If you are hiring an exceptional sales person, look for someone who wants to help his or her prospects. The emphasis is on help. For the “Me” generation, it’s not about “You,” it’s about “Them.” And as long as it is about “You” and only making the sale, your prospects won’t trust you, and you won’t make the sale.
Read MoreI believe one characteristic of likeability is “Authenticity.” The dictionary defines authenticity as the quality of being genuine. As an adjective, “Accurate in representation of the facts, trustworthy, reliable.” How do we look for authenticity in hiring sales people?
Read MoreEmotional intelligence is the ability to understand other’s emotional and psychological state as well as one’s own reactions and emotions. Intuitively it makes sense that to do well in sales, you not only need to understand your prospects emotions, but your own as well. Is there a correlation between EQ and sales ability?
Read MoreI prefer to hire smart sales people. The smarter the better. Changes in the market over the last ten years require smart people to help prospects solve problems. Not just the problems the prospect knows about, but problems they haven’t thought about yet.
Read MoreIt’s the category of internal candidate criteria we tend to focus on the most when hiring sales people. We tend to hire people we like, and we like people like ourselves. So hiring for internal criteria his is where our gut takes over. However, you can use corporate values and your own list of internal criteria. Here are mine.
Read MoreEvery VP of Sales and Sales Manager will tell you that the most important thing they can do to achieve forecast is to “hire right.” The question is why so many struggle with this process?
Read MoreThe tagline for Agile Marketing is the phrase “Do, Learn, Adapt.” One common mistake is to believe that simply implementing something quickly is Agile Marketing. It depends. Implementing the wrong thing doesn’t help anyone.
Read MoreChallenging your team requires that you do things smarter and not just harder. There are some goals where working smarter is difficult.
One common case of the “false challenge” can occur in sales forecasting. It stems from the belief that sales people are lazy and will sandbag their numbers. So management might add 20% to their numbers regardless of history or latitude.
Doing great things doesn’t come naturally. It requires an internal drive and often it also requires some external demand.
Several years ago I had the privilege of watching a senior executive challenge a small team intent on developing a new business.
I once owned a partnership in the Sheila Yeates; a gaff-rigged topsail ketch. She was a beautiful ship, 48 feet on the water line and 65 feet overall, built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and launched in 1976. The Sheila Yeats sank in the north Atlantic in 1989.
Read More