on an amateur level, is determined by personal focus and determination. Like sports, the AHS System view is that each of us is “made” for a career or profession. Unfortunately, when it comes to sales hiring, most companies lack a good system for hiring salespeople. More, most managers charged with hiring salespeople have given very little thought to what it takes to make a good salesperson. As a result, they are perpetuating the same sales hiring mistake of  “looking for someone who has previous sales experience” or better yet, “previous industry sales experience.” Consider the 80/20 rule to see why this doesn't work: If 80% of the sales are being produced by 20% of the salespeople, the majority of people hired for sales are lousy at it. Selecting applicants with previous sales experience has nearly zero predictive value of future success! Yet, most sales managers continue to select the applicants they are going to interview by looking for previous sales experience. Given the 80/20 rule this is totally illogical. Take heart, though, and let’s see if we can find a quality that does make a good salesperson... Any client who’s been with Advanced Hiring System™ for any amount of time has heard us say that High Compliance is the kiss of death in sales. (We measure Compliance in the Styles test, the second test we give to all applicants.) Think about the selling process and it’ll be obvious to you that High Compliance and sales just don’t mix. What happens in the sales process is that salespeople are being paid to talk to people who are starting at “No.” If they weren’t at “No”, there’d be no need for salespeople. If prospects started at “Yes”, our clients would just stick up a form on the Internet and have the prospect fill out the form, plug in their credit card and click. Obviously, then, our client’s products require selling in order to turn prospects into customers. And if you realize that a prospect is generally somewhere in the “no” scale, a salesperson who is a High Compliant, when they meet the prospect who is saying, “no”, “call me next week”, or some other put off, will respond with “OK, see you next week.” They are compliant; they go along with what they are told to do – in this case to get lost. On the other hand, Low Compliants don’t hear the “no”. In fact, they hear “no” as “yes” or at least “maybe.” So, Low Compliants keep on going when the “no’s” are coming at them. Certainly, there’s more to hiring success than just picking Low Compliants. Those of you have mastered the AHS Sales Hiring System and get consistently good sales hires know many other subtleties and details. However, from all of these nuances, one of the most important is to be looking for Low Compliants. Remember, Selling is a Low Compliance Sport. 2:00:03 PM    comment []

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