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Hire Salespeople By Keeping a Journal Will Make You More Money

Let’s face it, when it come to hire salespeople is like crawling around in the dark for most managers. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I was lucky when I first started at 25 as a Sales Manager to hire salespeople. My boss, Mike, told me that training was secondary to sales hiring. He taught me that if you hire a lousy salesperson, all the training in the world will not make him great. He’ll just be a well-trained lousy salesperson.

He also taught me that if you want to get great when you hire salespeople, you have to keep records. For me that morphed in keeping a journal — well actually two journals. I’ll talk about the second journal in a minute.

But first in the management journal it is important to track which candidates you get with each ad. In this way, you know which ad pulled winners. (And which one pulled mostly duds.)

You also then track how your salespeople do at regular benchmarks. My benchmarks are 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years. At those dates I jot down the level of productivity of the salesperson.

In the Advanced Hiring System, we have incorporated this journal into the sales hiring system. (We’re looking out for your career here.) Plus we want to make it easier foir you to see how well you’re doing with the system.

If you follow this very simple system, you’ll improve every time you make a sales hire.

The second journal, well, that is a personal journal. Life is tough and having a record of your thoughts is invaluable. Being able to look back at notes I made 40 years ago are the most powerful self-improvement tool.

If you’d like to know more about tracking candidates click the button below. We’ve put together a short survey that will help you improve your sales hiring strategy.

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Talent Acquisition

Why Top-Performing Sales Managers Build a Bench

Building a sales team, filled with salespeople who do the work is the goal of all great sales managers.

It really does happen. I’ve seen many dozens of sales teams run by great sales managers. The majority of their salespeople are producers.

Years ago, I had a conversation with one of the smartest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met that sticks in my mind.

Tony Renda, Sr owned a group of 13 radio stations. Tony had started out in sales management, as so many great entrepreneurs do.

Every one of his 13 stations was a top billing station in their market.

He told me his secret for building great sales teams in his stations.

He said, “When I visit my stations I always ask the sales manager to show me his bench. Does he have a list of sales applicants he’s recently interviewed? Is he proactively looking for new sales talent and does he have a system for building a team? If not, he’d better shape up.”

It’s sad but true that too many sales managers look at sales hiring with dread. It’s the thing you do when you HAVE TO, not as an ongoing strategy for improving.

Tony said, “If there had been a system like yours when I was a sales manager it would have made it so much easier. Your system does all the work. All the sales manager has to do is write a good ad and run it and your Advanced Hiring System does the rest for them.

Today there is no excuse for lack of continuous improvement in sales departments.

Remember the definition of the job of sales manager. “Recruit, train and motivate a sales team.”

Recruit comes first. It is the most leverageable of the functions of sales manager.

Training and motivating are important. But if you don’t have the right salespeople on your team, you are “Brick Polishing.” And in case you don’t know, you can polish a brick from now until doomsday, but it will never get shiny. A weak sales hire will never get strong.

The Advanced Hiring System AAPS Profiler Sequence is in use in more than 2000 companies. We’ve put together a short survey to help you decide the quickest way to improve the quality of your sales team. Take the survey to find the best way to build a great sales team for your company.

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Talent Acquisition

Nick Saban and The Process or “What Sales Managers Need to Do to Get Back on Track”

Nick Saban, the winningest coach in the history of football, doesn’t refer to it much. But ask any one of his assistants and players what makes University of Alabama football. Without hesitation they’ll say, “The Process.”

Anyone who’s followed me for the last 20 years knows that great sports and great sales happen the same way. Individual performers who don’t make excuses. It’s all about “the buck stops here, baby.”

… great sports and great sales happen the same way. Individual performers who don’t make excuses. It’s all about “the buck stops here, baby.”

2020 has been a bear for most businesses. And if you’re a sales manager figuring out where to go from here, this post is for you.

Quoting Coach Saban:

“Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.

So what can you do right now? If you’re a Sales Manager you know your sales team has got quality performers and also-rans. The also-rans might be nice guys and gals, but in today’s tough environment the also-rans are dead.

Its only the quality people you’ve recruited who have a chance to make something happen. This is going to be a tough sales environment going forward and you need more quality on your team.

Great coaches like great sales managers pay a lot of attention to recruiting.

You’re heard me say dozens of times the job is Recruit, train and motivate. Do you have salespeople on your team who have failed to respond to training and motivating? It’s time to recruit.

And the good news is this is the best time I’ve seen in the last decade to look for real sales talent.

this is the best time I’ve seen in the last decade to look for real sales talent.

How do you go about it so you don’t end up hiring another big-talker salesperson who doesn’t do the work?

We’ve put together a short quiz that will show you the easist and quickest way to find a quality salesperson. You want someone who does the work, who picks up the phone. No excuses. This quiz will take you less that two minutes to complete. Click the link below and take the quiz. You’ll find the quickest and most effective way to get quality on your sales team.

Find out why we’re the only sales hiring system with a one-year performance guarantee. Click below to take the short quiz now.

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