The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about many changes. While some businesses have hit rock bottom, some are thriving and hiring at scale. Businesses in customer care, retail, healthcare, digital marketing, and online training industries are actively hiring because of the new market demands. But unfortunately, recruitment techniques that have been used for years aren’t the same anymore. The need for social distancing has made recruiters and HR professionals work from home, making the shift inevitable. Let’s understand how things have changed.

How has recruitment changed now that COVID-19 is here?

Before the pandemic hit the entire world, recruitment couldn’t be imagined without face-to-face interviews. But considering the criticality of the situation, organizations are adapting to new methods of recruitment to prevent the spread of the virus. Let’s understand how.

Virtual Recruitment: Once a prospective candidate is found, HR professionals are conducting virtual interviews in which the candidates need not visit the corporate office for the interview process. Instead, interviews are happening over video calls.

There are quite a few reliable virtual interview apps that allow scheduling and sending interview invitations, and then interviewing candidates over a video call. Some platforms also allow having virtual job fairs in which several candidates can join a chat room at once and recruiters can get to know them. Moreover, virtual interviews are equally interactive since the HR professional can assess body language, expressions, and gestures, just as they would in an in-person interview.

Candidate Experience: Now that traditional interviews are slowly becoming a thing of the past, HR professionals are going the extra mile to ensure good candidate experience. Here are a few tips that you can also use to deliver good candidate experience if you’re currently hiring:

• Use consistent content or messaging across all channels to communicate how you’re taking effective measures to ensure the safety of candidates. This will also empower you as a brand.
• Provide candidate resources that would help them appear in the virtual interview without any hassle. For example, help them get access to the software or give them a simple guide for the interview process.
• Do not delay interviews hoping that you will soon be able to conduct an in-person interview. Your competitors may take advantage of every minute you lose and it will also have a negative impression on the candidate.
• Build a landing page to which the candidates can be directed to for answers to questions they may have.

Applicant Tracking System: Using an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is one of the most important recruitment techniques if you’re hiring at scale. It will allow you to work remotely and also make sure that you have the “right” candidate. During the pandemic, employers are hiring based on their fluctuating requirements. For example, many are hiring for flexible roles that may change post-pandemic and many are also hiring candidates on a contractual basis. And an ATS will help you screen the applications based exactly on your requirements so that you don’t unnecessarily spend time and resources on irrelevant applications. Moreover, you can also leverage its other benefits, such as:

• One-click job posting
• Resumes and applications repository
• Seamless interview scheduling
• Automated resume parsing
• Automated emails and follow-ups
• Analytics for conversion rate

Remote Onboarding: Remote work has become a new trending order to minimize physical interaction as much as possible. And to ensure safety even further, employees are being onboarded digitally without having to even set foot in the workplace. But this isn’t as easy as it sounds. To make onboarding seamless, you must:

• Make training is available to new employees so that they can adapt well.
• Give them some time to absorb all the information.
• Communicate the organization’s culture to the new employee.

How you onboard a new employee can make a lot of difference since it can make or break the employee experience. Without it, you can’t say that you have made a successful hire.

Avoid common mistakes and form a new recruitment strategy that adapts to the changes as quickly as you can, because how you do it will determine the future of your organization.

Author Bio:
Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager specializing in HR and is responsible for leading Jobsoid’s content and social media team. When Kelly is not building campaigns, she is busy creating content and preparing PR topics. She started with Jobsoid as a social media strategist and eventually took over the entire digital marketing team with her innovative approach and technical expertise.

In today's blog post, we discuss motivation in sales.  The problem, in many cases, is that the sales executive in charge of getting more out of their sales team has no idea what motivates those people on the team.  

Without knowing what motivates his/her employees, how could you possibly create a motivating environment?

As many of you know, we use the Objective Management Group's (OMG) assessment to evaluate every organization that we do sales and sales management training, coaching and consulting for.  The process helps us (and our clients) determine with great accuracy the answers to these 4 questions:       

1. Can we be more effective (sell more, more quickly at better margins)?
2. How much more effective could we be?
3. What would it take?
4. How long would it take?

Answering these four questions requires the ability to uncover at least two important contributors to improved effectiveness:

1. Their “will” to improve in selling and sales management
2. Their ability (sales and sales management DNA)

6 FACTORS THAT DETERMINE THE WILL TO SELL

There are 6 known contributing factors that OMG uses to determine “will to sell”  (click here to inquire about the pre-hire assessment tool).

1. Desire to succeed in selling
2. Commitment to succeed in selling
3. Motivation
4. Outlook
5. Responsibility
6. Enjoyment of selling

A CONSISTENTLY RECURRING QUESTION

I don't believe there is a way to effectively rank those factors in terms of relevant importance.  Having used the tool and delivered results to dozens of companies and hundreds of people, my experience is that these 6 work together to form a puzzle that gives you an overall picture of someone’s “will to sell”.  In this article, however, I want to focus on motivation because,often, when attending my workshops, attendees consistently the question,

“How do I motivate or keep my people motivated?”

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ARE YOU MOTIVATED?

What motivates you?  If you are a manager, what is motivating your people?  If you are not motivated to:

• Be more effective
• Be more successful
• Compete to be the best
• Sell more to make your lifestyle dreams a reality

I have to ask: Why?

ALL ENCOMPASSING - MOTIVATION INVOLVES EVERYTHING

Let me address two things:

• Personal motivation
• Motivation of others

My experience – my own true, personal experience - about motivation is that when you desire something greatly in your heart, then you will live and breath the desire to make the dream a reality.  Many of you know I played football at UConn.  I always considered myself blessed beyond reason to have had the opportunity to make my dream a reality.  But blessed does not stand alone as the only contributing factor for the scholarship. 

Yes, I had some God-given talents (nature), but I also had some external factors (nurture) that contributed to my success.  Those factors were Mom and Dad and the attitudes they instilled in me regarding hard work, anything is possible, don’t give up, and success requires commitment.  I learned early on that, if you really want to accomplish something great in your life, you must be willing to give up some things to get where you want to go.

• When my classmates were going to Lee’s house to party after a game, I did not.
• I hated vegetables, but my dad told me he would tell Coach Cacia I wasn’t eating right – I wasn’t going to let that happen.
• At the end of a long day – 12 hours – working on the farm, I still ran my miles and lifted weights.
• When I got beat on a certain play during practice, I would make that person pay the price on the next play.
• I ran sprints every day at the end of practice.
  
  

THE REAL DEAL – MOTIVATION IS PERSONAL

When I answer the question - How do I motivate my people? - for workshop attendees, I tell them, “You cannot motivate them.  Motivation is an inside-out job and they have to come to the table with their own motivation.  The best you can do is create an environment where people want to come and they want to be motivated and excited because they have personal reasons to be successful.”

While assessing numerous organizations, we have found three things that hinder the motivation and success of the sales team: 1) 90% of the sales managers don’t believe they need to know what motivates their sales people.  2) 25% of the sales managers are not motivated to be successful in the role of sales manager and 3) Virtually 100% of the salespeople lack personal goals, lack a personal goal plan and fail to have a process in place to track if they are achieving goals.

Without knowing what motivates your salespeople, how could you possibly create a motivated environment or sales team? 

Why do so many of my salespeople fail to perform as expected?  It's a loaded question.  Or, is it?  In our corporate sales training experience, we've seen that evaluating underperforming salespeople in the pre-hire sales assessment is crucial for success in your business.

From poor diagnosis of the right contributing factors for success, to other candidates being eliminated due to weaknesses rather than hiring on sales STRENGTHS, there are specific reasons that not all of your salespeople are performing the way that you thought they would.

Did you hire them this way or did you make them this way?  Let's take a look...

If you are a sales leader and you look at your numbers and the people producing those numbers, do you ever scratch your head in confusion over why you are looking at a lack of sales results?

Certainly, you didn’t hire these people to be in the middle of the pack or at the tail end of the conga line, but that is right where they are.  I know you don’t believe you hired them that way, but it’s either that, or you made them that way.

Don’t get upset with me here.  The reality is that your team’s performance is a result of who you’ve hired or what you’ve done (or not done).

So, in general, why do so many salespeople fail to perform? I have detailed answers to that question that you will be hard pressed to find anywhere else besides right here.

• Underperformers have 80% of the desire of top performers. *Note – not all performers have off-the-chart desire – that is about 7% of all top sales people.
• Those that underperform have about 44% of the commitment to succeed in selling that top performers do.
• These two factors combine to measure motivational level. Underperformers have about 60% of the motivation of your top people.

SUMMARY – Underperformers just are not as motivated to succeed.

SOLUTION – STOP hiring people that are not motivated to succeed at the highest level of performance!

Using the Objective Management Sales Evaluation, there are over 100 data points to measure the opportunity for sales growth of a sales team/organization.  Additionally, this data helps us to predict the likelihood of success of new sales people and managers. 

Here are some interesting findings based on the raw data I have from assessing salespeople (as well as firsthand knowledge of some of the people in the study).

• Top performers are trainable and coachable
• Top performers have a high figure-it-out factor
• Top performers have a low need for approval and…
• Top performers score an average of 86.8 (higher score is better) and underperformers score 39.6 for handling rejection!
• Top performers are hunters, consultative sellers and closers (average score for skills is 55% of required skills while underperformers average 39.6% of required skills)

SUMMARY – Salespeople – regardless of tenure or previous success - need training and coaching. Also top performers handle rejection extremely well and move on.

SOLUTION – Do not hire based on past performance. (It’s like investing in a mutual fund – past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.)  During the interview process, reject the heck out of the candidate – the strong ones will recover and attempt to close you over and over again!

The following data indicates that sales strengths are better indicators of success rather than sales skills:

• Underperformers have 85% of the sales skills of top performers and have…
• Only 71% of the sales strengths that support execution of sales skills and…
• The severity of their sales weaknesses are 52% higher than that of top performers

SUMMARY – The skills are about the same, but those with strong strengths of desire, commitment, outlook and responsibility win.

SOLUTION – Make sure your pre-hire assessment process looks for strengths and “will sell” rather than just skills, personality and behavioral traits.

So, back to the original question:   “Why do so many of my salespeople fail to perform as expected?”:

• Poor diagnosis of the right contributing factors for success
• Candidates eliminated due to weaknesses rather than hiring for sales strengths
• Too much credit given to sales skills exhibited during interview process
• Lack of solid training and development on the root causes of poor performance

Now that you have the answers to the question, what will you do about it?

In Part 1 of "Negotiating on the First Tee, we discussed the practice of negotiating with your prospect before you begin your presentation.  In Part 2, we continue this discussion and add more to the conversation.

In order to increase sales and close more deals, you must understand the client's business strategy, build a strong foundation for negotiation, and cross off all the boxes for a killer Sales DNA.

1. Establishing the ground rules for time of presentation are critical. Before we get to that though, you must have a transitional discussion
   • "Let me take a minute to review where I think we are..."
   • "You have the following issues a,b, and c that if not taken care of within this time frame will cause the following to happen and this outcome is a have to fix problem"
   • "Your capacity to invest time, money and effort to fix the problem is this…"
   • "And I’m assuming for a minute that if we are able to fix this for you, in the budget you’ve identified with the right criteria and priorities, you would also want me to be in a position to answer any and all questions at that time"
   • "Did I get this right?" (Buyer says yes)
   • "Good, assuming we can do this I will be prepared to do all those things. If I can’t, I will call in advance and cancel our presentation meeting.  Fair?" (Fair)
2. Ground rules discussion:
   • "It may not be effective here, but there is a process that we recommend to make sure we are all on the same page, can I share that with you?" (Yes)
   • I need for you to be prepared as well:
     • "As I am going through my presentation, you will be thinking one of 2 things: 1) this makes all the sense in the world; let’s do this, 2) This won’t work for me, the money is wrong or I don’t think there is a fit"
     • "When I’m finished, I’m going ask you which one you are thinking. What objections do you have to that process?"
   • Anticipate and prepare for objections when you complete step six. Keep in mind that  an objection, stall or questions does NOT mean they are telling you no. They just need more information or you need to find out more clarity about compelling issues, capacity to invest or clarity on decision making. At the end, you do your best to eliminate any TIOs (Think It Overs)
   • Let's assume for a minute that this works for you. You are not done minimizing the opportunity for negotiation at time of presentation.  When you finish this discussion, you must return to your  office and write out and send the "As we agreed to letter" that covers the 3 “Cs” and inform the buyer you will call to confirm the information you’ve sent.  Then call to confirm.
   • Presenting to get a decision is as much of a mindset as it is a process:
     • Review what you’ve discussed
     • Review the as we agreed to letter including money and decision process that will take place today
     • Ask, “What’s changed?”
     • Make the presentation starting with their priority item not the first page in your presentation
     • Answer all of their questions about each solution, get them to score that solution on a scale of 1-10. If you are 7 or better you are in good shape but still you need to get them to a ten.  Once you get the ‘10’ you check that item off.
     • Ask our closing question:
       • "What where you thinking as I went through this. Assume for this discussion they said, This is really great we should do this! 
       • You ask, what should we do now?

• Or your alternative is:
  1. Do you believe based on what we presented that we understand your business and what you are trying to accomplish?
  2. Do you feel we can help?
  3. Do you want our help?

6. Despite this great process and effort, you can expect buyers to ask you questions that they haven’t asked yet, raise objections, or present you with stalls.  The first thing is this: Be prepared by conducting pre-call strategy meetings and role play these challenges.  Always understand that prospects are looking out for their best interests and not yours. Do not get emotionally involved when they throw you the curve ball!

Now I bet you are thinking, Tony, where is all the negotiation stuff?  Well that’s it right there. You win the bet on the first tee.

In this blog post, we discuss the practice of negotiating with your prospect before you begin your presentation.  As is often said in golf, "All bets are won on the first tee," and you must be ready to negotiate price before you present to your client.

In order to increase sales and close more deals, you must understand the client's business strategy, build a strong foundation for negotiation, and cross off all the boxes for a killer Sales DNA.

I play golf. Not very well I might add and that is not something that I’m proud of, but it doesn’t bother me enough to do much about it, other than drop an “F” bomb when a shot goes awry.

Though I am a high handicapper, I do have the ability to put some pars up on the score card ever once in a while, and when I’m playing a low handicapper and I get a stroke or two, I sometimes manage to get a birdie. To you non-golfers, this means absolutely nothing. To those that play the game and occasionally have a friendly wager, you know how this can help you win a few bucks despite some average at best scores.

And so it is with my game and occasional winning of bets. The key however isn’t so much about what I do on the tee box, in the fairway, around the greens or on the putting surface; it has everything to do with what happens before the foursome steps up to the first tee. And that is the arranging, settling and negotiating "strokes" before we begin play.

“All bets are won on the first tee.”

The USGA GHIN helps with that: United States Golf Association Golf Handicap Index Number. I won’t go into the details on the math that creates a GHIN for golfers, I will just help you understand what the intention is. In layman’s terms, it helps level the playing field to end up with a competitive game based on "net" score rather than total score. You can find more information if you are bored and having nothing else to do here.

The theory that"all bets are won on the first tee" also holds true in selling. In other words, you will end up in a more favorable position when negotiating a sale if you do most of the negotiating before you start your presentation. If you have not fairly discussed and agreed to terms before you start then you are sure to lose. Negotiating at that time has cost:

• Lost time
• Lost money
• Lost confidence
• Lost reputation

Negotiating upfront helps create a better relationship with your new client, allows for a free-flowing discussion about the solutions you are presenting, and alleviates all the pressure of discussing and negotiating terms after you’ve presented. This is how it’s done.

1. Understanding the business strategy. What we know is that roughly 54% of executives say that their business strategy is to pursue profit. With regard to dealing with the competition, 80% of them say that their goal is to hold firm on pricing. This is important to you as a manager or salesperson because, in order to get the "backing" of your company to approve or close a deal, they want to know if their margins are protected. If getting company approval is important, then you have to make sure your sales strategy is consistent with the corporate strategy – hold firm.
2. Your own SALES DNA is critical for success. Using the Objective Management Group's Sales Force Evaluation we can predict with 92% certainty who will succeed in selling in your organization. If holding firm to price is critical they must reflect the top 10% of all salespeople in the areas of Need for Approval, Controls Emotions, Supportive Beliefs, Supportive Buy Cycle, Comfort discussing money and finally their ability to handle rejection. Think about those items and how important they would be in a negotiation setting.
3. Sales Competencies also come into play. How well would a salesperson negotiate if they are desperate for the business because they are not a Hunter? Imagine if they don’t score well in relationship building, consultative selling, or qualifying. But perhaps the strongest competency required is value selling.
4. Building a strong foundation for when negotiation does take place is a focus that takes place early on in the relationship and the sales process. There are certain strategies that are required in this foundation:
5. Think It Over (TIO) is not an option.
6. Confirm the decision-makers and decision-making processes.
7. Identify the capacity to invest MONEY and TIME and RESOURCES to make changes or make a purchase. Whenever possible you MUST meet with the money person.
8. The problem the prospect is talking to you about must be a ‘have to fix’ problem. Finally, you must discuss and have clarity on this question: “Who wins a tie?”

These may not take place in any particular order because the dialogue between buyer and seller must be "free-flowing." But when you get back into your car and you are mentally going over what just happened, you must be able to check each one of these areas as COMPLETED.

Failure to do so will lead to negotiating at the wrong time.

To be continued...