by Eliot Burdett | Published on - December 5, 2013
After many years of answering all sorts of sales management, recruiting and performance questions, I decided to put together an FAQ for hiring amazing sales people. These lessons have been learned from decades spent in the trenches building and managing successful sales teams as an entrepreneur and sales leader, as well as recruiting, investing and
by Eliot Burdett | Published on - November 19, 2013
The percentage of sales reps at quota on many sales teams implies a serious struggle with sales hiring efficiency. According to the 2013 CSO Insights Report entitled “Optimizing Hiring Effectiveness, Getting the Right Players on the Field”, the average percentage of reps making quota was 62%. When the participants in the study were asked to rate their
by Eliot Burdett | Published on - November 13, 2013
I heard this joke a couple of days ago and thought it was worth passing along: HR Rep: Here is a stack of resumes for your open sales position. Hiring Manager: Can you please show me the good resumes. HR Rep: Here you go. [hands over a dozen resumes] Hiring Manager: [Takes the resumes and throws six
by Eliot Burdett | Published on - October 11, 2013
Spend some time with high achieving sales people and it quickly becomes obvious that they share some key personality traits. Evidence of common attributes amongst top sales people comes from many high profile studies. Some of these are particularly notable in terms of the specific traits of top sales performers. Dr. Christopher Croner, Ph.D, who himself has
by Eliot Burdett | Published on - August 30, 2013
A colleague forwarded to me a copy of the the Accenture report Connecting the Dots on Sales Performance. The report, which analyses the 2012 CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Study, is a bit outdated, but still contains many useful insights. We have pulled some quotes and added our own commentary. The report suggests that changing customer