Sales managers and Recruitment: Part twoTo Fire or Not to Fire
Now let’s look at the other side of the coin. To Fire, sack, let go of. Whatever you want to call it, of what is on the surface the employee from hell.
Years ago in the dark ages it was a case of being told by your manager to “get rid of him he is useless”. In the enlightened new economy it doesn’t quite happen like that.
Employees (that’s us by the way) actually have legal rights. More so now that ever. That’s way making sure your recruitment is as good as possible and that you have crossed all the T’s and dotted the If’s is so important.
First except the fact that some people won’t fit for whatever reason. Hey we all make mistakes . We and they included. There will always be turnover in any sales team. If you keep it below 20% a year you are doing well.
This is a subject for a much longer article or one of our free reports or pod casts. For now though
some top tips.
First when you hire someone or take over a new team make sure they are fully aware of expectations both from a role, team and company perspective.
Assess what their needs are on an ongoing basis. Help them by making sure they get the training they need and agreed amounts of access to you for help and support. Get to know them. That way you will be able to establish from a base of knowledge if their behaviour is different from normal or is this the way
they always are.
Spend time and help them. For new members assign them a buddy or mentor who is a great role model. Give them some reasonable bench marks of what they need to be able to do and by when. If they are struggling set them some small goals to achieve and give them ideas on how to do it. Remember to think through what is happening.
OK you have been honest with yourself and you really have done everything possible. Yet it’s not working out. They are really struggling with no real improvements or willingness to have a go. And you are downright frustrated. At the same time, your gut is telling you something is not working.
Make sure you have had the conversation with your Human resources team. They are a great source of help. Familiarise yourself with your company policy on the correct procedures. Then take the action you need to without regret or worries. Always ask you’re self.
Have I been fair?
Have I given help and training?
Have I remained in dialogue?
Have I asked questions?
Have I established any issues at home that may be affecting their work?
Once you have done all of this you will have established great guidelines for your own actions that nearly 75% of sales managers never do.
Let me know your thoughts and experience
Congratulate yourself.
To you and your teams success
Popularity: 31% [?]
Sales recruitment:Hire fast or slow?
Do you hire slow or fast as a sales manager?
Recruiting great sales people ranks as one of your top priorities as a sales manager.
Imagine the scenario. Your best sales person has resigned and you are desperate to fill the gap. You share out some of the key accounts and actually start seeing some of the customers yourself.
You then ring the agency and launch straight into getting someone into the role ASAP.
No! No! No!
In honesty I can understand the position. I used to work in a company where it was expected that you fill vacancies within 50 days of a resignation. A tall order. The results where often a disaster. Now I am not advocating you take months and months.
What you need to do first is have your trusty questions that you ask yourself.
What are you looking for?
What are the must have skills?
What can you train and what are the nice to have?
What type of person actually fits your selling role for your industry? Be very careful here! Selling insurance, pharmaceuticals and cars are actually different. Yes the basic skills are the same. Other more advanced skills are not.
What are your team values? Is this person a fit or a match?
What is their attitude like?
Do your research? If you are using an agency ask all the awkward questions you want to.
Recruitment can be one of the most rewarding jobs of a sales manager ever. Especially when you bring that gem into the company. They sell over their quota and make you look good in the process. Always an added bonus.
Come back to the blog in the next couple of days for part two. How do you actually fire someone and keep everything intact and within the rule book.
Any thoughts it would be great to hear your comments?!
To you and your teams success
Popularity: 33% [?]
Sales Managers: How not to motivate your team
On the back of last weeks post and the reference to The Office. I had a conversation with an old buddy of mine I worked with when I first started selling.
It was great to chat about old times. As usual the conversation included a good laugh about a notorious boss we both had. As we looked back it was amusing and outrageous some of the things that went on.
This of course was a number of years ago. When employees where seen and not heard! Particularly brand new sales reps with a swanky new Ford Cortina!
I have been lucky in my sales and management career in working for pretty forward thinking companies. Where people are important and their welfare and development is paramount.
In the new business economy, the only true advantage organisations have is their cultural capital. For the simple amongst us thats the people who work there. The ones that turn up everyday and are totally comitted to what they do. This is never more so than with a sales team.
Get your team firing on all cylinders with an upbeat attitude and they are awesome. Treat them like a number and at best they are uninspired and resentful and at worse and they will walk away.
It is sometimes still surprising for me for me when I go into organisations where old fashioned ways of treating people still go on.
I found a great article. On 50 ways to get employees to quit. I laughed when I read it. Though when I got to the comments I reaslised that many had taken it seriously. Which makes me appreciate how much poor management still goes on. The psychology of how to work with people has still got a long way to go in some organisations.
It would be great to hear how many of you have experiend any of these?
Read on and let me know what you think
The article
I polled the other guys in my group and we built a damn good list of things that our IT manager did that led to him losing his $100K/year job. Note that I left a few specific things out because I don’t need anyone getting pinched. If you repeat these things successfully, you too will get your team to hate you. If you are a reporting to someone that does these things, print this and do the old Office Space under the door routine.
Assign enough projects with tight deadlines so that your team has no choice but to work a 60 hour week while you only work 30 hours
Cap overtime pay.
Do not offer project pay.
Constantly underestimate the time it takes to get things done and then penalize employees’ bonuses because they didn’t hit the goal.
Talk more than you listen.
Tell the team to begin planning for tons of deployments but never obtain the budget to actually implement any of them.
Don’t trust written time cards. Make employees email you when they get to the office so you can see a timestamp when they get in.
Always take sides in disputes instead of moderating.
Avoid looking people in the eye.
Reprimand employees in front of the entire team.
Hire someone that is very weak to take the place of a veteran and expect the same results from the team.
Reprimand Mark but don’t reprimand Tony when he makes the same error.
Consistency is good. Never ask you employees if they are challenged enough or want to take on more responsibility.
Make promises to internal customers but have no idea on the elements involved in getting the task done.
You know that Tony is a slacker, but he is really cool to hang out with so keep him around and give him good reviews.
Suzy can take 20 minute breaks instead of 10 because she’s a little cuter than Paul.
Give your employees 2nd tier systems to work with but expect top tier results.
Never cross train anybody on anything. The skills they walked in with are the skills they are leaving with.
Mandate a new policy without consulting a single person that will have to live with it.
Give employees low raises because the more you save, the higher your bonus.
When talking to an employee on the phone, type away at your email. That’s a great time to catch-up!
When someone comes to you with an issue regarding another employee, use a lot of big words to explain the situation but really take no interest or action.
Create a desk cleanliness policy.
When Suzy comes in late and leaves early, and we complain, do nothing about it.
Instead of offering to help hands-on, watch from a distance and provide support over email.
Mandate that the entire team use a single to-do list application simply because you think it’s best.
Make your best employees train the newbies for weeks at a time but insist that all deadlines be met.
Never answer your cell phone.
Never be the on-call guy to share in the team burden.
Have a group of employees that you get a long with and go out to lunch with while those that you don’t like get left out.
Send employees lots of chain letters, poems and other crap spam when they are hard at work.
Constantly give your employees vague project plans and get pissed when the result is not what you wanted.
Refuse to upgrade a system after the entire team asks for it and then be sure not to give a valid reason.
Blame everything on your boss because no one will ever call you on it.
Make all men wear ties.
Do not let employees expense cell phone use but require a cell phone number for the on-call guy.
Shut off access to Google and Ebay because it’s not “required for work”.
Never let employees hangout and use the corp. network to play games after hours.
Tell employees to do plan B because you will save $11 even though plan A is the safer, more efficient way to go.
I don’t care what they are working on. No one should get a monitor larger than yours
Insist employees come to your wife’s silly Barbecue.
Give advice on topics you are only partially educated in.
When the kudos are handed out, you should take the credit because you managed the team. Do not give credit to anyone else.
Monitor all phone use.
Charge someone .25 days off for a dentist appointment.
Lecture the team at least weekly.
Hold team meetings to provide updates even though the updates only pertain to one-third of team.
Buy the team lunch and always forget that Vegan in the corner…he’ll come around.
Make the team fill out self evaluations but provide very vague feedback on what they type.
Sleep with that girl Suzy on the team. No one will suspect she’s getting preferential treatment.
Call the redhead guy on the team Rusty. Everyone will laugh and you are sure to win their hearts.
Make sure the cubicles are as close to each other as physically possible. The open areas surrounding the group will be used eventually.
Make the entire team read a book and then set aside 3 hours to discuss it. This is sure to increase productivity.
Let a couple people work from the house, but provide no reason for it or ways for others to obtain the right.
Insist that employees complete projects that even you admit are worthless.
In the new business economy
As industry and business has moved on
As time moves on and
I am sure there are many more ways than this to demoralise a team
Yes these things still go on. Not with Sales Team of course. Let me know how many of these you have experienced.
To you and your teams success
Best Wishes
Denise
Popularity: 54% [?]
New Sales Managers : Have a sense of Humour
The Office was such a hit in the UK it transfered to America. What makes it so funny is how close it is to a lot of real life experiences. Oh dear.
If you are new on this journey of being a sales manager or you are just getting started looking for your first position.A top tip is to remember not to take everything too seriously. Life is fun and yes even when you are managing a sales team.
Have a look at the video. It’s so easy to spot the mistakes. Just be aware you might make a few yourself in the first weeks and months. Its natural. It’s called learning and finding your feet.
Just be aware of the bloopers that can happen when you are managing sales people especially. Expect the unexpected. That way you will always be prepared.
Have a great weekend,
Denise
Popularity: 31% [?]
New Sales Managers: What can you learn from the Apprentice?
Over the last twelve weeks a number of bright young hopefuls have completed a number of tasks set by Sir Alan Sugar and his team. To test and allegedly bring out the best in them.
Last night Lee was crowned. Even though we have found out that he can’t spell and lied on his CV! and Resume
Interesting don’t you think? Maybe it was his dinosaur impression that won over the judges.
On a BBC special after the show. Sir Alan stated that for him Lee stood out. As in fact did Claire the runner up.
The reasons:
Was willing to get stuck in and help his team (Team players always do well contrary to public opinion)
Was willing to learn and adapt along the way responding to feedback ( if you are overly sensitive and are unwilling to take feedback…get over yourself or you will stunt your growth as an individual or in business)
As you will have heard on the video above the one area of debate was did Lee have anything more than selling ability?
It’s a great point for all of us as Sales Managers particularly new ones. We have been conducting a survey ( by the way if you haven’t yet taken it please do. Just click the link or press the button at the top of the page saying quick survey).
The key skill a high percentage of you say you bring to the roles is Sales Ability. This is natural. I got my first Sales Managers job because of how much I had sold on my territory.
Moving into Managing Sales people is a completely different role. Yes you may do some selling of your products or services. However now your skills will be much broader.
If they are not they soon will be.
To be a successful Manager of a Sales team you need to have abilities in so many different areas or your team and you wont grow yourselves or your business.
So how may of these attributes/skills do you have.
Did Sir Alan make the correct choice? Post a comment on the blog.
To you and your teams success,
Best Wishes
Denise
Popularity: 36% [?]
Does your team see customers or clients?
In your organisation do you have customers or clients? or both. There is an interesting debate going on at the moment on a forum I am involved in. About how we interact with the people we “sell” to and how we treat them as a result.
The economy is rocky for some. Often panic sets in and sales people become desparate. This often spills over into how they sell and build relationships. The sad thing is that, this is the time to really keep calm and truly think about value and your customers/clients. Why? because very few people do.
The definition of selling comes from scandinavia and means to be of service. Perhaps that gives us a big clue. Lets look at some definitions first:
The Webster’s Dictionary definition of these two seemingly-identical words is:
Customer: One who purchases a commodity or service
Client: One who is under the protection of another
The difference in the meaning is huge. And there needs to be a different mindset on how you treat the two.
If in your organisation these people are referred to as customers, that’s fine. But whatever you call them, always think of them as a client.
What exactly does ‘under your protection’ mean? In this case, it means that you don’t sell people a product or service just so you can make the largest one-time profit possible.
You must understand and appreciate exactly what your clients need when they do business with you. Be prepared that most times they don’t always know .
That’s where finding out their needs, wants and outcomes is vital. Especially if you want a life time relationship with them.
Once you know what final outcome they want, you lead them to it. The result is you become a trusted advisor who protects them. And they have reason to remain your client for a lifetime.
Successful selling in the new economy is all about giving continued value to the client. So what is the best way to do it? build a relationship with them.
In this high technological age with new media forms of communication etc. Your only true differentiator is you and what you bring to your relationship.
Let’s look at an example. Forgive me if you have heard it before. It’s the best example I have come across and is really easy to explain. When you are having this conversation with your team break it down and relate it to your industry. It will have much more impact then.
A man or women ( yes we do buy drills as well!) who goes to a DIY or hardware store to buy a power drill ,doesn’t really need a drill. Yes you have guessed it they need holes.
They have a financial, emotional, logical or intellectual need for holes. They may think they want a drill. But it’s your responsibility to determine the real truth and the real need. Your responsibility and opportunity is not to just sell a drill.
To create the relationship you want you will have to work out how to satisfy their financial, emotional, logical or intellectual need for holes.
That way you will and make sure the drill they buy from you will solve the problem and provide the holes they need.
As you explore with your, soon to be client, you may even discover that their bigger goal is something else. e.g. they actually need to insert rods in these holes, you realise that fasteners would work better than holes. So you sell the client some fasteners. You have now truly solved their problem.
You have also become a trusted advisor and a friend. And you should always think of your clients as dear, valued friends. The concept of viewing clients as valued friends is the essence of the Strategy of Jay Abrahams Preeminence. This is the lifeblood of a long-lasting, rewarding and profitable relationship for both you and your clients.
Any thoughs or comments on how you work with your clients?
To you and your teams success,
Denise
Popularity: 28% [?]
Podcasts
Podcasts will be coming soon!
Popularity: 26% [?]
New Sales Managers: How to Network
“It’s not what you know; but who you know”. This is an often-heard saying because there is a lot of truth to it! Networking in business is important; in fact, it’s on the scale of importance right next to marketing (although networking is not the same as marketing).
Marketing is the process of introducing your products or services to potential customers, while networking is the act of making contacts. I know that might seem obvious though not always!
Contacts are often made with other business owners or employees in related industries, with the intention that both people will send referrals to one another whenever possible.
Referrals are the best source of new customers! Referrals will generally already have a certain degree of trust in you (or your business) because you were referred by someone they know. It’s trust by association.
A warm lead is worth so much more than a cold one!
I know that seems so logical and yet we so often overlook our current customers and contacts.
Networking is the perfect way for your sales team to get their name, business, products or services on the minds of people who can provide them with future business.
You never know when a contact you are meeting could lead to the bigesst sale your team member has ever made.
Some suggested Business networking tips for you and your team:
Always carry updated business cards with you to give to people you meet.
Consider putting magnets on the back of your business cards to encourage people to keep them longer (by putting on the fridge or file cabinet); or include a discount code of some kind on the back of the card that people can use if they call you.
Whenever you meet new people, make a point to ask them what they do for a living so that you will have opportunity to share what you do.
Add all of the new people’s contact information into a mailing list database, so that you can send them newsletters on a regular basis.
Ongoing contact with people is proven to develop relationships and trust. It will also make sure that your business or name is on their minds if someone they know mentions they need something that you can offer; and will increase the number of referrals you receive.
Just be sure that the newsletter or information you send them is valuable and helpful so that they look forward to reading it (instead of deleting it!)
Join forces with complementary businesses to extend your marketing reach. When you meet contacts that offer related products or services, generate a combined marketing effort and share the costs and leads that result from it. This is a classic tactic by the famous Jay Abraham. Lets be honest it has never done him any harm
In your downtime, join several networking websites, including www.linkedin.com, and create profiles that allow people to find you when they’re searching for products or services that you offer. You can also set up “connections” with people you know, and build a network of businesses and people which can lead to referrals.
New managers should master the art of networking; that is, the ability to make interact and engage with new people you meet. Knowing how to deal with people both inside and outside of your organisation will give you more effective leadership skills, as well as build your list of resources that can assist you in establishing higher sales volume.
Networking within your own company involves being visible to your team often, and being generally social. Introduce yourself to people you don’t work with directly whenever given the opportunity, and tell them which department or sector you work in.
Don’t assume they know what you’re working on, and be prepared with a few things you can talk about to ease any discomfort you might feel in talking with people you don’t know.
A ceratin guru says that your Networking will be a direct pathway to your networth!
To you and your teams success,
Denise
Popularity: 33% [?]
New Sales Managers: How to achieve your dream?
For those New sales managers working on their determination. Here is the result of Saturdays Britains got talent competition.
It has been a fascinating week on British TV.The public really do seem to have a say.
On the other side whilst George was winning. The New Nancy was also crowned. For Sir Andrew Lloyd Webbers production of Oliver.
The rise of programs such as this has really demonstrated how the human race really like to get behind their fellow man and woman. I don’t think supporting the supposed “underdog” is just a British thing either. My thoughts for what they are worth, is that we admire certain qualities in others.
Often ones we lack in ourselves.
Having an amazing thing happen to us and really living our dream is what we all want at quite a deep level. Saturday truly demonstrated that if you hold a vision and are totally determined great things do happen. More often than you think.
The conversation we have with ourselves are much more powerful than any we have with others. A true fact.
During the show most of the candidates where interviewed and it was very obvious who was going to win. Escala ( the amazing string quartet) where a great example of what dedication practise and talent can do. Though in their interview they already had a different vision ( possibly a contract with Mr Simon Cowell no doubt)
For young George he had convinced himself that people don’t get a second chance. He had so it was his one oppoprtunity and he was literally dancing for his life. Our minds and thoughts have such an amazing impact on us.
So what has that got to do with being a new sales manager in a recession? Well inspiration for one.
It actually doesn’t matter about the recession. Pick up any history book and you will read about the people that thrive in a recession and not just at the expense of other people.
It all starts with what you think about what you can do holding a vision and them moving into action.
No matter what industry you sell in, you will all know of certain teams and sales people that have achieved awe inspring results. Yes that could be you.
Mix a bit of belief with a vision, add a large spoonful of determination, move into action….and guess what just might happen?
To you and your teams success
Denise
Popularity: 30% [?]
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