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Understanding the Sales Force
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 Just like the salespeople who work for them, CEO's come in all different sizes, shapes, styles and flavors. As you can imagine, those variances influence the outcomes of sales force evaluations, sales infrastructure, sales and sales management development and sales recruiting. Here is a sampling of how some of the CEO's react to what I tell them about their sales force:
#1 - "Thank you for your advice. I'm not comfortable with that". Who says that YOU have to be comfortable? You have to do the right thing for your company!
#2 - "I'm not quite ready for that. How about if we do that in six months?" A less honest version of #1 - at least be straight with me!
#3 - "Whatever you say. You're the expert." This tends to work out a lot like #1. Yes, they agree with whatever I say but are no stronger with management than with me and can't drive change.
#4 - "This is B*ll S*it. They're just going to have to do what you say, right now, or they're gone." That's the spirit, but it isn't driving change. You can't pound people with a sledge hammer to drive change, you have to inspire them to change.
#5 - "Let me see if I can get some consensus for this." Oh-oh, this isn't going to work. You never get consensus from people who don't want change in the first place!
#6 - "OK. Let's talk about how we're going to accomplish that given our challenges." Much better! At least we're going to talk about how we can implement...
#7 - "Great - can YOU deliver that message FOR me?" This is even worse than #5!
#8 - "I'm not going to drive this. One of my senior managers will have to drive this." OK, how many years are you willing to wait to find a genius who finds value in this AND isn't threatened by it or me?
#9 - "Why aren't my people doing what they're supposed to do?" Because you have to be strong enough to tell them that it's a condition of continued employment rather than quietly sitting there, without saying a thing, and expecting something to change!
#10 - I don't want to do it your way. I think it should be done my way instead." Ah, excuse me, but isn't that the same way you were doing it for the last 10 years - and it didn't work then either?
I don't mean to paint a picture that depicts CEO's as the problem, but in some companies, they are the problem. In 9 of the 10 examples I described above they were the problem but unlike this article, it happens in only about 50% of the cases, not 90%. So if you are a CEO or know one, what should you do when getting help for your sales organization?
The change begins with you, not us. We'll help you change your culture and your results, but you have to show your people your commitment to that change by setting your expectations and holding the organization accountable. If you aren't strong enough to drive the change, don't even start. In most companies where the CEO is the problem, it's either because the CEO is fearful of confrontation, or the CEO mistakenly believes he/she is a sales expert and has all the answers. If you have an open mind, are committed to change, and can drive the change in your own organization, that is all you need in order to achieve significant revenue growth as a result of working with an experienced, talented, practical sales development expert.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 It never ceases to amaze me when clients receive nasty-grams from sales candidates who are - let's call it put-off - by the client's request that they first take our on-line assessment. The candidates receive a very nice email thanking them for sending their resume, explaining the client's recruiting process and asking them to take the assessment. You just wouldn't believe some of the notes I've seen. Name calling, cussing, threats, sarcasm, and more. Here's a typical sample:
"Are you looking for game show candidates?
On any given day, we splash you with a bucket of our LabCorp-tested, drug-free urine.
I've attached my photo so you can easily recognize me.
If you see me, I suggest you cross the street, you fucking douche bag.
Call me anytime and I will straighten you out.
And quickly."
It doesn't happen often but it's always a shock to see such responses. But there's good news. This is a no risk preview of how this sales candidate will respond, in the field, on the phone and via email, when things don't go as expected. It is representative of his normal behavior and you saved yourself, your staff, your company, prospects, clients and customers the horror of ever having to deal with this candidate. So this...is a good thing! In cases like these, the weaknesses come flying to the surface. We can instantly tell that this candidate has no need for approval, huge difficulty recovering from rejection and gets emotionally involved rather quickly. We can also see that he has little patience, inappropriate filters, an overbearing ego and no regard for process or protocol. Just what you want in a new salesperson!
If you use Objective Management Group's Sales Candidate Assessments and you weren't able to attend the July 27 End-User Webinar where I walked everyone through the great changes, enhancements and new features (much more client-centric), we recorded it, and you can view the Webinar at your convenience by clicking here. [Update - the link has been fixed and it works now]
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 If you follow this blog you know that recruiting salespeople is an often repeated topic, albeit from many different angles.
Today, I'll make some observations about the sales recruiting activity taking place this summer that either reinforces some of the things I've said in the past, or modifies my original stance.
In no particular order, but of equal importance:
- Candidates that respond more than 1 week after a job has been posted are always either not recommended by the assessment or they live beyond the acceptable commuting range.
- There are approximately 4 times more sales management candidates than sales candidates.
- The 3-5 minute phone call to screen recommended candidates is still the second most powerful filtering tool available after the sales candidate assessment. If you don't like the way they sound and they can't prove they have the experiences you specified in your ad, don't interview them.
- If you think you can simply assess your 3 favorite candidates and end up selecting a winner you a badly mistaken. Recruiting statistics haven't changed much in the past year. It still shows that for every Great New Salesperson hired it requires:
- Face to Face Interviews with the 5 Best Candidates
- 15 Recommended Candidates Screened by Phone
- 30 Assessments Taken
- 50 Resumes Received
- Ads posted on two successive weeks on targeted multiple sites
- There are still two kinds of sales managers - those who get the process required to hire great salespeople and those who fight it. Guess which group consistently ends up with the best salespeople?
- There are just as many awful salespeople as there ever were - the conversion statistics above show that 30% of the 50 resumes received are recommended by the assessment and only 10% get interviewed for one reason or another. Our statistics on more than 500,000 salespeople assessed indicate the number is 26% strong/74% weak.
- This is the best time to recruit great salespeople. They are out there, but you have to find them and recognize them when you assess them, talk with them and interview them. Many companies and industries are still struggling and salespeople in those markets will leave for an opportunity to earn lucrative commissions.
Hire some great salespeople today - but do it the right way!
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 As the primary researcher and analyst for Objective Management Group, I drive many of the enhancements, features and new product ideas for our industry leading, world-class sales force evaluations and sales candidate assessments. Today, we are very close to introducing some very powerful, new features to most of our assessments and while some will provide exciting new insights for clients, one is a fundamental change from our 1989 roots.
From the beginning, the two most important findings have been the amount of Desire for Sales (or sales management) success and the Commitment to do what it takes to achieve Sales (or sales management) success. Desire, or how badly they wanted it, was always the more important of the two and together, they formed the most important part of Incentive to Change or Trainable. My recent analysis has shown that today, Commitment has overtaken Desire in importance and we will be reflecting that in assessments very shortly. But Why? What has caused this fundamental shift? A comparison of selling today with selling over the past 20 years shows that selling is significantly more challenging today than ever before. Let's take a look at 10 of the factors that explain this shift in difficulty: - more competition for less business
- more difficult to reach decision makers
- prospects are much more educated when they meet with salespeople
- selling has become more sophisticated but salespeople have not kept up
- there is more resistance than ever before
- prospects are generally more skeptical
- prospects are placing more pressure on price
- companies are pressuring salespeople to sell value
- there is more pressure to perform without effective coaching to support it
- thanks to the recession, there is less money available to spend
There are certainly more reasons and I encourage you to suggest them in the comments below. Commitment to Sales Success has become the single most important factor in determining what a salesperson can become. When it comes to sales candidates, it is the most important factor in our ability to predict success at a particular company, in their market, and with their set of challenges. Please don't misunderstand. It is not the only factor and there are dozens of other factors that contribute to various degrees. But more and more, when we see salespeople who are struggling, failing to achieve and not adapting and changing, they often lack the commitment necessary for sales success. There are other reasons too, but Commitment is usually right there. I can't tell you how we measure Commitment, but I can tell you that when salespeople don't measure up, their sales won't go up either.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 When should you pay attention to how committed an individual is to sales success?
Clients tend to believe that as long as they're getting results from a salesperson, lack of commitment is not a problem. Clients tend to believe that when they're not getting results from a salesperson, lack of commitment explains everything. Clients who recruit backwards (interview, then assess) tend to fall in love with candidates, then learn about their lack of commitment and attempt to justify the redeeming features of the candidate and discount the commitment problem. Clients who recruit forward (assess, then interview) tend to ignore candidates who lack commitment - they don't even speak with them.
While commitment is a single data point - not the be-all-end-all - it's a very powerful and predictive data point as well. If you are a client, upon learning that a top producer lacks commitment you might be asking, "How can that be?" Top performers didn't lack commitment when they were top performers. While their noteworthy performance may have been recent (last year), their lack of commitment is probably brand new (last month). So while clients may fight this finding, they have to understand the predictive nature of the finding too. It isn't showing up in the results yet and won't show up for some months to come. If your company has a 6-9 month sales cycle the results are still 6-9 months away. I'm penning this on June 2, 2010, and the results in a medium to long sales cycle won't be known until at least January of 2011. So of course the client doesn't see it - yet. What does lack of commitment look like anyway? It's different for every salesperson but it has nothing to do with work ethic! Plenty of salespeople have a great work ethic despite their lack of commitment. It's the subtle things that commitment interferes with; The extra attempt to turn a prospect around; The additional attempt to reach a prospect that hasn't responded; The one additional question that might turn a so-so opportunity into a great opportunity. Aren't those skills? Sure they are. But when the salesperson has the skills but doesn't use them consistently, it can be attributed to commitment. Only when they lack the skills can you attribute the problem to lack of skills.
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