Most of our readers will be familiar with Stephen Covey’s great book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Basic stuff we know, but what percentage of your sales force has read this book and how many are practicing the habits?

Junior reps, in particular, are good at being busy, however they are not always productive. Activity and results are related, but they are definitely not the same thing.

To jog your memory, the seven habits are listed below and adapted to a sales context:

Habit 1 : Be Proactive - focus your time and energy on outcomes you can control.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind – Begin each day, or endeavor with a customer service mission or sales goal in mind.

Habit 3: Put First Things First – Know your priorities, your top deals and accounts and push everything else off.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win - Work towards deals and contracts that are mutually beneficial to you and the customer.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood – Focus on the what the client is saying and wants instead of what you want to say

Habit 6: Synergize – Value different perspectives and leverage the creative energies of many – prospects and team-mates alike.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw – Stay at peak performance by staying fresh and balanced across all aspects of life – physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.

**Special note re Habit #3. Put First Things First, offer the following important and useful tool for being productive: the time management matrix. Our diagram below shows Covey’s matrix adapted to sales and sales management.

Covey Time Management Matrix for Sales

Condition your sales force to stay focused on Quadrant 1 activities which are both Important and Urgent.

PS – you may also be interested in reading our recent blog post – Habits of Highly Effective Sales Leaders

A few days ago I bought a new cellphone at a retail outlet and thought I would share the experience since it highlights how not to design a comp plan (no need to mention the company).

The store rep was great, engaging me, asking questions, showing various different products and sharing facts and opinions on each. I might add, he successfully upsold me on a couple of items. Great service and a good sales for his company. After I had paid for the items he mentioned I would likely get a customer service call asking me to rate my buying experience. Straight forward so far. So he informs me that how I respond on this followup call is critical to him receiving any commission for this sale. He further explains that if I don’t use specific words in my response he would not be entitled to any commission at all. For example if I said the service was “great” but didn’t say “perfect” he would not secure any commission. And he expressed his opinion that this is just one of the ways that his employer tries to screw its sales staff – his words not mine.

This finish almost ruined a great buying experience for me and I blame the company not the rep.

First of all, when I buy something, I want to pay and go. I shouldn’t have to spend my time being coached on how to respond to a courtesy call or feel obliged to take the call at all.

Second, I shouldn’t have to hear about a reps comp plan and a company’s internal problems. None of this is my business and it should be transparent to me. It makes the company look bad.

Third, the company is being petty to be so strict about the way it comps its reps. Surely, I could say the rep was great and that I would buy there again and the rep should be entitled to a commission?!

This serves as a good reminder to all sales managers and employers to incent the sales staff to provide courteous and good quality service, *which includes* the staff feeling good about their compensation plan. If you are not sure if your reps feel the comp plan is fair ask them. And don’t assume they will tell you the truth, so find ways to ensure they feel their honesty will not be punished.

Many companies can’t resist the temptation to hire a group of inexpensive junior resources to pound the phones and generate more sales at a lower cost of sales, but the results are too often disappointing for a variety of reasons – lack of support from marketing, required tools and processes don’t exist, or the sales simply requires a level of maturity, experience and competence that is beyond the average junior rep, to name a few.
If this has been your experience, you might be wondering what to do next.

More and more, we are seeing B2B companies leverage a three-tier sales model to close both transaction and enterprise level deals. We drew this out on the white board so we could share with you.

Three Tier B2B Enterprise Sales Organization

The sales effort is separated across the team depending on deal size. Often the Major Account Reps are outside or in the field, while the rest of the roles are inside. The pyramid reflects the proportion of different types of reps across the team.
The key to making this work is to provide a lot of structure, process and support, particularly at the junior levels, so all pieces work well together.

We have been involved in thousands of sales hiring and recruiting projects. We are often called in to investigate and fixed failed hiring initiatives. Here in countdown order are the top 10 sales hiring mistakes we see and what you can do to avoid them.

10. Hiring based on gut.
Problem: while a person may feel right from meetings, your gut is often not skilled enough to make the right choice. Usually the hire that will perform is the one that scores the highest against specific criteria such as competencies, experiences, proven success and fit with your sales environment and culture.
Solution: Map out exactly what you need and objectively evaluate all candidates using the same criteria, same process and same interview questions.

9. Hiring who’s available instead of who you need.
Problem: The pressure to hit targets is immense and often a sales manager jumps to hire the first person that looks good or good enough, but getting sales hiring right takes patience and in the end they may end up wasting money and time investing in someone that is not the right fit.
Solution: Your best bet is to know the sales competencies your reps require and look for them when interviewing – past success is the best proof of ability.

8. Hiring a product sales person to sell solutions.
Problem: The selling activity and skills required to sell solutions is completely different than for products.
Solution: Your best bet is to know the sales competencies your reps require and look for them when interviewing – past success is the best proof of ability.

7. Hiring someone from a big company into a small company.
Problem: In a small company there is typically less infrastructure and support, less stability in direction and less brand recognition. It is tougher.
Solution: If your prospective hire has not successfully sold in a start up before, you need to test their comfort with the environment your company offers. Don’t sugarcoat.

6. Hiring the person with the best resume.
Problem: Often the best reps spend more time selling than polishing their resume. Solution: Focus on results and don’t be fooled by someone whose resume overstates limited accomplishments.

5. Hiring without doing thorough reference checks.
Problem: Sales people are often at their best in interviews and accomplishments may be embellished.
Solution: Validate all their claims and truly understand what it is like to employ them. Place a priority on former employers over colleagues and even customers.

4. Hiring based on industry experience rather than sales competencies.
Problem: Many companies believe that a new hire needs to come from the industry, have the right rolodex and domain knowledge in order to be successful, but the top performers are typically successful because of DNA not sector experience.
Solution: Give the job applicants tests and role plays that demonstrate their ability to learn and sell your offering. Top performers are usually fast learners.

3. Hiring reps from the competition.
Problem: Two head to head competitors can have vastly different offerings, cultures and selling environments, which require different characteristics in successful reps which means they may not be suited to your company and may in fact, bring baggage. Furthermore it reduces the pool of people you can choose from and raises the price you will have to pay.
Solution: Model your selling environment and know which competitors if any actually have the right people on their team.

2. Hiring a farmer when you need a hunter.
Problem: Each role requires completely different sales DNA and hunters can often learn to be farmers but the reverse is seldom true.
Solution: Make sure your hiring process includes tests to make sure you select the right DNA for the role.

1. Falling for a smile and a happy disposition.
Problem: Sales is a confidence sport and being likable is a good attribute to customers, but winning in sales takes hard work, persistence, optimism, ability to handle adversity and luck.
Solution: Look at past successes and references to ensure you are picking a performer with a great disposition.

In the end it doesn’t matter what kind of training, development, incentives and management you have in place if you don’t have the right people on board in the first place. You need to build the right team to be a sales powerhouse.

This is a video interview with John Nese, the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA, talking about his product. The video is long (12 mins), but you only need to watch for about 20 seconds before you are hooked. Think of your sales staff and the impact on sales if they all projected this kind of passion when selling to your customers.

HT to komando.com for the vid.

I had the good fortune to be invited to speak to graduating Sales and Marketing Management Classes at Algonquin College this week. Really enjoyed the opportunity to share my experiences and help the students get a head start with some basic tips tricks on Sales Management. Also some great questions from the class on rewards, culture, comp plans, promotions and success and how www.peaksalesrecruiting.com builds teams.

Here are my slides.

Some very good advice from Dave Stein about the importance of a structured approach required to consistently hire sales reps – Three Hiring-Related Truths About Sales Effectiveness. As always he is logical in his observations:

1. If you don’t have the right people in the right jobs, all the training, coaching, tools, technology, and support in the world is not going to result in sustainable sales effectiveness.
2. You can’t coach, train, motivate, incentivize, or otherwise transform C-players into B players. Not according to ESR’s definition of those categories. So, to put it simply, don’t hire any more C-players and put a plan together to redeploy the ones you currently have.
3. ESR has seen very limited cases where hiring authorities can consistently select the right salesreps, sales managers, or VPs of sales without a formal process, including profiling, structured behavioral interviews, psychometric/predictive tests, and simulations.

We frequently see companies hiring based on smile and confidence and it is no surprise that this often doesn’t translate to the desired sales results from the hire. To help ensure our clients select the right candidates, we put candidates through a set of steps designed to properly determine that they have the right competencies and cultural fit with our client’s selling environment. Our process is unique to selecting sales professionals and includes such elements structured and behavioral interviews, role plays, sample exercise, psychometric testing, thorough reference checks depending on the project and role. As a result we are consistently able to achieve a 90-100% hiring success rate for our clients.

Interesting take by our friend Dave Stein (who btw writes Commentary on Sales Leadership, a great blog to read if you have a chance ) in Sales and Marketing Management called Hazardous to Your Wealth. The article discusses the problems caused by inexperienced sales reps relying on sales tips.

His first point is that reps need to be able to operate at both high and low level, but tips encourage a tactical, low level focus.

“The more tactics a sales person reads in the form of tips, the further he or she gets from the real key to winning: developing and executing a higher level, overall strategy to win.”
His second point refers to getting exposed to bits and pieces but not truly learning how to sell better.

“Since most salespeople don’t have the knowledge and experience to determine what works and what doesn’t, and no one is providing them with a curriculum, they generally choose only the tips they perceive are easy to accomplish.”

He notes that if a tactic doesn’t work the first time, many reps will outright reject the tip rather than working to develop the skill and improve their selling results.

“Companies that have a formal, institutionalized sales methodology (read: strategy for winning) consistently sell more effectively than the ones that don’t.”

In our experience, this is a trap that younger sales reps fall into and particularly those that have been raised in a world that caters to short attention spans with a diet of headlines, briefs, one liners and sound bytes and (…twitter, text messaging, etc, and who reads books anymore anyway??).

His parting advice is to do your reps, your company, your customers and yourself a favour by integrating the most relevant tactics into a strategic documented sales approach. Good advice.

I grew up with *M*A*S*H* reruns on TV. This just cracks me up and makes me think of all the reps who look to their environment to solve their problems rather then themselves. Post on Deadly Sales Habits coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy.

Charles: As I was saying, sir, I feel I could be more useful in Tokyo or even the states.
Col. Potter: Not to me, commissioner.
Charles: This meatball surgery of yours is causing my skills to deteriorate. They’re wasting away!
Col. Potter: Don’t change the color of your face! I’m out of umber.
Charles: And I’m out of patience! This place is driving me mad!
Col. Potter: Cool off, Winchester.
Charles: How can I cool off in this God forsaken pest hole.
Col. Potter: You’re here so get used to it!
Charles: You haven’t lifted a finger to get me transferred.
Col. Potter: That’s right and I don’t intend to.
Charles: I certainly think you ought to consider…!
Col. Potter: [shouting] Not again, Major! I’ve had enough of your beefing! I need you here and you’ll stay here like the rest of us! Here, your face is finished.
[presents a painted portrait of Charles shouting]

Eleven weeks to go until year end. For most it has been a bumpy year and a strong finish will be critical. Hard work creates opportunity and there is still lots of time to find and close net new deals. This is a great time to work hard towards a strong finish. Here are the ten best ways to make sure your team hits target by year end:

1. Communicate the Importance of the Target to the Team – 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, regardless of whether they are on target. 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 energy levels high right to the finish.
2. Put extra focus on key deals and territories – for smaller deal sizes, review overall pipelines and daily plans to capture a high percentage of the opportunities. For enterprise sales review the best deals that each rep has in their funnel – 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. In either case, don’t be limited to what’s in the CRM as many of the good deals somehow don’t make their way in. Don’t neglect the rest of the pipeline.
3. 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 and they stop working hard especially with Christmas falling at the end of the quarter and clients taking time off. You can’t afford for anyone to 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. Encourage them to keep prospecting and act as if there is still 6 months left in the year.
4. Make sure everyone is practicing good discipline and work habits – with holiday season parties going on at the end of the year, reps might be staying out late at night and then coming in later missing key selling hours. You can’t afford to let them do this. You need your reps to be well rested and ready when they come into the office and you need them to start early finish late.
5. 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. You can also remind them that prices may be going up next year and buying now may in fact save them money.
6. Watch out for Excuses – top performers don’t make excuses, they keep fighting to succeed all the time. If someone on your team is making early excuses about why they can’t hit their numbers, you need to have a chat about expectations and their career. Of course you don’t want them to conceal issues either so you need to make sure you are constructive so you can help them advance deals and be successful.
7. 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. Jump on any sign that people are not doing the work that leads to results.
8. Track Deal Slide – What percentage of forecasted deals are sliding into the next quarter? Often reps dismiss deals early in the quarter assuming they have plenty of other deals to work. Time kills deals, so any that slip may in fact be dying. Jump on these to understand why they are slipping and what you can do to close them before quarter end.
9. Keep the focus on the revenue target, not the news – the news easily puts negative thoughts in the heads of your reps or distracts them from what is important, which in turn it doesn’t put them 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. There is no certainty in the outlook and won’t be for the foreseeable future. Get over it.
10. 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.

Last point don’t forget the importance of prospecting so you are set up to succeed in Q1 next year by starting with a strong funnel.