Managing Sales People » Managing Sales People

How to Hire a Sales Superstar

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:57:45 +0000

By: Andrew Botieri

With the economy making a slight comeback in the first quarter of 2010, several of my recent coaching work with my clients has been concentrated on improving upon and/or adding to their current hiring efforts. During our calls, we’ve been discussing the challenges they are facing during their hiring and interviewing process for sales and service professionals. A re-occurring theme was their lack of formal training in their own interviewing/hiring skills. Let’s face it…if you don’t interview for a living, like a recruiter, then it’s easy to become “atrophied” in this process. In addition, if you don’t have time to practice your interviewing skills, then you’ll continue to make hiring mistakes. Let me pose a question to you…can you afford to continue to make hiring mistakes? Have you calculated what it costs to hire a replacement, especially in this challenging job market?

Here are some of the common mistakes that are made by interviewers:

1. The expression, “First rate people hire first rate people and second rate people hire third rate people” should say it all. The insecurities or confidence of the interviewer will show in their hiring process, especially if the position is within their own department.

2. Not having a formal job description. The only way you can “inspect what you expect” is to set the expectations with a written job description. This allows each candidate to know what is expected of him or her and creates personal accountability.

3. An inadequate screening process. Utilize a telephone screening process before bringing a candidate in for an in-person interview. Your time is valuable. I use a formalized telephone questionnaire to give me a “snapshot” of the foundation of each candidate. If you would like a copy of this questionnaire email me.

4. Brush up on your in-person interviewing skills and the types of questions you want to ask. Ask questions that illicit an emotional response vs. the responses they think you want to hear. After a candidate response to your question, follow that up with “How did that make you feel?” Do you have a written list of questions to ask each sales/service candidate? If not, ask me for one.

5. Not utilizing a second opinion. If you feel you have a strong candidate, ask one of your managers or a top sales/service professional to meet with the candidate for a “mini” interview. This gives you a second set of eyes and eliminates the “halo” effect. The “halo” effect is when you are “blinded” during the interview process when the person reminds you of yourself.

6. Not checking references thoroughly. When I ask my sales/service coaching clients ‘who handles their reference checks, some of them say their assistants’ do the reference checks. OUCH! If you are being held accountable for your hiring decisions, then you need to be the one who does your own reference checks. Your assistant may miss some crucial information or miss what the reference is saying “between the lines” that could save you a big headache down the road.

7. Utilize assessment tests for every new hire to find out what motivates this individual and what their work habits are like before you hire them. It can save you a lot of angst later on. Email me if you’d like information on the assessment tests I offer my clients.

By implementing these seven key areas in your hiring and interviewing process you will eliminate the chances of making a bad hire. Remember….hire the “right” person the “first” time!

TPP Tip: Before you conduct a telephone interview, know what you’re looking for in each sales/service position you’re hiring for. If the candidate sounds strong on the telephone, immediately set up an in-person interview. Don’t let them get away. In addition, do your homework before the candidate comes in, by reviewing their resume and making notes in the margins about questions you may want to ask, aside from your prepared list of formal questions. Most importantly, take the interviewing process very seriously, because the success of your sales/service company and your career depends on it! If you’d like more information on hiring a sales SuperStar or other sales interviewing tips please email me.

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Changes To The Managing Sales People Blog

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:35:45 +0000

Over the next week or so the look of the Managing Sales people blog will change. With some new graphics.

On top of this we will have a new 49 page Ebook for all new and current subscribers to the blog.

For those of you already subscribed. I will send a link by email so you can download your own copy.

In addition we have lots of new things comming which we hope you will enjoy.

These will include Videos and podcasts and access to teleseminars.

Have a great Weekend

As I type this the sun is actually shining in the lakes in England. And believe it or not we are only wearing three layers!!

Take Care

Denise and Sharon

www.twitter.com/SharonNewey
www.twitter.com/DeniseOyston

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3 Simple Rules To Keep Your Quality Sales People

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:04:32 +0000

Quality sales people in perceived “difficult” times often get tempted to go to the highest bidder.

When times become challenging great sales people and sales managers are in demand.
Managing people in general can be a daunting task.

Managing sales people can be even more challenging. Particularly if this is the first team you have ever managed. Though they may seem obvious some basic principles can help to keep you on the right track.

Sales teams are expensive to run. However when everything is working well and you keep the great sales women and men and have an awesome team you realise it is money well spent.

This only happens with work. Yep ideally you will get help from your manager and your organisation. However think through what you do and how you can make your team the one everyone wants to work with.

Remember over 70% of sales people leave an organisation because of poor relationships with their immediate superior. That’s you by the way!

Internally, you need to provide a positive working environment. You can do this by adapting the following principles in managing sales people:

1. Conduct a regular sales meeting with your team

In our line of business, you might not see your team eight hours a day. They are ideally busy out and about seeing clients and customers.

Therefore, make sure that you schedule a regular meeting. This is the best option for you to ask how their days were, how the sales call went. This should be as a team and also individually. Meeting with one of your sales people should be a planned event. Plan it in your diary so it happens. Time spent coaching your team is the best possible investment

The quality time you spend with them the better they will perform. Sales coaching and development is one of the fast growing areas. Why because it works and can demonstrate measurable results.

2. Have an interesting and worth while reward system

Managing sales people includes creating a reward system that’s delivers its outcome. That is to motivate your sales staff and reward them for the performance and effort they put in.

More than the basic compensation, along with development what keeps sales people is the kind of perks and attention that they receive.

This could be anything from the number of day’s holiday. Staff discounts. flexible working hours, upgraded IT equipment. Think about the kind of market you are in. What age group are your sales people? Increased pensions might not be important to a 25 year old though holiday vouchers certainly will be.

In cooperation with your Human Resources team, you might be able to come up with a reward system that is intrinsically equitable and externally competitive. With this in place, you are sure that you’ll stand a much better chance of keeping your quality sales people

3. Keep performance evaluation transparent

Everyone in your team must understand how they are evaluated and should feel that they are fairly rated. In managing sales people, you need to show them that their performance is transparently being measured. This way, all of you are on the same page as to how you draw the line between the top and average sellers. Understanding the evaluation process is motivation enough for them.

To you and your teams success,

Sharon and Denise

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Sales Management: How do you manage a sales person, when you haven’t been one yourself?

admin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:46:08 +0000

How do you manage a sales person, when you haven’t been one yourself? a very interesting question.

By the way. High everyone , I am Sharon the other part of managing sales people. Well I am excited to finally be able to have some time to share a few thoughts and ideas with you.In case you have been wondering, how come our blog posts have been written by Denise so far?, I have been out and about working with some of our clients and delivering a variety of management and leadership training.

During some of my leadership training recently, some new sales managers have found themselves managing sales people when they have not been a salesperson themselves. At times, they have experienced a few challenges that initially they believed were

unique to themselves.The reality is though, that the only thing they haven’t experienced is the salesperson’s situation and also understanding the role of the sales person.

Of course, just like many other specialist roles, a salesperson is a unique individual. The highly motivated ones are driven by the chase of the next sale. They are focused and thrive on the challenge of finding a potential customer, building loyal long term relationships, identifying a need for a product, selling their product or service and then closing the sale.
Oh and potentially earn some bonus or commission too.

Occasionally I come across managers who believe sales people are loners. Well it is true that they often work and sell on their own. Sales people are often highly driven by results and what they can achieve.

They can also be quite focused on ‘what is in it for them’. This can be judged by others as ‘being a loner’, or even ‘selfish’.

However remember people are individuals. You will also find many sales people today work as part of a business development team and need to be as good a team player as they are at working on their own.

Whether you are managing a sales team and have or haven’t done the role of a sales person, if you aspire to be a successful sales manager here are a few things that highly successful
sales managers do.

Have a success focused ‘mindset’

What I mean by this is, believe in yourself and your abilities. In contrast, if you believed that you are at a disadvantage because you haven’t done a sales persons role, these thoughts will affect how you manage your sales people. Ultimately these thoughts will affect your success.I’ll be talking more about ‘Mindset’ over the coming weeks so look out for these blog posts.

Manage your sales people as individuals:

Everyone is special, treat them this way.Sales people are motivated by many things:

Recognition, money, incentives are only a few. Take the time to find out what else, you
may be surprised!

Let your sales people know what you expect from them:

Then let them get on with the job.

Recognise and reward your sales people and team:

For their successes and fortheir efforts. People can work incredibly hard even if the end result isn’t what you wanted. Let them know how much you appreciate their contributions.

Finally, walk your talk.Be prepared to do what you ask your team to do and set the standards in terms of the behaviours you expect.

It’s good that you have considered the impact of having done the sales persons role.
What’s even better is that you have invested your time in reading this post.

I’m not sure when now might be a good time to start practicing the suggestions above. How about now?

Take Care,

Sharon

PS Early next week look out for a post on the difference between training and development!

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New Sales Managers: What can you learn from the Apprentice?

admin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:49:30 +0000

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

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