Sales Recruitment Criteria

In order for a person to qualify as an effective salesperson, he or she must have certain personal and professional skills. The individual should be extremely persuasive and friendly. The ability to change people’s minds is one of the most important personal traits in sales. Not all customers will be willing to invest in the products and services a representative has to offer. That person must be able to approach the customer from an angle that makes sense. The salesperson must have the ability to make that customer think that he or she needs a specific product.

A salesperson must also be highly motivated. This person should be the type to take initiative whether someone directs him or her or not. A good salesperson will constantly think of ways to generate sales and get ahead. Even when the workday is done, he or she will still think of strategies to use for the next day. A sales personality is aggressive, motivated, hungry, and competitive. This person will want to provide results for himself or herself and for the company for which he or she works. He or she will have a high level of energy and a constant desire to achieve.

Experience and knowledge also play a significant role in sales recruitment. A salesperson should have previous experience in a sales environment. Knowledge of the hiring company’s products and services is also quite helpful. If a potential salesperson can show that he or she has done significant research on the company in which he or she intends to work, it will raise hiring probability. Taking the time out to study a new company’s products, services, ethics, profits, and the like would be a notable display of enthusiasm for the applicant.

Finally, a good sales candidate will be able to exercise logical thought during the interview process. The interviewer will put the applicant in certain situations and ask him or her to explain how he or she would get the situation under control. These answers will also play a significant part in the hiring process. Employers desire sales personnel who can adapt to any situation and turn it into a benefit to the company.

That component is inbound leads from the web. People make search queries with commercial intent all the time, and in all likelihood they’re searching for what you sell too.

Cold calling and email blasts are a form of push sales and marketing. You plan an efficient and well-targeted campaign, but these strategies will always require a wide net.

With SEO, you are promoting your business at a point when people are already involved in the buying process – they’re already looking for what you sell. All you need to do is come up first. Ninety-two percent of searches never go past the first page of results and 75% never go past the first few results. For SEO to work effectively, your site has to be at the top.

To Get Leads From SEO, It Pays to be At the Top

By first, I mean in the top few results of Google for your high-volume keywords. People trust Google, and they are a multibillion dollar Internet company that continues to stand the test of time for good reason. Seventy-five percent of all searches are through Google, with Bing, Yahoo and others picking up the scraps. And really, the other search engines copy Google as much as they possibly can, so focusing on Google search is future-proof.

PPC or Natural Search?

Now where do we need to focus within Google? Pay-per-click (the ads at the top and in the sidebar) is how Google makes its money, but it’s not the best use of your money. Once you stop paying, you drop off the page.

Natural search (or organic search) is more efficient in the long run, and natural results are those most trusted by users. Also, as you build a natural search campaign, you are moving something with a lot of mass. That means it will keep rolling along even if you stop funding it.

Advantage to Using SEO for Lead Gen

The biggest problem with SEO for most executives is that they’ve tried it in the past with minimal to no results. Partially that’s because without transparent reporting it takes a while to know you’ve been ripped off. Many (probably most) SEO companies don’t know what they’re doing. This is a grey art after all, and it’s changing all the time. The good news here is that your competition is in the same boat and they likely haven’t put the resources into finding a reliable SEO company or effectively funding SEO promotion efforts.

We have been using SEO for our own firm for nearly a year now and the results have been fantastic. It took a few months to get ramped up, but in all likelihood, it’s how you found us. And we’re glad to share our methods with you (as long as you’re not the competition).

This SEO game is still relatively young and there a plenty of niches left to dominate. Ten years from now, the layout will be as different as it was a decade ago.

Search for Keywords, Check the Market

As a parting note, you can try some search engine optimization strategy yourself. There’s a great tool that Google offers through their AdWords program that allows you to find the search volume (number of searches per month) for given keywords, or keyword phrases. It also offers a very gross estimate of the level of competition for any keyword, and related keyword with search volume. You can use find it by searching for “Google Keyword Tool”. Keep in mind that people generally use as few keywords as possible when they search, and they don’t always use the keywords you might use.

For a consultation on SEO targeted for sales leads generation, give us a call: 866.294.6767

Until next time, keep your sales in Overdrive!

This post adds some new elements to prior articles on the subject of Managing Sales Professionals once they have been recruited and brought on to the sales team. While volumes have been written on this topic, I’d like to speak specifically to Company Culture and three of the most common things we see holding back the performance of otherwise great sales professionals and great organizations.

Cultural Impediments to Successful Sales Recruitments

Many of the companies that outsource to Sales OverDrive are led by smart management teams that recognize cultural impediments to fast and effective sales management that are deeply ingrained in their company culture. One common example is “Decision Constipation”, the inability to make decisions affecting sales people fast enough to give them a fighting chance.

Boil the Ocean Syndrome

Another example is what I like to call the “Boil the Ocean Syndrome”, which can be summarized in this statement “We know what we want to do but we want to be sure that it’s (Exactly) right”. This tendency has several root causes including the fear of reliving a poor decision made in the past. Anyone who has lived in this type of environment knows how frustrating it can be.

So let me offer a word of encouragement to anyone who recognizes one or both of these behaviors. It’s an imperfect world with imperfect information and imperfect people. Less than perfect decisions will be made, so don’t beat yourself up. Give it your best shot and just get moving! And be sure to give your sales team the freedom to make decisions they need to make. Nothing will happen until the sales team has a clear direction, support and freedom to get into the race and make mistakes.

The ability to make fast decisions and mid-course corrections as they become apparent is mandatory in this hyper competitive world. The inability to make decisions quickly without consternation represents a serious competitive disadvantage.

Sales Recruitment Perceived Negatively By Non-Sales Staff

A third and equally problematic problem is a resentment or disdain for sales held by some non-sales staff members, upset with the sales team or even with the fact that their organization had to stoop to “sales tactics”. This and other destructive behaviors slow not only the sales team, making it difficult to recruit and retain talented sales professionals, but negatively affect other areas of the company as well.

If the sales function and the individual sales people are not fully resourced (supported), empowered and respected by the organization and, of course its leadership, it’s a good bet that customer service, IT and product development are also suffering.

In conclusion, cultures that make decisions fast, support and respect their sales teams well, and commercialize and bring to market new go-to-market ideas and approaches will be much more likely to compete effectively. They will also be the organizations that are best able to attract and retain the most talented sales people.

Personally, I believe it’s better to be 80% (forget trying to be perfect) and get 100% on task with the business of doing sales. Adjustments can always be made. The main thing is to get activity levels up as fast and as high as possible.
Outsourcing sales to Sales OverDrive is a great way to get careful but rapid decision making on track, to recruit, mobilize and train the most talented individuals, drive sales activity and win the race for new customers and market share.

Nest time we’ll look at some key things you can do to ensure that new sales recruits up to speed, happy and bringing in new customers very fast.

Until then, keep it in OverDrive!

Another very common problem area is the overall performance of the sales team. Clearly the importance of great sales professionals can’t be overstated. A high percentage of the inquiries we receive for sales outsourcing and sales recruiting are motivated by the common desire to get more performance from the company’s sales and marketing department. In our experience, under-performing sales teams most often have one or more of the following three root causes as it relates to sales professionals and their performance:

Poor Recruiting

The best people simply are not sourced (identified) and recruited into the team.

Leadership Failures

Even when great sales people have been recruited, company leadership fails to manage or resource them well.

Process and Strategy

Sales process, positioning, value messaging and a game-changing approach to the market is missing as discussed in previous posts.

So let’s look at recruiting as our first key to accelerating sales. The following is a list of common recruiting criteria. These are listed in the order they are most commonly used to screen candidates by smaller ($1 Million to $10 Million) companies:

• Industry Experience
• Product/Service Domain Expertise
• Chemistry
• Existing Relationships
• Employment Stability
• Personal Selling Style
• Performance/Track Record

While each of these criteria is important, over the years our clients have found that personal sales performance, adaptability and creativity are also essential. They’ve also found that having a Rolodex will only go so far and never take the place of a proven ability to win new relationships and customers. Most often, successful client companies put the following criteria very high on their lists:

• Personal Integrity
• Adaptability/Creativity
• Personal Selling Excellence
• Ability to Develop and Leverage Relationships
• Ability to Team
• Market/Territory Development Performance
• Industry/Domain Expertise

Finally, our most successful clients have us put in place very carefully conceived scoring protocols in their sourcing, screening and interviewing processes. This is very important in eliminating bias and wasted time (and opportunity) associated with the back and forth debates over a host of preconceived notions on just what describes a “good” sales person. Been there? Then you know what I mean.

Contact us and we’ll help you recruit and develop a sales team built for speed. Next time we will cover some things that Management can do differently to help sales people do their jobs well.
Until next time, keep it in OverDrive!

Though there have been some variations to this notion of outsourcing only non-core processes, I believe the thinking in this area is somewhat flawed. This is due in large part because its supporters don’t realize certain real-world competitive imperatives that every CEO faces.  Bear with me while we look at this very important question in a bit different way.

Outsourcing – Looking Back

Let’s look at the thinking over the past decade. One very popular study and some great insights are found in the findings of the CAPS Research and A.T. Kearney Inc. study, “Outsourcing Strategically for Sustainable Competitive Advantage.” The study covered 14 functional areas that have been outsourced, and the findings show that outsourcing is here to stay, of course. But is it being used as the competitive weapon that some, including this writer, believe it can be? Sadly, this is typically not the case.

The research indicates that Outsourcing is generally used broadly across many activities but not very deeply. For example, in the most heavily outsourced function, IT, only 36 percent of all companies outsource over 25 percent of the function. Only eight percent of companies outsourcing sales actually outsource more than 25 percent of the function.

The study is silent on exactly where the spend is being made and what “deeply” signifies.  What we know from our own surveys at Sales OverDrive and  experience with roughly 750 companies is that it’s usually the less strategic sales activities that are most often outsourced. These functions typically include customer support, administrative support for sales, appointment setting, and B2C and B2B sales typified by door-to-door and call center sales.  We’ve found that the same holds true in another one of our divisions, Advanced Harmonics Recruiting,  which is focused primarily on accounting, technology and recruiting.

Outsourcing Non-Core Competencies

In their book, Rebuilding the Corporate Genome, A.T. Kearney authors Aucik, Jonk and Willen put forth the notion that for “capability driven” organizations, especially  in hyper-competitive markets (and times like these), success will come from focusing “only on those capabilities crucial to their strategy and mission as an enterprise, and outsourcing or spinning off other capabilities.”

Outsourcing Sales for a Competitive Advantage

Here again, there is something missing. It seems to me that that success will come from outsourcing or co-sourcing anything in which the organization doesn’t have exceptional competency – regardless of how critical it may be. For example, a manufacturer might outsource manufacturing, warehousing and freight forwarding and a sales company might outsource field sales if a competitive advantage can be gained by doing so.
Yet, most organizations are reluctant to outsource a function that may in fact represent a competitive disadvantage or even a threat to the survivability of the organization. The reasons not to outsource are similar in every category and have largely to do with control and a sense of invincibility that I write about in another piece.

We see companies fail every day because they see sales as core or “crucial.” But because they perform so poorly as a sales organization, they grow slowly or not at all, often failing altogether. In fact, the more poorly a sales team performs, the more control is exerted, often to the detriment of the enterprise. “Oh we would never outsource sales” either means the enterprise has indeed turned sales into a competitive advantage, or sales is in trouble and blood is in the water.

With larger organizations, CEOs don’t see sourcing at its root as a strategic play, but rather a cost-savings opportunity. Yes, it is often a very effective in reducing costs. These companies generally are not looking at outsourcing to gain a competitive advantage.

Outsourcing Non-Proprietary Functions

In the February 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review, Bain partner Mark Gottfredson and two other partners authored an interesting study , “Strategic Sourcing: From Periphery to the Core.” This breakthrough study asserts that non-core doesn’t equate with a function’s likelihood for outsourcing.

Mark contends that it’s best to think about outsourcing based on whether the function is proprietary and unique in nature to the company.  If it is, the function is not a good candidate for outsourcing.  If, on the other hand, the function it is not proprietary and is common across many industries, it may be a good candidate for outsourcing.

Sales, for example, does not tend to be proprietary and sales processes tend to be similar across numerous industries. Thus, superior skills exist in other organizations that could present a viable alternative – and even a strategic advantage to a company lacking in this area. Even for those organizations whose subject matter might be confidential, that shouldn’t preclude outsourcing in order to tap into world class capabilities.

In conclusion, I encourage CEOs to look hard at the areas in which both competitive advantages, as well as cost savings, may be found. If you don’t execute in sales and marketing well, seriously consider outsourcing sales or hire a sales consulting company like Sales OverDrive. If sales and marketing is does not present you with a measurable competitive advantage, get rid of it and let another firm deliver that strategic advantage to you.

Most CEOs today have a good idea as to what’s not working, but selecting the best sales strategy and allocating enough bandwidth to implement sales solutions requires a clear plan of action. In most cases growth is inhibited by several, often complex and interwoven problems.

In this article we’ll briefly dive into the ten best sales tips that are all imperative for fast and sustainable growth. I encourage every CEO and sales and marketing professional to be sure they are executing in these areas so as to achieve more optimal and sustained revenue growth.

We’ll discuss just a few of the underlying success factors for each of these imperatives.

The Core Imperatives are as follows:

1.    Create a Culture of Sales Excellence
2.    Understand Your Customers
3.    Know Your Competitive Posture
4.    Align Your Strategy and Messaging
5.    Achieve Relationship Superiority
6.    Employ a Winning Sales Process
7.    Leverage Technology
8.    Attract & Team Top Talent
9.    Bring Discipline to Pipeline and Targeting Activities
10.  Execute Tirelessly and and Meticulously

1.  Create a Culture of Sales Excellence

Today CEOs really must create a culture of sales excellence. CEOs less cognizant of personal fallibility or company vulnerability are less likely to see this need, putting them and their organizations at greater risk. Lee Colan does a great job of capsulizing this as one of his “Top 10 Risk Factors for Growing Businesses”  as the “Sense of Invincibility” or “Titanic Syndrome.”

Leaders should understand the science of selling and sharply focus the entire organization on metrics that define “Winning.” This requires that each functional area be aligned around a common roadmap and speak a common language so that every person in every department knows their role – and their value – in driving organizational success.

It’s this language that breaks down silos and egos, allowing everyone to team together in winning the prize. So CEOs must speak the language and be personally involved in sales pursuits with key prospects and other aspects of the growth agenda including product development and customer service initiatives.

CEOs must mobilize the entire culture as a selling machine focused solely on winning new customers and expanding customer relationships.

2.  Understand Your Customers

CEOs and sales leaders normally have a good “sense” for the strength of customer relationships but rely on the CRM and personal interaction as a gauge. It’s always an eye opener when a customer leaves unexpectedly to go with a competitor.

Fortunately, some simple tools exist for understanding customers better and measuring their vulnerability to competitive threats. Unfortunately, not all companies use or are aware of them.

Good questions to ask are: What percentage of my company’s revenue stream may be vulnerable to loss? How is it concentrated?

Understanding your customers’ value drivers and strategic agendas makes it possible to align expectations, develop greater intimacy and either avoid or better manage problems and miscues. Communication protocols and avoiding “Relationship Pinches” is a complex topic to discuss more thoroughly at another time.

3.  Know Your Competitive Posture

An dear friend of mine at KPMG, Jerry Chapman, used to tell me to “keep your customers close and your competitors closer.” Knowing the internal alternatives to your offering and each competitors’ offer and tactics is often a daunting task.  Assessing their relationship depth and breadth is no less difficult, but it is doable and good methodology exists for this as well.

CEOs and sales and marketing professionals can assess risk and opportunity if they know how competitive offers are perceived and whether they connect well with the known and latent agendas of prospects and customers. Knowing this makes assessing competitive strengths and weaknesses and the vulnerability of competitive offerings much easier.  The following are some good questions as you consider your competitive posture.

First of all, are we competing on the basis that best matches our capabilities?

For example: Are we in the race to win on price or on value, and how does that fit our go-to-market strategy and corporate objectives such as profitability, share growth, etc.?

Secondly, do we do an effective job of helping our customers and best prospects understand how the value of what we deliver is more in tune with what’s important to them than the competitive offer?

Or, do we make ourselves vulnerable by making customers and prospects “connect the dots” themselves?

4.  Align Your Strategy and Messaging

To paraphrase Art Saxby of Chief Outsiders, “the CEO should be the #1 marketing visionary for the company.” Being the chief visionary for your company, making sure the corporate growth strategy is consistent, being well supported by sales, marketing, and business development activities is job one for the CEO as it concerns messaging.

Successful CEOs work with sales and marketing to identify the markets and prospects where winning is most likely, company products and services are most needed, and their offer is most compelling. The most fruitful markets are not always the most obvious. Often the most unattractive and seemingly difficult markets provide the greatest opportunity for margin enhancement as well as market momentum you can use to accelerate brand awareness. These less desirable target markets attract less competitive pressure and are more easily be won.

How your organization is branded and positioned in the market place will determine whether or not your ideal prospects believe you have the right to enter into a dialog with them. That dialog will most certainly not be about your competencies and your products or services, but about the prospect’s organization and how you can make life easier for them by improving their business. When the conversation is about connecting with the customer’s key agenda’s and partnering with them to achieve their goals, your message stops sounding noisy like everyone else. This often leads to developing a trust that you can help them meet their objectives and a win is possible.

CEOs ensure that the company’s value to the market is well communicated and understood by targeted markets. Sales and marketing position your organization as being the best and most capable provider of products and services most needed by your customers.

Value messaging should agree with the company’s positioning strategy and ensure that the perceived value received exceeds the cost and pain for the customer to buy and implement it, while maintaining or improving margins.

Its important to asses market requirements continuously so as to insure that your offerings remain aligned with the most compelling needs and key agendas of your customer and prospect CEOs.

Some basic questions to ask yourself about your company’s strategy and messaging are these:

Is the business I think I’m in the same business my customers think I’m in, and do our customers appreciate the value we bring them?

Does our messaging demonstrate that we understand our customer’s business better than anyone else?

A great resource for understanding the role of the CEO and the Chief Marketing Officer is Art Saxby’s article entitled “The Five Frogs of Mid-Size Company Marketing.”

5.  Achieve Relationship Superiority

A company can achieve market dominance by pushing one of three disciplines – Operational Excellence, Product Leadership or Customer Intimacy -  to the limit while meeting industry standards in the other two. This implies total alignment of an organization’s operations and culture to  serve that value discipline.

It is possible to excel in Operational Excellence or Product Leadership or both and still fail as an enterprise. In the end, one can trail significantly in the other two disciplines and win the market if relationship superiority is achieved.

Making relationship superiority a cultural imperative is essential to thrive and grow, let alone to achieve market dominance. To accomplish this, CEOs must insure that the following are accomplished:

• The entire culture must be focused on delivering value to customers and prospects.
• Organizational relationships must be “many to many”, not “one to one” or “one to several.”
• The company must continuously generate and deliver new, valuable ideas for its customers and prospects.
• The company must be willing to deliver exactly what the customer wants within increasingly fine customer and prospect definitions.
• Methods and processes must be in place to ensure the discipline develops.

Though there are too many to discuss here, some very good processes, tools and technologies are available to support this imperative.

6.  Employ a Winning Sales Process

One thing we’ve learned over the last 15 years is that sales problems or “pain points” such as poor top-line revenue production, low close rates, high customer turnover, and other indicators of poor sales performance all point to breakdowns in one or more organizational process that may or may not be related to sales efforts directly. If one can identify the process behind the pain point, it becomes much easier to identify the root causes and take the necessary steps to achieve the required improvement. Pain always has it’s root cause in an underlying process.

A great sales process should predict the oncoming pain and identify the underlying process in need of attention in advance of the train wreck.  Having a clear set of objectives with accurate management reporting and an effective, repeatable sales process through which all revenue-related efforts can be managed is imperative for any company set on growth.

Your sales process should be developed for speed and efficiency and be focused heavily on optimal targets and winnable opportunities. This requires not only a process, but reliable tools, technologies and training to support it.

Sadly, most commercially marketed sales processes and training programs are quite generic, lack important elements and rely too heavily on a common training manual or SFA application. Of 9, 000 sales professionals we surveyed across the country, slightly more than 80% indicated their number one concern was not knowing exactly what to do at each stage of the process.

So questions like “where do I sit,” “what did I say say when…,” “how to position, explore and transition to the buyer when…,” “understanding how to manage influencers and detractors,” etc. all point to another imperative:

Wining sales processes require finely detailed and mapped sub-processes, procedures, significant field coaching, and a host of powerful, yet simple tools that I don’t see being used by most sales organizations today.

IBM alum, Jim Hardee, used to tell me “there just aren’t as many sales folks that can block and tackle these days.” There is simply a lot to learn.

7.  Leverage Technology

CEOs must align and map their organization’s needs and processes – not wants – to the best technologies. Many desirable technologies exist today, but knowing which technologies will best leverage the interests of the company is often difficult.

When looking at your existing technology, its useful to know how many users are adopters and whether they have embraced the change the technology imposes. Moreover, how reliable is the data being input and produced, and does the output reflect the metrics you’ve established in your process as being meaningful?

For example: CRM tools can’t produce meaningful data unless the dashboards and reports are 1) designed to capture best practices, 2) provide management with data around the metrics that are predictive of success, and 3) can be adapted quickly to changes in market requirements, competitive initiatives, and the like. Put another way, are you managing your technology with key outcomes in mind or prioritizing functionality and features?

Effective sales and marketing organizations should be leveraging several technologies such as SEO, social media, and internet marketing in general. In future articles, we’ll explore a wide variety of fairly new technologies that can accelerate your company’s ability to grow.

8. Attract and Team Top Talent

CEOs today have a daunting task of determining how to allocate precious sales and marketing budget dollars, so let’s step back and look at resources in general.

First, we’ll discuss “resource modeling.” Given the corporate objectives we have and the go-to-market strategy for capturing that market, what is the  combination of resources that creates the greatest amount of new top line revenue (and new revenue from existing customers) in the shortest period of time while maintaining margins, staying within budget, and generating the highest ROI possible?

Secondly, once we understand how to apply resources, be it people, technology, PR, internet marketing or other resources, let’s make sure that clear goals, timelines, and key milestones and roles and responsibility are established.

As I mentioned in the first section on sales culture, CEOs must focus the entire organization – especially your company’s best talent and resources – on the customer. Short and long-term accountability will help ensure that new customer and opportunity goals are achieved. Great care should be given to make sure that personal and organizational goals are aligned with winning the focus for everyone.

Finally, measurement and reward systems must be tightly tied to teaming and revenue growth goals.

9. Bring Discipline to Targeting and Pipeline Activities

This is closely related to some previous imperatives, in particular Strategy and Messaging and Competitive Posture, as each of them deals with the alignment of your organizational competencies, products and services with the high priority agendas of your customer and prospect decision makers.

Targeting can only effectively be accomplished if this alignment is well understood and a disciplined targeting process is in place for ranking targets and pursuing opportunities in a disciplined way. While the number of selection criteria is less important than the thinking that goes into the criteria, good alignment and ranking tools exist that can greatly reduce the difficulty and risk inherent in establishing target customer and channel partner criteria.

Naturally, as with any other part of your growth agenda, the ongoing process should be adapted to the market and every target tested against it.

Pipeline reviews and revenue forecasting normally is an area where there is great opportunity for improvement. Forecasting is typically poor at best due to the underlying process execution failures.

During our discovery with new clients, I make it a practice to sit in on the pipeline reviews. At the conclusion of these meetings, its sometimes pretty hard to resist the temptation to close with an “Amen, Amen and Amen” as these are more like prayer meetings than pipeline reviews.

The good news is that these problems can be remedied. Pipeline Reviews can be objective and revenue can be predicted with a much smaller margin of error than is commonly believed. While all opportunities are managed through the CRM or “Hot Sheet” you may use, the value of every opportunity can be assessed and risk-adjusted by how far along it is in the sales process among other things.

When targeting and pipeline progress is becoming more productive, an opportunity exists to communicate this progress and the activities of pursuit teams throughout the organization, thus encouraging greater involvement in the process on the part of non-marketing and sales professionals.

10. Execute Tirelessly and and Meticulously

This imperative cannot be realized fully unless the other imperatives are being accomplished. Often new clients ask me how they can know if they’re executing well. Typically, if they answer “yes” to questions like the following, then opportunities for process, teaming and execution improvement may all exist.

• Are we competing more on price and less on value than we had planned?
• Are our customers having difficulty understanding how our products and services should be important to them?
• Is pipeline reporting overly optimistic and are “sure wins” often elusive?
• When we lose, do we know why exactly?
• Does more than 25% of my sales force fail to meet quota?
• Are there complaints about pressure on pricing?
• Are major wins hard to replicate?

In order to Execute well, at least seven key areas must be working well. These are as follows:

1. An effective sales process and common language must be in place and working.
2. Account, relationship and opportunity targeting and pursuit plans should be in place.
3. An optimized Resource Model must be in place along with effective sales support such as research and lead generation resources.
4. Specific objectives and action plans for each target and target market must be defined and executed.
5. Best practices capture and re-use must be ongoing.
6. Pipeline reporting must be reliable, actionable and predictive of revenue growth.
7. Field coaching and mentoring must be underway to ensure that “sure wins” never elude, and revenue opportunities are realized.

Optimizing your organization’s ability to execute well will require management’s involvement and nothing can be left to chance.

While it has been fun for me to share, its more important that it benefits you. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email or sign up for other materials. You can also take our one minute preliminary questionnaire and I or one of my partners will personally review it with you.

The first article focused on recruiting the optimal company-owned or outsourced sales force. The second article had to do with how to develop your “Revenue Mechanism,” that ideal blend of human and other “go-to-market” resources capable of propelling your company’s growth. In the third article we looked at various roles that Sales Coaches must play to assure success, and in the fourth installment we looked at the key elements of an effective “Performance Roadmap”, and finally we looked at some key accelerators in the fifth installment, Appointment Setters in particular.

In this sixth article we’ll look at the Essential Asset, Personal Competencies, that every Sales Coach or CEO should look for in the sales people selling in B2B environments.

Essential Assets for Sales Coaches

You may recall that in weeks past, we mentioned that Performance Roadmap for Sales Coaches will necessarily include the following Essential Assets:

• Growth Strategy
• Sales Processes & Systems
• Personal Competencies
• Management Practices
• Skills Development

Personal Competencies

In just about every B2B sales environment that utilizes sales staff or has a direct sales function, certain competencies are a must. Depending on how difficult, competitive or complex the sales strategy, the requirement for various types of knowledge required will also vary. Here, however, we will just touch on the essential competencies.

Domain Expertise

A good Sales team will have a command over the subject matter which is the focus of the industry. For example, you would not expect an agribusiness sales executive with no knowledge of technology to do well without substantial sales and industry training in the telecommunications field.

Sales training generally is required for all sales people on the product or service itself, the industry and the market the company serves, the competitive environment, the universe of potential targets and clients, as well as any other “must know” topics such as relevant technology, supply chain dynamics, and the like.

Essential Selling Attributes

Let me preface what I am about to say with this: I love sales people and will move Heaven and Earth to help them. But CEOs should immediately terminate a Sales Leader or Sales Coach who gives any sales person a pass on using the CRM or any other technical aspects of selling because they are “just not very technical” or “too busy”. There will always be “great sales people” who just refuse to grow up and get with the program. These are what we call “Volunteers” (and I don’t mean Jefferson Airplane for all you other Retro’s out there). Volunteers should also be terminated with haste regardless of their book of business. But don’t worry! When you really dig into what they have been doing, you will find more fumbled and lost opportunities, untapped client opportunities, screwed up relationships and just plain pipeline BS under the rug of that Volunteer than you would have imagined.

And as the CEO you want to have some connection with your clients and prospects, correct? Your whole organization – not only the sales person – should know your clients and prospects intimately. CEO, you should OWN the relationships. So just how does this happen if every salient bit of information about the prospect organization, its people, the decision-making landscape and key agendas, etc., are not codified? So if you fear the loss of a particular sales person, ask yourself if the reason isn’t all about who owns the relationship. If it’s the sales person an no one else, you know what to do.

In fact, this lack of multiple layers of relationships between your company and your client and prospect organizations is the worst characteristic and greatest structural flaw of the “commission only” and “independent rep” models. Oh, but with commission only sales people you only pay for the business booked? Think again!! Think lost opportunities, stolen or abandoned relationships and clients at much greater risk.

Technical skills goes beyond putting the minimum information in SalesForce. It’s professional writing (yes that means the CEO DOES NOT HAVE TO PROOF everything that goes out the door). To me that’s just of arrogance and should not be tolerated. Everything should be “customer ready” which is to say PERFECT. I can’t tell you how many times we have won work over competitors because we cared enough to get every dot and tittle correct. My advice? Take no prisoners on technology, desktop and CRM skills and especially writing.

Great Sales Teams will have terrific verbal skills, being adaptive, always listening and endowed with a quick wit to tie stakeholder agendas to your offering, able to sell through objections and to earn trust. In fact, the smartest people you have should comprise your sales force. Yes, the smartest people you have should be your sales people. There is a very high correlation between IQ and sales aptitude. More on this at another time.

Effective sales people must be organized and capable of managing a number of tasks around prioritized objectives as well as understand and manage the agendas, fears and objectives of multiple stakeholders from a variety of disciplines at once, able to create value applications on the fly for each stakeholder while not tripping over other agendas and sacred cows.

Finally, whether you have an internal team or you are outsourcing your sales force, a high level of
selling skills is a must. Though I’ve already covered some of the more important attributes in the paragraphs above, basic sales blocking and tackling, key account targeting, opportunity management and the like will be key to any effective sales organization.

A good deal of sales training and coaching will always be needed. But make sure that it is face-to-face field and conference call coaching, not didactic “one size fits” all training and coaching because that kind of training is generally good for one thing – selling books and CDs. If you are the CEO, Sales Leader or Sales Coach, make it a point to be in the field with your team at least several times a month.

I hope you found this article to be helpful. Next week we’ll finish this series and catch up on a Key Accelerator every Sales Coach should deploy. Until then, keep your Sales in Overdrive!

Great Sales Quotes:

Confidence and enthusiasm are the greatest sales producers in any kind of economy.
-O. B. Smith

If you’re a gifted flirt, talking about the price of eggs will do as well as any other subject.
-Mignon McLaughlin

Don’t sell life insurance. Sell what life insurance can do.
-Ben Feldman

If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.
-Bob Hooey

The key is not to call the decision maker. The key is to have the decision maker call you.
-Jeffrey Gitomer

Timid salesmen have skinny kids.
-Zig Ziglar

If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you are doing,and always put the customer first, success will be yours.
-Ray Kroc

To succeed in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here’s what’s exciting – there are lots of people!
-Jim Rohn

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
-Alexis de Tocqueville

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
-Ben Jonson

I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
-John D. Rockefeller

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect.
-William Clement Stone

The secret of man’s success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them.
-J. G. Holland

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
-Terry Pratchett

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton

A salesman, like the storage battery in your car, is constantly discharging energy. Unless he is recharged at frequent intervals he soon runs dry. This is one of the greatest responsibilities of sales leadership.
-R. H. Grant

What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient but restless mind, of sacrificing one’s ease or vanity, or uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.
-Victor Cherbuliez

Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.
-William Bernbach

Forget about the business outlook, be on the outlook for business.
-Paul J. Meyer

You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.
-Patricia Fripp

The sale begins when the customer says yes.
-Harvey MacKay

Internalize the Golden Rule of sales that says: All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.
-Bob Burg

Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.
-Malcolm Forbes

Everyone lives by selling something.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.
-Estée Lauder

A smart salesperson listens to emotions not facts.
-Unknown

For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.
-Zig Ziglar

In sales there are going to be times when you can’t make everyone happy. Don’t expect to and you won’t be disappointed. Just do your best for each client in each situation as it arises. Then, learn from each situation how to do it better the next time.
-Tom Hopkins

Always be closing…That doesn’t mean you’re always closing the deal, but it does mean that you need to be always closing on the next step in the process.
-Shane Gibson

A good ad which is not run never produces sales.
-Leo Burnett

Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It’s the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It’s that important, so don’t mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.
-Nicholas Sparks

It is not your customer’s job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.
-Patricia Fripp

We hope these sales quotes get you charged up for the next meeting, the next call or the next sale. Until next time, keep your sales in Overdrive!

The first article focused on recruiting the optimal company-owned or outsourced sales force. The second article had to do with how to ensure that your “Revenue Mechanism,” that particular blend of human and other “go-to-market” resources, is capable of propelling your company into the winner’s circle. In the third article we looked at the complexity of the roles that Sales Coaches must play to assure success, and in the fourth installment we looked at the key elements of an effective “Performance Roadmap.”

In this fifth article we’ll look more closely at the Essential Assets any successful Sales Coach must have working in unison to achieve sales performance, and one “Key Accelerator” in particular.

Essential Assets

As we discussed last week, effective Performance Roadmaps for Sales Coaches will include at least the following elements we refer to as Essential Assets. These include:

• Growth Strategy
• Sales Processes & Systems
• Personal Competencies
• Management Practices
• Skills Development

Today let’s look briefly at how organizations in differing competitive positions will tend to deploy one or more of four essential growth strategies when it comes to dealing with competitive pressures.

Then everything else aside for the moment, let’s look at how an organization’s sales process will (or may need to) differ or flex as a function of the industries being pursued.

Then we’ll look at one of the most powerful Key Sales Accelerators: Appointment Setters and Lead Generation/Qualification and its potential impact on sales velocity, relationship enhancement and sales growth.

Growth Strategy and Competitive Posture

There are any number of commonly-used approaches to the market which fall into the general category of Growth Strategy. Please note that in this article we are discussing growth strategy only in terms of sales-related activities. While your Company’s Growth Strategy will have many components, it will likely have more to do with your company’s competitive position in the market place than anything else.

If your company is one of the recognized leaders in your industry, your strategy may be to “Defend” that leadership position. This is often accomplished by Exposing the Competition, contrasting their weaknesses with your strengths.

On the other hand, if you are not one of the leading competitors but you do have what you believe is be a significant advantage, your organizational strategy might be “Direct” or what some refer to as a “Frontal” strategy. Attacking the competition at the weakest points where you have an advantage is central to this approach.

Companies that are at par or weaker than most of their rivals will often adopt a “Flanking” strategy by either pursuing those opportunities less hotly contested, or by leveraging one or more “Key Accelerators” to create a game-changing advantage such as relationship superiority over their competitors.  This is a very common and effective strategy in the services sector where most providers appear undifferentiated.

Finally, those companies that are unable or unwilling to commit resources will commonly use a “Guerilla” strategy, seizing and attempting to capitalize on any opportunity regardless of the source, employing  a variety of tactics that might seem illogical or inconsistent to an outside observer.

Industry Driven Process Variations

So let’s imagine that your company sells in the B2B arena and pursuing prospects in the following Industries:

• Technology
• Services
• Medical
• Manufacturing

Think for a moment with me about 1) the two or three most important elements to your sales process when investing time and resources into pursuing companies in these industries, and 2) how will that impact your sales approach as you pursue them.

So let’s decide what our sales process for Technology companies will be. Since this industry is vast and tremendously varied, I’m guessing that the majority of us would think that qualifying targets would be essential, followed by identifying needs that your capabilities will address (qualifying again), and understanding and influencing decision makers at multiple levels to adopt (close on) your solution or product.

Services companies have a tendency to be more relational in their buying behavior. So we can be expected to understand the company culture and their decision makers thoroughly, to exhibit superior relational skills, and to identify and co-develop solutions to problems and opportunities that may or may not be active. For these companies, identifying, co-developing a solution and closing, or “Adopting” our solution is more of a continuous process for service companies, so building trusting relationships very quickly is key. There is a Key Accelerator for this we can discuss at a later time.

Medical company decision makers, on the other hand, are less relational and more skeptical in general. Positioning you organization as a thought leader or one that has a successful track record serving medical companies very much like them is especially important. Identifying problems, co-developing solutions and providing subject matter experts will also be important. So qualifying these prospects and the opportunities that may exist will usually require a significantly higher level of research and qualification prior to committing resources to a given pursuit in this industry.

For selling to Manufacturers, your sales process will involve qualifying of both target companies and opportunities within them, understanding the decision making process, building  relationships, and co-developing solutions that can be adopted. Here also, positioning and relationships at various levels and departments in the organization will be key.

While the terminology for any given process stage may not differ from industry to industry, CEO’s, Sales Leaders and Sales Coaches must ensure that there is flexibility in the way the process is utilized as various prospects are pursued.

Key Sales Accelerators

Like nitro methane in the fuel of a race car, certain “Key Accelerators” can make your sales engine run much faster than would be possible otherwise. A Key Accelerator is a specific technique, process or resource that carries a low cost (or none) compared to its impact, is fast and can be deployed to accelerate sales overall, create relational superiority, produce a game-changing advantage or deflect the advances of a competitor from your high priority prospects and key customers.

Appointment Setters

While there are several I’ll be discussing here in the coming weeks, the one that we see having the most profound and immediate impact on sales for clients in every industry and size company is the effective use of Lead Generation by trained Appointment Setters.

As we think about our sales process and our prospects in general, it’s quite evident that enormous efforts must be committed to enable your sales executives to prosecute a successful campaign or pursuit. As we were reminded, Appointment Setters, Lead Generators and Sales Support Personnel in general are essential.

Properly trained and managed, Appointment Setters can:
1. target prospects/opportunities best aligned with your offerings and eliminate knockout prospects
2. connect with prospects and initiate productive business conversations
3. qualify prospects’ key agendas and opportunities against your core competencies
4. map the political and decision making landscape at various levels and departments
5. uncover active and latent needs
6. initiate and build on relationships with a variety of prospect stakeholders
7. identify problems and opportunities
8. enhance your brand and increase mindshare while advancing relationships
9. test for and ensure customer satisfaction, and
10. conserve your time by putting your best team in front of the right people at the right moment armed with the right information

Impact of Lead Generation

If you are a CEO, Sales Leader or Sales Coach and you do not have an effective team of Appointment Setters and Lead Generators, you need to get them in place as soon as possible. Sales Overdive executives consider this function to be so important that our clients almost invariably install this function.

The experience of other Sales Coaches and Sales Outsourcing Firms may differ, but we find that for every Appointment Setter or Lead Generator we deploy:
1. the number of prospect decision makers contacted each day increases at least ten fold
2. the ROI for each sales executive supported increases by at least five times
3. productive sales executive hours increase from a maximum or 1.5 hours to 5.5 hours per day
4. the typical sales cycle is shortened at least 30% and normally more than 60%
5. deals in the funnel increases five fold and revenue is at least doubled per sales executive

Why Aren’t Appointment Setters More Utilized

So why is it that Appointment Setters are not more universally utilized?  I believe it is because many have either had a poor experience or know someone who did. As a Sales Leader or Sales Coach it might be a bit risky to recommend that a robust Appointment Setting and Sales Support function be established, but is it not more risky for the company you serve to fall behind its competitors? The key is to outsource the activity to the right firm. This mitigates the risk and eliminates the long term commitment to people and other capital expenses.

But please note that of the 400+ companies we have surveyed offering this service here, in Canada, Mexico, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, India and Asia, there is only one firm other than Sales Overdrive I would recommend to you without hesitation.

It’s possible to create a sustainable advantage for almost any company even with a relatively small budget for sales. In fact, some of our greatest success stories come from “commodity providers” like staffing, accounting and logistics companies which had no clear differentiation and no compelling value proposition. Their one advantage was the sales superiority that our firm was able to provide. So if you are a CEO, Sales Leader or Sales Coach and you desire a sustainable advantage, consider this Key Sales Accelerator first.

I hope you found this article to be helpful. Next week we’ll take a look at two other Assets and another Key Accelerator every Sales Coach should deploy.

Until then, keep your Sales in Overdrive!

The first article focused on recruiting the optimal company-owned or outsourced sales force. The second article was about recruiting great sales and marketing talent, as well as ensuring that your “Revenue Mechanism”, that particular blend of human and other “go-to-market” resources, is optimized and can indeed propel your company into the winner’s circle. In the third article we looked at the complexity and four principal roles that Sales Coaches are obliged to play if their organizations are to succeed in the race for revenue and market share growth.

In this fourth installment we’ll look at a generalized “Performance or Success Roadmap” for achieving extraordinary success as a CEO, Sales Leader, Sales Coach, Sales Consultant, or anyone with the daunting task of coaching sales professionals in achieving sales performance.

First, I think it will be helpful to draw a distinction between a Success Roadmap (also often referred to as Performance System) and a sales and marketing process. A Success Roadmap is that system of beliefs, goals and objectives, processes, skills and motivation that make individual and company performance possible. Our job as sales coaches at Sales Overdrive is to assist client companies in assembling all of the necessary resources, processes and talent, and then to coach and mentor individuals, teams and organizations toward achieving the company’s objectives.  Effective sales and marketing processes are vitally important, but remain parts of a larger system. So when we discuss Success Roadmaps, it will be with this broader view in mind.

The Performance Roadmap for Sales Coaches

Any effective Performance Roadmap for sales coaches will include the following elements:
1. Essential Assets

• Growth Strategy
• Sales Processes & Systems
• Personal Competencies
• Management Practices
• Skills Development

2. Goals and Objectives
3. Core Values and Guiding Principles
4. Reward Systems

Essential Assets consist of all those things against which a sales coach can reasonably be expected to measure and benchmark the skills and effectiveness of individual contributors and that of the organization overall as it pertains to competing in the marketplace. Essential Assets is a large topic that warrants a deep dive. We will devote the last three articles in this series to this area.

Goals and Objectives are common to all organizations. Alignment between individual, team and enterprise goals is essential in order to understand behaviors, measure performance and provide appropriate coaching. Setting and/or validating the appropriateness of company and sales team goals and objectives is a key function for sales coaches, sales and marketing leaders and CEOs.

Core Values and Guiding Principles come to life when communicated across the organization, written and rewritten, and lived out in the language and behavior of the team, especially the sales and marketing team.

But Core Values differ from Guiding Principles. Core Values are those vital few values that all members of the organization are expected to use, live by and demonstrate on a daily basis while executing their work responsibilities. Core Values are the essential and enduring tenets of an organization. Every Sales Coach must live and breathe the Core Values in their all the roles we discussed last week, but especially in their roles as Champion, Mentor and Evangelist.

Guiding Principles, on the other hand are the fundamental beliefs that guide the operation of a sales team or specific program, such as a Tier I pursuit team. As an example, the Core Values developed for a Sales Organization we served recently included these:

Open, Honest Communication – Speaking with one another openly and directly, bringing the hallway conversations into the meeting rooms.  Listening intently and encouraging different ideas and opinions.

Teamwork and Collaboration – Working together, with the Company as the priority; even if this means supporting something you might want to do differently. Basing all decisions on what is best for the Company.  Making sure that the Company, not the individual, has the biggest ego.

Involving Everyone – Seeking the best information from all sources while supporting decisions made by those closest to the situation.  Each person who uses his or her voice to better the Company will be rewarded.  Everyone must believe his or her voice will make a difference.

“Boundarylessness” – Sharing knowledge and relationships in a fresh, open environment.  Taking the time to share your knowledge with others. Accepting great ideas regardless of their source.

Leaders Who Serve – Leading is not about power or control, but is measured by the success of those on the team being led. Leaders don’t get on the backs of their people – they get behind and push.  Leadership is a privilege and a responsibility.

Personal Accountability – Set clear, aggressive goals and deliver on your commitments.  Every person keeps his or her word by doing what is promised including showing up for meetings on time.  Surely these Core Values would exemplify not only a great sales organization, but the senior sales coach as well.

As you can see, Guiding Principles are the fundamental beliefs that guide the daily operation of a sales team or specific program. They are the standards for behaviors that are more specific and aligned with a particular campaign, sales program or team of sales professionals all pushing to achieve common goals.

The following are the key Guiding Principles we co-developed with a professional services client recently:

Understanding Our Market

• Continuously analyze the marketplace, forecasting future trends and service needs for purposes of investment decisions.
• Know our competition and the relationships they maintain within our existing clients and target clients.

Capturing and Servicing Opportunities

• Protect and nurture existing client relationships, continuously measuring client satisfaction.
• Actively pursue relationships that create profitable business opportunities for us and for our clients.
• Dominate the Dallas/Fort Worth market as the premier professional services organization.
• Develop new practice areas based on anticipated demand, risk profile, and potential profitability.
• Optimize the pricing of our services based on the market’s perception of value.
• Continuously improve the following elements as the foundation of our competitive advantage: relationship management; technical skills and industry knowledge; and technology.

Minding Our Business

• Working as one SBU, meet or exceed profitability expectations of the Firm.
• Proactively manage business risk factors in relation to expected rewards.
• Continuously improve our service delivery system, focusing on the effectiveness and efficiency of both the practice organization and its supporting infrastructure.

Developing Our Resources

• Directly link the office’s strategic goals with performance and contribution goals for individual partners and managers.
• Create an environment that allows each partner and employee to reach their full professional and personal potential, capitalizing on their diversity.
• Support our partners and employees as they expand and enhance their skill bases to ensure success in a rapidly changing business environment.

So as you can see, how your organization defines its core values and guiding principles has a huge impact on the unity, focus and direction of an organization. It also provide a great platform for coaching in some of the areas that are not purely “by the numbers”. I encourage every CEO, Sales Leader and Sales Coach to look at their organization’s core values and guiding principles very carefully to see if they 1) are appropriate for the enterprise in today’s environment, 2) if they align with organizational goals and objectives, and 3) if they can be leveraged for enhanced communication, greater organizational focus and the development of a common language around sales and, finally 4) if they can be used as an  effective framework in mentoring your people.

Reward Systems

Often referred to as a component of a sales process, Reward Systems are broken out here as a separate element of the Performance Roadmap. I’ve done this due to the opportunity it can provide both for sales coaching, and for its potential impact on organizational success. The best compensation and reward plans are tightly aligned with the business and sales strategy. The worst are causes of dissatisfaction and attrition.  Your compensation plan needs to reward (or at least support) the application of your go-to-market strategy and sales process as well as performance against you revenue and/or customer goals.

Too often, compensation plans focus exclusively on the metrics surrounding outcomes such as proposals issued, proposals converted, quarterly closings and the like. While these are important, doesn’t it make more sense in every sales coaching session to look behind the numbers and closely examine the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the root behaviors that are the most predictive of success or failure?

Please note that I’m pretty fanatical about the importance of coaching around KPIs and the larger topic of “Predictive Behaviors”. The reason I believe this area should be treated separately from sales process and other Assets is that it’s such an important area is missed so often by so many very smart people.

Frankly, I believe this is one of the most glaring misses for Sales Coaches and it is often missing entirely in compensation plans. Oh, someone in you company’s HR department noticed that rewarding around Predictive Behavior is difficult to measure and somewhat risky to do?  So we should dismiss achieving sales excellence and wining the market because it’s very difficult? Of course not!

So let me share just four of twelve KPI’s that seem much more predictive of success than the number of calls we might make per week, for example. These four favorites of mine are adaptability, ability to create value applications in real time, emotional awareness and the ability to create trust. But someone said you can’t teach or coach around these? Yes you can indeed. Most of these can be measured and I can share our tools with you on this as well.

I do hope you have found this article helpful to you and your organization. For more information on sales coaches, follow the link to our services section. Next week we’ll drill down into some of the Essential Assets including the Sales Process. Until then, keep your sales in OverDrive!