Maybe you’ve seen one; maybe you’ve even been lucky enough to hire one. There are some salesmen who seem to do everything right, from getting the right leads to closing the deals. It seems like magic; it’s like they have a crystal ball that tells them which clients to go after and how to approach each one.

The truth is, it’s not magic—not really. It’s sales intuition, and it’s how rock star salesmen are always getting better and better sales.

Although intuition is not something that can be identified on a DiSC assessment or the Values or Styles Matrices used in the AHS sales hiring system, any salesman who has strong intuitive skills is going to bring better sales to your company. By definition, intuition is the ability to know or sense something without the use of logic or rational processes. In sales, intuition tends to tip the scales, smoothing out most facets of the process. Basically, it’s selling by gut feelings.

Yes, we know. We’ve addressed the issue of how gut feelings can steer you wrong in sales hiring, but now the game has changed. Now the salesman is on the hunt—tracking down the client, discovering his problem, offering a solution, dealing with objections, and closing the sale. Let’s see how intuition will work each part of the process and create the potential for better sales.

First, finding the client. Whatever process the salesman uses to acquire leads, sales intuition can save him a lot of time if he can isolate the prospects that offer him the best chance for better sales. A little research to gather information about the prospects, and he will most likely develop some rational ideas about which ones are more open to dealing with him. But if he has a good sense of intuition, he’ll be able to use the facts to “sense” the right person to approach as well as the right style to adopt in making the initial contact.

Once contact has been made, intuition helps a salesman understand the best time to make the presentation as well as the appropriate method. When the prospect raises resistance or makes an objection, the salesman uses intuition to gain insight into what might be behind the objections and creates alternative solutions to dispel the prospect’s reservations.

Sales intuition enables a salesman to manage the delicate balance of knowing when to be assertive and knowing when to back off and give the customer some space. With intuition, he is confident that the sale will go through; he just needs to listen to the inner voice that tells him where the customer stands in relation to making the commitment, and wait for the appropriate moment to guide the prospect toward closing the deal.

To clarify, intuition is not something that just happens. It develops as the salesman focuses on what he sees, hears, and experiences as he communicates with a customer. Learning to read between the lines and interpreting body language are key in developing these magical insights. So it’s no crystal ball, but sales intuition is an invaluable tool that ultimately leads to better sales.

Long time clients and friends know that Christmas Day is my day of self-reflection and goal setting.  Things are quiet on Christmas since I’m a nice Jewish boy from Long Island.

I’ve been lucky in my life. I’ve been married to this cute little blond haired girl for 35 years now with 4 children and now, welcome to the world to my 3^rd grandson.

I’ve built half a dozen businesses and sold one that netted me a modest nest egg.

I’ve built myself a home on the beach with an unobstructed view of the sunset. And I’ve learned how to live part time in a foreign country and speak the language.

All my lists have come to me from the years of my Christmas Day goal setting exercise.

I am not any smarter than most, I’m not much more motivated than the average guy and  like Gary Halbert used to say, “I’m semi-handsome.”

I am not writing this to you to brag or blow my own horn. I am writing this to you for the simple reason that I want you, my valued clients and friends to have a happy life.

I read that one out of every 5 Americans is taking some sort of drug for depression. I’m not a licensed therapist, don’t play one of TV, but that sure seems like a heck of a lot of people.

I’ve been depressed in my life so I know what its like. But in looking back on those periods of being depressed, I think it was caused by the way I was driving my brain. You see, whether you realize it or not you do get everything out of life you want.

Not everything exactly the way you think it will be, but you set your own direction in life. Depending on the oomph you put behind it you either achieve or not.

Clarification here: This is the world according to Alan, but bear with me and hopefully some of what I am saying here will help you.

When I have been at my most productive (able to set and achieve the goals I’ve set for myself) I’ve taken the time to systematically set and achieve them.

Two steps there: 1) set and 2) achieve.

I set goals on Christmas Day for the year. Every year now since 1987 I’ve sat down and written them out. And then I save them in a folder – no fancy system. I do try to keep them in some sort of chronological order. But at the beginning of the day on Christmas they get all spread out and its kind of fun to put them back in order.

I’ve kept journals – and that is by far the best way to me see myself for who I really am, but daily journal keeping has some downside for me because I tended to be overly critical in it. I recommend you pick one day a year to write your goals from here on out.

As a human being with limited vision, my ability to see the time frame on goals is laughable. I really thought every year since 1987 I was going to have a house on the beach with an unobstructed view of the sunset that year.

I didn’t achieve the goal until 6 years ago. In other words it took me 20 years to achieve a goal that I thought I would achieve in a much shorter time frame.

But because I have developed a system for annual goal review and achievement I never lost sight of the goal. And today here I am sitting out at the Mediterranean while I write this.

A Goal to Cure Cancer and Live

I have a couple of friends I meet with by Skype every week. One of them I’ve been meeting with for nearly 20 years now on and off. (I’ve been meeting with him since long before people knew what a business friend looks like.) He was my client at Radio Profits Corporation, then I became his coaching client when he became a certified E-myth coach.

Five years ago we made a commitment to meet weekly by Skype for an hour and hold each other accountable.  One day he missed our call which was very unusual – I was the one who would miss calls, he is very disciplined (typical High-S). Later that day he sent me an email that he was in the hospital with a very aggressive form of Leukemia.

I did an internet search for his type of cancer and found “prognosis poor.” That was more than 2 years ago. We then began a series of meetings where we both committed to meditate an hour a day and to hold each other accountable for it.

Today my friend has achieved his goal of being alive, regaining his health and continuing as a business coach.

I am not saying that everyone who commits to a goal of regaining health after being diagnosed with “prognosis poor” type of cancer will regain their health. I am saying that without setting a goal to do it, then taking the steps necessary the odds fall dramatically.

Doubling Clients’ Sales Hiring Success Rate in Real Time

My commitment to you this year is to continue to improve Advanced Hiring System’s ability to help you select top sales performers. Our new StylesMatrix™ coupled with the improvements we’ve made to the ValuesMatrix™ are working perfectly.

We will be tracking our recommendations more effectively this year. We’ve done studies and we increase sales hiring success rates by 200% on average.  I’ve always wanted to be able to track that in real time across our entire client base.  This year we’ll put that in place. You’ll be hearing more about that going forward.

Thank you for the many friendships I’ve made with many of you and best wishes for a good, healthy 2014!

It goes without saying,  Google effects every aspect of our lives — and sales hiring is no exception. Having recently gone back to college to audit a course given through the  School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Understanding Media by Understanding Google, a recent incident points up just how much sales hiring has been effected by “Googlization.”

As many long-time readers of the blog know, we’re proponents of scientific modeling when it comes to filling sales positions. In its simplest form, modeling says rather than guess at what really makes a great salesperson, figure out what makes current top performers tick. Then only interview applicants who match the model of top performers.

We have based this on our experience with a sales team of 200 salespeople. We had a large team and we were attentive to tracking. As a result, we learned that key personality characteristics are common to top sales performers.

Here’s what we look for:

1. Strong practical Values scores
2. Highly persuasive Styles DISC scores
3. Examples of entrepreneurialism in their history
4. Able to demonstrate repeated examples of stick-to-it-iveness
5. Strong ability to control their internal emotional state (able to get themselves to do things they don’t necessarily want to)

But what happens when you find an applicant who Google says doesn’t pay their bills and has a string of Warrants at Circuit Court yet they seem to match the model?

That, as my friend Scott Wolf used to say “Is why you make the big bucks.” You’ve got to determine whether this applicant hit a bad patch because of the Crash of 2008 or whether you didn’t get the real answers in items 3-5 above.

Through a combination of values, styles and good interviewing skills, you can rocket your sales hiring success to Google-like heights!