Last week I talked about how Jim Cecil had introduced me to the concept of selecting salesmen using Values and DISC styles tools. This week I’d like to share one of the other brilliant ideas Jim gave me 20 years ago that changed my life.

The concept, which he called Drip Marketing, is based on sending out a series of letters to a target market. But not just any letter, it should be a letter with a 3-dimensional grabber attached.

Jim explains the strategy is based on nurturing the prospect.

First, making sure your letter provides valuable information. Make it something that they are happy to receive and is not just about you. This is step one in giving them something.

Then, attached a small party favor type gift relevant to the letter. By doing so you are setting yourself apart, demonstrating you are a giver and providing a valuable “anchor”.

The world is filled with takers, says Jim, demonstrate you are a giver and you stand out from your competitors.

I’ve built 2 successful businesses in the past 20 years based on the principle of giving using Jim’s nurture mail including attaching a 3-dimensional gift.

Technically, after you mail the second letter, start calling at around the time they will be opening their letter. If you miss them on letter #2 do the same thing for letter #3 and so on.

When they get on the phone, introduce yourself and tell them you’re the person that sent them a letter with the widget attached. They’ll remember you, guaranteed. Then start finding out how you can help them solve the problem that your company solves.

Works every time.

Is There Really a “Sales Mindset” (And If So, Can It Be Trained?)

I think it’s easier to hire an MD than it is to hire new salesmen.

Think about it. I don’t know the statistics, but I’ll bet the percentage of MD’s who fail, is nowhere near 60%.

In sales hiring, average failure rate is right around 60%. That means that 2 out of 3 of your sales hires are mediocre or worse. If you can afford to carry mediocre salespeople then, maybe it gets to 1 out of 2.

Hiring for MD’s is straightforward. You need an applicant with a degree and specific training in the specialty you’re hiring for.

In sales there’s no degree and the ones who really are kicking butt in sales already aren’t applying for a new job because they’re already making a great living.  So what do you do?

Look for Sales Mindset and Then Train Them on Your Product

So what is the Sales Mindset? First it’s based on the applicant’s value’s – what is the first they think of when they get out of bed in the morning.

Top sales performers don’t wake up, open their eyes and say to themselves, “How can I serve humanity today?” — that is not a part of the Sales Mindset. Top performers are what are called “Practical Personality Styles.” They wake up and ask themselves where the money is and where the power is.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBS0OWGUidc]

Top performers (the ones that possess this Sales Mindset) have in addition to their innate ability to sell, a positive world view, a sense of stick-to-it-iveness, and the internal discipline to follow through.

Fortunately, there are profiles you can use to determine whether your applicant has the Sales Mindset. To try one of the profiles yourself follow this link and fill out the form. Sales Manager and CEO’s only, please.

How to Hire Sales People Under Pressure

(or How to Hire a Dud Salesperson)

One of the most common mistakes made in hiring salespeople is hiring under pressure.

I wish I could give you some tricks to improve the odds of hiring successfully under pressure. The fact is that, short of using lucky fairy dust, the odds of making a successful sales hire under pressure is less than 1 in 5.

  To understand why hiring top sales performers takes time, compare hiring under pressure to trying to make quota on the last day of the month.

There you are on the last day of the month, one big sale away from making goal and collecting your bonus. But anyone with an ounce of experience in sales knows the odds of succeeding are not good. Yes, it’s possible. (And we sales types are optimistic by nature.) But the odds are low of making quota on the last day of the month.

“Having studied the problem for years, I think it comes down to a question of too much pressure.”

Let’s try to imagine the problem with making the big sale on the last day of the month. First of all, you don’t have enough time to really prospect for the most likely buyers. And second, you will unconsciously be applying too much sales pressure. Pressure doesn’t work, but your bonus is at stake so you apply a bit too much urgency.

Same thing with trying to hire under pressure. Our research shows hiring a top performer means you need to filter through 25 applicants. Filtering means more than “I’m only talking to them if they have previous sales experience or not.”

From those 25 applicants, you then need to get down to 3 who you will interview intensively. And by interviewing intensively I mean conducting at least 3 – and preferably 4, well-planned interviews with each of those applicants.

Our research shows that it takes four interviews to really get to know whether the applicant really did all the things they claimed they did.

Hiring well is one the most profitable activities a sales manager does. Our research also shows, unfortunately it is the thing that tends to get left until last. Hence the average sales manager’s rather unspectacular record as a sales hirer.