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Explaining The Sales Cycle

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:13:04 +0000

Does It Take A Genius?

Many companies are less than forthright when discussing the length and makeup of their sales cycle with current and prospective salespeople.

They fear that if their salespeople clearly understand just how long it will take before the first commission check hits their bank account – and how many hurdles will have to be jumped along the way – the team will beat a hasty exit while the getting is good.

This approach is a mistake. Explain the Sales Cycle.

As I described in my article on Recruiting Top Producing Salespeople, and will explain in detail in my upcoming article on Corporate Transparency, my belief is that in all aspects of running a sales team, honesty is the best policy.

Better to repel people who can’t deal with a long sales cycle right at the start than have them hanging around, becoming increasingly disillusioned and poisoning the rest of the group with their frustration. And better to arm those who can accept the slow cycle with all the information they need to engage with and accelerate the process.

Salespeople can – and are incentivized to – speed up the sales cycle. Give them a clear picture of the whole process and help them to help you speed it up.

In this article I’ll cover:

The Definition of The Sales Cycle
Setting and Managing Realistic Expectations
The Impact of the Sales Cycle on Your Comp Plan
Balancing the Pipeline and the Sales Cycle
How to Shorten The Sales Cycle

What Is The Sales Cycle?

My definition of The Sales Cycle is the period from first contact with the prospect to the moment the sales rep sees the commission show up in his bank account. Many people feel that the sales cycle ends when the deal is closed. Those people are probably not salespeople.

Days and weeks can come and go between the time the deal is closed, the rescission period expires, the paperwork is blessed by lawyers or others, financing is arranged, goods and/or services are delivered and accepted, payment is received, the check clears the bank, the commission report is generated, the next pay cycle comes around, the salesperson receives and deposits the check and it appears in his account.

Business owners and sales managers who ignore these final steps do so at their peril. You can be sure the salespeople are paying close attention to them. One of the best truisms I ever heard about salespeople is that they are coin operated; show them the coin and they’ll operate. A closed deal ain’t coin, money in the bank is.

Steps in the Sales Cycle

The Sales Cycle occurs in phases, beginning with marketing efforts that attract the prospect to your offering. Whether that includes television advertising or door-to-door canvassing, someone has to persuade a prospective buyer to take a closer look at your product. As soon as someone raises their hand and says “I’m interested,” the Sales Cycle has begun.

Marketing should continue until the prospect is qualified and their contact information is collected. Once we know who they are, what they need and how to get in touch with them, we have a lead (not just a name) which is handed off to the Sales Department. This qualification and handoff process should occur as quickly as possibly and can often be automated.

This next phase can take many paths depending upon your product, your industry, your target market and your sales process, but it will somehow begin with a conversation between the prospect and the salesperson. The salesperson asks discovery questions and the prospect explains how we can help them.

In a business-to-business sales cycle multiple conversations may be required. All decision-makers need to be identified along with their needs and perspectives. An initial presentation may lead to multiple additional presentations before an actual proposal is presented. This process can be accelerated by identifying all the players ahead of time and presenting to them all at once, online if necessary to assure 100% participation.

For in-home sales teams, one-call closing has been the rule for years. But recently, due to increasing customer sophistication, bad past industry practices and the downturn in the economy, two or more calls may be required in order to get to the point where a deal can be closed. While this slows the sales cycle by a couple of days it can lead to much higher closing percentages and drastically reduced rescission numbers.

In either B2B or B2C situations, once a proposal has been proffered, closing time begins. Don’t wait, begin closing.

Eventually we win or lose the deal. If the deal doesn’t close, a good company will continue to drip on the prospect until the deal has clearly been lost to a competitor. Unfortunately, effective and systematic Follow-Up is a rare bird indeed as will be explained in my upcoming article on the subject.

If the deal is truly lost we move on. If it is won, we then begin the final phase of the sales cycle which, as was described above, involves delivering the goods and getting paid.

Setting and Managing Realistic Sales Cycle Expectations

Generally speaking, B2C sales cycles are shorter and B2B sales cycles are longer and professional salespeople with experience in either arena understand which is which. Nonetheless, it is a mistake for management to gloss over how long it may actually take to get paid when interviewing prospective salespeople.

I once worked for a home improvement company which followed a standard industry approach to paying commissions. The commission rate was 10%, with half being paid up front in the first pay cycle after the rescission period. Depending on the day you close the deal this could add as much as two weeks to your wait.

The second half of your commission would come after the job was completed and the customer paid in full, supposedly in an average of 4-6 weeks. The problem with this approach was that, if the sales team kicked butt and brought in a lot of projects, the production department would get backed up, creating a backlog of up to 3 months. Not a happy scenario for the salespeople who were in effect being punished for being so productive. The solution? Keep selling more deals!

Another company I worked with in a B2B environment didn’t speak to the sales cycle at all. Little wonder. The prospect and lead generation process (which was placed on the salespeople because no Marketing Department or efforts existed) was extremely lengthy. Qualified prospects were very hard to find and the number of competitors in the marketplace was daunting.

Even when you did find someone who was interested and qualified, so many decision-makers had a stake in the process and so many competitive offers existed that many weeks or months would go by without any movement. If you didn’t stay on top of those people you would lose out to others who would.

And if you were lucky enough to find a big prospect, the amount of discounting required in order to land a big deal would cut out over half of your commission. The net effect was that your best possible approach was to try to land scores of small accounts, all of which took as long to hook as bigger ones. Clearly this was a bad situation and I have no one but myself to blame for becoming involved.

The point is that owners should not only be honest with their salespeople about the length of the sales cycle, but with themselves as well. Don’t kid yourself; this stuff takes time! And you may well lose great salespeople whom you’ve invested training and support into because they just can’t wait any longer to get paid. Recognize the problem and take proactive steps to minimize it. Your cash-flow will thank you as well.

Impact of the Sales Cycle on the Compensation Plan

An obvious remedy to the impact a long sales cycle can have on salesperson turnover is to offer a base salary. This is more common in B2B environments where the cycles are longer and more training, support and ramp-up time is generally offered. These positions are often W-2 employee/employer relationships which offer benefits including group medical insurance participation, holidays and 401-K accounts.

A lot of the job listings I see for in-home sales offer “unlimited upside potential” with no base pay or benefits in a 1099 independent contractor arrangement. I’m fine with that and have worked successfully in that environment, but the start-up phase can be painful and frustrating.

Many of these B2C companies would never consider offering a base salary. At best they offer a recoverable draw where monies paid upfront are repaid to the company out of future commissions. My response is “Pay me now or pay me later.” Whatever you save by withholding base pay may well be eclipsed by the money you lose training and supporting people who end up leaving you before they generate a single sale. Turnover is not only expensive but also detrimental to growth.

Balancing the Pipeline and the Sales Cycle

The longer the sales cycle, the more deals you need to have at every stage of your pipeline. This way you ensure that – once the pipeline fills – you’ll have a steady flow of money coming out the other end. Again, this is something that must be made clear up front by the company during the recruiting process.

In B2B positions your pipeline or funnel may have myriad stages, each of which should be as full as possible and moving forward as quickly as possible. A good CRM (which will be described in an upcoming article) will help you and your manager stay on top of this process and pinpoint areas of weakness.

In a B2C job you keep your pipeline full by running every lead you get – no matter how bad you think it is – and doing your best to listen, solve, close and follow-up. Sales truly is a numbers game and the more people you see the more you’ll sell. Never prejudge a prospect’s willingness to buy or ability to pay. Sell them all the same and keep your pipeline full.

How Salespeople Can Shorten the Cycle

The most important first step in shortening the Sales Cycle is to fully understand it. How long is it? How many steps or phases does it contain? What are those steps and which ones are the most common pinch points? Learn the Cycle like the back of your hand and own it the same way.

Focus your attention on the pinch points and brainstorm with your manager and peers on how to loosen them. Make the extra phone call, call a day sooner or hours earlier, contact prospects through multiple channels, develop best practices based on your team’s experience, find a mentor who sees all and knows all.

Use your CRM for everything it’s worth. Learn everything you can about its functionality and features. Read your reports. Check your funnel twice a day. Look for weaknesses or air bubbles that may cause an income disruption in upcoming weeks or months. Focus your attention on eliminating those bubbles without losing sight of the big picture.

The most important thing you can do to accelerate the sales cycle is to improve your closing skills. The sooner you get someone to make a decision in your favor the sooner you’ll get paid. Ask the right questions initially, create a sound plan for solving your prospect’s problems, explain your plan clearly and ask for the sale.

Be prepared to rebut every objection, provide testimonials, case studies or references. Require your prospects to agree to a decision by a date certain. Be willing to take “no” over “I need more time to think about it.” Present yourself with confidence from a position that infers that the customer needs you more than they need them.

Your time is valuable and your solution is clear. If they just want to play around they’re going to have to find another playmate. You have customers out there that need you.

The bottom line is this…

Business Owners and Sales Managers: Confront the Sales Cycle Head-On. Explain It. Own it. Accelerate It.

Salespeople: Embrace the Sales Cycle. Learn It. Work It. Accelerate It.

If all of this sounds like a great idea but you have no idea when you’d find the time to implement it, give me a call.

Frank Felker
frank_felker@yahoo.com
866-949-2661

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Is Sales The World’s Most Valuable Profession?

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:01:26 +0000

Are You a Sales MVP?

How is it that successful salespeople can earn more than doctors or lawyers, or sometimes even more than the owner of the company they work for? Economists agree: it’s because they practice the world’s most valuable profession.

How valuable is it? Here’s a short quote from my 2004 book, The Greatest Job You Never Thought Of: How Anyone Can Find Career Satisfaction and Financial Independence in Sales:

I know a mortgage loan officer who makes over $1 million per year A friend of mine in the printing industry pulls down almost 8% of the $10 million book of business he has built over the past twenty years as a salesperson. (In case you’re wondering that’s almost $800,000 per year and yes, I have seen his pay stubs.) Top automobile salespeople earn more than $150,000 annually. Insurance sales can generate six-figure residual income streams in 2-3 years. Successful radio ad salespeople often make more than $250,000. I could go on and on with examples from pharmaceutical sales, software, farm equipment, you name it.

Why is that the case? Why are top-producing salespeople so highly prized in the marketplace? Because of the value they generate.

In using the word “value” here, I’m not making a value judgment. I’m not saying that salespeople are somehow better human beings than doctors or lawyers or business owners or teachers or firefighters. I’m only pointing out that the marketplace clearly places more value on their function and demonstrates that opinion monetarily.

A basic tenet of economic theory is that resources flow to their highest value use. This is how a small piece of land can go from being used for a miniature golf course one day and a high-rise condominium the next. The land didn’t change. It’s still in the same location. What changed was the value the marketplace put on that plot when local population patterns shifted or a new mass transit station opened nearby.

The same is true of the printing salesman mentioned above who was making perhaps twenty times what the owner was paying his pressmen. Their value as human beings is not different; it’s the value that they bring to the firm which is being rewarded.

Another economic theory, supply and demand, also comes into play here. Every company is looking for people who can sell but very few members of the labor pool are truly skilled at it. The marketplace bids up the prices for those scarce resources resulting in very lucrative commission plans in many industries.

So, if sales is such a great job, in fact The World’s Most Valuable Profession, why don’t more people choose it as a career path?

In The Greatest Job, I argue that virtually anyone can become a successful salesperson if they set their mind to it, are willing to commit, work hard and face down the five fears that prevent most from even trying:

The Stigma of being called a Salesman
Risk Aversion
Lack of Structure
Talking to Strangers
Rejection

Many people disagree with this assertion, but in the book I give five examples of people completely devoid of “the sales personality” who achieved great success selling in industries ranging from industrial food supplies to professional audio equipment. We all know people who match this profile.

But exactly how do salespeople generate all this value? Through their critical functions as fonts of information and transaction facilitators.

Information is the most valuable non-human commodity in the marketplace. Successful salespeople are experts in their industries. They understand features, functions and benefits and how to communicate those ideas to the right listeners.

They also communicate what they’re hearing on the street back to the mothership. What are people asking for? How could our offering be improved, increasing value and marketability? Good salespeople know these answers and share them with corporate decision-makers.

Salespeople also facilitate transactions, primarily through their skills as closers. Their ability to persuade buyers to make a decision, place an order and write a check – right now – accelerates transactional velocity, allowing their company to generate more revenue in a given time period.

Economists refer to “transaction costs” which are often the same no matter the size of the sale. Absorbing many of those costs is often one of the salesperson’s most important tasks. They make sure that all the paperwork is completed correctly, payment is made and services are delivered on time and in the correct configuration. They get the customer up and running quickly with their new purchase and make sure as much of the potential value that was touted ahead of time is actually realized.

So there you have it: my theory on what makes Sales The World’s Most Valuable Profession. What’s your take?

If you’d like some help building The World’s Greatest Sales Team for your firm, give me a call.

Frank Felker
frank_felker@yahoo.com
866-949-2661

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Freeing Salespeople from the Burden of Marketing

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:53:09 +0000

Too often, I see companies placing the burden of Marketing on the shoulders of their salespeople, obscuring their true function and diminishing their effectiveness.

In The World’s Greatest Sales Team, I imagine a firm which gives salespeople every opportunity to succeed by relieving that burden, allowing their salespeople to do what they do best; sell.

What is the difference between Marketing and Sales? How does separating the two result in an empowered sales team? And what can you do to ensure that your Marketing efforts are effective and your Marketing budget is well-spent in supporting your sales team?

In this article we’ll examine:

The Role of Marketing in Your Firm
The Difference Between Marketing and Sales
Why Separating Marketing and Sales is so Important
How Marketing Supports Sales with Branding, Support, Tools and Leads

The Role of Marketing

There are three basic departments in any company: Production, Marketing and Administration. Marketing’s function is to get people to buy your company’s product or service. At a farmers’ market, vendors place their wares on tables for passersby to examine, consider and purchase. You know an apple when you see one and through the senses of sight, touch, smell and taste you can determine whether or not you want to buy the one in your hand.

In the global marketplace things get a little more complicated. There are hundreds of products in every category competing for your dollar. The range of features, functions and benefits are mind-numbing. Any man who has had to purchase the exact, correct brand of feminine hygiene product for his significant other can testify to this, but there are many other examples in categories ranging from breakfast cereal to antifreeze.

Establishing a brand and getting people to buy into it is the role of Marketing. In The Customer Factory Marketing Model I refer to the process of moving someone from Stranger to Client as a Marketing Production Line where specialized tools are used in sequence to transition people through these stages:

Stranger —> Suspect —> Prospect —> Customer —> Client

Through effective Marketing, companies introduce a product or service to their target market and, over time not overnight, convince them to buy it, once or repeatedly. Think of your favorite brand of deodorant. At some point you had never heard of it (Stranger), but you bought it once (Customer) and now you buy it every time you run out (Client). How did that happen? How was it introduced to you? What made you want to try it? Why do you keep buying it? You may not know the answers to those questions but I’ll bet the Marketing Department at the company that manufactures it does.

The Difference Between Marketing and Sales

Let’s start with the classic definition of Marketing, the Five Ps: Product, Place, Packaging, Price and Promotion.

Marketing encompasses every aspect of a product or service (henceforth simply referred to as the product) in its relationship to its target market.

Product: Exactly what is the product and what does it do? What are its ingredients, features, functions and benefits?
Place: What is this product’s position in the marketplace? How does it stack up against its competition? What makes it different or better?
Packaging: What does it look like, smell like and feel like? What sizes does it come in? How do I consume it? Where and how can I procure it?
Price: How much does it cost? Can I buy different sizes at different unit costs? Are there any discounts, coupons, bulk or frequent buyer promotions?
Promotion: How is it sold (retail, wholesale, online, network marketing, direct sales team, etc.)? How do I find out about it (advertising, promotion, PR, etc.)?

In this series of articles I am speaking to companies and managers who employ a direct sales team as the primary driver of the Promotion P in the Five Ps. As you can see, that is but one element of one-fifth of the entire marketing burden. So why do so many companies place much of the rest of the Marketing responsibilities on their sales team and then wonder why things aren’t working as well as they had expected? Two reasons: ignorance and frugality.

I often say that, for many business owners and managers, “Marketing Is a Mystery and Sales Is a Dirty Word.” So, when I refer to business owners and managers as being ignorant of Marketing fundamentals, I’m not accusing them of being stupid, just mystified. They don’t understand how successful Marketing works and so can’t use it successfully.

As for their “frugality,” here I might be cutting a little closer to the bone. Companies who don’t invest in market research or creative product development to establish and understand what the Product, Place, Packaging and Price should look like and yet expect that they will succeed are just kidding themselves. And those who don’t put money into branding, PR, advertising, lead generation and sales tools are kidding their salespeople as well.

Why Unburdening Salespeople is So Important

Saddling salespeople with Marketing tasks like prospecting, lead generation, first-rung prospect qualifying, brand introduction and the like wastes both time and money. Most of these functions can and should be performed by people with other specialized skills like copywriting, advertising production and placement, direct mail production, web development, video production, graphic design and so forth.

Salespeople’s skills lie primarily in interpersonal relationship building and persuasive communication. That’s what they should be spending all their time doing, supported by powerful branding and sales tools provided by their Marketing Department.

Prospecting and Cold Calling are extremely time-consuming and often frustrating tasks. I have done sales work for companies that required those functions from their team and for companies who instead provided a steady stream of pre-qualified leads generated by their Marketing Department. The difference in my effectiveness, production and income is staggering.

Requiring a salesperson to generate their own leads is like telling a brew master to grow is own hops. He might be able to do it, but it will take up most of his time and the results – for both the hops and the beer – will be significantly inferior, both in quality and quantity. Let the farmers farm, the brewers brew and the salespeople sell.

When I worked in the home improvement industry, I received three qualified leads in my inbox every morning, six days a week. When I met with these prospects in their homes they already were aware of my company’s name and marketplace position (highest price, best product), knew what we could do for them and had a general idea of the unique features, functions and benefits of our offering. All I had to do was introduce myself, do a detailed explanation of why our product was superior, execute some measurements, write a proposal and close the deal.

I spent all day every day meeting with people and closing deals – not prospecting, qualifying or setting appointments. In six months I generated over $600,000 in sales and earned over $80,000 in commissions. The company gave me what I needed to succeed and I gave them what they needed to grow.

How Can the Marketing Department Support the Sales Team?

There are four primary areas where every Marketing Department should support their sales team; Branding, Support, Tools and Lead Generation.

Branding

The word Branding is derived from the practice of marking livestock with a symbol that signifies ownership. A brand identifies a product, encompasses every aspect of it. Created correctly and developed sufficiently a brand communicates everything about a product or service in a single word, often followed by a tagline.

Brands such as Coke, Pepsi, Ford, Xerox, Kleenex, Pampers, etc. need no further explanation. But even without a multimillion-dollar marketing budget, it’s critical that you create and communicate your brand to your marketplace before your salesperson says word one. This is accomplished in a variety of fashions.

While advertising is generally designed and implemented to directly generate sales, it also has the side effect of establishing a brand. The hundreds of ads we’ve all seen for GEICO and Magic Jack have not only generated millions of dollars in sales, they’ve also established those brands in our minds. We know that 15 minutes on the phone with GEICO could save us 15% or more on our car insurance and that Magic Jack gives us unlimited domestic long distance for only $19.95 a year.

Those ads have established the identity of the Product, its Price, its marketplace Position, etc. in thirty seconds or less (repeated incessantly over time) without the need for a customer to speak to a salesperson. Similarly, in order to support your salespeople you need to keep Branding at the front of your mind when creating and placing ads for your offering.

If your advertising is also to function as a lead generation system, you need to make it clear what you offer, why’s it’s superior and how and why your target market should learn more about it. I often recommend Education-Based Marketing for this purpose.

I’ll explain this process in further detail in a future article but suffice it to say every time you see an ad for Video Professor, the Bowflex or Rosetta Stone which offers a free DVD or color brochure, you’re seeing Education-Based Marketing in action. When you respond you self-qualify and provide your contact information, creating a qualified lead.

Companies and organizations from across the spectrum from The Hair Club for Men to the U.S. Army use this same technique, and you can too. Tune in later for complete instructions.

Public Relations is another important, and often inexpensive, element of successful branding. In today’s era of online publicity and free press release sites you should be publicizing everything your company does, from starting up to introducing new products and hitting significant milestones to case studies and testimonials from your customers. Every press release will appear in Google searches your prospects do and some of them will even appear in newspapers or blogs which, once again, will appear on Google.

Live events such as trade shows or conferences are also an important element of branding. Particularly for business-to-business marketing, exhibiting at trade shows can be an invaluable technique for establishing the existence and credibility of your brand while forging relationships with peers, suppliers and prospective customers. Successful trade show marketing will be examined in a future article.

Support Materials and Resources

Successful salespeople should be surrounded by materials and resources that help establish their brand and its credibility, as well as answer questions and provide product information to prospects.

In terms of print collateral, in the age of the Internet, I don’t think you need much more than a full-color three-fold brochure, stationery and business cards. Just about anything else is better communicated through the web with its ability to convey messages interactively through text, graphics, audio and video. You just need something you can drop in the mail as a physical touch. Put the brochure in a #10 envelope along with a short cover letter and you’re good to go. You can also use the brochure as a leave-behind after meetings and presentations.

One type of print collateral you may not be using is digitally-printed, full-color glossy postcards and greeting cards. The ones I use are produced on-demand, customized with my own handwriting, signature and message. They make great Thank You cards and drip campaigns and are one of the most powerful follow-up tools I’ve ever seen. They are available very affordably from SendOutCards.com.

Your web site is your most important marketing support resource, but you don’t have to go crazy with it. Home, About Us, Product Listing, Customer Testimonials and Contact Us are about all you need to support a sales team. Using your site as a lead-generation tool will require a sign-up form to receive your weekly email newsletter, get a free in-home demonstration or download your whitepaper (or audio or video).

Within those pages should be crisply written, customer-focused copy that answers questions and builds value. A short explanatory video that demonstrates how your product works and features happy customers is also a great idea that salespeople can post a link to in their email signatures.

The About Us page or section should include a short history of the company, quick bios on the founders and/or executive team, a list of customers and any awards or distinctions the company has earned. Any market research or statistics you can provide that demonstrate the size of the problem and the excellence of your solution goes a long way. And a Newsroom page with press releases and coverage the company has garnered is also helpful.

You should also take some steps to make sure that curious prospects can find your web site via search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated subject that I won’t cover here. But I can tell you that I am aware of a new company that offers a quick, simple solution at a reasonable cost. Contact me if you’d like more information.

Sales Tools

The number and nature of the tools your salespeople need to succeed will depend upon your industry and sales cycle. In the home improvement business I needed things like business cards, a clipboard, pitch book, visual aids and a tape measure. As with any other salesperson I also needed a company-branded email address.

Your salespeople may need a laptop, multimedia presentations, an online ordering interface, downloadable documents – God knows what. The important point is that, whatever tools your salespeople need, give them to them! And make sure you have enough of each so that everyone has a complete set. If the tools are company property and the salespeople are responsible for their maintenance, upkeep and safe return, so be it.

One last, sore point: business cards. When I was in the printing business I referred to business cards as the bane of the industry. Seven square inches of hell. But for the holder of those cards, very few things are more important in terms of establishing their identity, credibility and connection to your firm. Pay for your people’s business cards. You can get 1,000 full-color cards on extra-thick stock with glossy coating for about $35.00 per set. Loosen up with the budget muscles to make sure everyone is using the correct fonts, logo and color scheme so they make a consistent, professional impression for themselves and your firm.

Your Lead Generation System

This topic could (and may) make for a complete article of its own. Certainly I will be discussing one angle on it when I tackle Education-Based Marketing in a future posting. What I want to stress here is that your Lead Generation System must be just that: a SYSTEM that GENERATES LEADS.

The system must include gathering contact information from targeted leads and somehow eliciting their interest in your offering. You then need to contact them, ask qualifying questions, set appointments and distribute the qualified leads. Again, the methods for accomplishing this are myriad and will not be addressed here.

I have worked with a company which touted its Lead Generation System when advertising for sales reps. Unfortunately, it was not a system, but rather just a method for sending one-off emails to addresses scraped from web sites, with no further opportunity to contact, follow-up, ask questions or set appointments. Your LGS must work from beginning to end to pump out qualified leads and set appointments.

As important as generating leads, is your method of distributing them. You may choose to send the best leads to your most experienced top-producing salespeople but doing that also means that you are giving your least effective people the hardest leads to close, potentially dooming them to ineffectiveness.

My recommendation is to assume that all appointments set have an equal probability of closing and that they should be distributed randomly to all of your salespeople. If you’re sure that one of your people couldn’t close a door with both hands; fire them, instead of giving them bad leads to run

Well, there you have it: 2,702 words on how to Free Salespeople from the Burden of Marketing. You may not agree with everything – or even anything – I’ve said but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

If all of this sounds like a great idea but you have no idea when you’d find the time to implement it, give me a call.

Frank Felker
frank_felker@yahoo.com
866-949-2661

For more information:

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Supercharge Your Sales with Laser-Sharp Target Marketing

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:28:50 +0000

It's All About Focus Baby!

Looking for that “one thing” you can do that will supercharge your sales and make your salespeople incredibly happy and productive?

Try this: Focus all your marketing energy and resources on one or more specific target markets. Believe me, it’s critical to your sales success.

But how do you do that? How do you decide what markets to target and how to target them? Won’t you be leaving money on the table by ignoring other revenue sources? And what the hell does all this have to do with building The World’s Greatest Sales Team?

Read on…

Too many companies take a shotgun approach to both their marketing and production, willing to be all things to all people and perform any task for any customer. This is a direct path to entrepreneurial hell. Neither your marketing nor production departments can support that strategy profitably or for long. You’re going to hell. You’re going directly to hell. You will not pass Go and you will not collect $100.

While most companies are guilty of this, the worst offenders I’ve ever seen were in the printing business in the 1980s and 90s. Most commercial and quick printers were happy to take any job they could get, even if it didn’t match the production equipment on their floor. “Anything that keeps the machines running” was seen as a godsend. Business cards on a 40” six-color Komori? Bring it on!

The printers who have survived and prospered during the past three decades of technological and economic upheaval have been those who focused on fulfilling specific needs for tightly-defined niche markets. They use their printing equipment with other tools to create and sell value, not printing. People don’t buy printing because they love the look, smell and feel of ink on paper. They buy printing because of what a direct mail piece, business card, product label, etc. can do to help them increase sales or operate their business.

While working for a health and wellness company in Arizona, I came across a printing company that sells exclusively to medical practices. They know what a medical practice needs (prescription pads, specialized Medicare forms, etc.) and they market those products (not printing) directly to the doctors and office managers through catalogs, a phone center and the web.

They buy equipment and hire skilled people who match their customers’ requirements, rather than using existing resources in a futile attempt to fill any order. And they manage to keep their machines and people running around the clock thank you.

Profit is found in matching needs with solutions. The greater your customer’s need and the better you are at solving it, the more you can charge. Selling commodities to large markets results in razor-thin margins. Soothing extreme pain for niche markets generates fat profits.

This approach benefits your sales team because they are only speaking to people who really need and want their offering and clearly see its benefits. These prospects make decisions more quickly and are less price-resistant. If the firm providing the solution has an intelligent marketing plan in place, the customers have come to you asking for your help, rather than you having to seek them out like needles in a haystack. In short, targeted prospects mean more sales quicker. Sound good?

Who Do I Target?
So how do you decide whom to target? The answer is more difficult to derive for start-ups than it is for existing companies. The start-up had better have a very clear target market in mind up front – based on verifiable research – if they have any hope to survive. But an established firm need look no further than their current client list to easily figure out where the low fruit is hanging.

We’ve all heard of the Pareto Principal, better known as the 80/20 rule. In sales, the Pareto Principal states that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. I would further state that, for most businesses, 90% of your sales probably comes from 50% or less of your client list. That means you could fire half of more of your customers and not lose more than 15% of your sales.

While your revenue would drop by 15% your headaches would decrease by 75%. These lesser clients have lower average ticket sizes, are more difficult to deal with, pay their bills more slowly and use up an inordinate amount of your time relative to the dollars they generate. I say let ‘em go!

But if you can’t imagine yourself walking away from any of your customers, you can target your marketing efforts and sales production toward procuring more of your Gold Star Clients.

Take a look at your ten biggest customers. What industries do they represent? How big is their company in terms of sales level and number of employees? Where are they located? What do they buy from you? Why is it that your solution is such a great match for their needs? How did they come to you in the first place? The answers to these questions will allow you to easily paint a picture of what your Perfect Customer looks like.

Starting with your single largest customer, begin the hunt for more firms that match their profile. Go to infoUSA.com and run a search for companies in that industry, of a similar size in the same geographic area or a similar distance away. You’ll be amazed at the number of firms you find.

Then create a Customer Factory based on that Customer Design and start pouring your marketing budget and sales efforts into landing two or three more firms just like them. This is a much better investment than your current shotgun approach. You will not only see a higher closing percentage, larger average ticket size and faster receivables cycle, but your production department will thank you for bringing them so many orders that are easier to process.

Now duplicate the process with your second largest customer, third largest and so on. Lather, rinse and repeat as necessary until you just can’t handle any more business.

Real-Life Stories of Target Marketing Success and Failure
I once worked with a law firm that specialized in trust and estate planning. Their wide-ranging marketing program targeted homeowners who were 45 years old or older who lived within 10 miles of free seminars they presented throughout a certain metropolitan area. They sent direct mail pieces to these people and advertised their upcoming seminars on radio stations which also targeted that same demographic.

The fish jumped into the boat, attended the seminars and signed up in droves at the end for the free, no-obligation consultation the firm offered to attendees. It was then the lawyer/salesperson’s job to close them on paid services at the end of the consultation.

They had an incredibly high closing percentage due to their intelligent application of Education-Based Marketing (explained in a future article) and because they started the whole process by targeting their most likely buyers. This is a formula for salesperson satisfaction.

A home improvement company I once worked with targeted the same market with a completely different offering. They also advertised on radio and television, exhibited at home shows and placed a lot of ads in newspapers. Their marketing message offered a free in-home estimate for qualifying homeowners who called a toll-free number.

Callers were asked qualifying questions by phone center operators who received bonuses based on the number and dollar value of sales their leads produced. The operators asked the right questions and gathered critical information for the salespeople to use during the in-home presentations.

Again, this company generated hundreds of thousands in sales and made their salespeople very happy (and financially successful) by only presenting their wares to people who had a high propensity to purchase. It seems obvious but for some reason a lot of firms still don’t get it.

For example, I have worked with a company which targets businesses who own and/or operate fleets of vehicles. There are tens of thousands of these companies in industries ranging from funeral homes and limousine services to HVAC contractors and concrete companies.

The fact that the market is so huge and fragmented is actually a problem. Which industries can derive the most value from this company’s offering? What size fleet benefits the most? Which companies are likely to be looking at this service for the first time and which probably already have a solution in place? Once we answer these questions, how do we target and present to these low-hanging lorry operators?

These questions had not only not been answered, it appeared as though they had never even been considered. The resulting low sales production frustrated their sales team to no end and generated an attrition rate approaching 100%.

One reason why firms fail – or choose not – to employ target marketing is that they’re convinced they’ll lose sales by ignoring prospects who don’t match their customer design. Let me make one thing clear: you’re not refusing to do business with other firms, you’re just focusing your energies and marketing budget someplace else, a place where you’re much more likely to find a pot of gold.

If you have a office management software suite that is great for both chiropractors and architects but, for some reason, architects see the value more easily, buy quicker and pay faster then focus your marketing and sales efforts on architects. If a chiropractor comes flying over the transom or calls you out of the blue – close him!

Once your Architect Customer Factory is humming at full speed and it’s time to start looking to build another production line, put one together that churns out chiropractors. Then focus energy and resources on them until you’ve got that one running three shifts. Then go after your third-best target market, whatever that may be. Track your results and improve your processes along the way. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The bottom line is that Laser-Sharp Target Marketing is a critical sales success factor and any company that ignores it does so at their peril. Get clear about whom you’re selling to and how you’re selling to them and you’ll make both your salespeople and your banker very happy.

If all of this sounds like a great idea but you have no idea when you’d find the time to implement it, give me a call.

Frank Felker
frank_felker@yahoo.com
866-949-2661

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Recruiting Top Producing Salespeople

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:13:40 +0000

How to Hire Winners

Good help is hard to find. Never is that phrase more true – or important – than when it comes to finding, developing and keeping good salespeople.

Sales team member development will be covered in my articles on training. Retaining good salespeople is generally a question of properly setting and managing expectations which will be primarily covered in my articles on company ethics and compensation plan structuring.

In this article I’m going to describe the steps required to find productive salespeople in the first place.

In many ways it’s like a sales funnel, you start with a large pool of targeted prospects and winnow them down until you find your needle in a haystack.

===========================

This system involves nine steps:

1. Target Marketing

2. Advertising Your Opportunity

3. Vetting The Initial Responses / Creating Your Short List

4. Identifying Your Final Four

5. Telephone Interviewing

6. Checking References

7. In-Person Interviewing

8. Making Your Final Selection

9. Administering An Initial Test of Salesmanship

Let’s Get Started!

Finding the right people to man your sales team is a critical success factor. As such, it deserves your focused attention and the implementation of a detailed plan. If you want to attract, develop and keep top-producing salespeople, it’s important to have a system which begins with getting clear about exactly the type of person you’re looking to attract.

Target Marketing

Just as I recommend companies do when setting out to attract new customers (the Design Your Customer step in The Customer Factory Marketing Model) it’s critical that you get very specific about the skill set and personality type you’re looking for in your new salesperson.

There is no point in building a team of underachievers. You’re better off doing all the sales work yourself. The plan described here is designed to attract top producers, people who are capable of earning $100,000 or more annually and who have made that kind of money in the past. People who have not experienced that level of income may actually be uncomfortable with the idea and so sabotage their own efforts – and yours – in achieving it.

So, just exactly what are you looking for? That depends. It depends upon your industry, product, competition, sales cycle and venue (in-home, B2B, telephone sales, etc.). But there are some generalities that apply across all of these.

You want someone who is well spoken but still a good listener. While it doesn’t take a genius to become a top producer, a higher level of intelligence will help an inexperienced salesperson (whether their inexperience relates to sales in general or your product specifically) to get up to speed and begin producing more quickly.

Generally speaking you are looking for someone who is able to deal with uncertainty and adversity and can solve problems quickly. They can’t be inordinately risk-averse and they need to be able to differentiate between objections and personal attacks and so are well-served by a strong self image.

Entrepreneurial spirit is an important factor. Salespeople essentially run their own business within the larger company. They set their own hours, manage their own schedules and effectively write their own paychecks. Anyone who prefers a 9-5 job with a steady, reliable job is not your ideal candidate.

Other important traits include; a competitive nature, a high level of integrity and trustworthiness, the ability to take personal responsibility for successful outcomes, follow through, being able to ask tough questions and knowing how to set the right expectations with clients. These traits may be difficult to identify during the vetting and interviewing process but you should always be looking for them nonetheless.

Here are a few personal attributes that don’t generally make any difference: age, sex, race and career background. I have seen top producers in every industry and they never fall into any one particular pigeon hole. As I wrote in The Greatest Job You Never Thought Of, I have met successful salespeople of every stripe and personality type.

However, they must be willing to work with prospects whose backgrounds differ from their own. Prejudice is a luxury successful salespeople cannot afford. And, if the salesperson is a member of a group (such as gays or ethnic minorities) which is frowned upon by certain segments of the population, they need to be prepared to accept and overcome that objection, whether stated or implicit, in their sales presentations.

While the salesperson’s national origin or native tongue is not necessarily a potential obstacle to their success, if their accent or manner of speech is so pronounced as to interfere with the sales process, they may not be the person you are looking for. Successful communication is key.

As for previous industry-specific or general sales experience, there a two schools of thought. Some sales managers refuse to deal with greenhorns for a number of reasons. Inexperienced people require a lot of training and can take a lot longer to begin producing revenue. I once worked with a mortgage company who hired only top-producing veterans and offered absolutely no training and very little marketing support. Their new hires were expected to begin producing immediately and were richly rewarded for their production.

On the other hand, many sales organizations prefer to hire inexperienced salespeople in order to avoid any ingrained bad habits that veterans can bring with them. These companies generally have structured training programs in place to mold their new people into the processes and habits that the company believes will maximize their opportunity for success.

Greenhorns can become top producers. I once took a job with a home improvement company having no previous construction or in-home sales experience. Although I had owned my own companies and had achieved a six-figure income level in past, I had never been a “salesman” working for another company and was uncomfortable with the whole idea of a “sales culture.”

In my first year with that company I became its top producer, generating over $600,000 in new revenue and earning over $80,000 in commissions in my first six months. My surprising success became the basis for my book The Greatest Job where I encourage other non-believers to consider sales as a career path.

Advertising Your Opportunity

When I wrote The Greatest Job back in 2003 and 2004, I cited newspaper classified sections as the best place to find sales jobs. What an antiquated notion that is today!

Obviously, online job listing sites are where you want to place your ads these days. But which job board is the best place to advertise your opportunity?

Big shiny sites like Monster, The Ladders and Career Builder are generally better for more corporate, big-company sales job listings. Those are the places where people who are accustomed to base salary and all the perks of a corporate employer look for their next job.

Nonetheless, Craig’s List is a great place to advertise for any type of sales position because it’s so much easier for the job seeker to interact with. The applicant doesn’t have to create an account or upload a static, text-formatted resume or go through a time consuming multi-step application process for every job they’re interested in.

I have found job listings on Craig’s List from every conceivable size and type of company. But, generally speaking, you will find more postings from smaller companies there.

Writing Ad Copy That Will Attract the People You’re Looking For.

While the listings posted on the big shiny sites are generally better written than those found on Craig’s List, there are still a lot of problems with most sales job ads. Just as with every other type of advertising, you need to write the copy from the perspective of your targeted customer, not from your side of the table.

Top-producing salespeople (and those others who are capable of becoming top producers) are looking for some very specific aspects in their next sales job. They want to work for a company that has a superior offering and marketplace reputation. They look for great marketing support and communication. They want to know that the company is financially stable so that their paychecks will always clear and their customers’ orders will always be filled.

Your ad copy needs to communicate that your company has something that customers want because of its high value and unique attributes. You must reference the marketplace demand for your product along with your industry’s growth potential. You need to tell your prospective salespeople that you value your sales team, offer them a high level of ongoing support and training and handsomely reward those who produce.

Some employers prefer to play a bit of a shell game when describing the details of the job itself, keeping their cards close to the vest while extolling the incredible benefits of the sales opportunity. This is a grave mistake and a red flag to top producers, signaling danger ahead. If the company isn’t willing to publicize details of who they are and what they do in their job listings, how open and honest will they be in dealing with you and your customers going forward?

I believe that your sales job listing should include as much detail as possible without revealing potentially detrimental information to your competitors. Tell us who you are, what you do, why you’re great, how much money your average salesperson makes, how long people stay with your firm, who some of your marquee customers are and why I want to work for your instead of your competition.

While you should trumpet the superior income opportunity you are offering, you should also make it clear that you only pay for production, and that those who are not willing to work hard and ramp-up quickly should move on to another ad. You are beginning the process of setting and managing expectations and, while you want to paint an attractive picture, it’s always important to under-promise and over-deliver.

Prospective applicants will sense and appreciate your honesty just as they will sense and be repulsed by the bogus promises and fuzzy details they find in other companies’ ads.

Ads that cite unlimited or uncapped income potential need to also make clear that no level of success is guaranteed and that income will be directly tied to the rep’s ability and willingness to work hard and learn quickly.

Top producers prefer a steady flow of pre-qualified leads. If that’s something you offer, you need to state how many leads you provide each week, where they come from, how they are qualified and distributed.

How Do I Apply and What Will Happen Next?

At the end of the ad, you need to give clear instructions on how to respond and what will happen next. If possible, list your web site URL and instruct potential applicants to research your company and offering before responding. State that you will acknowledge their response by email and that all resumes will be reviewed but that only a small number will move on to the next step, a telephone interview.

Create a form-letter email that clearly states how long it will take for successful next-step candidates to be contacted and that, “If you haven’t heard from us by then you probably won’t.” Thank them for their interest in your firm, for taking the time to respond and wish them the best of luck in their job hunt.

Applying for a job takes a lot of time, effort and focused attention. And when a job seeker finds a job listing they’re really excited about, they become emotionally invested in the process. As the advertiser, your acknowledgement of each applicant’s human value takes only a few seconds but goes a long way to demonstrate that your company is a great place to work.

Vetting the Initial Responses

An important part of this process is deciding how long to advertise and how many applications to review. In today’s economy you may receive hundreds of responses in just a few days.

You should post your ad on a Monday or Tuesday and leave it up through the rest of the work week, deleting the posting before close of business Friday. Choose your targeted email inbox wisely (if you can, create an email address solely for resume submission) and watch it closely. Set a maximum number of resumes to review, but keep all that come in just in case you don’t find your prince among the first round of frogs.

In reviewing the responses don’t put all of your emphasis on career history, age, industry experience or the other usual selection criteria. Also scrutinize the manner in which the applicant communicated with you.

Sales requires persuasion skills and someone who cannot communicate clearly and persuasively in responding to a job listing will be similarly challenged out in the field. Look at the subject line of their email, the body text, spelling and grammatical issues. Does the email give you the impression that this is a person you would want representing your business?

Is their resume clearly written and cleanly laid out? Do they write in run-on sentences or are they concise and get right to the point? Do they seem to be embellishing their record with a lot of fluff or do they simply and briefly state their past assignments and accomplishments?

If the person can’t quickly and clearly communicate to you who they are and why you should hire them, they won’t be able to tell your prospects who you are and why they should do business with you. How they communicate is at least as important as what they communicate.

In terms of the resume itself, all you’re really going to be able to glean are “facts” as stated by the applicant. Education level, number of years of work experience, titles held and average length of service are the most important high-level factors.

Actual duties and accomplishments are important but are also more subjective and prone to exaggeration. Just like “fudging” on our taxes, most of us have gilded our resumes to some extent. Assume that going in and you won’t be disappointed going forward.

Personality and Intelligence Testing

I am not a big believer in the accuracy of personality testing – online or otherwise – but I know many sales managers swear by it. At rates from $1 to $10 or more per test subject, this could be an inexpensive way to eliminate bad apples from the barrel, or it could be a great way to randomly discard people who might have contributed mightily to your sales team.

The accuracy of intelligence tests is a different story in that they are more objective. While it doesn’t take a genius to be a top producer, someone with below-average intelligence is going to have a very hard time succeeding at sales.

But there’s one big caveat with any kind of testing: sometimes all you learn is how good someone is at taking a test. While I usually do very well with intelligence tests, I got slammed when I recently did an online tryout for Jeopardy. With the clock ticking on my screen, I had 15 seconds to pick one correct answer from four choices on 40 incredibly difficult questions (much harder than what you see on the television show). I experienced brain freeze on several where I knew that I knew the answer but just couldn’t pull it up out of the old memory banks. Rely too heavily on applicant testing at your own peril.

Narrowing Down The List

Using an American Idol reference, your next task is to decide how many candidates you should “send to Hollywood” or move to your list of resumes to review. These are the people whom you feel have a good chance of being one of your new top producers and may be worthy of consideration for a telephone interview.

The number of people on this list depends on a number of variables including the number of slots you have to fill, how much open production capacity you have to support your growing sales team and how many decent applications you’ve received. For a single open position, this list should be no larger than ten, from which you will choose a Final Four to interview on the phone.

Your decision criteria here should be in alignment with the original Customer Design you created in the Target Marketing step above, and should include an equal balance of objective criteria and good old fashioned gut instinct. Do an initial sort of the resumes from best to worst and then see how you would feel about simply picking the Final Four the top of that list.

If your gut is telling you to spend a little more time deciding, set a deadline and stick to it. Worst case, choose a total of five or six instead of four but realize that every person you add is going to require an equal amount of time investment going forward but may not yield additional value.

Telephone Interviewing

Telephone interviews should be kept as short as possible. Gut instinct will play an important part here but, given the gravity and formal nature of the conversation, you should expect that your candidates to be a little nervous and possibly come across a little bit more stiffly than they normally would.

Be prepared with 3-4 short, open questions such as:

What attracted you to this opportunity?
What would be your approach when meeting with our customers?
How much money are you looking to make?
Tell me about a time you were able to overcome a very strong customer objection.

Don’t spend a lot of time talking about your company – this is the applicant’s time to sell you on them, not vice versa. Pay at least as much attention to the applicants’ communication ability as you do to the actual answers they give you. Give them every chance to sell you.

Being Objectionable on the Phone

I once did a telephone interview with one company whose approach was to seemingly blow off the interview by telling applicants early in the conversation “We’re only interested in closers and I’m not hearing anything here that tells me you’re our kind of guy.”

They do this to gauge the applicant’s reaction. If the applicant apologizes for wasting their time and hangs up, they know s/he would have folded quickly in the field as well. If the applicant stands up for themselves, pushes back, asks probing questions or otherwise continues the conversation, the interviewer knows that they may have a winner on their hands. While a bit devious, this technique is clearly effective.

What Questions Does The Applicant Have?

When you’re finished asking your questions, give the applicant the opportunity to ask questions of their own. If their questions focus on the upside income opportunity, compensation plan, ability of the company to deliver on its promises, sources and quality of leads, etc., you’ll know you have a serious sales bird on your hands. If instead they ask about base salary, car allowance, holidays, work hours, vacation time, etc., you’ll know that their heart may not be where you’d like it.

Keep the telephone interview to 20 minutes or less and clearly let them know when it’s over. Then tell them that you are still in the interviewing process and will next communicate with them within three days – either by email to tell them thanks but no thanks, or by telephone to schedule an in-person interview. Then stick to that commitment to follow-up in a timely fashion.

If they pass the telephone interview, call them to schedule the in-person interview but tell them that you will be emailing them a reference form to complete and return by email beforehand. Leave enough time ahead of the in-person interview for them to complete and return the form and for you to check their references as explained below.

A Quick Reference Check

This is a topic which garners a wide range of opinions. Everyone “knows” they should check references, but few people ever actually do it. My belief is that this is an important step but can be very time-consuming and so should only be taken with candidates who pass the telephone interview hurdle, and should be kept as short, sweet and simple as possible.

Ask for three business references along with their names, titles, phone numbers, email addresses and the nature of your relationships to them. Create a simple Excel spreadsheet for the applicant to fill out with their name, as well as the names and contact information for their three references. Their ability to quickly and correctly complete this task will be telling.

After receiving the reference spreadsheet back from the applicant, call all three of the references and ask three short, open questions:

How do you know this person? (compare it to what the applicant said about their relationship)
What is the applicant’s greatest strength as a salesperson?
What is the area in which they could gain the greatest improvement?

Five minutes on the phone with three different people will give you an incredible level of insight into not only the applicants themselves, but also the type of people whose approval they value.

The In-Person Interview

This is the most important step in the whole process, one you should make a priority in your day. Be sure your calendar is wide open for at least an hour and don’t allow anything – phone calls, emails, fire alarms, you name it – to interrupt you during the interview.

I once kept an office manager job candidate cooling her heels for the better part of an hour while I flew around the office putting out a fire. She finally left in a huff, but not before telling me that I was rude and inconsiderate for not appreciating the value of her time. She was absolutely correct and I probably lost a great employee that day.

Before I go into the nuts and bolts of the overall interview, I want to emphasize that you should be paying attention to every aspect of this meeting. What time did the candidate arrive? How did they introduce their arrival to the receptionist or yourself? Are they dressed appropriately? What condition are their clothes in? Are their shoes clean – not necessarily buffed to a gleaming shine, but just clean? Are they well groomed? Could they use a haircut, shave or a vigorous teeth brushing?

The fact is that this person should be trying to put their very best foot forward here at a job interview. How good is their best? How might they be perceived by your prospects in the field?

Your objective coming out of the interview is to gauge your personal reaction and opinion of this person – not the specific answers they give to your individual questions. After meeting with them, how do you feel about them? Would you be proud and excited to have them on your team? Are you confident in their ability to go out and make rain?

As I wrote in The Greatest Job, this interview is one of the applicant’s most important sales calls. They are pitching a very high-value prospect on buying the most important service they have to offer. Do they overstate their case? Do they seem confident in the value of their offering? Are they willing to obfuscate when asked a difficult question? Perhaps most importantly, are they willing to respond “I don’t know” when it is the only honest answer?

As a sales professional, you need to approach this interview from the perspective of a prospective customer and decide for yourself whether the person on the other side of the table from you is doing a good sales job. If you’re not sure, you’ve just decided. Remember, you’re only interested in hiring top producers.

Ask them the same questions you asked them on the phone:

What attracted you to this opportunity?
What would be your approach when meeting with our customers?
How much money are you looking to make?
Tell about a time you were able to overcome a very strong customer objection.

Having been asked these questions previously, they’ve had time to reconsider their answers during the “I wish I had said THIS” period after they hung up the phone with you. They should give you even better answers this time.

Next, ask them to give you one sentence on each of their previous employers. Note their willingness to disparage any past associations. Are they generally a positive or a negative person?

Finally, ask them about each of the references they provided. Vaguely allude to the conversations you had with those people and see how they react. Are they embarrassed or confident? What do they say about those people? Do they begin to denigrate any of them?

During the entire interview you should be noting what percentage of your time together do they spend listening and asking questions vs. speaking about themselves? Are they an intelligent questioner? A good listener? Did they answer your questions directly, completely and to your satisfaction? These are obviously important traits for top producing salespeople.

As with the telephone interview, ask them if they have any questions for you. A good candidate will have several questions while a poor candidate will not. And, as during the telephone interview, the nature of their questions will be telling.

Close the meeting by telling the applicant that you are still in the interviewing process but will be making a decision very shortly. If possible, state a date certain.

In closing, ask them “Is there anything we haven’t discussed that you think would be helpful for me in making my decision?”

This is an opportunity for them to close you. Pay close attention to how they handle it. If they pass it by, you’ve got a problem. If they come strong to the hoop with one or more closing attempts, you’ve got a player on your hands.

Making the Final Selection

At this point your choice should already be apparent. Worst case, you should be torn about choosing between two or more great candidates. If that is the case, I recommend you give both of them a shot on a probationary basis until they pass an initial test (outlined below). If they both pass the test – hire ‘em both! If only one passes, your decision is made for you.

If none of the people have really turned you on, you could be in trouble. Either your ad is sending the wrong message and therefore bringing in the wrong candidates, your company and/or opportunity are not attractive to the people you’re looking to bring in, or you’re doing a poor job selecting winners from your pool of candidates. Review every aspect of your offering and every step in your process and start over again. You’re bound to do a better job the second time around.

Administering an Initial Test of Salesmanship

I was once hired on a probationary basis by a company that required I pass what they called their “Five in Five” test before being offered a full-time job. During a five day test period I would be given 100 leads and expected to close at least five of them. No problem, right? Read on.

What they didn’t tell me was that all of these were old leads that had already been worked by someone else, who had failed to close them. While I had been trained extensively on delivering the company’s script to fresh leads in a normal conversational voice, I had been given no training whatsoever on how to work people who had already heard the script once and said “no.”

Worse yet, all of these people already had a strongly negative predisposition to the company having been pitched poorly, on something they hadn’t asked for, not been sent the free resources by email they had been promised and not been followed up with until weeks later when I called.

To make a long story short (too late!) I didn’t pass the test. But I learned a couple of important lessons. The first is that the concept of a short-term hurdle for salespeople to clear during a probationary period is sound. If the candidate can’t pass the test, you’ll know immediately that they won’t work out. This saves you a lot of time, money, aggravation and opportunity cost (wasted leads) going forward.

The second thing I learned is that you should test for what you’re looking for (explained below) and for the candidate’s ability to implement the training you’ve provided them.

The company testing me said that they wanted professional salespeople who could establish the foundation for a long-term beneficial relationship with their clients. What they were testing for was people who were willing to beat someone over the head until they either buy or die. I shared that observation with the company’s training director during my exit interview and, surprisingly, she agreed.

As it appears as though I will be building a sales team in the near future, I will be practicing what I preach in the recruiting process, including creating an initial test for them to pass. This will not only allow me to judge their effectiveness but also allow them to see whether or not this is the job for them.

I’m sure I’ll tweak it going forward but for right now my test will not require them to close any sales in their first two weeks but rather to persuade five prospects to agree to a 60-day no-obligation free trial of our service. This test will require them to do some prospecting, phone calling, persuading and interaction with the company’s systems, including the CRM.

I’ll be able to judge how well they understand our service and who our target market is, along with their ability to communicate our value proposition to that target market well enough to get people to say “yes” to something. I’m sure I’ll be posting my results to this site at some point in the future.

Conclusion

In many ways, the system I’ve described above can be compared to a sales funnel, with scores of applicants being systematically narrowed down by stages: short list of ten, Final Four, reference checks, in-person interviews, final selection and initial test of salesmanship.

Successfully hiring the right salespeople is a crucial element of your job and should be approached as such, carefully and systematically. This system works. Put it to work for you.

If all of this sounds like a great idea but you have no idea when you’d find the time to implement it, give me a call.

Frank Felker
frank_felker@yahoo.com
866-949-2661

For more information:

Join The World’s Greatest Sales Team LinkedIn Group

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Zen Selling

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:17:28 +0000

Always Be Closing, Grasshopper

We’ve all known salespeople who seem to be the the marketing equivalent of “The Natural.”

They know everything; about their offering, their clients, their prospects and their competition. They’re prepared for and calmly overcome every objection.

They never get flustered or seem desperate, never take “no” for an answer. When they are faced with unavoidable rejection, they take it in stride, knowing that each “no” takes them one step closer to their next “yes.”

They consistently lead the team in production, win all the contests, make the most money and enjoy their eternal position at the top of the leader board.

These people have achieved a state of mind I call Zen Selling, an almost unconscious level of sales skill.

In this state, all traditional aspects of the sales profession are turned on their heads. You don’t chase leads, they chase you, happy fish jumping into the boat, anxious to engage with the clear benefits you have to offer.

Zen Sellers know exactly what attributes constitute a great prospect, focusing their energy on only the lowest-hanging fruit and leaving the rest for others to fight over. They know how to find and expose pain, often creating pools of great potential where others saw nothing but frustration.

Prospects are closed before the presentation even begins, with the pitch taking on an almost perfunctory value – simply a process which must be followed in order to complete the paperwork and move on to the next meeting.

How does one achieve such a state of mind? As with any other form of mastery, the answer is an unwavering commitment to learning through focused repetition.

And how can management help every member of the sales team to become a Zen Seller? Through ongoing training and role-modeling.

It has recently been postulated that, in order for one to achieve mastery, at least 10,000 hours must be spent in pursuit of a given skill. That’s about five years at 40 hours per week.

So will management have to wait five years to see production from their green grasshoppers? Of course not. Because, as with any other aspect of growth in our lives, it’s all about the journey.

Every bit of sales and product training takes the salesperson one step farther down the path. Every opportunity to learn from and model after top producers on the team subtly alters the newer rep’s consciousness.

Over time, not overnight, the novice becomes the master – provided that both they and their leaders are committed to the process.

“See the Master, Grasshopper. Become the Master in your mind first and you will truly become the Master yourself one day.”

Perhaps five years from now.

Frank Felker
frank_felker@yahoo.com
866-949-2661

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