Friday, June 27, 2008
5 Steps to Successfully Hiring Salespeople
By Theresa Gale and Wally Olson, Transform Inc.
Hiring salespeople is more an art than a science, and too often business owners want to know the exact formula for hiring the right salesperson. To be successful, you must devote some time upfront to developing an effective hiring strategy for your particular business. Here are some guidelines:
• Have a clearly defined position description. Most descriptions are too vague and lack specific measurable outcomes. Your position description should include success criteria — specific behaviors or results expected for the position. All employees, especially salespeople, need to know how their performance will be measured and what constitutes “success” in the job.
• Develop behavior-based interviewing questions. These inquiries gather information about the candidate using his/her past performance as an indicator of their future success. Examples include: “Describe for me a typical day at your last company” or “Describe the sales process you used in your last position.” Remember: During an interview a candidate should be doing 80 percent of the talking; it is his job to “sell” you on why he should be hired, not yours to convince him why working for your company is in his best interest.
• Be clear what performance expectations you have of the successful candidate in this position and be honest up front as to what the challenges might be. Ask candidates how they would overcome those challenges if they were in the position. Listen closely for their responses and probe deeper to uncover what really drives them to be successful. Relate their responses back to past positions and ask them to give you examples of what they did then and what results they got. Listen for excuses, blaming the company or their manager, or worse, the economy.
• Assess sales skills before you hire. Objective Management’s Sales Express Screen is an amazing tool. It tells you if your candidate “can” sell, “will” sell, is “trainable” and if you should hire the candidate based on a profile you establish ahead of time about your sales environment. With this information, you know exactly what you are getting and what training you need to do from day one.
• Establish a 90-day training plan for new sales hires and commit to investing time upfront to train and observe the new hire in action. Expect behavior from the start and set expectations for what should be accomplished by the first 30, 60 and 90 days.
Make the process of hiring sales professionals less stressful: clearly define expectations, ask behavior-based questions during your interview, be honest about your expectations during the interview process, assess sales skills before you hire so you know what skills you are getting ahead of time, and lastly, have a 90-day training plan that sets performance expectations for 30, 60 and 90 days. That’s our formula for success!
Theresa Gale is co-owner of Transform, Inc. and co-author of Wake Up and SELL. Wally Olson is a Sales Development Expert who works with Transform, Inc.’s clients to help them build and grow sales and leadership teams.
By Theresa Gale and Wally Olson, Transform Inc.
Hiring salespeople is more an art than a science, and too often business owners want to know the exact formula for hiring the right salesperson. To be successful, you must devote some time upfront to developing an effective hiring strategy for your particular business. Here are some guidelines:
• Have a clearly defined position description. Most descriptions are too vague and lack specific measurable outcomes. Your position description should include success criteria — specific behaviors or results expected for the position. All employees, especially salespeople, need to know how their performance will be measured and what constitutes “success” in the job.
• Develop behavior-based interviewing questions. These inquiries gather information about the candidate using his/her past performance as an indicator of their future success. Examples include: “Describe for me a typical day at your last company” or “Describe the sales process you used in your last position.” Remember: During an interview a candidate should be doing 80 percent of the talking; it is his job to “sell” you on why he should be hired, not yours to convince him why working for your company is in his best interest.
• Be clear what performance expectations you have of the successful candidate in this position and be honest up front as to what the challenges might be. Ask candidates how they would overcome those challenges if they were in the position. Listen closely for their responses and probe deeper to uncover what really drives them to be successful. Relate their responses back to past positions and ask them to give you examples of what they did then and what results they got. Listen for excuses, blaming the company or their manager, or worse, the economy.
• Assess sales skills before you hire. Objective Management’s Sales Express Screen is an amazing tool. It tells you if your candidate “can” sell, “will” sell, is “trainable” and if you should hire the candidate based on a profile you establish ahead of time about your sales environment. With this information, you know exactly what you are getting and what training you need to do from day one.
• Establish a 90-day training plan for new sales hires and commit to investing time upfront to train and observe the new hire in action. Expect behavior from the start and set expectations for what should be accomplished by the first 30, 60 and 90 days.
Make the process of hiring sales professionals less stressful: clearly define expectations, ask behavior-based questions during your interview, be honest about your expectations during the interview process, assess sales skills before you hire so you know what skills you are getting ahead of time, and lastly, have a 90-day training plan that sets performance expectations for 30, 60 and 90 days. That’s our formula for success!
Theresa Gale is co-owner of Transform, Inc. and co-author of Wake Up and SELL. Wally Olson is a Sales Development Expert who works with Transform, Inc.’s clients to help them build and grow sales and leadership teams.
Labels: 5 Steps to Hiring Salespeople
Monday, June 2, 2008
AUTHORS, THERESA GALE AND MARY ANNE WAMPLER, SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS ABOUT SALES AND SELLING
Theresa Gale and Mary Anne Wampler are co-authors of Wake Up and SELL!. Recently they were interviewed about their thoughts on sales and selling. Here's what they had to say:
Theresa - “I wake up every day saying “I love what I do.” What a gift really to be able to love what you do and get paid doing it. If someone had of told me 15 years ago that I would have to sell to do what I love to do I’d say they were crazy. I was an Administrative Manager at a computer service company handling everything but sales. I believed I wouldn’t be good at it and plus I didn’t want the pressure that came with sales. I’d find myself admiring the successful sales people and wishing I could do what they did, but knew that it just wasn’t for me. Five years later I’m at a sales training class because I’m working at a consulting firm and need to learn how to sell. What I very quickly learned was that my beliefs about sales and selling were what would keep me from enjoying success as a sales person and as a consultant, so I decided to do something about those beliefs … and the rest is history!”
Mary Anne, a seasoned sales professional responds: “As much as I love consulting, training and coaching, to this very day it still thrills me to be sitting with a prospect or client. Listening to their problems, exploring desires for their business, asking just the right question to discover what’s really going on, designing a solution and closing the deal. It’s fun, it’s thrilling, it’s real and it matters. I clearly remember my Dad asking me, after my first few years as a sales trainer, “When are you going to get a real job?” It was in my automatic response to him that showed me I truly understood the importance that selling and being a sales trainer holds. My response was simply “nothing happens in business until someone sells something”.
Read more about the authors and their book, Wake Up and SELL! at www.transforminc.com.
Theresa - “I wake up every day saying “I love what I do.” What a gift really to be able to love what you do and get paid doing it. If someone had of told me 15 years ago that I would have to sell to do what I love to do I’d say they were crazy. I was an Administrative Manager at a computer service company handling everything but sales. I believed I wouldn’t be good at it and plus I didn’t want the pressure that came with sales. I’d find myself admiring the successful sales people and wishing I could do what they did, but knew that it just wasn’t for me. Five years later I’m at a sales training class because I’m working at a consulting firm and need to learn how to sell. What I very quickly learned was that my beliefs about sales and selling were what would keep me from enjoying success as a sales person and as a consultant, so I decided to do something about those beliefs … and the rest is history!”
Mary Anne, a seasoned sales professional responds: “As much as I love consulting, training and coaching, to this very day it still thrills me to be sitting with a prospect or client. Listening to their problems, exploring desires for their business, asking just the right question to discover what’s really going on, designing a solution and closing the deal. It’s fun, it’s thrilling, it’s real and it matters. I clearly remember my Dad asking me, after my first few years as a sales trainer, “When are you going to get a real job?” It was in my automatic response to him that showed me I truly understood the importance that selling and being a sales trainer holds. My response was simply “nothing happens in business until someone sells something”.
Read more about the authors and their book, Wake Up and SELL! at www.transforminc.com.
Labels: Intro
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