I've decided to hit you all with a very focused month of blog posts. The topic will be on recruiting and upgrading your current sales team. In our Sales Management Environment Program, we focus on 5 primary components: Setting Standards and Accountability, Coaching for Success, Motivation that Works, Growing by the Numbers and Upgrading Your Sales Staff. Of the 5, Upgrading Your Sales Staff, is the MOST under-utilized and least implemented component.
Why? Because it's so damn hard. It's hard because it requires change. It's hard because it requires a whole different level of desire to be successful in sales management and a whole different level of commitment to success in sales management. It's hard because it requires 100% accountability for results. It's hard because it requires discipline to a system and process designed to disqualify candidates rather than qualify them.
At Anthony Cole Training Group, we use a licensed program to help companies reduce the cost of hiring mistakes and improve the productivity of new hires. The program is called STAR - Sales Talent Acquisition Routine. When a company implements the process and becomes "married" to its principles, recruiting top talent becomes less difficult, less expensive and more productive. In order for the program to be succesful, a company (or the sales executive) responsible for recruiting top talent must recognize and accept the following:
Let me take a minute to explain #2: No one responsible for hiring goes to HR or a more senior executive and describes a new candidate this way: "I have the most unbelievably average sales person that I want to hire!"
Almost every candidate hired is hired with the expectation of success. So, what happens? Why don't they succeed? Again, it's either because a hiring mistake was made, or the people, process and system responsible for helping them succeed, has failed. It can only be one of those two.
These 2 sales management concepts help companies recognize that they are responsbile for the current results, and the process of building a successful sales team starts with taking that responsibility and then implementing a way to upgrade the sales team.
Going back to why it is so hard to recruit your way to sales success.
1. Change - no one likes change. It's kind of like the expression: "Everyone wants to get to heaven but no one wants to die." Everyone wants to recruit better people, but no one wants to do the things necessary to get that done.
2. Desire for success in sales management and building a sales managed environment - This requires extremely hard work and a bias toward coaching, motivating and recruiting. Most sales managers end up in the position they are in because it is the only way to advance in a company if you start in sales. OR the company has a tendency to take their best sales people and make them managers because they think success in one area will lead to success in another area. Wrong. The desire needed for success in selling is completely different than the desire to be successful in sales management.
3. Commitment to do everything possible to succeed - Normally what this means is that a sales manager has to be willing to "unthink" all those beliefs they have about who to recruit, how to recruit, how to interview and how to onboard new talent. Highly successful sales people often believe that what worked for them (i.e. made them successful) is what will work for everyone. Wrong.
4. Responsibility - Time and again, I will stand in front of a group of sales managers and ask why the underperformers are underperforming and I will hear all about how "they" - the sales people - are not putting in the effort, are not executing the sales process, are failing to effectively qualify prospects, are failing to ask for the business, and are failing to cross sell, ask for introductions, or allocate enough time for prospecting.
Rarely do I hear a sales manager say that they are failing to help the sales people overcome their problems or that they have failed to find a way to make the underperformer perform at the expected levels of success. That is taking responsibility.
These 4 crucial elements for success are why upgrading - recruiting for sales success - is so damn hard.
Posted by Tony Cole
http://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/
Why? Because it's so damn hard. It's hard because it requires change. It's hard because it requires a whole different level of desire to be successful in sales management and a whole different level of commitment to success in sales management. It's hard because it requires 100% accountability for results. It's hard because it requires discipline to a system and process designed to disqualify candidates rather than qualify them.
At Anthony Cole Training Group, we use a licensed program to help companies reduce the cost of hiring mistakes and improve the productivity of new hires. The program is called STAR - Sales Talent Acquisition Routine. When a company implements the process and becomes "married" to its principles, recruiting top talent becomes less difficult, less expensive and more productive. In order for the program to be succesful, a company (or the sales executive) responsible for recruiting top talent must recognize and accept the following:
- The hiring process that they are using today is perfectly designed for the results they are getting today. If they are not happy with any outcome related to recruting top talent, then the first thing they have to do is change what they are doing.
- Those sales people that are not performing to expectations were either hired that way or made that way once they were hired.
Let me take a minute to explain #2: No one responsible for hiring goes to HR or a more senior executive and describes a new candidate this way: "I have the most unbelievably average sales person that I want to hire!"
Almost every candidate hired is hired with the expectation of success. So, what happens? Why don't they succeed? Again, it's either because a hiring mistake was made, or the people, process and system responsible for helping them succeed, has failed. It can only be one of those two.
These 2 sales management concepts help companies recognize that they are responsbile for the current results, and the process of building a successful sales team starts with taking that responsibility and then implementing a way to upgrade the sales team.
Going back to why it is so hard to recruit your way to sales success.
1. Change - no one likes change. It's kind of like the expression: "Everyone wants to get to heaven but no one wants to die." Everyone wants to recruit better people, but no one wants to do the things necessary to get that done.
2. Desire for success in sales management and building a sales managed environment - This requires extremely hard work and a bias toward coaching, motivating and recruiting. Most sales managers end up in the position they are in because it is the only way to advance in a company if you start in sales. OR the company has a tendency to take their best sales people and make them managers because they think success in one area will lead to success in another area. Wrong. The desire needed for success in selling is completely different than the desire to be successful in sales management.
3. Commitment to do everything possible to succeed - Normally what this means is that a sales manager has to be willing to "unthink" all those beliefs they have about who to recruit, how to recruit, how to interview and how to onboard new talent. Highly successful sales people often believe that what worked for them (i.e. made them successful) is what will work for everyone. Wrong.
4. Responsibility - Time and again, I will stand in front of a group of sales managers and ask why the underperformers are underperforming and I will hear all about how "they" - the sales people - are not putting in the effort, are not executing the sales process, are failing to effectively qualify prospects, are failing to ask for the business, and are failing to cross sell, ask for introductions, or allocate enough time for prospecting.
Rarely do I hear a sales manager say that they are failing to help the sales people overcome their problems or that they have failed to find a way to make the underperformer perform at the expected levels of success. That is taking responsibility.
These 4 crucial elements for success are why upgrading - recruiting for sales success - is so damn hard.
Posted by Tony Cole
http://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/
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