In this blog article, we discuss the similarities between the NFL Draft and hiring better salespeople and increasing sales.  Like the draft, sales managers must do their best to discover if their potential candidate is a fit not only for the particular sales role, but the organization
as well.

What tests must your next recruit pass to excel on your sales team? What are you doing to ensure that your sales candidates have what it takes to become a top performer? 

Last night, the first round of the NFL draft took place and here are a few important facts about the event:

• There are only 224 out of 16,000 eligible draft players
• Roughly $1.3 Billion in contracts will be negotiated and signed
• They must participate and attain a certain score in the following;
  • 40-yard dash
  • Bench press (225 lbs x reps)
  • Vertical and broad jump
  • 20 and 60-yard shuttle
  • 3 cone drill
  • Position specific drills
  • 60 interviews in total at 15-minute intervals
  • Physical measurements
  • Injury evaluation
  • Drug screen
  • They Cybex test
  • The Wonderlic test

Not only must the player submit to these evaluations, but keep in mind that their entire college career, has been videotaped.  Statistics on yards, catches, passes, tackles, rushes, etc. are kept and used by professional scouting organizations to determine the likelihood of an athlete having what it takes to make and succeed on an NFL Football Team.

What tests must your next recruit pass to excel on your sales team? What are you doing to ensure that your sales candidates have what it takes to become a top performer?  How much data do you collect, and how reliable is it?  How much interviewing do you do?  And finally, is it consistent enough to eliminate variability in data, thus eliminating variability in hiring and eventually in performance?

In the coming months, I’m guessing that the following are going to happen:

1. The sales talent pool will be flooded from many industries that suffered partial or complete shut down and had to let people go.
2. A lot of unqualified salespeople will be hired only to be let go within the following 12 months.

What should you do?

Take some pointers from the NFL playbook on drafting talent:

• Know EXACTLY what role you are looking to hire for
• Know EXACTLY what a candidate has to do in order to succeed in that role
• Create the ideal job attraction post of the candidate that will execute the role
• Assess ALL candidates before your interview them for their will to succeed in selling and sales DNA
• Interview them for most the critical characteristics like:
  • Phone skills
  • Relationship-building
  • Qualifying
  • Closing
• Have these candidates audition through roleplays and their ability to demonstrate success, recover from rejection and ask questions while listening intently
• Implement a consistent vetting process that is managed and inspected
• Prepare them to make a decision when you offer them the position
• Onboard them as if they are new to the industry and role

I’ve talked to several people today.  All of them told me that they are on a hiring freeze and the companies they work with are also on a hiring freeze. That probably includes you. But this will not last. When it is over, you need to be prepared to act rather than wait until it’s time to start the process all over again. 

Here are some resources to help you hire the best people to be successful in your company:

1. Access to a free trial of the highly predictive pre-hire sales assessment
2. Objective Management Groups SmartSizing tool that will help you evaluate who to keep on your team and in which roles

Guest Blog Post from Gaia Hawkes

In this week's blog post, guest blogger Gaia Hawkes offers her insights into leadership development within sales organizations and explains how taking a mentoring approach can lead to positive outcomes and increasing sales.

In sales and sales coaching, the process of mentorship is crucial to passing on expertise and knowledge to more junior team members. It enables sales teams to drive growth and success, leading to increased performance and sales across the board.

In a previous article on growing a successful sales team by Tony Cole, he describes how certain weaknesses in your sales team can lead to dissent and chaos. For instance, prioritizing your own agenda and being a bad team player can impact the team’s overall success. To remedy this, leaders should act as mentors to improve and change their attitudes. Maryville University explains how a degree in organizational leadership can help you introduce positive change through superior employee training and collaboration.

Being a strong leader and mentor will help your team follow your lead when it comes to driving sales productivity. With that in mind, here are some ways in which developing a mentorship program can greatly benefit your organization.

Identifying strengths matters

If you don’t know where your team members excel, you’re not working with them to achieve their true potential. It may seem basic, but conducting personality tests conducive to learning your salespeople’s unique strengths can give you key insights moving forward.  For instance, if a particular salesperson excels in nurturing and providing for others, you can put them in a role as an onboarding companion for hiring better salespeople. 

In addition, you can find ways to help them use their empathy to work with clients.  Ensuring that everyone feels appreciated and valued will help your employees feel like they are a key member of the team. In the long run, they’ll be more willing to step up and take on greater responsibilities to help increase sales within your organization.

Why empathy matters

Because selling is a numbers-oriented business, sales leaders might put pressure on specific goals and money milestones within the organization. On the other hand, Kevin Kruse describes why successful sales leaders need to show that they care. He explains that apart from dealing with the tasks at hand, you should also take the time to get to know and interact with your team members.

Address them by name, greet them every morning, learn about their families, and ask about life outside of work. Sometimes, outside life gets in the way and affects productivity, but if you’re understanding and approachable, you can help your team members get over these road bumps more quickly.

Why feedback and recognition matter

Without assessing your team’s progress and providing regular opportunities for candid feedback, improvement will be a slow process. An Entrepreneur article on the art of mentorship explains that one-on-one time between a mentee and a mentor is crucial to adjust targets and modify goals if necessary.

Creating a well-designed plan involves identifying the issues at hand, setting realistic sales goals, and providing actionable steps to meet them. Growth can be a challenging process, but by giving recognition and praise where it’s due, you’ll keep your mentees motivated and energized to meet and exceed expectations.

Ultimately, mentorship programs not only steer team members to success, but sales mentors are also rewarded with the fulfilling experience of seeing their mentees succeed. In fact, a 2018 research study on Business News Daily found that 76% of respondents considered mentors important to their success. If you don’t already have one, it’s better late than never to start implementing a mentoring approach within your sales organizations.

There is always something going on in the market that makes selling difficult.  However, you can choose to develop strategies and utilize virtual technologies to get in front of your prospects and clients.

Take this time to really get to know your clients and their needs, fears, and pressures so that you can help solve their problems, while helping to push both of your organizations forward.

Earlier this week, I conducted a 30-minute Live Zoom Broadcast titled, “How to Sell in Any Market”.  The primary focus of the session was to help people understand the following:

• There is always something going on in the market that makes selling difficult. If you’ve been in sales long enough – more than 10 years – something is always happening with the economy, politics, health crises, competition or decisions made by your company.
• Don’t let outside conditions be the reason you don’t succeed. Maybe the market has shrunk as it did in 2008 – 09 but it didn’t disappear unless you were making recreational vehicles in Elkhart, Indiana or Houseboats in Cumberland, Kentucky.
• No one owns 100% of the market, so if there are 100 opportunities and the “800lb gorilla” in your market has 20% market share, that leaves 80% for you to go get in addition to taking some of the low hanging fruit from the “gorilla.”
• Old technology still works – pick up the phone and call someone! Don’t rely on emails that are getting deleted by the dozens.
• Have a strategy:
  • Get face to face – via virtual technology – with the top 20% of your client list
  • Call and talk to your next 40%
• Email, or better yet, snail mail the next 20% of those that you believe have the potential to grow to the top.
• What you are doing today is either helping you race to the top or race to the bottom, you get to decide!
• Identify the 3 things that you should be doing NOW to help your build relationships and forge friendships, rather than the 3 things that will help you increase sales. Remember, those that you are calling on in B2B business have lots of things they are worried about and buying from you may not be top of the list.  These worries may include:
  • How is my business going to survive this crisis?
  • Who do I let go and what’s the best way to do that?
  • How do I best serve and keep my clients safe and secure?
  • How do I protect myself and my family from harm and illness?
  • How do I take care of those people that have helped me build, run and grow this business?
  • I do have a business to run so unless you are bringing something valuable and unique to my situation, I don’t have time to talk to you or respond to your emails.

In closing, here are some responses below that we received from some of the 50 participants in our session.

Thank you be safe and stay healthy.

1. It’s time to make friends not money
2. Run zoom rooms with top 20
3. Using the quote about “People want to know how much you care before they care how much you know.”
4. Change my attitude
5. Make sure you listen to your clients
6. Get to know your clients better
7. Assume that your clients need a solution, not a sales pitch
8. Short term actions lead to long term results
9. Your best clients look great to competition at any price
10. Human Touch in a High-Tech World….love this!
11. Make friends, not sales
12. Take advantage of technology, learn to provide creative solutions, pick up the phone and be unique!
13. Be persistent, but not pestilent.
14. Think Strategically

Interested in Leadership Development for your organization? While our program is personalized, it will often include an initial in-person kick-off training day or virtual zoom-cast, followed by a series of focused Coaching Calls with the “Leader in Development” as well touchpoints with the Executive team.

Leadership Development 

Most Sales Managers would agree that completing prospecting activities and hitting sales goals are critical to success.

However, what happens when we focus too much on the numbers and not enough on being a resource for prospects, we impact (or lose) the human element of our business. 

In today's blog, we discuss what it means to be in the B2P industry and how you can impact people each and every single day as a salesperson.

In general, there are two different types of classifications in sales; Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C). B2B — meaning you supply a product or service directly to an organization — i.e. you provide a chemical coating that will be sold to an aircraft manufacturer and applied to rotors. B2C — being that you provide a product or service directly to the end user — i.e. you sell anti-aging skincare products using social media and your network to women 30+. But what if what you do falls somewhere in-between?

What if you are in the B2P (Business-to-People) business?

I believe that Anthony Cole Training Group fits within that category. Before we get too far into this topic, I do realize that B2C sales technically describes what we are about to discuss below, but for the sake of this article, I ask that you expand your realm of thinking. See, we (ACTG) primarily provide sales hiring and production training for financial institutions.

We usually work with pre-existing sales teams to uncover the problem areas they face and build our training and development around addressing those problems. But at the end of the day, it is the people that we impact first, not the organization. I would imagine 99% of the organizations that are considered B2B still have to sell to a real, living, breathing person who is responsible for making a decision.

So, at the end of the day, you’re in the business to people game too.

So why does this matter? Sometimes, we get so caught up in our day-to-day activities of producing, prospecting and checking off our individual tasks, that we forget we're here to help people. We focus more on the RFP (Request for Proposal) in front of us than on the company and people behind it.

Typically, in B2C sales, the salesperson shares more of a personal relationship with the prospect as well as flexibility around conversations and decisions. In B2B sales, there is usually more restriction to the branding, marketing and positioning of products or services, as well as how we can approach people in the market.

Now I’m not suggesting we should throw the handbook out the window, but I am suggesting that those of us in the B2B space can probably benefit from a healthy dose of “authenticity” and “the human element”.

Don't you think?

At the end of the day, you must remember that you are impacting people, regardless of the type of work that you do. The aircraft manufacturer that is buying your chemical coating still has a team of people they are responsible for, so they must confirm that the chemicals are safe and regulated—so talk with them about that. Not only why your coating lasts so much longer than your competitors’ brand!

When we stop focusing (solely) on the next sale, the next dial, or the next commission check; and instead focus on being a go-giver for our clients and prospects, more sales will occur. Be in the Business-to-People, or B2P, business.

It will be your most rewarding sale.

If you are not in the acquisition business, then you must develop your talent in order to increase sales in 2020 and beyond.  One of the keys to doing that is to understand how to drive sales improvement. 

You must determine what is really happening with your salespeople when they fail to acquire a new piece of business, and then you must take key steps to help you determine if they lack the skills to get the job done, or if they are making excuses for their lack of success. 

Companies are constantly trying to figure out how to drive organic growth by:

• Acquiring a revenue stream by buying a business or lifting out talent from a competitor
• Developing current talent

If you are not in the acquisition business, then you must develop your talent.  One of the keys to doing that is to understand how to drive sales improvement.  You must determine what is really happening with your salespeople when they fail to acquire a new piece of business. 

Are your people just making excuses for failure or do they have deficits in the required sales competencies or will to sell?

To be successful in determining the real issues with your salespeople, you must have a system.

I read a blog the other day by Dave Kurlan.  We’ve had a strong business partnership with Dave and his company OMG (Objective Management Group) for most of our 24 years in business.  With OMG, we have the ability to determine the answer to the question – is it excuses or is it a talent issue?

Dave’s post  - 12 Reasons They Didn’t Like You Enough To Buy From You – helps address some of the issues associated with “not getting the business”.  It primarily focuses on the area of matching styles.

This got me thinking about the issue of “style” as it relates to talent, which relates to sales competencies and excuse making.  The challenge for the sales manager is determining if the reason a salesperson did not get the sale was really a talent issue, or an excuse issue.

To determine the root cause of the results, a sales manager must work more closely with the relationship managers and implement a process that Bill Eckstom calls “intentional coaching”.  This process of working closing with your RMs is addressed in our Sales Management Certification Program in the Coaching for Success Module.

Here are the 5 steps you must take to help you determine if your salespeople lack the necessary skills to succeed or are making excuses for their lack of success:

1. You must gain insight. You gain insight by using various data points. The data points you MUST use are: 
   1. Observational joint sales calls – You do not run the sales call; you observe your RM
   2. Data from your CRM or SAT program (SAT – Sales Activity Tracking)
   3. Sales meetings – In all of your sales meetings, you need to include a segment on skill development where you drill for skill, role play and conduct strategy development discussions
   4. 1-on-1 coaching – Each week, you should have time set aside for 1-on-1 coaching with those people that are NOT in the 1^st quadrant of the “Where’s Walter?” matrix
2. Provide feedback. In advance of the discussion about lost opportunities, you want to provide your RM with the data you have – no ambushing.
   1. You discuss – ask the RM questions about what they see in the data
   2. You provide them feedback based on what you see and where the problems might be
   3. You discuss what the future might look like if the current trends continue
   4. You agree that there is a problem
3. Demonstrate – Once you identify the problem as either an excuse or a skill issue, you demonstrate to the RM what you expect them to execute.
   1. If they are making excuses – "They didn’t understand the value of our offering” – You ask, “If I didn’t let you use that as an excuse what would you have done differently?”
   2. If it’s a skill problem – “I asked them if they had a budget and they said yes.” “When you asked them what it was, what did they say?”  “They said they didn’t want to tell me.”  “When you asked, ‘why not?’, what did they say?”  “I didn’t ask that question.”
4. Role play – The scenario above allows you to now role play with you acting as the prospect. You need to start with Drill for Skill and then graduate to the full role play.  Getting them to practice what you expect them to do takes patience and repetition.  Do not believe for a second that one role play will be enough.  You need to start your RM on a weekly coaching session repeating the required skills over and over again. 
5. Action steps – Each coaching session must end with action
   1. "Bill, so what I want you to do is call Mary and have this conversation we just role played."
   2. "I want you to report back to me by end of business today what happened as a result of that conversation."
   3. Hold your salespeople accountable while also coaching them along the way! 

Implementing a process of gaining insight, providing feedback, demonstrating, role playing and establishing action items will go a long way in helping your team discern the difference between making excuses for failure and the need for skill development.

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