Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Today I was asked how many sales candidate assessments are required in order to hire one salesperson.
Great question.
Let's make an assumption that your postings on various job sites draw 200 resumes and 34% of those candidates take the assessment. So you have 68 assessments completed and of those, somewhere between 25% and 50% of those candidates are recommended, giving us a pool of 17-34 candidates. You talk to those candidates by phone and invite the 6 best candidates for interviews. You like 2 of them and offer one a job and he accepts. 68 Assessments.
But what happens if, for one reason or another, you don't like any of the best candidates? What happens if the candidates you like don't accept your job offer? What happens if your requirements are such that significantly less than 25% of the candidates are recommended post assessment?
You begin the process a second time and may have to assess an additional 68 candidates.
The ratios are different for everyone, depending on geography, requirements, compensation, travel and experience. But the bottom line is that if you are using the assessment properly, as your primary filter in the first step of the sales recruiting process, you will assess a great number of candidates before you settle on the one. And of course, if you are hiring 10 or 100 or 1000, you'll need to assess an appropriately larger number of candidates along the way.
Why wouldn't you just wait until the end of the process to assess the candidates? Three reasons:
- You would be out of EEOC compliance. If you use an assessment, all candidates must be assessed.
- The best sales candidates would not make it to the end of a process that didn't begin with assessments - you would have disqualified them for not having a pretty resume, not coming from your industry, not having certain experiences or some other irrelevent reasons.
- You would have wasted an incredible amount of time and money talking with, interviewing and assessing the wrong candidates.
Clients learn a solid, time-tested, proven, proprietary process called STAR and it works brilliantly every time. Combine that with the
Gold Medal winner for best Sales Assessment Tool and you have a turnkey solution that identifies winning salespeople like the Dominican Republic turns out baseball players. Best practices exist for a reason. The challenge is to use them, even when your tendency is to do what you have always done.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
It doesn't matter who the sales trainer is.
It doesn't matter what the content is.
It doesn't matter what the subject is but let's choose making cold calls for appointments.
It doesn't matter which sales process is being introduced but let's assume it is a simple one.
It doesn't matter which sales methodology is being taught but let's assume it is a good one.
It does't matter how long the training program lasted, but let's assume it is a full-day.
Belief - Most believe that after a day of comprehensive training salespeople will have the understanding, tools and experience to get on the phone, go out in the field, use what they learned and be effective.
Reality - After a day of training salespeople still have the old, worn-out, ineffective approach down cold. It's muscle memory. The new approach, even if they took notes and practiced it during training, even if the approach is highly effective, time tested and proven, is as strange to them as the thought of eating monkey brains for dinner. They're still using a modified version of their old approach rather than a modified version of the new approach. They are definitely not using the new approach as taught.
Most people don't understand that effective sales training isn't about what is being taught. Most sales trainers don't even understand what they must do to achieve results. Before your salespeople will make wholesale changes, several things must occur.
The first group of events are salesperson-facing and related to the sales force evaluation:
- They must have their sales assessment results to fully understand the skill gaps need to be filled, the sales weaknesses they have, and how those issues are affecting their sales calls.
- They must know how much better they can become, how much more revenue they can generate and how much more money they can earn by making the necessary changes.
- They must be trainable (incentive to change) and coachable (not resistant to change).
The fourth event rarely occurs unless your sales trainer knows how to accomplish it:
4. Your salespeople must be change ready so they don't waste training time by resisting.
The fifth event is based on the expertise of the training and development consultant:
5. A customized, formal, structured and optimized sales process must be designed, introduced and demonstrated and buy-in must be acheived.
The sixth group of events is dependent on the effectiveness of the trainer:
6. The sales methodology must be introduced, demonstrated, discussed and role-played. Most sales trainers are capable of introducing and discussing but not demonstrating and role-playing to the degree that your salespeople see the power of the approach. An exercise to help the salespeople apply what was learned must be assigned.
7. There must be follow up training within 2 weeks, during which time the approach must be demonstrated and role-played again because nobody is applying exactly what was first taught. The reason for the lack of execution is that your salespeople have weaknesses which, until eliminated, interfere with execution. Take Need for Approval for example. That single weakness, which affects more than half of all salespeople, prevents them from saying, asking and doing what they learned whenever they believe that their prospect will no longer like them, approve of them, find them credible, smart or helpful. They can't push back, challenge or ask good, tough, timely questions due to a fear of being disrespected. This problem can continue to interfere for weeks and months and until it's eliminated, prevent execution of the skills being taught. Most sales trainers are completely blind to this problem and don't know how to fix it. In most cases, this is why the majority of sales training program fail to help most companies.
The next event is dependent on sales management effectiveness. Sales managers should have been trained prior to training the salespeople!
8. Salespeople must be coached by their sales managers each day, observed to make sure they are doing what was being taught, and held accountable for making appropriate changes.
9. Review and Repeat
10. Continue twice monthly for 8-12 months, while introducing new content and material each time.
How does this compare with your experience?
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Watching the Super Bowl got me thinking about strategy and tactics.
In baseball, the strategy most often involves how the pitchers will exploit the weaknesses of the opposing teams' hitters but during the game itself, it's more about tactics.
In football, the head coach has a game strategy that is tweaked during the week and during the game itself, strategy continues to play a big part as plays are selected while personnel substitutions might be more tactical.
Both sports are team sports but baseball relies more on one-on-one battles - pitchers versus hitters - while football relies on each of the eleven men on the field executing perfectly in order for a play to succeed.
In my opinion, football is the sport based more on strategy while baseball is the sport based more on tactics.
Sales Leadership, roles performed by people with titles like Director of Sales, Chief Sales Officer and Worldwide VP of Sales, requires strategy. Sales Management roles, performed by people with titles like Branch Sales Manager, Division Sales Manager, District Sales Manager and Regional Sales Manager, requires more tactics. Even when managers conduct account strategies, more often than not, those strategies entail the use of tactics.
Sales Leaders are like the head coaches of football and sales managers are more like the managers on the baseball team.
The problem I observe most frequently is when sales leaders and sales managers do not take ownership of their respective responsibilities for strategy and tactics. We see sales managers unaware of what their salespeople are doing, where they are doing it, and who they are doing it with. We see sales leadership unable to get sales managers aligned on strategy, messaging, targeting, pricing and expectations.
If sales leadership can strategize like football head coaches, and sales managers take on tactical responsibilities, like a baseball managers do, we would see more effective, productive, consistent sales organizations.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
On the eve of Superbowl XLVI Weekend, an article in the February 3, 2012 issue of the Boston Globe discussed Patriots Coach Bill Belichick's place in football history. In the story, written by Michael Whitmer, Belichick says, "You do your job, take care of your business, and hopefully good things will happen.’’
Whitmer says it’s the same approach he takes with his teams and players, no matter what they’ve accomplished." Tom Brady, the Patriot's equally brilliant quarterback, is quoted as saying, “He treats minicamp like it’s the week of the Super Bowl. The pressure is always on. We joke, because every day he comes into the meeting and he goes, ‘Alright guys, this is a big day,’ and we always joke that he should walk in one day and say, ‘Guys, this day’s not super important. Whatever we mess up today, don’t worry, we can get to tomorrow.’ That’s how he approaches it, every day is meaningful, and I think as a player you come in and you really respect that, and you try to do your very best to accomplish the goals that he sets out every day. When we won those 16 games in a row in 2007, people would have thought we were 0-16 by the way that we were coached. He doesn’t care what you did last year, he doesn’t care if you made the Pro Bowl, as long as you can help us win this week.’’
Sales Managers could learn a thing or two from Belichick! Like:
- Consistency
- Past Performance is not a free pass for lack of performance today
- You can always perform better
- Accomplish the goals
- Every day is meaningful
- The pressure is always on
Go Patriots!
(photo credit John Biever on SportsIllustrated.CNN.com)
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
In just the first minute of your interview with a sales candidate you should know whether you don't want that candidate working for you. Think about it. If you decide in minute one that this candidate is NOT for you, there are options. You can end the interview and find yourself an hour that you didn't expect to have. You can complete the interview for practice or you can do it to see if the candidate succeeds at winning you over during the remainder of the interview. If you can be won over after you have written a candidate off, that is exactly what you want in a salesperson.
What should you look for in the first minute that would suggest you don't want this candidate?
It depends on what you want in a candidate. Most clients provide me with wish lists. in addition to a candidate's sales ability, clients want the candidates to possess certain traits that appeal to the clients. Most of those traits are unnecessary. Many of those traits only serve to make the clients happy. Most of those traits don't help the salespeople sell more effectively. So they aren't necessarily the things you should look for in the first minute.
I have problems with candidates who exhibit any of the following 10 behaviors:
- aren't prepared to begin the conversation
- don't attempt to overcome my resistance
- can't look me in the eye
- don't answer my questions with direct answers
- dress like s**t
- fidget
- get so nervous they break out in a rash
- make excuses for their track record or jumping around from job to job
- talk too loud
- can't handle being challenged
I'm very impressed with candidates who are capable of these 10 things:
- push back and challenge me without starting an argument
- ask intelligent questions that aren't about benefits
- talk concisely versus ramble
- explain rather than claim
- express rather than state
- be memorable instead of forgetable
- demonstrate their ability to succeed
- distract me from my interview strategy
- connect with me
- [please provide us with the one thing you look for in an interview]
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