Better Sales – Managing Different Styles The High-S

High-S behavior is staying in one physical location for extended periods of time. High-S’s make good accounting managers and receptionists since their work requires they stay in the same physical location for extended periods of time.

The High-S is possibly a good inside salesperson PROVIDED that other criteria are met. This is discussed in the Member Area of the Advanced Hiring System website. In general, though, we recommend you stay away from High-S in salespeople.

If you’ve ever hired a salesperson who looked good, smelled good and everything seemed right with them in the interview, but they never left the office, you hired a High-S.

Many sales managers think they can train people to change their behavior. Be extremely cautious when you find this thought creeping into your head – especially with High-S’s.

When I was a young sales guy, I remember my Sales Manager going through the office at 10:00 am clapping his hands saying, “OK everyone out of the office.” He was trying to fix the High-S hirers he had made by getting them out. It was an exercise in futility as those High-S’s just go home or to their favorite coffee show.

Think back to the time you’ve hired a salesperson who you thought was spending a long time learning about the product at their desk. Did they really ever succeed? In the overwhelming majority of cases they failed.

Outside sales is Low-S behavior. It requires a personality style that enjoys going to different places – which is what is required to make sales calls.

Sales Managers: Watch This Video of a 737 Landing For a Sales Hiring Lesson

If the statistics are accurate, as a profession, sales managers hire 1 great salesperson for every 3 or 4 hires. Contrast this to commercial airline pilots who successfully land 50,000 to 70,000 planes a day.

Sales Managers: We “bat” anywhere from .250 to .300. Pretty bad. This “sales hiring failure” rate hurts:

• your reputation as a manager and leader
• sales as a profession
• your company
  • lost revenue
  • lost salary to the bad hires
  • lost reputation in your markets
  • poor morale in your sales department
• our clients miss a chance to take advantage of our company’s products and have to settle for our competitor’s inferior offering
• the poor shlub you hire
  • is wasting his or her time
  • hates their job
  • doesn’t make any real money
  • in truth should never have gone into sales

Here’s why pilots succeed:

Because they know their decision is a life or death situation. Pilots have developed a system with a series of benchmarks. They check those benchmarks off every single time.

Haven’t you suffered enough hiring salespeople the old fashion way?

Check out this amazing video

Writing Ads to Hire Sales people — Do You Make This Mistake in Writing Ads to Hire Salespeople?

When I first started hiring salespeople I didn’t pay very much attention to writing the ad for hiring salespeople. Back then I took the attitude that if they weren’t motivated enough to seek me out to heck with them.

Today I realize that was a big mistake. 

Why? Because top salespeople don’t grow on trees. Top salespeople are a rare and precious commodity – and they are essential to my success in my business.

My thinking — that top salespeople were going to figure out that I was the kind of company they should want to work — for was foolish.

As a result of this mistake, I was required to have to sift through way too many duds. But even more deadly to my effort to find those super salespeople is that they never even considered me.

Let me explain:

We all have a certain image of ourselves – ways we describe ourselves to ourselves, if you will.

What makes top salespeople different is first of all what happens inside themselves. And how they communicate to themselves about themselves is different from what the average salespersons does.

If I think of myself as a unique, special top-performer type salesperson, then the standard ad is simply not going to get me interested enough to apply.

Don’t kid yourself, most ads for salespeople are simply horrible. I joke in seminars that most ads for salespeople look like they were written by people who hate salespeople. Unfortunately, it’s not really a joke.

Check it out yourself, as a sales manager when you see someone who’s a great salesperson what do you think? Something like “Wow, he or she is really effective, they’re so in control of their communication.”

But people who are not salespeople’s reaction is, “they are such salespeople, so superficial.”

So the next time you decide it’s time to take steps to grow your sales by improving your sales team, be sure that someone who respects sales as a profession writes the ad for salespeople.