Peak conducts tens of thousands of sales interviews a year. The majority of candidates with whom our interview teams meet with are ambitious, capable, diligent, and accomplished professionals looking to advance their career. And quite simply, honesty is profitable. However, from time to time, we come across those candidates who are inclined to bend the truth about their career accomplishments.
Furthermore, some candidates are remarkably good at lying and if it weren’t for a series of useful tests and tricks we employ, they might slip through our process undetected. Luckily it is easy to spot most liars since they overconfidently assume they are smarter than the rest of us and that no one is on to them – arrogance is usually pretty easy to catch.
That’s why our assessment team offered to share the five most common lies they hear in interviews, what they actually mean, and how interviewers can extract the truth.
1. “I was laid off but it had nothing to do with my performance”.
Real meaning – My previous employer didn’t feel I performed well enough to keep me on the team, but was kind enough to lay me off rather than fire me. It is almost always about performance and employers rarely part with a performer without a fight. (Related lie – I was on contract and left because the contract ended.)
How to get the truth: Request the candidate’s performance metrics over the past 5+ years.
2. “I can’t use my previous manager as a reference because I am not sure where they are now.”
Real meaning – We didn’t have a strong relationship when we worked together and still don’t. Previous employers offer significant insight into what it is like to employ a candidate.
How to get the truth: Request the candidate to provide you permission to contact other members of their sales team to describe their experience with the manager.
3. “I wasn’t able to be successful at my last company because the company didn’t support the sales team.”
Real meaning – I need the sun, moon and stars to line up in order for me to make a sale. Top performers let nothing get in the way of closing business and don’t have time for excuses.
How to get the truth: Request that the candidate describe how they have successfully overcome challenges in their sales career. Be on the lookout for patterns in their ability to meet or exceed their sales targets in previous roles.
4. “My career is not about the money.”
Real meaning – I don’t know how to make money or how to negotiate a good compensation package. Businesses exist to make profits and people work for money. Anyone who says it isn’t about the money probably doesn’t have much. Except in rare instances, it is about the money.
How to get the truth:Ask why the candidate is in sales. Ask about their lifestyle outside of the office and if they would take a pay cut to join your company.
5. “I worked for my wife’s consulting business for a year and a half.”
Real meaning – I interviewed for a year and a half, but couldn’t find employment, so I have put my wife’s home business on my resume to fill the gap. This is not a lie if candidate successfully closed several thousand deals and made his wife a millionaire.
How to get the truth: Ask the candidate why they are still not interested in working for the business.
If you have other lies you have seen, please post them below and we will be happy to share them with our readers.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
We are living in a time of information overload. With no shortage of internal and external data, sales executives need to carefully choose the data and information they use to make sales management decisions and determine strategy. Otherwise, they risk getting overwhelmed with too many data points that could hinder a focus on what is truly important to success.
As every sales executive knows, a strong and effective sales force is a constant work in progress that must be carefully managed and monitored. Therefore, the data required to manage the sales force is likely to evolve with business needs and priorities. Moreover, the exact array of data that will be most helpful to sales executives is likely to vary depending on the situation and from business to business and from sales organization to sales organization.
Therefore, choosing data to track and analyze is not a one-time occurrence but something that, like the sales force itself, requires careful management. In general, this data will fall into two categories: (1) internal data gathered from new or existing data systems and (2) external data, including industry trends and economic data and statistics.
Finding the Right Data
When it comes to finding the right data with which to benchmark sales organization performance, there is plenty to be had. Some of it is free but more of it comes with a cost. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on free data and how sales executives can leverage that data in various ways.
Recruiting
Data derived from recruiting sales talent can be very useful and in some cases can not only shed light on recruiting problems but point to the root of bigger sales problems. For example, a report in the Wall Street Journal stating that, “Employers spent an average of 41 days trying to fill technical sales jobs, compared with an average of 33 days for all jobs,” can lead to a broader discussion of rebuilding so-called middle skills necessary for success in various jobs, including sales positions. For example, a recent report from Harvard Business School suggests that employers transfer supply chain concepts to finding talent:
Forecast, Planning, and Inventory Management involves identifying the skill and talent most important to strategic success, identifying potential skills gaps and planning for workforce needs.
Source and Procure requires cultivating a strong supply base for this talent.
Supplier Relationship Management means partnering with technical and community colleges to develop needed talent.
Make and Deliver focuses on the need for employers to invest in talent development instead of expecting talent to be developed elsewhere.
In other areas, specific data is not as meaningful and, instead, can provide what are essentially guidelines or ideas for managing different parts of the recruiting process. For example, when it comes to the right number of candidates to interview for a sales position, that number is often based on the hiring manager’s preference, talent pool, and design of the screening process. Some managers prefer to interview several candidates for a position to get a sense of who is available and what skills, talents and experience they bring to the table. Even if a strong candidate is not a good fit for a current sales role, there may be other available roles that are a good fit or the manager might want to keep that candidate in mind for future needs. However, other managers who are focused on making the hiring process as time and cost efficient as possible rely on a structured and rigorous screening processes that leverages email, and telephone interviews, in addition to third party psychometric assessments, to identify only the top three or four strongest candidates for deep, face-to-face interviews.
DePaul University’s Sales Leadership Center offers some basic benchmarking data on the recruiting process that can be useful for sales leaders. While some of this data is time sensitive and should be considered from that standpoint, much of the recruiting-related data is relatively timeless. For example, when gauging an appropriate number of interviews for new talent, the DePaul data found little change in company habits from earlier surveys. Three interviews (39 percent of companies) appears to be the “sweet spot” of not too much and not too little interaction with candidates. However, a significant number of companies limit interviews to two per hire (28 percent) or four interviews (16 percent). Our experience over the years tells us that three interviews, consisting of stakeholders from a variety of business units (marketing, HR, sales, and members of the C-suite) works best to mitigate hiring risk by reducing bias and eliminating the irrational gut instinct that often grips hiring managers.
The survey goes on to highlight the amount of time companies spend with candidates before extending an offer. Two to three hours is the most common amount of time (43 percent of companies), followed by four to five hours (26 percent). Interestingly, a significant number of companies (14 percent) spend less than an hour with candidates before hiring, while 12 percent spend six to seven hours with them and 5 percent spend more than eight hours with candidates.
Since sales people are expert interviewers, the time invested by hiring managers during the interview process should not be underestimated. With four out of ten reps missing sales targets every year, the necessity to make the right sales hire through a rigorous interview process that seeks proof of success in similar sales environments is what sets apart world-class hiring organizations from the rest. [Click here to view the ultimate list of sales interviewing questions]
Sales success
The DePaul University data also offers a good sanity check for sales managers concerned about particular problems with the performance of individual sales reps and the sales force as a whole. For example, a sales manager who wants to compare the percentage of sales reps who reach their quotas in a given year will find that the 600 companies surveyed said that 38 percent of their sales representatives were at quota, 33 percent above quota and 29 percent below quota. Other data includes percentage of sales as new business, profit/sales ratios by industry, and sales and profit per employee by industry.
Broad-based surveys like this have their drawbacks. Sales organizations in different companies and industries vary greatly. A 2013 sales survey published in the Harvard Business Review found significant differences in quota attainment by industry. Just over half of sales reps in software companies (52 percent) reached their quotas, while reps in computer hardware (60 percent), cloud/software-as-a-service (61 percent) and telecommunications (66 percent) companies performed much better.
Looking at sales data also provides some insight into which sales metrics companies tend to track. For example, the HBR survey focuses on and provides benchmarking data for what it considers the 12 most important sales metrics:
percent of organization achieving quota
quota attainment average
average annual quota for field salesperson
average annual quota for inside salesperson
average annual on target earnings
average new deal size
sales cycle length
vertical sales adoption
percentage of sales reps selling to small and medium-size businesses
Free basic sales compensation data is relatively easy to come by. However, the quality and utility of that data varies considerably.
Government sources. Perhaps the most useful free source of sales compensation data for companies with U.S. operations is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment Statistics series. This survey provides a wealth of free and comprehensive pay data broken down into several categories:
national (U.S.)
state
metropolitan area
industry
ownership type
Sales executives can leverage these categories to create various subsets of data to meet their needs. While the job categories may be broader than most companies use, this data can be a good starting point for benchmarking pay levels. It is important to note, however, that BLS data is not broken out by type of compensation—i.e., how much of total pay is made up of base salary and incentives.
Online salary sites. While compensation data from free online services, like Salary.com, can be useful in some ways, sales executives should approach this data with extreme care. The key drawback of using this data is that it may be out of date and its accuracy cannot be verified. Much of the data is self reported, meaning that individuals provide the information on their own job position and compensation. Therefore, sales executives who want to use this type of compensation data should not rely on it alone. However, they can use it to supplement any other verified compensation data sources they are using.
Association surveys. Industry and professional associations are good sources of compensation data. Not only are these surveys targeted to specific professions or industries, these groups may also provide free or discounted survey reports to organizations that participate and provide data for these surveys. WorldatWork, a compensation trade association, provides a high-level report on its annual pay survey. The free data covers only four categories of workers—non management/non union hourly, non management salaried, management salaried, and officers/executives. However, the survey includes data from more than 5,500 organizations and it provides basic salary increase data from 19 countries.
Consulting firms. Various compensation consulting firms usually provide high-level results from their annual compensation surveys. This data , however, may not broken out by type of position (instead, it might use broad categories like pay for hourly employees, salaried positions and executives).
In some cases, these survey reports offer some sales-specific data. For example, Mercer’s 2014/2015 Compensation Planning Survey identified sales professionals as one of the positions for which it is most difficult to attract and retain talent. Another data nugget is the fact that both public and private companies offer target incentives for sales professionals equal to 20 percent of base salary. It is important to keep in mind the broad-based nature of these surveys. For example, our own data suggests that senior B2B reps compensation packages, regardless of industry, provide an even 50/50 split between base salary and commission incentives. The breakdown of these incentives in the Mercer survey is heavily weighted toward individual performance (about 50 percent), followed by organization, division and department metrics, which align with our internal data sets.
Consulting firms that specialize in sales compensation also provide high-level survey results that are obviously going to be more focused on sales. For example, The Alexander Group provides high-level reports on various aspects of sales compensation (registration required), including revenue growth expectations (average of 12.8 percent), incentive budgets (average of 4.9 percent) and base pay increases (average of 3.2 percent). Other firms offer industry specific survey reports, such as this one from ZS Associates and Reality Works on the high tech industry.
Industry and economic trends
Industry and macroeconomic data are also important elements of sales management. The obvious use of external data is to keep up with customers and the challenges they face, not to mention understanding how those challenges can impact customer budgets and purchasing behavior. However, industry and economic data also have important implications for companies recruiting sales talent.
The most logical use of economic indicators involves gauging the economic issues facing the sales force in different parts of the country and the world, which could significantly affect a company’s ability to acquire new customers and sell more products and services. From a recruiting standpoint, this data allows sales executives to present a stronger case for increasing sales force headcount, as well as obtaining additional resources or anything else for the sales organization, by showing how that spending will drive more revenue.
This is especially important when working with peers in finance, operations, marketing and even the CEO. By showing what this data and information mean to the business from a sales perspective, sales executives can demonstrate an understanding of the company’s and its industry’s business cycle and the underlying economics driving company performance.
Employment data on the local, state/regional and national levels can be useful when making hiring plans. If the company routinely looks nationally or internationally for talent, the data they track would naturally expand accordingly. The U.S. Department of Labor maintains a web page with a list of employment-related data sources. The BLS also has a comprehensive list of available data, tables and calculators by subject. The Conference Board is another source of broad employment-related data. For companies with operations in Europe, the European Commission maintains several data sources. Our sales hiring landscape series also provides employers a detailed overview of key markets such as Chicago and Boston.
Finally, sales executives might also want to track specific industries, including their own, to see how economic developments might help or hurt the company’s ability to hire sales professionals from companies in those industries. For example, if sales professionals from a particular industry are often a good fit for the company’s sales force, tracking the performance of those industries is critical. This way, if a certain industry is heading toward a slump, the company might have a better chance of recruiting some of the key sales talent from those companies. News about mergers and acquisitions in industries from which the company recruits sales talent is also useful. After all, these transactions create uncertainty and often make sales talent more open to new opportunities.
Choose Carefully
These free data sources are just the tip of the iceberg for sales executives. It is possible to track data and create metrics on just about anything these days. However, more data is not necessary better.
When looking for and tracking data, the key is to make sure that data is crucial to business and sales success. Otherwise, these efforts can become more of a confusing burden than an aid to better sales decision making.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
The interesting thing about management is that the role is commonly misunderstood.
Stop and think about what usually gets someone promoted to a management position. Typically, it’s the results he or she created in a previous position. In other words, people move up the corporate food chain based on knowledge, skill, or, most commonly, performance.
Especially salespeople. Typically, it is the top salesperson who is picked to become the next manager.
And, more often than not, the great salesperson struggles as a manager. Why? Because they are two different roles and require two completely different skills sets. And great players often make terrible coaches.
But companies make it worse. They typically require that sales managers focus on management tasks, like sales automation, CRM, proposals, slide decks, budgets, reports, policies and procedure, things like that. Which, at first blush, would seem to make sense since those things are important and necessary.
However, they pale in comparison to the effect your leadership skills will have on the performance of your sales team.
Think about all the things managers do that have NOT been mentioned: recruiting, hiring, performance management, coaching, creating a productive culture, communicating vision and purpose, and much, much more.
These are all leadership functions. And to call them critical is a serious understatement.
In the big picture, what we really need corporate managers to do – when it’s all said and done – is to identify, hire, and develop the potential of capable people, and to create a culture where that talent can thrive.
Everythingelseisjustsupport.
Which begs the following questions:
How many prospective managers are actually assessed for their ability to identify talent?
How many managers are trained to hire effectively?
How many managers would get strong marks for coaching and training?
The answer is very few.
Instead, we continue to promote top salespeople simply because they are great salespeople. But the reality is that selling is not the same as leading.
And it is the leadership side of the sales executive role that will ultimately make you or break you as an executive.
4 Keys to Success as a Sales Executive
When sales teams underperform, companies often struggle to find the root causes of the problem. So, in search of answers, pricing strategies are dissected. Marketing plans are scrutinized. Software is replaced.
In my experience, however, the problem is usually not price or product or marketing or tools. Sure, those things may need to be addressed, but the causes of underperformance are often systemic and/or structural.
And this is where sales leadership is extraordinarily important. Why? Because the leader is directly responsible for the systemic problems.
Worse, he or she is often the direct cause of the problem.
Let’s look at four leadership ‘secrets’ you need to address to be successful in the Sales Executive role.
1. Acquiring and developing talent is far and away the most critical element of your job.
Big secret, huh? Like you don’t know this already.
But, even recognizing the critical importance of identifying and recruiting top talent, how many organizations do it well? The answer is very, very few. Sales teams are rife with average players with loads of excuses.
Whose fault is that?
You hire reactively. You have no strategy for identifying and acquiring great players. Your on- boarding methodology is almost non-existent. You constantly complain that you don’t have time to train your people.
Bottom line, this is a leadership function. Which means if you don’t do it, nobody else will. So, if you want to jump to the top of the class, make this your most important priority and focus on it every single day.
[bctt tweet=”You don’t win championships with average talent. “]
And, not surprisingly, average leaders don’t develop great salespeople.
2.How you deal with sub-par performance will define you as an executive.
Since talent is so important to your success (see No. 1), the way in which you manage poor performance is critical.
But, since most sales managers are completely underwater with all the management tasks they are required to complete, their most common complaint is that they have little or no time to coach, train, and address performance.
And this is a HUGE mistake.
Where performance issues exist, managers – especially new or inexperienced managers – often struggle to address those issues. The conflict is very real, and most people don’t enjoy the confrontation that is necessary to talk candidly about sub-par performance.
So, they employ a number of non-confrontational approaches, including sticking their heads in the sand and hoping things will get better.
But allowing underperformers to remain on the sales team is damaging from a number of perspectives. Overall team performance suffers. Top performers resent it. And your leadership credibility suffers dramatically.
Remember this critical message: “A” players want to play on winning teams, and they won’t stick around very long with average leaders.
3. Creating a ‘no excuses’ culture is critical to success.
If you’ve been in sales management more than a few months, you’ve heard the excuses:
My territory (or market) is different.
The economy is killing me.
Our prices are too high.
The competition is giving it away.
I have to spend too much time with our CRM software.
Leadership is often about distinguishing between the very real obstacles that impact success, and those excuses that serve only to mask poor performance.
It is critical to understand that allowing salespeople to use excuses and blame circumstances for their failures will quickly define your sales culture. And excuses make it almost impossible to identify and address the actual issues that impact sales performance.
Having been in sales for more than three decades, I know that there are any number of factors that can adversely impact results. No question. But the primary difference between top performers and pretenders are how they respond to those factors.
Great players find ways to win. They refuse to be deterred by anything. They take personal responsibility for their own success.
And great sales executives make that trait a non-negotiable part of their sales culture.
4. Creating competition is critical; creating silos will crush you.
There seems to be a significant trend towards not posting sales numbers or even publicly recognizing top performers. Which is, as plainly as I can put it, ridiculous.
If that is your practice as a sales executive, you can rest assured that “competitors” – people who are motivated to compete and win – will work somewhere else.
Sales is, by definition, a competition. When your team wins, everyone else loses. And when your competition wins, there is no consolation prize for second place.
Creating a team that competes is absolutely critical. Salespeople need to be willing to do whatever it takes – legally, ethically, and morally. They need to be willing to work whatever hours are necessary and improve their knowledge and skills as circumstances demand.
They need to be driven to compete and win.
However, allowing that competition to create organizational silos will quickly result in enormous problems. Competition needs to external, not internal.
If you are not aware of the tendencies of salespeople to do horde resources, monopolize assets, and create internal conflicts in an attempt to get ahead, you haven’t been managing long.
As a leader, you should create a culture that recognizes and rewards individuals who play to win. Post your numbers. Celebrate wins. Give most of your attention to the players on your team who have a burning desire to be at the top of the charts.
But don’t ever allow individual competition to create silos inside the company.
Making the wrong sales hiring decision has an enormous negative impact on a business’ finances. Often overlooked, but closely related, is the larger impact it has on a sales team’s morale.
The cost of a bad hire
SAP recently rounded up a series of statistics on the impact of a bad hire. Citing research from Mindflash and CareerBuilder, the articles show that 41% of survey respondents reported a bad hire cost them $25,000, while 25% said a bad hire in the previous year cost them $50,000.
Breaking down costs even further, Mariah Deleon, vice president of people at Glassdoor, notes in a recent Entrepreneur article that a bad hire costs employers dearly when it comes to productivity. Deleon shares a statistic from Robert Half International that shows 11% of companies reported a bad hire resulted in fewer sales.
Quantifying the cost of a bad hire in terms of time, the Robert Half study revealed that supervisors spend 17% of their time managing poorly performing employees.
In one of our previous articles, What is The Cost of a Bad Saes Hire, we calculated that a bad sales hire costs the typical sales department upwards of $690,000. Read the article to find out how we calculated this loss and you’ll get a better idea of the value of a good sales person and just how much a bad hire can detract from your year.
Measuring the cost of a bad hire in terms of time and money is one thing – but the ramifications of the bad hire extend much further…..the dark cloud that a bad employee brings into the office can impact the mood of the whole sales team. Deleon refers to the Robert Half study to note that 95% of financial executives surveyed “said that making a bad hire at least somewhat effects the morale of the team, and 35 percent said a poor hire greatly influences employee morale.”
Poor morale is an especially damaging drain on a sales team. It’s easy to see how a bad hire can creep into each aspect of your sales team and begin eroding team spirit – from a new sales manager who hosts horrible meetings, a top morale buster according to Soma, to a prima donna who arrives with the wrong set of expectations.
SAP points out that an underperforming employee places a burden on the remainder of the team, creating a situation where “good workers end up getting saddled with additional workload [which] eventually wears down the team spirit as the group is overburdened carrying a non-contributing member.” Underperforming sales team members are burning more than time – they’re also churning through good leads, converting far fewer than they should, and alienating potential customers. If other sales team members are burdened with trying to compensate for their underperforming team member, you’re creating even more potential loss.
Losing time and money is a bad situation, but gaining a cadre of now-unhappy sales team members is even worse. It’s natural to want to foster a bad hire into a better performer, and while there is such a thing as a rocky start, sometimes you just have to admit that the hire wasn’t a good one.
“Hire slowly, fire fast”
How to handle a bad decision
There are red flags to look for in a bad hire both in terms of results and attitude. Consistent inability to hunt and close new business, inconsistent use of your CRM, not giving the required hours or activity levels, poor planning, tardiness, no sense of urgency, not optimistic, lacking resilience after losing deals, interaction issues with other staff, and failure to embrace the sales strategy despite undergoing standardized training, all signal that a hire doesn’t belong on your sales team. Within 3 months you should know you hired the wrong person, and it’s important to remove them from your team before all of these bad qualities start taking a toll on other team members.
Fast action is warranted when you consider the ripple effect a bad employee can have on your sales team as well as your customer and vendor relationships. Consider indirect costs incurred by lost sales, or compensating for errors the employee made. In the worst-case scenario, there could be litigation costs initiated by the employee or by customers or vendors who interacted with the employee. As these problems multiply, the entire team – including management – feels the impact.
Making a better hire the next time
A structured and rigorous interview and assessment process mitigates hiring risk. A consistent hiring process for each and every candidate offers an “apples to apples” comparison, and allows you to determine with the highest degree of certitude who the best hire is. Multiple interviews involving all stakeholders in the hiring decision, combined with third-party psychometric and behavorial testing, and extensive background research should be used for each candidate.
Careful planning, strategic thinking, and adopting a disciplined sales hiring process can help you make better decisions in the long run and avoid the pitfalls that a bad sales hire can have on your team’s morale.
For more comprehensive insights on how to make the right sales hiring decision for your organization, get instant access to our eBook “Make the Right Sales Hire Every Time.”
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Typically, they are words of encouragement. Joyful, even enthusiastic. Designed to leave someone with pleasant feelings about the future.
They are NOT, however, designed to be the two words that describe the sum total of a company’s training program.
Really.
Back when I started as a sales representative for a west coast medical company, I went out to corporate headquarters for a 2-day, new-hire training session. Or so I thought.
My first day on the job, I went on a couple of sales calls with a sales manager. We said hello, picked up a couple of small orders (literally, we picked them up, they were written on a piece of paper and left for us), and headed back to the office. After lunch, someone spent some time showing me some of the company’s products and where to find them in a catalog. They were just showing me the products — not explaining or doing anything, you know, instructional.
Then we had a three-day national sales meeting. And I headed back home. “Good luck,” the boss said.
I’m gonna need it, I thought to myself. Training? You can’t be serious. It wasn’t training, it was a disaster. Disorganized. Disjointed. Dis-aster.
One week in and I’m thinking the decision I made to join the company was exactly that – a disaster.
What Does YOUR Training Look Like?
People often ask about sales leadership roles (National Sales Manager or VP Sales or something similar) and ask what it takes to be successful at that level. While there are a number of critical pieces in that puzzle, few, if any, are as important as a comprehensive training and development plan.
But I never cease to be amazed at companies that provide little or no training (initially or ongoing) for their salespeople or their sales management team — outside of product-related training.
Worse, they can’t understand why employee commitment and performance are lacking.
But when a company fails to provide comprehensive and ongoing training and development a couple of things happen, neither of which is good for the company.
First, employees that aren’t well-trained rarely perform up to their potential.
Why would they? Even elite athletes, singers, and stage performers train and train and train. In fact, research clearly indicates that the very best performers get that way through focused, purposeful, long-term training. They are constantly learning, and consistently honing their skills.
Remember, there is a world of difference between twenty years of experience and one year of experience twenty times.
Second, when a company doesn’t invest in training, it sacrifices employee engagement, which, in turn, translates directly in to increased employee turnover, less productivity, and declining morale.
Employees make the direct connection: you don’t want to invest in my training and development, but you do consistently ask me to improve my performance.
No contradictions there!
Recent research indicates that companies who ignore the development of employees at all levels do so to their own detriment. In Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce, researchers found that “offering training and career tracks to line workers led to lower turnover and easier recruitment, and served to make employees more efficient while they were with the company.”
Translation: investing in training saves you lots of money.
But We DO Train Our Salespeople
Many sales leaders get a little testy at this point. “We DO train our salespeople,” they say. Maybe they do; maybe they don’t.
In my experience, most employee on-boarding processes are random, disorganized, or incomplete. How would you answer the following questions for your sales organization?
Do you have a script for the first 60 days for new salespeople? Does that script include milestones, minimum expectations, testing, ?
Do you require salespeople to test regularly in the first six months for core knowledge acquisition?
Do you require salespeople to demonstrate proficiency in specific product or service sets prior to releasing them to make calls?
Do you provide selling skills training and test for proficiency?
Do you have a process for putting new salespeople in the field with senior salespeople or managers during the on-boarding process? Does the “trainer” have a checklist of specific skills/topics to review/demonstrate during that time?
Do you even check to see if salespeople can complete an effective sales presentation?
Yes, most people hate “role play.” Many “experts” argue against doing role play. They say that people don’t like to role play, and the scenarios don’t play out like the real world and on and on.
But they don’t have a leg to stand on. Very few people LOVE to practice. Most would rather avoid the scrutiny of their peers or management staff. But the truth is that you are guilty of sales malpractice if let your salespeople practice on customers. Unless, of course, you are more than willing to lose that opportunity. In that case, knock yourself out. Live role-play is even better!
Here is what I see consistently:
Few companies have an intentional and measurable approach to on-boarding new employees.
Few companies have a set of milestones and minimum standards established for testing during the first 60 days of a new employee.
Few companies provide purposeful career-development programs for their sales teams (managers and salespeople).
Few companies provide training to develop critical selling skills. Their “training” regimen consists primarily of product orientation and sales administration (CRM, placing orders, budgets and reports).
And very few companies train their salespeople to develop a comprehensive sales plan for developing their business. CRM is one thing; a sales plan (a business plan) is quite another. The first is retrospective, the second is prospective. Big difference.
But all of these companies say exactly the same thing: ”We train our people.” Sure they do.
Hiring an exceptional sales team is not only difficult, but also extremely expensive. And while an investment in successful salespeople will deliver massive returns, the fact remains that a sales hiring budget requires large amounts of starting capital. After all, truly exceptional salespeople expect—and receive—exceptional salaries.
Unfortunately, many companies looking for great salespeople simply can’t compete with the Fortune 500s if the size of their sales budget is the only relevant consideration. Does this mean that sales hiring is a rigged game? Does it mean that growing B2B startups, for example, are doomed to lose to bigger-name companies with deeper pockets every time?
Following traditional hiring practices—where a candidate’s history of major sales and lasting buyer relationships in relevant markets is the hiring criterion—the answer is probably ‘yes.’ However, this doesn’t mean that smaller companies with smaller sales budgets should give up and accept mediocre hires!
Instead, companies that can’t compete on budget alone need to change the rules of the hiring game.
How to change the rules for successful sales hires:
Without a budget large enough to offer competitive compensation, top salespeople are not likely to leave their current jobs—especially for a high-risk position at a company without strong marketing, brand recognition, buyer trust, and a well-oiled sales apparatus. However, by changing tactics and focusing on a different set of hiring criterion, startups and high-growth companies can make smart hires and build high-achieving sales teams.
Though there are numerous ways to attract and develop talent through creative deployment of a smaller budget, effective sales recruiters focus on two of the most crucial considerations: finding candidates that have the potential toconsistently sell successfully year-over-year, and investing in these employees to expedite development and reduce turnover.
1. To find the right candidates, look beyond the résumé
It is tempting to think that the top candidate for a sales position is the candidate with the most impressive career selling products similar to yours for big-name companies within your target market(s). But while a candidate’s résumé illustrates, to a limited extent, how well that candidate can sell—perhaps under optimal conditions—it may or may not reflect how well that candidate will sell for your company.
In order to get a better sense of how well a candidate will do, several additional considerations must be taken into account during the hiring process. These include a candidate’s deep-seated personality traits (or “sales DNA”), those personal/professional features common across the most successful sales people, as well as details about your company culture and its selling environment.
Sales DNA
Truly successful salespeople share certain characteristics or personality traits—those traits that help them get ahead no matter the circumstances. Such traits include confidence, perseverance, ambition, competitiveness, resilience, optimism, situational intelligence, a sense of urgency, the desire and ability to influence others, and more.
If a candidate displays the right sales DNA—even if that candidate has little sales experience, or has only worked in unrelated markets or on different types of sales cycles—that candidate has a real opportunity to outperform a candidate who has more experience but lacks some essential traits. This means that a potential hire with the right DNA (combined with the right sales environment and support) will quickly build an impressive track record—at a lower starting salary.
Company selling environment
Though top salespeople share many similar traits, they are not a completely homogeneous group: individuals have different selling strengths and weaknesses, different working styles and preferences, and different experiences across markets, sales cycles, buyer groups, etc. As a result, a quota-busting top performer at a Fortune 100 corporation, for example, might fail to convert a single lead for your early-stage startup—and vice versa.
In many cases, a candidate with less sector experience might be a better performer than the candidate who has spent the majority of their career in your organization’s sector—if that candidate has more experience working in sales environments similar to yours. Once again, by broadening hiring criteria to include candidates that aren’t established in your particular sector, your organization is presented an additional opportunity to stay within budget and also make a better hiring decision overall.
Thus, in order to optimize budget and hire salespeople who will drive sales, it is essential to thoroughly understand the myriad characteristics that make up your company’s selling environment. These include company culture and offerings, market and competition, average deal size and sales cycle length, available sales infrastructure, etc. With a complete understanding of your selling environment, it is easier to identify candidates who are most likely to succeed—even if they come with less overall experience and a lower salary.
2. To build a top-notch sales team, invest in your salespeople
When recruiting on a budget, world class hiring organizations understand the importance of spending more—wherenecessary. Candidates who have the right sales DNA, mesh with your company’s selling environment, and require lower starting salaries are ideal. However, making a mediocre hire rather than an exceptional one in order to cut costs is one of the most expensive mistakes an employer can make.
Invest in training and development
Along similar lines—and especially with a hiring strategy focused on less experienced sales employees—it is essential to invest heavily in a sales team’s training and development. As we’ve said before, “Self-managing sales people and teams are as rare as purple unicorns.” Keeping top performers performing while transforming high potential into selling machines requires exceptional leadership, training, and support. And exceptional sales infrastructure requires money.
A young company with a relatively young or inexperienced sales team depends on strong leadership: after all, only through smart management and training will new employees reach the sales potential they initially displayed during the hiring process. Again, when hiring a sales leader, successful sales recruiters examine personality traits and company fit alongside the candidate’s history of developing new teams into seasoned sales machines.
The necessity to invest in training time for new sales hires cannot be overstated. Even though weeks spent learning company and market best practices, for example, are weeks during which no sales are made, that investment will yield high returns when new employees do start selling. At the same time, a skilled sales leader will conduct rigorous monitoring and focus on accountability, helping to transform raw potential into ROI.
Invest in work environment
Salary is always important, especially in the highly competitive world of sales. However, numerous studies have shown that work environment plays a larger role in employee satisfaction than salary. Developing an environment where employees feel personally valued and highly motivated (rather than afraid) both increases current salespeople’s performance and attracts top sales talent.
An exceptional work environment comprises multiple aspects of interpersonal communication and interaction, employee recognition and commendation, effective management practices, and more. Salespeople who feel that their actions have a direct impact on their company and that they are developing their own opportunity for growth exhibit higher motivation than salespeople driven by the fear of missing an impossible quota. Thus, top companies encourage programs that highlight and emphasize the value their salespeople bring to the organization, that prioritize internal talent when filling leadership positions, and so on.
It is no coincidence that today’s massively successful corporations—Google, Apple, etc.—devote significant attention to employee happiness. For the same reason, many new startups are emphasizing company culture: from organizing weekly team events and setting up gaming tables in the break room, to allowing flexible work schedules and implementing personal employee-employer communication. Such benefits play a significant role in a startup’s ability to attract top talent at a lower price tag.
3. Keep an eye on budget—but beware becoming stingy
It’s an unavoidable part of the sales hiring game that startups and smaller companies must make do with smaller recruiting budgets than the Fortune 500s of the world. And while focus on budget is essential when working with limited starting capital, it is equally essential not to forget the reality that newly trained salespeople will have the opportunity to flee for higher salaries!
Investing to expand salespeople’s skill sets, actively building company loyalty, and rewarding top performers with commensurate commissions all mitigate hiring and costly turnover risk. After all, the better and more experienced a new sales team becomes, the more attractive your sales employees look to competitors: your employees are no longer the overlooked and under-resumed.
At the same time, though: the better and more experienced a new sales team becomes, the more they earn for the company—and it’s far cheaper to invest those earnings back into a winning team than it is to start again from scratch.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
The sales engineer plays a vital role on a sales team. Not only do they help interpret a customer’s technical requirements and communicate product features, but they are also given a level of trust that is often not offered to salespeople and consequently, the sales engineer is in a unique position to promote a vendor’s key benefits and value proposition.
While there is no mistaking that the sales engineer contributes to a company’s sales mission, the role is to support and technical competence is paramount. Typically, sales engineers must possess a bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering or a similar scientific area of study and work in fields such as software or manufacturing. Top performing sales engineers also have the communication and relationship skills to be able to work closely with team members and prospects to explain complex solutions and systems in easy-to-understand terms; the ability to alter their presentation style to meet the needs of their audience; and most importantly, build trust with prospects.
This expertise is rare, and it’s no easy task to recruit sales engineers that can connect with prospects while still being able to articulate their solution’s technical capabilities. Given the reality that the job description, or career opportunity as we call it, represents an important aspect in the recruiting process, world-class employers understand that a job description needs to succulently articulate the challenges that high achieving sales engineers crave, along with the right set of benefits that are attached to the opportunity. Sales engineers will be on the lookout for companies that foster the right culture, so incorporating an excellent description of your team, your corporate environment, and clear definitions for the sales engineer role will elevate your job description.
Overview Section
The best employers seize passive sales engineers’ attention with a brief but powerful overview of their company. They tailor the description of their company’s recent achievements, current growth structure, and corporate culture to a sales engineer’s interest in product excellence, highlighting technical achievement and recent innovations. Since high achieving sales engineers understand the potential they have in the marketplace, SE’s want to be assured of growth opportunities in a prospective company. Providing incentive and compensation information, including base salary and on-target expectations in the overview section provides prospective candidates with the ability to immediately recognize the opportunity’s value (note that a variable component to the compensation plan is common, but represents a much smaller portion of overall compensation than the typical compensation plan associated with a sales representative or executive role).
Goals
In order to give candidates an honest and accurate picture of what the expectations are for the role, hiring managers should provide a specific set of goals for the sales engineer position. Since SE’s are results-driven people, including plenty of information about how your company measures performance and the kind of challenges the candidate will face will help generate excitement in the opportunity while acting as an informal candidate filtering mechanism.
Leading employers state very specific numbers, percentages, and provide examples of the positions’ expectations in order to present the opportunity as honestly as possible.
Responsible for new business development of $___ per year.
Works with xx – xx number of clients each month to deliver sales presentations and close deals.
Responsible for increasing sales by ___% during the first year.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities are the elements that managers use to determine if a candidate can and will be successful in the role. Successful opportunity descriptions carefully outline the sales engineer’s responsibilities and take into consideration their everyday tasks as well as the relationship would have with the rest of the sales team.
Work with product and sales teams to interpret customer requirements and deliver solutions with the end-goal of sales in mind.
Demonstrate an understanding of what the customer will need in terms of on-going service, and manage expectations on the customer and sales side.
Develop and deliver product demonstrations and sales presentations that explain key technical aspects of solutions that will benefit customers and prospects.
Provide answers to client questions about our product, servicing, and other technical aspects of the product.
Successfully tailor demonstrations for customers, trade shows, and special events.
Work closely with the customer to set up and maintain a successful demo period, being available to answer questions and trouble-shoot as needed.
Be able to think critically and suggest improvements that might lead to cost savings or other client benefits.
Work with the client to problem-solve through every hurdle during the sales process.
Arrange and, in some cases, lead training for customers.
Work with compliance to ensure all legal requirements are met.
Research the industry on an on-going basis to know what changes may be on the horizon that will impact current and future sales.
Provide feedback to the team as well as R&D for process or product improvements as required.
Condense information into reports for a wide variety of uses from marketing and sales to engineering and R&D.
Provide clear and accurate responses for RFPs and/or contribute technical solutions directly to proposals.
Work in tandem with the sales team on presentations to ensure accuracy.
Willingness to travel and devote long hours to challenging sales projects.
Experience
Experience gives hiring managers a sense of a candidate’s ability to execute the activities required to drive sales. Companies seeking high achieving sales engineers focus on experience that is aligned with the desired selling tasks stated in the responsibility section of the job description.
Demonstrate a successful track record in the _______________ industry, (product/service or related product/service) to ______________ (group of buyers).
Background in supporting $___-figure deals.
Successful experience in working with sales and engineering staff to deliver high-quality presentations and information to clients.
Successful experience in developing and delivering persuasive presentations to audiences ranging from small groups of clients to large trade show audiences.
Fantastic written communication skills.
Successful experience in driving innovation as a way to increase sales.
Skills
Sales engineers possess a unique set of skills that require left- and right-brain expertise. Their ability to skilfully manage both will set them apart from the rest of the pack. Including details in the job description that articulate exactly what is required to be successful not only acts as a candidate filtration mechanism, but sets the foundation for hiring managers to assess if a candidate can fulfil these expectations during the interview process.
Strong ability to quickly comprehend and explain complex engineering concepts in simple, effective terms.
Ability to work in concert with team members to build the most effective presentations that blend technical facts with tangible benefits.
Proven sales skills with an eye for results.
Superlative communication skills with the ability to navigate a wide range of internal and external environments.
Coaching skills to help co-workers quickly understand and explain new and emerging technical concepts.
Strong networker who can reach out to customers and clients to offer support and assistance.
Industry insider who understands current trends and anticipates change.
Impeccable time management skills.
Ability to work in a wide range of software programs that support our business (Excel, SalesForce, PowerPoint/CAD, CSS, etc.)
DNA
There is a core group of traits that any salesperson has that will predict their success on the job. Incorporating these qualities into your job description enables experienced interviewers to determine if a candidate possesses these qualities:
Drive, energy, and ambition – the triumvirate personality traits that any successful sales professional should have.
A competitive nature.
Sense of urgency.
A sense of optimism, resilience, and perseverance.
Team player.
Solution-oriented.
Looking for an easy-to-use job description template? Get instant access by filling out the form below:
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
We are approached by many companies seeking to hire their first sales person. This is an exciting time for young companies and often it is excess demand that seemingly requires the addition of a new sales person. In some cases, the founders are unable to effectively sell themselves and hope that hiring a new sales person will allow them to focus their time elsewhere. This is a grave mistake and we advise against hiring in these cases.
Hiring The First Rep is Usually a Huge Gamble
First and foremost, in most start-up companies, sales is the most important aspect of success. Hiring a new sales person is a huge gamble, so why would a founder want to take this risk and assign this most important aspect of success to someone else?
A fledgling company has no history of success that would dictate that the new sales person will be successful. Furthermore, customers dealing with a start-up, particularly if the offering is new, want to deal with company founders who know the offering intimately and can have meaningful conversations about the product benefits. A founder has to accept the reality that a sales person in a start-up is like a boxer fighting with one arm tied behind his back.
So what if the sales person is not successful?
If the founders have effectively resigned from the sales effort and placed all the responsibility on the new sales person, and that new sales person fails to sell at the required clip, the founders have no contingency sales efforts to support cash flow requirements. They also don’t have the key customer relationships to pick up things if they are required to react quickly and jump back into the sales effort. Furthermore, the founders will not have been exposed to valuable feedback directly from customers on critical missing features and benefits in the product or service.
Even if the founders do not consider themselves strong sales people, they are usually capable of generating sales and we always recommend that they stay very involved in the sales effort until at least the company has successfully launched.
To your success!
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Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
With less than 3,000 miles between New York City and San Francisco, there is an undeniable contrast in business cultures between these two business meccas.
While ‘the Big Apple’ is influenced by Wall Street’s power brokering, deal-making business strategy, San Francisco embraces the business utility created by fostering relationships.
It is no surprise that these differences impact the selling cultures in these cities. What may come as a surprise to hiring managers, however, is that these differences directly influence an organization’s sales recruiting efforts.
While both cities have a large pool of sales people, talent and career opportunities, organizations actively searching for B2B sales talent in NYC and San Francisco cannot embrace the same recruiting strategy.
Here are 3 techniques world class hiring organizations embrace when sales recruiting in New York City and San Francisco:
1) Focus on relationships in San Francisco and be concise in the Big Apple:
Cold calling and unsolicited recruiting pitches work well in New York, where aggressive tactics can yield surprisingly good results. The cut-throat sales world of New York dictates that sales reps who get straight to the point often win. Speak to a sales candidate in NYC and be prepared to make your pitch in 25 seconds or less or expect to hear a dial tone. Think ‘The Donald’.
Hard recruiting techniques on the West Coast, however, are likely to draw a blank response. Relationship-based selling wins the day in San Francisco and is why many of the best West Coast sales reps focus on establishing an active presence in their space and becoming trusted advisors to their clients.
Effective recruiters hiring in San Francisco, therefore, do not simply call on prospective candidates and start articulating a positions requirements. They educate the candidate about the opportunity and its benefits, frame the conversation around the candidate’s career, and become a trusted advisor.
So what about recruiting in New York City? For top sellers in NYC, utilizing every second the business day offers to hunt new business and close deals is what counts. They are too focused on hitting and exceeding their quota and tending to important selling activities than to be having lengthy conversations with sales recruiters about future opportunities.
In New York, hiring managers must appreciate the nature of the city’s salespeople and quickly present the career opportunity. They must focus on the elements that matter to candidates – the compensation package, office location, territory, travel, and the company’s reputation in the marketplace.
2) Focus on corporate culture and career growth in San Francisco and focus on immediate earnings in New York:
San Francisco embraces opportunities. The city is filled with visionaries and start-up founders who are convinced they are on the road to changing the business world forever. Therefore, top Bay Area salespeople appreciate a recruiter that instils enthusiasm and excitement as part of the recruiting process.
West Coasters aren’t afraid of a little risk, if they see the possibility of high rewards. While generating excitement around the opportunity by focusing on intangible benefits like corporate culture is an effective tactic, it is important for hiring managers to have their opportunity pitch remain grounded in numbers. Salespeople, regardless of where they live, will immediately dismiss an opportunity that has overstated earning and career growth opportunities.
This is not to say that there aren’t visionaries in New York, in fact, quite the contrary, but the East Coast, thanks to its legions of bankers and financial wizards, means that sales candidates typically assign less value to elements not tied to the opportunity’s “bottom line”. Hiring managers in NYC, therefore, need to tailor their pitch to the candidate by focusing on immediate earning opportunities.
3) Job titles matter more in NYC:
When Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows up to investor meetings wearing hoodies, nobody bats an eye on the West Coast. The world’s tech capital is famous not just for its innovation, but also for its “relaxed” business attire and flat corporate structure. However, wearing sneakers and a hoodie versus a $3,000 suit, and the difference between a Manager and a VP title are important aspects of the business culture in New York City.
These differences impact recruiting efforts in San Francisco and New York. Job titles matter more to candidates in NYC – the cornerstone of corporate America. New York’s traditional business structures are still pervasive and advancing up the ‘corporate ladder’ is a fundamental part of the ‘American Dream’. This has shaped the business and career psyche of many New Yorkers and impacts if a sales candidate will consider transitioning to a new opportunity. Effective sales recruiters in New York, therefore, will not only focus on a candidate’s increased earning potential, but on an upgraded title.
In short, hiring managers that tailor their approach to court candidates based on local market requirements will be far more efficient and successful. Adopting a specific plan on the type of information to share about the opportunity, and catering to the candidate’s mindset will help get the right salesperson onboard and lead to increased revenue.
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Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
EXCITING NEWS: We are about to launch our latest book, SALES RECRUITING 2.0 – How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast
That’s half of today’s news. We are putting on a FREE 30 minute, high impact workshop to preview the advice and insight in the book.
If you are a sales manager or business leader who is serious about:
• building HIGH PERFORMANCE SALES TEAMS
• consistently achieving BIG SALES TARGETS
• getting 100% OF YOUR REPS AT TARGET, and
• getting to 0% TURNOVER on your team
…then this workshop is for you
PROVEN SYSTEMS:Peak Sales® Recruiting Partner, Blogger and Author, Eliot Burdett brings more than 20 years success in building companies and sales teams. In this presentation, he will share systems that work: they are applied to successfully find hundreds of top performers for Peak Sales® customers each year.
We have a limited number of spots available for this event so sign up early to secure your space.
WHEN: Join us on Thursday May 27th at 11:00 EST to discover how you can apply these approaches to build better sales teams that drive bigger results.
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Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
EXCITING NEWS: We are about to launch our latest book, SALES RECRUITING 2.0 – How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast