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

Outsourcing Your Sales Department?

In a recent call with a prospect, the question of “outsourcing the sales function” came up.

Outsourcing your sales department
Another bad idea

Rather than answer the question directly, I asked him what he meant by that. He proceeded to tell me that he had read how some companies are outsourcing everything, including their sales effort. However, he said, from his perspective it was not a particularly good idea.

He’s right.

Rather than tell you why outsourcing sales won’t work for most companies, let me tell you where it does work.

One client has been successfully outsourcing their sales effort. They are in the Internet advertising business and are now placing their inventory with brokers. This  company sells  “clicks”. This is a totally generic product. Where one click might be better than another click, it is adjusted through tracking results. Their click and Google’s click are essentially the same thing. If their click is better than Google’s click, the results are all tracked and balanced out. There is no way that Google will get more than his click.

On the other hand, client David W. is moving from a rep strategy for his internationally marketed industrial products. Rep firms are outsourced sales teams. However David is reversing the “outsourcing” because he knows that having his own rep in a territory means better sales focus and better accountability.

Another example is when, ten years ago the radio advertising business got all excited about selling its inventory like Google sells clicks. A former partner created a company to do this and sold it to Google. It was a giant dud. He made millions. Google ended up shutting it down and writing off their investment. Why? Because local advertising is not a commodity. It responds to sales effort and it cannot be tracked the way clicks on the Internet can.

Where its true, in my view, that business has used the excuse of this Crash of 2008 to outsource and downsize, efforts to outsource the sales effort have been a failure. In fact, when the Government stops QE whatever number we’re on, companies who’ve been ramping up sales efforts will prosper. Nothing works better than a great sales team to improve the top and bottom line.

photo credit: markhillary via photopin cc

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Valentines Day: DISC Styles Technique For a Good Marriage

Can DISC Profiles explain why some couples, like my wife Leah and I, have stayed married for 43 years? Or why other couples “throw in the towel” long before “death do us part?”

I didn’t pick my wife based on her DISC profile — in fact, I didn’t know beans about DISC Profiles when I first met her. I just really liked being around her. However having learned to read DISC styles has helped us stay together.

Our marriage has had its ups and downs. There were many times over the past 43 years that I was ready to call it quits and so was she.

DISC is a personality style system. It’s a tool that’s been around for nearly 100 years and has gone through constant refinements. In DISC we measure four aspects of the human personality. We then look at the relationship of those aspects. Then establish both a Natural more permanent style and an Adapted situational style.

In order for DISC styles to be helpful in making a marriage work, the interface of the two partners styles needs to be managed by them. This is easier for some styles to do than others — regardless it can be learned. For a marriage to work, often the responses need to be “Oh, its their personality style that is causing them to…”

I think one partner will tend to compromise more than the other. Certain styles are more happy to bend.

In a society that values Drive and Achievement, we focuson maximum achievement. In my opinion, this tends to partner two high Drives. Unless Drivers are very self-aware, this is often a prescription for disaster.

The four aspects of DISC are Drive, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.

DRIVE: That voice inside my head saying “I’ve got to make it”, “I can do it”, “I’m the one who can make this happen”, “It’s all about me”. Drive is about putting my ego on the line, if I fail I am hard on myself. The Drive voice inside my head talks tough to myself.

Under pressure Drivers tend to push people, rather than lead and they become impatient.

INFLUENCE: My ability to communicate with others in a way they like to be communicated with. Influence is about my flexible communication style. Influence is my ability to measure the effect of my communication on others. How I adjust to get my message through.

Under pressure Influencers become all heart over head. They rely too heavily on verbal ability.

STEADINESS: My desire to stay for extended periods of time on one physical location. Steadiness is the desire for less movement and more stability. It is my desire for routines.

Steadies under stress resist change. They internalize feelings when they should be discussing them.

COMPLIANCE: My belief in the value and importance of rules. My comfort in following the rules.

When feeling pressure Compliants experience analysis paralysis and avoid controversy.

As it turns out, my wife Leah and I have complimentary styles. Fortunately despite be a Driver, I had the good sense to look for someone who is kind hearted and let’s things go.

Oh, and we don’t marriage counseling here at Advanced Hiring. We use these power tools to help clients hire great salespeople. If you’re looking to hire great salespeople we’ve put together a quick one minute quiz that will help. Click the button below to take the short quiz.

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