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Sales Recruitment Essentials

The slow but sure reopening of the economy is not only a relief, but is also an opportunity. You must reposition your business to meet customer’s needs in the business “new normal.” In order to capitalize on the opportunity, you must have a sales organization populated with real sales studs who can adapt to a very new sales reality. The talent pool of great sellers looking for their next opportunity has never been higher. Consequently, it’s a good time to make sure your sales hiring strategy includes some key elements used by the best sales recruiters.

Photographer: Sebastian Herrmann | Source: Unsplash
  1. First, you must have a solid compensation strategy to attract and keep top sales talent on your team. Real sellers want to know that they will be well paid for performance. They’ll have a goal to be at the top of your sales stack quickly. Any good outside sales recruiter should be ask about and guide you on compensation strategy before any recruitment ads are placed.
  2. You need to have a recruitment ad that will attract the right type of person. Real sellers want to know specifically what the position you have will offer in income potential. Use specifics on current top earners’ income.
  3. Use profiling to “check under the hood” of your applicants. There are personality profiles which are both scientifically measurable and associated with top sales performers. Resumes and previous sales experience are not going to reveal the truth about a candidate. Therefore, combining profiling with the next essential step become critical.
  4. Finally, you must have a good interview strategy. It will put your in a position of being able to make decisions based on a process. Never, ever hire by “gut feel.” It is the most common error made in the sales recruitment process.

Making sure you’ve got these 4 essentials wrapped up before you start sales recruiting will increase your success rate.

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Talent Acquisition

AVERAGE SALE IS ONE METRIC THAT CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOUR BUSINESS SURVIVING OR NOT AFTER CORONAVIRUS SHUT DOWNS. SO WHAT NOW?

It should come as no surprise to anyone that while the “reopening” of the economy is hopefully in its early stages, there are a lot of people who will still be hesitant to go out and shop for anything other than absolute necessities. Some will be flat out scared. Other than doing everything you can to reassure potential customers that your business is doing everything possible to protect their safety, there is little else you can regarding their emotional state before walking into or calling your business. You can, however, do a great deal to control their emotions once in your store or on the phone asking about buying from you.

Part of this will be done in a customer service context which is certainly very important. Equally, if not more important, will be how the reduced number of customers you’ll have the opportunity to sell are managed in a sales context. And a key metric that you are able to influence is average sale. This metric will be key to making up for part of the impact fewer customers will have on your business as you pull out of shut down mode. Pushing higher margin items will amplify the positive impact higher average sales will have on your business.

So, how do I increase average sale you might ask? It’s actually quite simple, though not easy. First and foremost, you need to have the best possible sellers taking on the mission of pushing average sale metric. You will need to make them aware of what products are high margin and/or good upsells related to what the customer is planning to buy. Superstar sellers will rise to the challenge if they are well compensated for achieving the goal.

My first job out of college, somewhat to my parents’ dismay, was as a waiter in a touristy seafood restaurant on the downtown waterfront. I learned a lot from that job! I was not the best waiter in the place, but I consistently had higher tickets than the others because I knew that, for the most part, I was going to earn 10-15 cents on every dollar I sold to the diner. Same thing works no matter what the business. If the seller is a real seller and understand what’s in it for him to push that average sale, you’ll both benefit.

These are anxious times for all of us but one thing I’m sure will help your business crawl out of the shut down more quickly is a team of REAL SELLERS who can take their orders knowing there is a big reward for them once the mission is accomplished. And there are more REAL SELLERS looking for jobs right now that there have been in the last decade or more.

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