Better Sales – Managing Different Styles The High-C

High-C is about compliance – following “the rules.” High-C’s are mechanical and committed to being accurate. These characteristics present a challenge for someone who you’ve hired to sell for you.

Since selling is about breaking rules, if you have hired a High-C the odds are they are not making it. And worse, High-C’s really are not cut out for sales in 99.9% of cases. (At least in high sales driven types of sales organizations.)

High-C’s are worried in general as a result of their desire to be accurate. Felix Unger is the ultimate High-C.

Contrast this to top sales performers who are relaxed and, dare I say, a bit loose with the details. Put this note on your wall “High-C’s Can’t Sell” – it will save you a lot of time and energy.

As a student of sales hiring and sales management, I follow the work of quite a few trainers. One of the best is Jim Cecil.

I first met Jim Cecil when he was one of the key presenters at a week-long marketing event in Los Angeles. “You’ve got a good memory,” he said, “that was 20 years ago.” Seems like yesterday…

Jim is the “real deal”. Having lead hundreds of sessions for Vistage throughout his career, you don’t get to be a regular presenter for Vistage without being a true achiever in business.

Yet, despite his business mastery, Jim Cecil, is one of the most genuinely giving men you’ll ever have a conversation with. There’s not a sense in talking with him (as is so often the case of achievers of his caliber) of haughtiness. He gets a kick out of sharing his ideas on what makes sense in marketing and management.

This week as Jim and I were talking, he touched on two of his favorite topics: how to select top sales performers and how to get and keep customers.

On selecting top sales performers, Jim said, “We introduced the concept of using profiles nearly thirty years ago. And, yet, it’s incredible that the majority of small businesses still hire salespeople without profiling. It’s no wonder that so many sales departments have so many weak salespeople.”

True story: when I first heard Jim talk about the concept of user-profiles as a selection process in Los Angeles 20 years ago, it changed my view of hiring salespeople. As a result, I went on to build a team of 200 salespeople. The statistics on our team was unheard of at the time. We destroyed the 80/20 rule and had a much lower turnover rate than anyone else was achieving – I owe it all to the ideas Jim shared.

In my next post, I’ll publish some of Jim’s thoughts on one of his favorite topics next, “Drip Marketing – Or How to Get a Meeting With Anyone (And Why They’ll Be Looking Forward to the Meeting and Hearing Your Ideas.)”

If you have questions for Jim, post them here.

Sale Personality Test and “The Art of Learning”

I just finished reading Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning. Josh was the young chess champion star of the movie “In Search of Bobby Fisher.”  If you haven’t seen the movie it’s a 2 Thumbs up from Advanced Hiring System in the human excellence category.

The Art of Learning is different from the movie in that Waitzkin discusses how he learned to first become a world chess champion and, then, a world champion martial artist.

Pretty amazing stuff to achieve that level of excellence — to be both a world champion chess and world champion martial artist.

The book  is about learning strategies he used. It’s applicable to Sales Managers who are charged with training top sales performers to achieve even more in their careers.

One criticism I had with the book is the author never mentions how to identify personality styles with the predisposition to achieve high levels of success. (Sales managers looking to hire salespeople would use sales tests.)

Having worked with Sales Managers for nearly 14 years who are responsible for hiring salespeople the question is “Is this applicant I am interviewing a master interviewee or a master salesperson?”

All too often managers make that mistake of believing the applicant who sells well in the interview is a good seller. We disagree.

Virtually no one hires an applicant who interviews poorly – yet only a small minority of sales hires are top performers.

Here we have found that sales managers who use Advanced Hiring System’s scientifically validated sales tests achieve much higher levels of sales hiring success. Because they are able to be sure that the applicants they are interviewing actually have the proven personality characteristics of top sales performers.