Executives understand the importance of formalized processes in their business. Most companies have established elaborate processes for manufacturing, distribution, finance, purchasing, maintenance, employee reviews, and a host of other fundamental aspects of their organizational backbone.

I have visited with hundreds of business leaders and asked the question:

“What process do you follow for SALES?”

In response, I usually get a blank stare or the question, “What do you mean?”

The fact that most business executives have never considered implementing a process or system for sales never ceases to amaze me. While most business leaders clearly understand the importance of investing heavily in the development of back-end processes, only a small percentage have a process to deal with the aspect of their business that has the single largest potential impact on their ability to generate cash and improve their profitability—SALES.

Another seemingly obvious, yet often overlooked issue which can greatly limit sales growth is confusion about the difference between a “product expert” and “sales expert”. Some people think these two are one and the same. This could not be further from the truth. Most companies recruit and train with a heavy emphasis on product or industry knowledge and experience. While these can be somewhat important, they will not determine whether or not an individual will succeed in creating business. If generating revenue and profit for your company are your goals, recruit and train primarily for sales, secondarily for product/industry.

The face that your company presents to the world should be consistent, attractive, and competent. In order to make this happen, you must have a sales process. So how do you start?

You can’t fix what you can’t see:

It doesn’t matter if you have a huge direct sales force or if you are just beginning to think about hiring salesperson number one. An essential first step is to evaluate your people. Excellent objective assessment tools are available for this purpose. Make sure to select a tool that incorporates both Critical Success Factors and Core Sales Competencies.

Create the most effective organization:

Assess the results, then combine the objective data with your sales plan to achieve your goals. An effective sales team includes leaders, managers, farmers (account managers), and hunters (to secure new business). Each one of these roles incorporates different skill-sets and competencies. Use the objective assessment data to make sure your round pegs are set into round holes. If your company is small and one person must wear multiple hats, make sure that he/she possesses or is trained in multiple competencies.

Use a selling system:

Do not send your salespeople out to “do their thing.” Send them out to do YOUR THING. There are several selling systems available. Some are good, some are not. Make sure to select a system that is consistent with your company’s objectives and core values and one that will result in long-term, win/win relationships. Your selling system should be “owned” by anyone in your organization that has contact with your customers and salespeople. Your team should be fluent in the language.

With effective training and practice, your selling system will soon become second-nature and part of the company culture.

Implementation of an effective, understandable, and easy-to-use sales process will have a dramatic effect on both the top and bottom lines of your business. Incorporating an effective process for recruiting/hiring salespeople and measuring results will multiply your gains and improve your ability to control your future.

© Copyright 2009 Joe Zente

Business owners ask me this question all of the time.  The answer is because the majority of sales candidates are simply NOT GOOD!  There are sales superstars out there, but you need to know how to find them and attract them.

At Z/Three Performance Development, we’ve been conducting objective sales assessments on candidates for over a decade.  Objective Management Group, Inc., the company that developed our assessment, has recently published statistics based upon the 350,000 sales candidates who have taken the assessment to date.   The objective data has been consolidated and the excerpted results are sobering:

24% of all candidates will not prospect - at all!
Only 1% of all hunters have the complete Hunter Skill Set.
Only 8% of all candidates could even be considered Hunters. 

Did you want your new salespeople to hunt for new business? 
The typical sales candidate will have between only 27% and 52% of hunter attributes.

Why?  Salespeople who dislike prospecting dislike it for a reason.  They have beliefs and fears that cause anxiety and physical reactions to even the thought of prospecting.  Some won’t do it at all, many will have difficulty getting started and others will have difficulty finishing.

45% of all candidates will not close - at all!
Less than 1% of all candidates have the complete Closer Skill Set.

Are your salespeople having trouble closing?
The typical candidate will possess less than 23% of the attributes of a closer.

Why? Salespeople confuse asking for business with getting it.  Many salespeople know how to ask for the business.  However, very few know how to finalize profitable transactions in the face of resistance.  As with hunting, there are beliefs and fears that negatively impact their behavior.  When salespeople aren’t comfortable saying the words you’ve taught them, they substitute words that make them more comfortable. 

What makes them comfortable?  Presenting features and benefits.  These are the actions that don’t put their prospects on the spot, that don’t create objections, stalls, put-offs  and excuses.   Most Salespeople will avoid doing anything that will make prospects behave in a way that takes them out of their own comfort zone.  Only GREAT salespeople will behave in this productive manner.

The bottom line is that salespeople who can provide your company with a strong and consistent ROI are very scarce.   The good news is there is a remedy!  It does not require you to be a Sales Guru or magician.  All it takes is a commitment to adopting a structured, time tested, sales recruiting process using objective data to separate the candidates who can and will sell from the masses.

Happy Hunting!

© Copyright 2009 Joe Zente

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This is first in the series of several articles outlining how to grow your sales in the face of a turbulent economy. 

As daily stories of economic doom and gloom continue to dominate headlines, most companies have their own version of the current economy and its affect on them.   Some of your salespeople may be returning from calls with objections like:

• “there’s a spending freeze…”

• “it’s no longer a priority…:
• “they’re going out of business…”
• “they’re laying people off…”
• “they’re postponing the initiative…”
• “they’re only going to do half of what we spoke about…”
• “they’re too busy putting out fires…”

There are many more that we don’t need to list here.

If the doom-sayers are correct, excuse making, chronic mediocrity, under achievement, complacency and a selling skill set adequate only for wonderful times may collide head-on with a recession or possible depression.  What could be worse?  Lots could be worse.  You cannot control the global economy, but you do control the strength of your sales force.  Tremendous opportunity exists in today’s economy.

• This is the best time to evaluate and identify the real issues
• This is the best time to start training
• This is the best time to coach
• This is the best time for incentive and motivational programs
• This is an excellent time for new accountability initiatives
• This is the great time to evaluate and possibly adopt a more effective tracking system
• This is the perfect time to demand excellence and Upgrade Your Sales Force

The strong sales force in a weak economy is the dominant sales force in a strong economy.  There are so many more things you can be doing.  What are you doing to motivate your salespeople and make them more effective when it’s most important for them to be more effective?  If you’re not doing anything proactive to strengthen your sales right now, why not?

More to come…

Many entrepreneurs endure massive pain in the area of hiring salespeople before adopting best hiring practices.  If you have become tired of the addiction of hiring salespeople who require a long ramp up time just to achieve a level of mediocrity, then flat-line and never achieve anything special, this program can be your key to Sales Force Recovery and Abundance.

The 12 Step Program is essential to developing a process that consistency produces strong salespeople.   It takes approximately 12 hours to teach clients how to apply these steps to their businesses, but the following synopsis should get you well on your way.

1) Recruit Continuously
The absolute worst time to hire a salesperson is when you really need one.  Emotions and desperation will make you less likely to wait for a salesperson who will succeed and more likely to hire the first person who comes along that can allow you to get back to working on the stuff you really want to do instead.

2) Job Descriptions are NOT for Recruiting
Job descriptions should be provided AFTER the hire, not before.   First, clearly identify for yourself the obstacles that your salesperson must overcome in order to succeed.   Identify real market challenges that an individual would face.  These include items like company size, pricing compared to your competitor, number of competitors, decision maker level, length of your sales cycle, etc.  These pre-identified criteria are crucial for filling your talent pool with the right candidates.

3) The Differentiated Ad
Again, this is NOT a job description or an embellished representation of the greatness of the opportunity. Instead, simply describe the candidate you seek by describing the experiences, drawn from the list above in #2, in which the candidate has already succeeded.

4) Pump Up the Funnel
Finding a single sales superstar can require a pool of hundreds of candidates.  Most hiring managers set themselves up for failure in advance by using a pool that is way too small.   Sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com are good sources of candidates, but most companies use them incorrectly.  Effective usage can pay huge dividends in terms of both candidate volume and quality.  The Job Title field should always contain the words that candidates will use to search.  Make sure “sales” is included here. Although ads typically post for two months, reposting your ads weekly will continue the flow of resumes.  Salesladder.com is one of the best sources of high level sales candidates.  Social and business networking sites like LinkedIn also offer potential.

5) Automate the Process
Now that you’ve generated a huge funnel, it can take a lot of time to process candidates if you don’t automate.  The Rules Wizard in Microsoft Outlook can automatically identify incoming resumes, sort them into the proper Outlook folder, reply with an automated message that explains your hiring process and instructs candidates to take an assessment.  Recruiting can be time consuming.  Don’t waste valuable time talking with candidates that didn’t earn the right.

6) Resumes are Overrated                                                                                                                                Many of the best sales hunters I have ever hired are pathetic resume writers.  If you are not hiring a professional writer or designer, please do not include or reject a candidate based on a resume.  A resume contains hardly any predictive information as to whether or not a candidate will succeed in your particular sales position.  The proper way to efficiently separate the candidates that won’t succeed from those who will succeed is to assess them early in the process, before you begin to invest organizational man-hours of interview time.   Great Sales-specific assessments are available to do this properly.   These predict, with 95% accuracy, whether the candidate will succeed selling your specific product/service/solution to your decision makers in your market against your competition facing your unique challenges.

7) Phone Screen #1
Your candidate group has now been pared down to HIRABLE candidates separated by the assessment.  These represent a very small percentage of the total.  We’ll now have a 5 minute, structured conversation with these individuals.  The purpose is to learn whether they have the experience you specified in your posting and to ensure that they sound like a person you would want representing your company. 

Phone Screen #2

Candidates who passed Phone Screen#1 will then participate in a very precise 10 minute interview, where they’ll be graded and ranked. 

9) The Face-to-Face Gauntlet
Next, a face-to face interview will be conducted to challenge candidates and observe responses.   Assessment weaknesses will be probed and resume claims will be challenged.  Survivors can sell.

10) Panel Interview (optional)                                                                                                                                  If the salesperson might ultimately need to sell to groups, a highly orchestrated panel interview will be inserted here.

11) Final Interview
Now that you know those candidate(s) who can and will produce a high Sales ROI in your company, you will sell the opportunity to them.

12) 90 Day On-Boarding
A 3 month, highly-structured on-boarding program will orient your new candidate(s).  The On Boarding process is designed to teach them, train them, educate them, coach them and prepare them for exactly what it takes to succeed in your business.