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The Problem with the 80/20 Rule for Sales Managers

Sales Manager and the 80/20 RuleMany sales managers accept the 80-20 rule – that 20% of their reps make 80% of the sales – which I suppose is acceptable if the sales manager is consistently meeting targets, but it certainly is not a recipe for superior results. There are many downsides to allowing under-performers to exist on your sales team. Sales leaders who regularly exceed targets are vigilant about removing the weak performers from sales force.

“Traditionally, sales teams fall into a pattern: Twenty percent hit well above target – they are your high performers; 60 hit their target fairly consistently – they are your workhorses; and another 20% underperform” Colleen Francis – Nonstop Sales Boom

Wasted time and effort

While it is customary for sales leaders to pay more attention to their best reps and neglect the weaker ones, the poor performers require an inordinate amount of coaching and management time relative to their output. As a young sales manager for a B2B Internet solutions company I had two reps on my team that weren’t hitting targets. As I was unused to aggressively pruning my teams at this point in my career, I tended to work with each rep as they suffered through their troubles. I would spend considerable time coaching them through account strategies and in many cases, reworking their proposal to fix basic mistakes. It didn’t take me long to realize that my time was better spent on finding more capable reps.

U.S. managers waste an average of 34 days per year dealing with under-performance. Senior executives claim they spend seven weeks a year — or over an hour per day — managing badly performing employees.  – Inc. Magazine

Under-performers do more than hamper results

Anyone who is missing their goals, is not an overly happy person. Reps are no different. In spite of the perception that reps are overly optimistic and eternally happy folk, they are emotional and can become sullen when they are not succeeding. Just as positivity is infectious, so is a negative attitude.  Furthermore, when some people get in a rut, they take it upon themselves to actively bring others down with them.

In one of my previous companies, an unhappy team member acted like a contributing and “on-board” member of our team during sales meetings, but outside the meetings she opposed the direction we were going in and was verbal about it to others, trying to solicit support for her viewpoint and undermining our efforts to execute on our plan and create momentum.

Lost Opportunity

Once after terminating a rep for lying to a prospect, I made calls to the accounts the rep was managing and learned that while the customer liked the benefits they received by using my company’s products, they were reluctant to refer us to others since they really didn’t like the rep that they were dealing with. This situation was salvaged by assigning a new rep to the account, but how many other opportunities were lost because we were unaware of the dislike for our rep? Research shows that customers are far more likely to share bad experiences with companies than good experiences. How much bad buzz did our unlikeable rep create?

66% of B2B customers stopped buying after a bad customer service interaction. 

95% share bad experiences. 

54% shared bad experiences with more than five people

45% share bad customer service experiences and 30% share good customer service experiences via social media

Survey: The impact of customer service on customer lifetime value – Dimensional Research / Zen Desk

Morale 

Top sales achievers take a lot of pride in the companies that they choose to work for. Poll your best sales producers and you will find that they are annoyed when some people don’t meet the performance goals that would justify their role on the team, but are allowed to remain as a team member. Over time this frustration can boil over and cause a good rep to consider moving to a company with higher standards. As a sales recruiter, we see this all the time and make a living out of meeting great sales people who are open to considering a career change.

Replace the weak with the strong 

Perhaps the biggest reason for rejecting the 80/20 rule of sales rep output is that the gains of replacing low achieving reps are huge. Consider this – if you replace a rep performing at 70% of target with a rep at 120% of target, you get a 50% boost in sales output with less management effort. Win-win.

There are a lot of reasons why sales managers fail to trim inferior sales talent for their teams  – lack of awareness, sense that there isn’t anyone available to replace the rep, fear of change are some of the main reasons – however failing to make hard choices can be the difference between success and a long downward spiral.

To your success!

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Need-to-Haves That You Don’t Need When Hiring Salespeople

Non Mandatory Hiring Criteria for Sales ProfessionalsProspective clients often come to us with a typical problem: many of the salespeople they hired seemed great during the interview process, but under-performed once they were hired.

When a new sales hire doesn’t work out, the loss is huge. Poor-performing salespeople can cost thousands in lost opportunities and revenue, and worse yet—damage a company’s reputation and credibility.

As part of Peak’s 5 step process for recruiting top sales talent, we help our customers clarify their hiring requirements so we can focus our search on finding candidates with the specific characteristics and traits that will make them successful in our customer’s unique selling environment.

Oftentimes we find that companies use job descriptions when hiring salespeople that require candidates to have certain qualifications. Over the years we have found that the typical hiring requirements of most firms have little to do with sales success. In fact, some of these “need to have” conditions adversely limit the pool of candidates and create great costs for the business.

Sometimes these requirements are carried over from previous job descriptions or tossed in to fill out a job description. The bottom line is that they detract from the focus on what really matters.

Why Many Need to Have’s are Not Really Need to Haves:

Many of the typical hiring requirements that employers use in job descriptions are neither necessary nor sufficient for sales success. Here’s the top 3 “Need-to-Have” requirements most often listed in job descriptions and why your company doesn’t actually require them.

1. Why salespeople don’t “need-to-have” university degrees:

Steve Martin writes in the Harvard Business Review that more often than not, top sales people are born, not made. Martin administered personality tests to over 1000 top salespeople and estimated that:

“Over 70% of the top salespeople are born with ‘natural’ instincts that play a crucial role in determining their sales success.”

Dave Kurlan, the author of Baseline Selling, too points out that “salespeople don’t succeed because of their education.” As Kurlan points out, many top companies like Google who carefully study their recruitment efforts, have arrived at the conclusion that there is no correlation between higher education and success.

What Kurlan and Martin are pointing to is that selling prowess is not determined by a piece of paper or four years of tuition. Too many companies require their salespeople to have university degrees—when such a requirement has nothing to do with sales success.

The question then arises: what determines success in the sales world?

Our experience has taught us that top sales achievers have certain innate qualities, traits and attributes—what Martin called “natural instincts.” We call these traits the Sales DNA. A candidate’s Sales DNA is the most importance factor in determining sales success.

Selling is something that comes naturally to the best salespeople. It’s something a university education cannot teach. This is why it makes little sense to require a university degree for a sales job.

What is this Sales DNA? Gallup has researched these traits of top sales achievers for over 30 years and concluded that the Sales DNA includes traits like “motivation, ability to influence and build relationships; creativity, innovation and problem-solving abilities; and natural tendency to derive joy from their work.”

Our experience over the years has confirmed this too. More often than not, the top sales earners are successful NOT because they have a college degree, but because they have characteristics such as ambition, drive, confidence, optimism, goal-orientation, persistence, competitiveness and curiosity. That’s why our recruiting process includes not only strict, behavioural based interviewing by our seasoned interview team, but third party, psychometric testing that spells out not only what drives an individual, but how they can be managed to produce optimal sales results.

2. Why salespeople don’t “need-to-have” experience:

Many sales job descriptions stipulate that the candidates “need to have” X years of experience.

But, like education, past experience too is a poor determinant of sales success. It matters not where someone worked, but how they behaved in a relevant and similar sales environment and whether they demonstrated the behaviours required to be successful.

Gallup conducted a massive study of over 250,000 sales reps in over two dozen industries which revealed that “sales is primarily a talent-driven occupation.” Top salespeople have innate talents or tendencies that are “extremely difficult or even impossible to teach.” Thus, experience, like education, has little impact on sales success, or in Gallup’s not-so-subtle words, “traditional reliance on experience, education, and skills or competencies is a grossly inadequate and often misleading way of building your best team.”

In all our years of work with top companies around the world, we too have found that experience cannot predict future sales success.

There are several dangers with relying on past experience as the key to recruiting.

Experience doesn’t protect an employer from mediocre salespeople who just happened to work in a fast growing company. The candidates’ sales numbers may look pretty on paper but they might be extremely poor when looking across the industry or even at their colleagues. Sometimes top salespeople are the product of their environment, and may not be able to duplicate their past success in their new environment.

Experience may even be a detriment to selling in certain situations. As people’s buying habits and methods change, sales tactics learned years ago can seem obsolete and harsh today. Experienced salespeople might need to unlearn their past habits, costing money and time for a new employer.

Top sales people keep up with changing times and are flexible enough to sell to today’s buyers. However mandatory hiring requirements often stand in the way of spotting real sales talent. Many salespeople with great sales DNA, yet only have 5-7 years of experience, are often disregarded by companies that make it mandatory for candidates to have 9+ years of experience. Maturity may play a role in ensuring that a seller can relate to a potential buyer, but if a sales candidate has demonstrated that they can perform the job successfully, does it really matter if they have less years of service than the job description requires?

Experience is not a holy grail when it comes to recruiting, nor should it be dismissed, especially if it is in the same industry or niche. It can be a useful tool but should not become a hard-fast rule while screening sales hires.

“Research by Leadership IQ confirms that 46% of all new hires fail within 18 months of being hired, chiefly due to ‘attitudinal factors’.”

3. Why Salespeople don’t “need to have” sold X product previously:

Experience in selling a similar product is perhaps the most desired requirement in recruiting. Experience tells us, however, that if a candidate has been successfully selling the same kind of products, this experience can be a good indicator as to whether they will be able to contribute to your bottom line from day one. To sum it up, if a candidate has sold similar products to similar industries and worked in familiar environments, then their contacts, innate understanding of the vertical, and past selling habits might come in handy at your company.

But as with the other two requirements, this requirement isn’t overly necessary.

Working for the competition in the past is no guarantee that they will excel at your company nor an indicator that the sales person will fit with your organization and culture. In fact, working for the competition may be a detriment if it means they think and do things considerably different than what your company requires. Their specific product or niche experience should be viewed through the lens of your own organizational needs.

Remember that it is not necessary that only salespeople who have worked for direct competitors will be able to succeed at your company. In fact, many employers overvalue sector experience so much that they miss out on other great sales hires and stellar candidates who may not have worked in that sector before, but have worked in environments with a similar offering, selling process, buyer, and prices and would be rewarding hires nonetheless.

Each selling role and environment is unique—even within the same sector. A Hunter’s DNA will push them to succeed even if they don’t have sector experience. It is a great sales attitude and work ethic that creates great sales results.

As we have said before, sales recruiters should expand their pool of candidates by recruiting across a variety of industries. Often, the industries may differ, but the sales approaches, product features and selling tactics can be the same.

Searching within a broader candidate pool, might help you find great salespeople in a more cost-efficient manner than if you restrict your search for people within specific industries. The larger the pool of candidates the more leverage an empolyer will have in hiring the ideal person at the right price.

Companies can unknowingly limit their candidate pool if they continue looking at these meaningless requirements when filling their sales jobs. When the starting pool is weak and screened based on unnecessary metrics, well-meaning companies lose out on star sales professionals who can boost revenues.

Hiring people with top-notch sales DNA—personality and behavioral traits— will lead your organization towards A-players and radically lessen chances of attrition or failure.

Like what you’ve read? Check out our eBooks here!

References—
Rally the Troops—Gallup Business Journal
Hiring for Attitude—Research & Tools to Skyrocket your Success Rate—Leadership IQ
What Google Might Know About Hiring Salespeople—Customer Think
Are Top Salespeople Born or Made?—Harvard Business Review

Photo Credit: george.bremer via Compfight cc

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

What Can Bootstrapped Start-Ups Offer to Hire Sales People?

I answered the following question over on clarity.fm:

What do (bootstrapped) startups offer to new sales hires? Commission only?

Here I reiterate and expand upon my answer.

Having spent the last 25 years launching my own companies and working with start-ups, I understand the pressure to hire sales people that can accelerate the acquisition of customers and infusion of cash, but I also have first-hand exposure to the problems of hiring sales people, particularly in the earliest days of the venture, so I generally advise against doing so. There are a few reasons:

  1. Cost Prohibitive – Reliable sales people and those that can consistently sell and convert prospects into customers (the only ones that should be considered for hire) are highly sought after by employers who can pay them well, but unfortunately unfunded and bootstrapping start-ups,  typically can’t afford to compete for these sales people. I have worked with several startups where the prospect of paying a $75k base salary plus commissions, or even a $4k monthly draw would be problematic. The default response is often to hire sales people with spotty track records who will accept less base salary. Unfortunately, this typically doesn’t result in the sales person magically becoming a superstar and achieving the desired sales goals.
  2. The Right Mix of Skills and DNA – Selling for a startup is very different than selling for an established company where the brand is well known, the product is stable and established, there is a customer base for references, and there is sales infrastructure and support for the sales person. In many of the startups I have been involved with, the product offering, value proposition, and target market have evolved quickly, and there have been many start-stops and product challenges. Not all sales people, even the great ones, have the predisposition to be successful in a this kind of an environment. It takes a rare mix of skills and DNA/personality traits along with the critical domain knowledge for someone to be a successful sales person in a startup. Startups often hire the wrong sales person, who in turn achieves disappointing results (after several unsuccessful tries at recruiting sales reps, many of these companies come to Peak for help).
  3. Care and Feeding – Many start-up execs and founders, under great pressure to generate sales, have the expectation that a good sales person will be able to come in and simply produce sales. Not much thought is given to the sales support and/or management a sales rep might need and management’s time is often spent fighting fires. It is not unusual for there to be a “sink or swim” culture, where the rep is expected to figure things out and sell, but this presents a major challenge for most sales people who need to be managed in order to perform well. For more on this, see The Myth of The Self Managing Sales Rep.
  4. Too Early – In some cases, there may not even be many or even any sales that validate the product, yet the founders have a lack of faith in their own sales abilities and/or a feeling that they don’t have time to sell, and want to hire a sales person that can bring on customers. While it may be virtually impossible to get an established and successful sales person to accept the risks of coming into this kind of a situation, it may be even more difficult for them to actually produce the desired sales until the company is further along the path of launching and the direction has settled down. In my experience, the founders need to be very involved in the selling activity (for the sake of having an intimate understanding of what does and does not work) and customers will only want to deal with the founders who have extensive domain knowledge and are very closely tied to the company’s offering and direction.

That said, if a startup venture’s plan is still to hire a salesperson, my advice is to find someone who has demonstrated sales success in startups and is excited by the early stage in company building. Create a compensation plan heavily leveraged on sales results but pay a fair base to attract an established sales person. Unless the startup is in an industry where 100% commission is a common practice, I would recommend against a $0 base as this may creates the false impression that the hire isn’t passing time with one company while looking for another job with a better compensation plan. The rep will need to be 100% focussed on selling for the startup in order to have any success. Don’t sugarcoat the challenge, it will be tough, but certainly sell the vision and opportunity to be part of a growth story, which will be more likely to attract the right type of DNA.

A sales person is not a magic bullet in a startup, although I wish that were the case. Instead, the timing and expectations have to be in line with what the right sales person can realistically contribute.

Here are some additional posts related to the topic of selling in a startup that I would recommend any entrepreneur to read when they have a few minutes:
Tip: Don’t Stop Selling Once You Hire Your First Sales Rep.
An Intro to Hiring Sales Reps for Startups.
The 5 Types of Reps Common to Startups.

To your success!

Photo Credit: benarent via Compfight cc

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

The Single Most Important Benefit of On-Boarding New Sales People

on-boarding new salespeopleGreat post, the 9 Results You Can Expect From Sales Onboarding, by Lee Salz (link below), summarizes the many benefits a structured program for onboarding new salespeople. In it, he discusses why a structured onboarding program helps achieve the following: protects an investment in recruiting and employing sales people; help provide increasing revenue performance; improved client experience; protecting company brand; reducing sales force turnover; and enhancing the ability to recruit and achieving faster identification of hiring mistakes.

SALES RESULTS SOONER

But if there was one reason alone for any company to commit to an intensive new sales hire onboarding program, it would be to speed up the time it takes to get new sales reps producing sales. We come across companies where more than 50% of new sales reps are let go within the first year. This represents an enormous waste in terms of hiring and management effort as well as lost sales opportunity. Properly training and developing new sales hires, even senior sales executives, addresses many of the challenges which cause new sales hires to fail, but also exponentially increases the chances that they will be successful, quickly which is of paramount importance in highly competitive markets.

Check out Salz’s post here: 9 Results You Can Expect From Sales Onboarding

Also check out Peak’s guide to onboarding new new sales people, The First 90 Days – Your Guide to Making New Sales Hires Produce Fast

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Interview Legal Landmines: How HR Can Help

Illegal Sales Interview QuestionsYour team has found what look like some great candidates for your open sales position. You have planned your interview questions to help filter out the mediocre and find the top performers. You have reviewed your compensation package and are certain it is competitive. You feel you are ready to hire the company’s next super star. STOP.

Before you sit down at your desk to interview candidates, make a stop at HR, or you may be risking a law suit. Many questions that seem innocuous can land you in legal hot water, and the laws may have shifted without your realization. It is part of HR’s job to keep up on changes in employment law, so be sure you ask them to review your intended questions before sitting down with candidates.

Here are some questions and issues you may want to discuss with HR or your organization’s legal department before diving into your interview process:

Age: Most sales managers are aware they should not ask directly about age, but may not be aware they can violate age discrimination laws with offhand comments that may indirectly ask the candidate to expound upon or reveal their age.

  • Illegal: Wow, you look much too young to have been a top sales performer at such a large organization!
  • Legal: How long did you work for XYZ Company, and can you tell me more about your accomplishments there? How many deals were you able to close, who are your primary buyers; do they reside in the C-suite?

Gender-specific questions and questions about marital status and family: It is illegal to discriminate based on gender. It is crucial that you don’t ask any question that could be interpreted to be digging for information about the candidate’s marital status, spouse or children.

  • Illegal: Do you have children? Will you be able to travel for business and work the long hours this job requires or do you have to be home by 5:00 to take care of your children?
  • Legal: Your sales territory would include five states, so you will be on the road quite a bit, and that will include some overnight stays. Since you will be busy with sales calls during the day, you may have to do some paperwork nights and weekends. Would you be willing and able to work these kinds of hours and spend some nights away from home?

Sexual orientation: Questions about sexual orientation are illegal in California and some other places. There is no reason to inquire about this at all.

Country of origin: It is illegal to discriminate based on country of origin. You cannot ask about nationality or native tongue, but you can ask candidates to verify they can work legally in the country. You can also ask what languages they can speak or write fluently – if that is critical to the job. HR should have attorney-approved forms regarding legal-to-work verification. It is best just to let HR verify these forms and supporting documentation.

  • Illegal: We have a position opening up in Mexico City. Are you from Mexico? Is Spanish your first language?
  • Legal: We have a position opening up in Mexico City. Are you fluent in Spanish?

Ethnicity and race: It is illegal to inquire about either ethnicity or race, even if comments or questions seem complimentary.

  • Illegal: Since you are African American, you would do well in this sales position, because there are many African American prospects in the territory.
  • Legal: There is really no legal question or comment about ethnicity and race.

Religion: Don’t ask about religion with the reasoning that you are trying to find out what holidays the candidate will want to take off or for any other reason.

  • Illegal: Are you Jewish? Will you want Hanukkah and Passover off? It would be great if you were willing to cover for some of the other client service representatives around Christmas.
  • Legal: The company gives the following holidays off: [List them.] You also can take [#] of personal days per year. (Check with HR about this one, as it is possible you may have to give important religious holidays off in certain jurisdictions.)

Disability: You cannot ask a question that would cause the candidate to tell you about a health issue or disability.

  • Illegal: We are looking for real go getters who can take a tough schedule on the road, because this sales territory is quite large. How many days were you sick last year?
  • Legal: The schedule for this job can sometimes be grueling. The territory is quite large, and it requires long hours and a lot of time on the road. Can you handle being on the road 50% of the time?

Physical attributes: You cannot comment on height, weight or other physical attributes.

  • Illegal: With your good looks, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting in the door to pitch new prospects.
  • Legal: Tell me about your experience in getting through the gatekeepers in order to pitch new prospects.

Affiliations: It is illegal to ask generally about clubs and affiliations.

  • Illegal: What clubs do you belong to and what are your political affiliations?
  • Legal: Do you want to discuss any professional organizations you think are relevant to helping you perform your job?

Military status: It is best to just avoid any comment on their military background.

  • Illegal: It is important that our clients can reach you, and that they feel their rep is available to them. I see you were in the military. Are you still in the reserves? Might you be called away from work to serve?
  • Illegal: What kind of discharge did you receive?
  • Legal: Do you have any potential plans that would require you to take time away from your field position?

Arrests: It is illegal to ask if a person has ever been arrested, because someone could have been arrested and then exonerated.

  • Illegal: We really need someone we can trust in this positon, because you will have access to confidential company and product information as well as certain financial accounts. Have you ever been arrested?
  • Legal: It is legal to ask about felony convictions, and factors about the felony can be considered when making a hiring decision. There is a fine line here when weighing these factors, and it is better to avoid this issue during your interview and just leave gathering to HR. HR will likely use attorney-approved forms. Of course, HR can also be helpful in performing background checks.

Financial information: It is illegal to ask if a candidate has ever declared bankruptcy, but it is legal to run a credit check.

  • Illegal: We want high-powered salespeople who know how to make money. We are looking for winners. Have you ever declared bankruptcy?
  • Legal: Do not ask about financial background during an interview. Rather, your HR department can ask the candidate to sign a form giving consent to a check credit. Many U.S. states allow employers to use credit history as a factor in hiring decisions, but in some states there are restrictions.

Special Note on asking about earnings: It is a common practice to evaluate a sales person’s level of success by looking a their history of commission earnings and in most jurisdictions it is legal to ask a candidate to prove their income in one way or another. Once you have had your interview questions sanctioned by the HR department, if you need to deviate a bit during the interview, stick to the straight and narrow and only ask obviously job-related questions. If there is any doubt at all about the legality of a question, don’t ask it. An off-hand comment can cost the company a lawsuit.

*CAVEAT: This blog does not give legal advice, but here are some questions and issues you may want to discuss with HR or your company’s legal department. Questions labeled as “illegal” and “legal” should be checked with your HR department or attorney. Examples are based on U.S. and Canadian law, but U.S. and Canadian law differ (from each other and other countries), as do laws from state to state in the U.S. Please check with your HR department or attorney regarding the issues raised in this blog post and how they apply to your company.

Sources
8 Interview Questions You Should Never Ask, Inc.
13 Questions to Avoid During a Job Interview, Entrepreneur
Discrimination during a Job Interview, Lawyers.com
Interview Questions: Legal vs. Illegal, Canada Human Resources Centre

Image courtesy of  Naypong | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

(The Most) Unacceptable Excuses From Sales Reps

From time to time all sales managers will have at least one rep who is under-performing and not demonstrating the right attitude. Considering the amount of time and money it takes to find and develop each rep, it serves to be patient with a slumping rep especially when they are demonstrating the right behaviors, but successful sales leaders are vigilant in attacking excuses, since a culture of excuses is kryptonite for sales performance (see also The Language Used by Leading Sales Teams).

Over the years I have certainly heard every excuse in the book from sales reps that are missing targets. Often I have been able to reset the rep’s attitude and get things back on track with a brief chat or two. But when my reps have consistently given me excuses about why they are unable to perform, been unable or unwilling to commit to the work that will lead to success or have an attitude that sucks, I have known it is time to part ways.

Unacceptable Excuses

Below is a list of unacceptable excuses from sales reps that I’ve never tolerated as they surely compromise any efforts to create a culture of success:

  1. “I am waiting for…. ” – Time kills deals and sales reps who are always waiting for things to happen don’t close a whole lot of business.
  2. “I didn’t pursue that sale because I wouldn’t get comped on it” – No doubt there is a strong relationship between commissionable goals and activities, but reps spend their time thinking about how to help customers lead to customers who buy a lot.
  3. “Our prices are too high” – Customers don’t buy on price, they buy when they trust the rep and feel they can depend on the supplier, but they are happy to imply that the competition is offering a better price. The best reps don’t accept this and win business by selling on value.
  4. “Our product/service is not good enough”  – There is no such thing as a perfect product or service. In fact, most products and services that are purchased are absolutely imperfect so assuming that the base customer needs are met, it is up to the sales person to build the relationships and trust with the customer and position the offering in a way that wins the business.
  5. “That’s not my job” – Great sales reps do whatever it takes to win the business and if that means doing someone else’s job, they’ll do it.
  6. “The quota is unachievable” – it is always easier to refute this excuse when other reps are hitting target, but the best reps consistently prove that where there is a will, there is a way.

A culture of success is critically important to high sales performance. Don’t let these types of excuses stand in the way of creating the right culture on your sales team.

To your success!

Photo Credit: KROCKY MESHKIN via Compfight cc

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

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How Your HR Department Can Help Drive Sales Success

Sales and Human Resources

Sales leaders don’t have enough time in the day and it’s costing them.

They are busy developing strategies and implementing tactics to drive their companies to the next level, and sometimes the necessary minutiae of managing their team can come in second. But there is help, and it is close by in your company’s human resources department. Yet, many leaders do not want interference from HR, and only look to them for tactical, not strategic, support. But the best leaders invest the time to teach HR what the sales department really does and the type of people that perform best within it. They take key members of the HR department along for a sales call or two, so they can see up close and personal just what it takes to succeed in sales. They give them a solid understanding of the duties performed by people in different sales roles and realize that with this knowledge, HR can provide a great deal of time and money-saving support, as well as provide invaluable advice in critical decision making.

Here are some areas where a strategic partnership with HR can pay off:

Employment Law: Hiring, staff management, compensation plans and terminations are all legal minefields. Even some of the top sales gurus have been known to unwittingly recommend practices of questionable legality. Sit down with your HR Department and get a firm hold on what you can and cannot do legally. Give them your list of interview questions to review. Discuss compensation, incentive and bonus plans with them. And, of course, if you are even considering terminating an employee, your first stop is the HR Department.

Recruitment: Once HR understands the structure of the sales department, what it is selling and to whom, HR can help to recruit for those roles. Here’s how.

Job Descriptions: Although no doubt sales leaders have a good idea what they want in a candidate, HR can take the job description you give them and put it in standard company format and check to be sure it is within the law. They can also search for similar job descriptions from other companies to show you additional responsibilities and metrics to consider incorporating into your plan.

Sourcing Candidates: HR can reach out to likely passive candidates from other companies or on online sources such as LinkedIn. They can also manage the relationship with sales recruiters.

Diversity: There are ethical reasons for building a diverse sales force, but it is also very good for business, particularly where customers are made up of both men and woman and are of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds. But when is it legal to proactively seek people of a particular gender, race or ethnicity? And if a company does not do that, is it open to legal action if its work force ends up comprised quite predominantly of white males? This is an area where Sales needs to seek the strategic advice of HR.

Screening Candidates: With the direction of Sales, HR can help provide structure (processes, scorecards and scripts) which helps to weed out unlikely candidates and preinterview more likely ones. HR can also give valuable insights into the candidates they pass on to Sales for further interviews.  HR can also provide scheduling support and arrange travel which allows the sales team to focus its time on selling.

Personality Testing: This is one of the most important ways HR can help Sales. HR can arrange for personality testing that will help Sales decide who to hire and give insights on the best role for each candidate. For example, a candidate who shows a very healthy ego but low empathy may be a top performer in new account acquisition, but may not have the patience required for nurturing existing accounts. This is a critical aspect in order to hire the right sales person for your company and that is why we utilize industry leading psychometric testing in our recruiting process.

References and Background Checks: When sales managers are on the fence about who to hire, they will probably want to call key references themselves. But for those calls that are meant to check the veracity of resume and interview claims, including previous income, HR can be a great help. Of course, HR can also do background checks that go far beyond the resume.

Compensation Packages. Sales leaders will have their own ideas about how to compensate their staffs, but HR can help them to align sales goals with the broader goals of the company. Sales vice presidents should also familiarize themselves with all benefits offered, and discuss them with HR if they do not come up to the benefits packages offered by the competition. The compensation plan is how to motivate the sales force and influence them to support business goals; its importance cannot be underestimated.

Onboarding: It’s no secret that the first days can be critical to a salesperson’s ultimate success and their impression of a company. HR will should not be responsible for sales and product training, but they can help make onboarding a lot less painless. For example, they could mail all those tedious forms in advance, so your new hire can minimize time on the job filling out w-9s and contemplating health care options. HR may also be able to help you coordinate the logistics, if not the content, of training events. This may not be all that strategic, but this source of support should not be overlooked.

Termination:  Before terminating an employee, sales management must follow a structured plan. It bears repeating that sales vice presidents and managers should sit down with HR well before there is a need to terminate in order to get a good understanding of legal issues, then sit down with HR again if it is necessary to terminate. Here are some ways HR can help:

  • Review plans for goals and metrics salespeople must meet in order to remain employed with the company
  • Review sales management’s termination decision, so if termination is necessary, it can never be claimed it was a personal vendetta
  • Advise on how to document the employee’s activities and performance, and compare them to the job description, the expected numbers and other written expectations
  • Advise what the sales manager should do in the form of warnings and written instructions so the problem employee can attempt corrective action
  • Be present as a witness at termination meetings
  • Conduct an exit interview to inform the person of the details of any packages or benefits they will receive

Exit Interviews: Of course many employees leave of their own volition. For all employees leaving the company, HR should conduct exit interviews which may give valuable insights into how the culture of the company can be improved and how to retain more sales staff in the future.

The key take away: Don’t overlook the value that your HR department can bring to your sales recruitment and talent management plans.

Sources

Closing the Credibility Chasm between Sales and Human Resources, Sales Benchmark Index

Sales and human resources — a perfect collaboration, Philadelphia Business Journal

How to Fire an Employee Without Being Sued, INC.

How to Set Up a Sales Compensation Plan, Elizabeth Wasserman

Who Makes for the “Best” Hire?, Allan Schweyer

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles | freedigitalimages.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

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Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

How to Hire a Great Sales Person on Full Commission

If you want to hire a great sales person on a full commission sales compensation plan or with a very low base, here’s the short answer on how you can: You can’t.

We get literally hundreds of requests from companies each year that want to hire sales reps on full commission.  The requests often sound something like these (all details have been modified):

  • Seeking a superstar sales person. We are a startup so need commission only, but the right person can easily achieve six-figures.
  • We need an experienced sales person, with strong contacts. Commission only with other incentives. 
  • Need commission only reps who can sell. 
  • Looking to expand our sales team – commission only, but payouts can be significant.
  • We need to hire 100% commission sales people that are hunters and can close sales on the initial visit.

I love the clarity on needs, and I wish hiring capable sales people was this easy, but think about it – why would someone who can sell work strictly on commission, where they assume all of the risk in building someone else’s business? Why would someone with a strong track record of sales performance join a company that makes no commitment or investment in the sales effort? Why would a superstar join a company that can’t afford to pay them a base salary? They wouldn’t. 

They wouldn’t because reliable, top performing sales people are a rare breed. They represent a small percentage of the total sales population (5-10%) and are in high demand, which consequently allows them to choose which employers they work for. And when they choose, they consistently choose employers that pay them well and set them up to succeed.

In fact there are only a few business sectors such as office products or retail sales where it is commonplace to attract talent by offering a full commission compensation plan, but even in those sectors, the best reps are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to migrate to better sectors where they will receive a more favourable return on their effort (we know – they call on our recruiters for help).

In most sectors, an employer that does not pay its sales people a premium over competitors, cannot expect to attract the best talent available and will more likely be building a sales team with under-performers that maybe wasting time, opportunities and money.

The bottom line is that if you want people who can sell, you will have to pay to attract them.

To your success!

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

5 Secrets for Hiring Sales Managers Who Are “Master Motivators”

Hiring Sales Manager secretsSales Managers are supposed to be kingmakers—their job is to inspire and guide sales superstars towards glory – and effective sales managers unlock the potential of their sales team, especially when rewards and retribution alone aren’t driving sales results. They boost their team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together in the pursuit of profit— and fulfilment. In the end, the best sales managers are not managers at all, but are guides, advisors, trainers, cheerleaders and coaches all rolled into one.

In order to be exceptional at their jobs, sales managers need to have one skill above all else— they need to be master motivators. They need to be able to drive sales results through the efforts of others.

Highly Motivating Sales Leaders

Master motivators abound in the sports. A coach who understands how to motivate people can transform a bunch of fresh-faced recruits into world-class athletes. And once-great teams can slump quickly in the hands of insipid leaders.

It’s a similar story in the sales world. As recounted in the Harvard Business Review, research conducted by Gallup shows that “having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”

The Dale Carnegie Training Institute also confirms the importance of managers who are great coaches. “Over 55% of employees who express confidence in their manager’s leadership ability and who are inspired by the communication with their direct supervisor feel engaged.”

“having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”  Gallup

The Sales Manager’s job thus, is not just to manage sales, but to also manage and coach the people who get the sales.

Unfortunately, most sales managers are abysmal at coaching others. According to research by the Objective Management Group (OMG), only 7% of all sales managers are effective at sales coaching (In fact, OMG research shows that Presidents and CEOs find 4 out of 5 sales managers ineffective overall – ouch!).

Six Reasons Not to Promote your Top Reps to Sales Management 

When to Promote Your Top Sales Rep to Sales Manager 

Clearly, sales managers who can coach well are rare. This means that companies need to be extra attentive when headhunting for potential sales managers. Here are a few questions to ask candidates to figure out if they are experts in the art of motivation:

1. How are they motivated?

Inspirational managers lead from the front—they are motivated to perform, and focus on constant self-improvement. They earn respect most often by simply living out the principles that they are trying to inculcate in their teams. If candidates cannot explain what motivates them, or how they continually improve, they will be unable to ignite passion in the hearts of their team members.

There is a wrong way to answer this question though. If a sales manager is overly coin operated, concerned only with numbers, and not with the people bringing in those numbers, then even if that leader can stimulate results in the short term, the numbers are likely to suffer over the long term. You need a charismatic leader, not a glorified accountant.

A great sales manager is almost always motivated by the opportunity to inspire and lead others. Great sales managers will always want to invest in their sales reps not because they expect returns for themselves, but because they thrive on watching others grow.

2. What’s their motivational style?

Experienced sales managers can often develop bad habits. They increasingly rely on either carrots or sticks to “motivate” their sales teams. The problem, as Dr. Paul Marciano points out in his book Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT, is that neither of these techniques is effective. People who are motivated by the fear of losing their jobs work with less drive and energy, and those who are enticed by big payouts quickly become complacent even when receiving the payouts.

What motivates people then? According to Frederick Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene theory, real motivation comes from within. John Baldoni, author of Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders, agrees that true motivation comes from wanting to do something of one’s own free will.

Master motivators realize this truth. They know that financial rewards or competition are not enough to motivate someone. Instead, salespeople need to be allowed to set their own targets and encouraged to be creative in solving their own problems. This is what will lead to a sense of fulfilment and self-drive.

The best sales managers, thus, believe in creating an environment of growth and appreciation which will spur their salespeople to develop a strong sense of internal motivation.

3. How do they motivate different types of people?

Ask your interviewees: “How have you inspired overachievers to continually excel? How do you motivate those who have chronically underperformed?”  The motivational tactics will differ in both these cases, and so should your candidates’ answers.

Truly exceptional sales managers make it their mission to discover what triggers each of their employees. They will be obsessed with helping each of their salespeople—hunters and farmers— realize their individual potential. If your sales managers have a “my way or the highway” attitude, or if they only focus on inspiring the top salespeople, you will soon have conflict on your hands.

“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” – Eddie Robinson

4. How do they give feedback?

Great coaches are supportive and approachable. They listen patiently before providing unconditional support and solutions to empower the person seeking help.

Unfortunately, such a supportive atmosphere is rare in sales. Most sales managers believe they are providing “constructive criticism,” but are usually just fault-finding.

Master motivators will instead approach feedback as an interactive process, by assisting their sales reps in figuring out how to improve their own weak points. For great sales managers, feedback is not a chance to point fingers, but an opportunity to refuel their team’s fire to succeed.

5. Is the person sitting in front of me charismatic?

In his best-selling book Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson illustrates a unique concept: the Reality Distortion Field. He describes how Steve Jobs, the most famous motivator in Silicon Valley, could distort others’ perception of reality through the sheer power of his personality and convince his team to achieve milestones that seemed impossible at first.

Bud Tribble, a software designer at Apple, is quoted in the book as saying: “Steve has a reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.”

Jobs would set out ambitious goals for others and use the force of his charismatic personality and self-belief to convince others to complete month-long, industry-leading projects in a few days. This is largely the reason why Apple managed to zoom to the top position in so many product verticals in the tech industry.

Of course, a reality distortion field isn’t a physical phenomenon, but it works! The best sales managers continually apply some version of reality distortion to break the mental barriers of their sales people and convince them to rise above and beyond what seems possible.

Such managers are interpersonal superstars, with unfailingly positive attitudes even in the face of low morale or negative experiences. Through their charisma, they are capable of changing both the skill sets and the mind set of their salespeople.

However, when you spot someone with an allure, a presence or the elusive X factor, make sure that they aren’t just all talk and no action. Consider how they measure up to the standards we’ve laid out above, and use multiple interviews, behavioral questions and panels to ensure that their charisma holds up in the long run too.

Download our free eBook: Make the Right Sales Hire Everytime to make your sales hiring process more effective today.

References

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

How to Interview and Spot the Traits of Top Salespeople

You may have hired a lot of B2B salespeople in the past, and probably some of them looked great on paper, but turned in lackluster performances. How can you skew the odds for hiring a sales superstar in your favor? Many hiring managers look at the resume, but the key to hiring well is to look beyond the resume.

Interviewing sales people can be tough because they are trained at being interviewed by customers and can sometimes be very good at telling you what they think you want to hear. There are a variety of tests that evaluate personality traits of salespeople, and we highly recommend such assessments. But effective interviewing can also go a long way towards uncovering the best sales people – and it can often be a lot like peeling an onion.

Here are traits to look for and solid tips for interviewing for those traits.

1. Goal oriented and ambitious:

You can train skills, but motivation and a good work ethic is more innate, and you cannot train that into people. Of course, no sales candidate is going to assess themselves as unambitious so you need to make your own assessment.

  • Tip for interviewing for ambition: High performers have a pattern of accomplishments and achievements. At Peak Sales Recruiting, we include questions in the interview script that probe what they are most proud of outside the workplace such as in sports or the arts. Look for signs of achievement and competitiveness as these are key indicators of someone who is a top performer.

2. Confident:

This is perhaps one of the most obvious traits you need to look for in a salesperson. Yet, a salesperson can exude confidence in an interview, and still wilt under rejection or criticism. At Peak, we see false bravado all the time, but the best salespeople believe in their products, and if they are told “No,” they are not defeated – they still don’t give up.

  • Tip for interviewing for confidence: Chet Holmes, sales guru and author of The Ultimate Sales Machine (Penguin Group, 2007), recommended what he called the “attack.” At the end of an interviews, he would tell a candidate that although he seemed nice, there was only one open position, and the candidate just did not appear to be a superstar. Holmes wrote, “You’d be amazed how many people crumble…Let that person go. Superstars never crumble.”

3. Optimistic:

The ability for a sales professional to look past obstacles and focus on the end result is a trait that all top sales pros possess. This does not mean that they only focus on the ‘bright side’ of things, that they wear “rose colored glasses” or are delusional in any way. On the contrary, they are actively on the look out for challenges that may come their way and focus on the positive steps that can be taken to overcome them.

  • Tip for interviewing for optimism: Ask the candidate to name two personal and two professional challenges they have faced in their life and ask them to describe what motivated them to take these challenges head on. Was it the fact that they had taken the right steps, and it was just a matter of speaking with the CEO one more time to close the deal? Was it the fact that they saw these as small obstacles that could be disregarded because the end goal was in sight? It is essential that the candidate demonstrates to you that they are positive in the face of adversity and don’t let rejection deter them from their goals.

4. Competitive:

Defined by Merriam-Webster as “having a strong desire to win or be the best at something” is one of the most vital traits that your new sales hire should possess. It is the fuel that powers them to hunt new business opportunities, cold call, get in front of the key decision makers, and close deals.

  • Tip for interviewing for Competitiveness: Have the candidate describe how they strive to be the best sales person possible. Do they talk about learning a new sales methodology to add to their arsenal? Do they talk about using their teammates recent big deal as a driver to start work early and leave late? Do they talk about the desire to surpass their best sales numbers to date? These are some key indicators of whether this candidate is indeed competitive by nature.

5. Sense of Urgency:

The sense that “time kills deals”, defines the top performing sales people. They understand that every minute not on the phone with prospects or meeting them face-to-face is potential lost revenue. Hence, these candidates should demonstrate to you that they understand the need to act in a timely fashion.

  • Tip for interviewing for Urgency: Ask the candidate to provide examples of how they used time to their advantage. Ask the candidate to describe their daily activities. How much time is split between prospecting, working the funnel, and closing accounts? Is it broken up 15%, 40%, 45%? These numbers will help you understand how they spend their time and how much emphasis they place on closing deals so that they can start pursuing new opportunities.

6. High Need to Interact and Influence Others:

Let’s face it, people like to buy from people they like. The best salespeople have an innate need to bond with and be respected by others. That is not to say they are categorically extroverts, as many great sales people classify as introverts, but they have a strong need to develop relationships with others and influence behavior of buyers.

  • Tip for interviewing for a people person: Does the candidate appear relaxed? Is their smile and handshake genuine? Do you get a sense they are trying to forge a real connection with you? Are they listening and asking questions that build upon what you are saying. Are they attempting to drive the discussion and qualify you as much as you are qualifying them? Ask the candidate how they bond with clients. If they are sending clients helpful information that has nothing to do with the product, asking clients over for Saturday barbecues and remembering to send them birthday cards, you may have a winner.

7. Persistent and Solution oriented:

Creativity is not a word that is always associated with salespeople, but the best are very creative in finding solutions to problems. When a customer describes a challenge, the top reps instinctively move towards solutions and when they run up against obstacles, they do not curse their bad luck, but they come up with creative ways to get around the obstacles and convince the prospects.

  • Tip for interviewing for creativity: Ask the candidate about times they had to develop alternative ways of doing things in order to succeed. Give them difficult scenarios and ask them to brainstorm solutions. Focus on how the candidate overcame the obstacles more than the actual situations.

8. Organized and disciplined:

There is a commonly held view that great salespeople are akin to Wild West cowboys; that is, they ride out hard, lasso them in, and don’t give a whole lot of thought to structure or paperwork. That’s for the administrators back at the ranch. Nothing could be further from the truth. Great salespeople are disciplined, work with a plan and get things done on time.

  • Tip for interviewing for organization: Ask the candidate how they strategize who they calls on first, how they decide to approach a specific prospect, what their structure is for follow-up, what kinds of materials they send to prospects before and after sales calls and when they sends those materials, how they work to improve their sales skills, how they manages their time and what efficiencies they have discovered to streamline paperwork. Insist on examples where they have done these things rather than philosophies of what they think should be done.

9. Fits into your organization and sales environment:

Culture matters and so does sales environment. There is a world of difference between working as a salesperson for a company with widespread name recognition and a lot of sales support and working for a smaller company. The former typically has a lot of marketing and sales administration support, while the smaller company or start-up may expect the salesperson to do a great deal of marketing and administrative work themselves.

  • Tip for interviewing for fit: Make sure the candidate has been successful in an environment similar to the one they will be working in. When you question the candidate about previous positions, ask if they were expected to develop their own leads and how, who developed and distributed marketing materials, and who did various types of needed paperwork. If a candidate comes with five star ratings from an organization that just handed he/she hot leads, don’t assume they will know how to cold call or to drum up leads on their own. On the flip side, if the candidate is doing well and making their numbers with very little support from the company, you may have a sales superstar.

10. Client-focused:

Client-focused salespeople are focused on bringing the client what they need, not just what they want. A global study by the Sales Executive Council and reported by The Harvard Business Review, calls these kinds of salespeople “challengers,” and says they outsell all other kinds of salespeople. According to the article, “They focus the sales conversation not on features and benefits but on insight… They come to the table with new ideas for their customers that can make money or save money — often opportunities the customer hadn’t realized even existed.”

  • Tip for interviewing for client focus: When you ask the candidate to give you a sales pitch, do they ask a lot of questions first and then come up with a solution that fits your needs? Now ask them for examples of when they were successful in convincing clients to invest in innovative solutions.

Resumes are important, but when you really want the best sales people on your team, you can’t stop there; you must take a deep look at the traits of the person behind the resume.

For more on traits of great salespeople, see The Traits of Top Sales Performers.

References:

Superstar-growth strategy, Chet holmes

Selling is not about relationships, Matthew Dixon

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)