Sales Blog with Professional Sales Tips

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I have mentioned in earlier posts that I’ve interviewed thousands of individuals for sales positions. A bad habit I got into earlier in my career was to interview too quickly and make hiring decisions too quickly. I don’t think I was alone in doing that. One can understand why sales managers don’t always take the necessary steps in interviewing:

1. Sales managers are responsible for a revenue commitment and don’t have a lot of time to interview.
2. Since a sales position is measured almost solely by sales results, the sales manager doesn’t have to feel a lot of chemistry with the applicant. They just need to feel that the applicant could successfully sell the products or services.
3. Most sales positions are commissioned positions so the loss to the company of a poor performer is somewhat minimized.
4. Salespeople are professional interviewers. What can you really know about them until you put them out in the field with a sales budget?

All of the above are true. However, if you take the near-sighted view of hiring you will pay, pay and pay for making a bad hiring decision. Customer damage and opportunity costs are just two of the problems caused by a bad sales hire.

I have two pieces of advice that will help you to stop making bad hiring decisions.

1. Make a sales call with the sales applicant before making a job offer. This one is so obvious that we can’t see it. It’s like grandpa looking for his glasses that are on his head. Yes, it takes some time and planning but you will gain tremendous insight into how this person behaves in front of customers in a real customer environment. Depending on the sales level being hired, I would even agree ahead of time for the applicant to engage the customer in a certain topic or point.
2. Slow down. Any incremental gain you might make by hiring quickly will be lost a 1,000 times if you don’t perform your due diligence and as a result end up hiring the wrong person.

We all know that hiring salespeople is an art and a science at best. Sales applicants are professional interviewers and know how to sell themselves. And everyone knows that a salesperson (or sales manager in this context) is the easiest person to sell because they often make emotional decisions. Apply the two simple points above and you will put a little more science in your hiring decisions.

My 24 year old daughter who is two years into the beginning of a successful sales and marketing career called me yesterday. She said, “Dad, I used one of the sales techniques you taught me and it worked!” I was so dumbfounded that I didn’t know how to respond. Not because the technique worked, but that she actually listened to some advice from her father.

I asked her what happened. She told me that she has been working for some time to close a large deal. She was in a meeting and the key decision maker kept throwing objection after objection at her to the point where it almost turned into a whining session. After about an hour of responding to these objections she realized things weren’t going anywhere, in fact, she may have even been losing ground with the customer. And then she remembered what I told her about ignoring objections.

Ignoring objections is very powerful yet most salespersons don’t use this tool. It’s not used very often because it seems somewhat scary. Here are some key points in using this technique:

1. Studies have shown that the first objection that a customer or prospect throws at you is typically just a knee jerk response and carries little real importance to them. The first objection is a good objection to ignore.
2. If you have fielded one objection after another and see no end in sight, this technique can help end the barrage. If you keep responding to a stream of objections, the customer or prospect sometimes sees no need to stop. Remember, it takes two to tango. This is exactly the point that my daughter stopped responding to the customer’s objections.
3. No need to feel anxiety about using this technique. Why? If the objection is really important to the customer or prospect, they’ll bring it back up and you can handle it head on at that time.
4. So how do I ignore an objection? You acknowledge that you heard the objection and then just continue. It’s really very easy.

Customer: “Your price is too high.”
Salesperson: “Oh (or uh huh)…(pause)…did I tell you that we provide service on everything we sell?”

5. So what is the message to the customer? It’s the following metamessage, “I’m not going to do any more bending for you Mr. Customer and now it’s your move.”

When I was a salesperson I was hesitant to use this technique until I saw it used successfully by a standout salesperson at the company where I was working at the time. Once you start to use this technique and get proficient with it you’ll get addicted like I did. Not only does it help you deal with the objection at hand, but it demonstrates how empty and meaningless most objections are that we get from customers and prospects.

In my last post we talked about things that sales applicants need to look for in a potential employer when interviewing for a sales position. Now let’s talk about some important things that a potential employer should look for in a sales applicant.

A sales position is always temporary so you can expect sales professionals to move from job to job every few years. You don’t want to hire someone that has been in the same sales position for 20 years. However, there is a limit to this transitioning from job to job. A good rule of thumb is an average of three to five years per job. If they are moving any more than this you might want to raise the yellow flag.

I don’t think I have ever, with a few exceptions, interviewed a sales applicant that claimed they weren’t either the number one or number two salesperson at all his or her past employers. Please keep in mind that I have interviewed thousands of applicants in my career. If they were ranked so highly why would they leave all those companies? The truth is that most applicants you interview are either mid-pack or below. Have them show you sales ranking charts, awards, etc. that prove their sales position at their past employers before you hire them. Every sales organization normally has all kinds of awards, percent of budget rankings, company newsletters, etc. that could easily be produced to show the interviewer their relative sales position.

Knowledge. Just like with sales rankings, almost every sales applicant I have ever interviewed exaggerated their product or technical knowledge. Virtually every one of them claimed to be an absolute world authority on whatever it was that they were supposed to know. Most interviewers resort to asking a few product or technical questions to get a feel for what the applicant knows. The problem with this technique is that it is totally haphazard. The other problem with this technique is that if the interviewer really likes the applicant they normally don’t want to eliminate them based on limited product or technical knowledge. The way to ascertain an applicant’s product or technical know-how is to create a standardized product or technical test that all applicants must take before being hired. This removes the interviewer bias, makes sure you ask the right kinds of questions and creates an objective measurement.

Interviewing and then hiring successful sales professionals is probably one of the most difficult jobs around. If you avoid applicants that frequently change jobs, those that can’t prove their sales success from prior employers and ensure that you give them a standardized test on product and technical knowledge, you will greatly improve your batting average.

As I have said in earlier posts, a sales job is always a temporary job. You can’t expect to work your entire career for one company. To do so would be bad for your career and bad for your employer as well. Since it’s a virtual certainty that you will work for multiple employers as a sales professional, then you need to know how to select employers.

Most salespersons are great at interviewing since that’s part of their daily job duties. What they aren’t so good at is asking the right questions sometimes. I cannot begin to tell you the number of sales candidates I have interviewed through the years that try to just “close” the interview and get the job without really knowing what they are getting into. Here are a few key things that you need to establish before ever accepting a sales job.

1. Why is the position open? Just about every sales position that becomes available to the public probably is not the best sales position available at a company. Think about it. If a great account base is vacated then it will be assigned to a proven salesperson that is currently working for the company or it will be offered to someone that is networked into the company. Bottom line, vacancies for sales positions where sales are stellar will not be publicized.

2. What is the turnover for the entire sales force? If it’s much above 20% you should be concerned. If they won’t or can’t give you turnover information, run, don’t walk, from that interview.

3. What is the modal income across the entire sales force? Asking the average income for the sales force is a waste of your time. There are always a number of super high producers that pull the average up and sales management always pads the average on top of that. The number you should care about is the modal income. When asking for the modal income you are asking what income level is most prevalent. In short, if you lined everyone up by how much they made last year, how much did the people make in the longest line?

There are a lot of questions to ask when it comes to interviewing for a sales job. These are three of the most important. Since sales is a numbers only job don’t be shy about asking these questions. If they won’t or can’t answer these questions then you probably have all the information you need anyway to make a decision.

If you’ve been in sales for a while you’ve heard this kind of thing many times, “Wow, the economy is really booming; Bill is having a great quarter.” You have probably also heard its reciprocal, “Karen is having a bad sales year; she’s not much of a salesperson.” Basically what you’re hearing is that if a salesperson’s sales are good then it has to be because of a great economy. If their sales are poor, then they must be a bad salesperson.

Now I know that there are in fact some great sales professionals that have had stellar years in truly bad economies. I also know that there have been a lot of salespersons who despite a robust economy and good territory, have managed to tank. There are a million variables here. But what I’m focusing on is management’s tendency to not look inward and admit to themselves that on some occasions they have a good salesperson that is doing poorly for reasons beyond their control, like a bad market, poor products and pricing, terrible territory, etc.

While it is painful for sales management (and executive management) to do a little introspection, it can save a good salesperson and help to make some much needed changes in how a company goes to market. If sales management finds that the last 12 salespersons have failed in a territory, it’s probably time to make some changes to that territory. If a salesperson that was extremely successful selling widget X can’t give away widget Y, then there might be a problem with how widget Y is marketed, priced, etc.

Sales professionals don’t usually go stupid and suddenly forget how to sell. In many cases it can be what, when and where they are selling. Use the opportunity to honestly assess the situation, save a good salesperson and make some long needed changes. I can’t overstate how resistant most sales management is to doing this kind of thing.