Video Rant #9

A Big Reason Why Your Company Struggles
To Hire Salespeople Who Can REALLY Sell

One of my best friends sold for me 20 years ago at Radio Profits Corporation. AMAZING salesperson. Once he gets the prospect in his crosshairs, they may as well just hand over their wallet. The beauty is, they don’t know they’re being sold. Everything Bruce says is just totally logical. No pressure. No emotion. Just comfortable as hell.

People love him. His prospects become his customers and his friends.

So then we sold Radio Profits. Bruce went to work for a company selling environmental testing and construction testing. It’s a BIG market. Companies need a lot of scientific tests to comply with government regulations. For instance, companies have to satisfy a long list of health regulations, to keep things safe for consumers and avoid problems with the government.

So testing is a monster business. Bruce sold for one of the biggest companies that do this testing. One day he showed me that company’s compensation strategy. It was like a maze. Every paragraph had something you couldn’t figure out. It was so convoluted, the company sales team used to joke about it.

Bruce sold more of this testing than anybody else on the East Coast, double or triple the #2 guy. And he’d only been with them a year or two. He was stomping it. BUT he wasn’t the top earner. And THAT was extremely de-motivating to him. Company eventually went broke. They just weren’t very profitable, because the sales team wasn’t being paid very well for the deals they brought in.

It’s not that unusual. A LOT of compensation strategies are not well-engineered. Too complicated. BIG mistake.

A star salesperson who’s considering joining your sales team sees it as a very bad indicator if your compensation plan is hard to understand. A good salesperson looks at that and thinks, “These are smart guys. They could make it easy to understand. But they didn’t. If they make it tough for me to figure out how I’m being paid, then THAT makes it easier for them to screw me.”

That type of compensation plan will NOT result in a strong bottom line for your company.

This is Alan Fendrich. I’d be happy to give you my thoughts on your company sales compensation plan. Give me a call.

Video Rant #2

My client Tom has used our service to build a team of solid sales pros.

He laughs a bit and tells me the 3 words he’s SO thankful to get from us, because they’ve saved him SO much time and SO many headaches. And the 3 words are…

“DO – NOT – INTERVIEW!”

When you get THAT message from us, it means the prospect profile testing shows an applicant who does NOT have the values or style of a top salesperson.

And that means the chance is sky-high if you hire that person, they’ll cost you time, money, and headaches. They’ll flame out. And then you’re back at the beginning. You have to start all over again.

I’m telling you now, you MUST NOT INTERVIEW any applicant who has not passed our profile testing.

And it gets tricky, because if you DO interview these guys, they often really impress you in the interview. But then, you pay the price later. You’ll NEVER build a solid sales team when your applicant pool is full of people who are not money-motivated. They can fool anybody in the interview. But they can’t fool our testing.

You GOTTA understand how crucial this is. I can’t tell you how many companies have come to us in bad, bad shape. And when I profile their sales force, it turns out their sales team is a bunch of people who are NOT motivated by money and power. THAT is the kiss of death.

Look. I know it’s hard for you and me to believe this. But the vast majority of sales applicants are happy JUST to earn a living. Oh, they may have wet dreams about kicking butt revenue-wise. But they just will never make the effort necessary to make it happen. They will NOT put themselves in front of a consistent stream of qualified prospects, day after day, week after week, month after month. They can’t handle the rejection. It’s too much PAIN for them. So they go into hiding. Those guys will NEVER bring home the bacon for you.

Our profile testing identifies WHICH of your applicants are clones of legendary salespeople, and which ones are hoping you’ll be their next sugar daddy.

You NEED us to test every applicant you have. It will change your life.

This is Alan Fendrich at Advanced Hiring System. Give me a call.

I’ve just finished my cousin, Martin Greenfield’s book “The Measure of a Man.” It is the story of an amazing life. From surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps to becoming suit maker to world leaders. American Presidents including Truman, Eisenhower,  Busch, Clinton and Obama are all dressed by Martin.  Presidential hopefuls  including Bloomberg, Collin Powell and The Donald are among his customers.

As a selling professional, “Salesmanship in Action” would be my subtitle.

Martin is a great story teller — and an amazing salesman.  Written from the most personal perspective, you won’t be able to put it down.
Growing up on Long Island in NY, my Dad would take me to Brooklyn when he had his suits made by Martin.

As a young American boy, I remember the rows of workers in the factory. Many of the workers had numbers tattooed on their arms from the concentration camps.

Martin would stop at the workstations of the hundreds of workers. He’d make small talk in Yiddush and introduce my Dad to them.

Every Passover Seder we would go to Martin and Arlene’s home.

We all knew the story of how Martin, the orphan, had arrived in the US after the Second World War.  And how he had become a master clothier for some of the world’s most successful men. Yet, we were forbidden to ask Martin about the number on his arm.

I was with Martin in Jerusalem two years ago. I saw how Martin, at 83, is still a vigorous and persuasive salesman. We went to the Great Synagogue together on Saturday morning. Within 20 minutes, Martin had met and was invited to a meal with some of Jerusalem’s most successful men. No pressure, just pure charm and warmth — and never having met any of them. Of course, he told me later, some of those men ended up wearing Martin Greenfield suits.