Posted by Tom Rothrock on Tue, Oct 06, 2009 @ 05:57 PM
Several of our previous blogs have talked about identifying, interviewing, and using assessments to hire top performing sales reps for your sales team.
So let's say by now you've enacted those points, built a benchmark and have introduced assessments to your recruiting and hiring process. Further, you've brought aboard a strong "A Player" who's really making the numbers happen and is going to make plan before year-end in a territory where that's never occurred before.
Congratulations!!
Next, by capitalizing on your use of assessments, we'll move forward on how you can use them to strengthen your sales team beyond the hiring process. [Don't worry, if you haven't used assessments yet, you'll benefit from the discussion, too.]
How do you build strength?
Seasoned sales managers and, yes, veteran coaches of every sport will tell you, "Observe, coach, observe, coach, observe, coach." You spend every available moment in the field observing your team and stressing the use of sales strategies and techniques to advance the sales cycle in pre-call and post-call coaching sessions.
The use of an assessment will give you a "heads up" on your coaching efforts by telling you what areas to focus on and what areas are of a lesser concern that can be set aside for now.
For example: The assessment data tells you your new "A Player" is very social. In sales, we know that's a good thing as we'd prefer having our prospects and customers relating to a personable, outgoing rep instead of a remote, indifferent one.
However, your rep's need for social interaction can stymie sales performance. If the rep takes too much time "making friends instead of sales," sales will suffer as the result of too many "howdy calls" instead of executing calls with a clear sales objective. There are also prospects and customers who'd rather stick to business and forgo rapport-building. Your rep needs to know the difference between the two and react and respond accordingly.
A properly structured assessment report will identify characteristics like these and provide you coaching steps to overcome them.
Who Moves Up and When?
Every sales manager knows that at some point in time, they'll get asked, "Who's your successor?" When you do, you'd better be prepared with an answer. That question comprises a big part of our job responsibilities and planning succession is a critical process to ensure the continued success and growth of your sales team.
When planning succession moves, you'll need insights into your candidates beyond the scope of their current assignment. Your assessment data will help you out here, too.
Many sales organizations have promoted their top performing sales reps to sales managers, based on the logic that the rep's performance can be duplicated and translated in the managerial role to their new subordinates. This approach has worked in some cases but, in others, it has not.
The challenge is that a sales manager's role takes on aspects which are opposed to the classic sales rep function. For one, there's an administrative reporting responsibility to assume that presents a struggle for many former reps to address.
There's also the issue of structure. Reps generally are autonomous and independent while a large part of a manager's job involves enforcing policy which can present a transitional challenge for the new sales manager.
As in the case of our coaching example, an assessment on a managerial candidate will tell you if the candidate is "cut out" for the managerial function. Your starting point - as in the case of indentifying our top performing sales reps - will be to establish a benchmark for your managerial position that your candidates can be measured against.
Then, your assessment report will tell who you who is up for the challenge and who needs more "polish." Again, you'll be spending time developing those who'll be likely candidates as opposed to those who're not.
If I can aid you in using assessments for building your sales team strengths and depth, please do contact me at precallpro.com.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ggvic/
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Tue, Sep 08, 2009 @ 10:27 AM
Do They Measure Up?
In two of our earlier blogs we spoke about
identifying and
interviewing top performers for your sales team. We now want to expand that discussion toward how you can use assessments to strengthen your sales hiring process.
So, let's roll up our sleeves and get to work!
Your next move is to acquire the tools to enable you to do that. What you need is a tool that will measure the behavioral characteristics of your sales rep candidates and your existing top performers.
"Wait a minute," you say. "I understand the candidates, but why do I have to measure the characteristics of my top performers, too?"
Good question! That's how you establish the foundation for building your team of top performers. Once you've identified your top performers, your goal is to find more just like them. You want to duplicate your successes and avoid repeating costly hiring mistakes. By developing your "top performer benchmark" you'll be doing just that to measure future candidates.
That's where we'll return to the tool that measures behavioral characteristics mentioned above. Since the late 1980's, there's been a boom in the availability and the accuracy of behavioral assessments. That growth was enabled by the widespread use of the personal computer and Internet access, all of which have greatly reduced the time to complete, evaluate and generate assessment reports.
Today, there are hundreds of companies who can provide assessment services for you - a simple Google search using "assessments" will yield you a number of possibilities.
But that's where the hard work comes in. While there are a lot of firms who can provide assessments on your candidates, you must insist on the following from any firm you're considering:
Once you've located a reliable source for your assessment needs, you'll have the process in place for building your top performing team! If you have a HR department or specialist on staff, that’s a good place to start.
If I can aid you in your effort to incorporate assessments for your sales team hiring process, please do contact me at
precallpro.com.
Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 @ 06:06 PM
How Do You Know Who's Really Behind The Mask?
In our earlier discussion, we pointed out the predominant characteristics of top performing salespeople. Of course we know there are others which positively contribute to a rep's performance not mentioned here. For now, we're focusing on 3 key characteristics which appear below with a brief description:
Enterprising: Independently competitive, takes on initiative and risk, has personal ownership or "stake" in outcomes. Tends to "ask for forgiveness instead of approval."
Sociable: Conversant and comfortable across a broad array of business and social settings; easily builds rapport and readily interacts with all types of people.
Assertive: Leads more than follows; is confident, comfortable and competant in directing people as well as the course of events. In the sales environment it's mandatory in any sales professional's ability to advance their sales cycle.Now equipped with these characteristics, you're certainly wondering...
"How do I know the candidates I'm talking to have them...or don't?"
That's the easy part - just like good sales professionals, we ask! Listed below are some interview questions to help you do that:
Enterprising:
- While on a sales call with a prospect, you encounter an issue that's outside of your authority but must be addressed to close the sale. Do you: a) execute to advance the sale or b), wait for approval from higher authority?
- When in competition, what lengths do you go to to win?
- When sales goals are not achieved, who's responsible?
Sociable:
- Describe the relationship building skills you have used to successfully achieve your sales goals.
- How would you build rapport with a remote, indifferent prospect on a initial call?
- What types of things have you done in the past to retain and expand business from existing accounts?
Assertive:
- Describe an example when you closed a particularly difficult sale by using your persuasion skills.
- Using examples from your experience, explain how a salesperson’s tenacity impacts the outcome of the sales process.
- When in the sales environment and while engaging a prospective customer, tell me how you a sense of urgency.
- Demonstrate for me how you'd handle a indecisive prospect who is stalling your sales cycle. Specifically, I’m interested in the approaches and the words you’d use to move them forward.
By carefully gauging your candidates' responses to these questions, you'll be better prepared to tell if they're the "real thing" or merely saying "what they think you want to hear."
Armed with the answers to your questions and then comparing them to the experience and accomplishments cited on their resumes, you'll be well on your way to hiring your next "top performer - not just another "great pretender!"
We'll be talking about other tools available to you in order to accomplish this - and more - in a future blog. Stay tuned!
Photo Credit: esper.art.br
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xper/3350897632/
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Fri, Jul 24, 2009 @ 10:31 AM
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bufferchuck/
Sales managers have long struggled with defining the characteristics of top sales reps and have frequently used the old saying, "You'll know when you see them" to do so.
That saying recalls a question a sales manager once asked us, "I've got a great rep who runs rings around the rest of the team. What does that rep do that the others don't?"
There's been quite a bit written on this question, both in the sales management and behavioral science circles. Since this is a sales blog, we'll focus our effort there.
Aside from the obvious - which are your rep's monthly, quarterly and yearly sales figures which tell if quota was met, exceeded - or not - part of our answer lies in what we'll call the "personality mix" - those traits which point to a individual's potential for success or failure in sales.
But how do you do that?
The first thing to do is to establish a profile of common characteristics of strong salespeople. While there are some variations to the needs particular to your sales environment, it's generally agreed that successful salespeople are;
Enterprising: Salespeople are leaders. They like to drive people and events from start to finish, especially their sales cycles. They're doers more than thinkers and are interested in the "big picture" than the details. Also, being true entrepreneurs, they're comfortable with risk and take ownership of outcomes, both good and bad.
Sociable: In sales, it's all about people so to be a success, your salespeople must like helping others and working with teams. They must communicate well, thrive on human interaction and prefer talking with people over working with machines or data. If they don't, they're better in a cube working on lines of code.
- Assertive: The best salespeople exhibit limitless energy and don't let themselves to be stalled or blocked when advancing their sales cycle. They can intuitively sense when they need to take control and have the ability to rebound from setbacks, too. The top salespeople are the ones on your team who're restlessly asking "What's next?" and are ones who're never content unless they're moving forward.
Take a moment and using the characteristics above, match them to your top performers. You'll find that your top performers share these characteristics. Once you've established that, your next step is to use your "Top Performer Profile" as a "best practices" hiring tool. We'll talk about that in a later post.