First, no apologies about the term, "Sales Warriors" since some may not feel that it is not politically correct.
In fact, I did learn long ago that this wonderful profession of Sales is not about "doing battle". It's not about negotiation or manipulation or trying to outwit the person on the other side of the table. It's no longer about "good-old-boy" relationships
The true excitement about Sales today is the realization finally that the real job of all of us as sales warriors is not to do battle, but to deliver to our customers one simple word: "VALUE". And, the other equally important realization that if I cannot provide true and long-lasting VALUE to those new prospects and existing customers, then I'm going to ultimately totally fail in my job.
Taking this concept of sales warriors one step further, my own experience as a coach is that success comes only to those sales leaders who...
To the #1 bullet, of hiring the best, if I review the stats from our own practice and the guys and expertise at Sirius Decisions, (you should sign up for their blogs at the very least) as sales managers in general, we do a really poor job of hiring. We way too often hire on superficial gut feel and resume dust, while not going through an analytical assessment and testing process.
As a result, plus the fact that most managers do an equally bad job of providing consistent skills training to our warriors, the turnover rates of the typical B2B sales team, combining Voluntary and Involuntary averages 20% plus. In the tech space, where we focus a lot of our time, we know that the number ranges from a low of 20% to 35%.
How could anyone live with even 20%?
Click on the link above and then just page down a little to Section 4, Hiring Sales People the Right Way. Make sure that your speakers are turned and sit back and enjoy!
Pay formal attention to the Skills, Experience and Attributes Triangle, and you will immediately increase your ability to hire and retain the very best while significantly reducing that ugly haunting churn rate that plagues all of those other guys.
Just to leave this discussion, take a quick look at the following very compact and thought provoking HBR blog, which arrived this week, on The Best Ways to Hire Salespeople for their own perspective and related stats.
-George for Finance & Sales Effectiveness
-Bob for Entrepreneurship and Business Planning
-Steve for Organization & Management Development
-Jan for Marketing
... and, of course, for Sales Productivity Improvement, just email me, and we'll set up a time to talk.
The deadline for submissions for this spring's semester is December 15th. Projects will be sent to the students for assessment and team creation at the end of December.
If you're interested in finding out more, just email me at jack@derbymanagement.com. Of course, I'm biased and, yes, more than a bit passionate about Tufts, but I must say somewhat objectively that our results, as attested to buy our customer companies, have been outstanding with many companies coming back year after year.
Good Selling!
Every single day now counts as we move through this last quarter of the year!
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