Sales DNA describes a salesperson’s underlying strengths and weaknesses.  Using athletic traits as an analogy, they are comparable to good hand-eye coordination, quickness off the line, acceleration, and balance.

A salesperson’s Buy Cycle (how a salesperson purchases), the time it takes for them to Recover From Rejection, and whether they Get Emotionally Involved when selling can significantly influence selling behavior and outcomes.

Sales candidates either can sell or will sell.  The challenge is selecting the ones who will.  Effective sales recruiting requires science, the right process, patience, and excellent interviewing skills.  Unfortunately, many companies don’t approach sales recruiting holistically.  The most common, first mistake comes in identifying what they’re seeking.

Science is critical to consistently hiring “Will Sell” salespeople.  Recent data from the Objective Management Group sales candidate assessment and sales force evaluation identifies the following:

• 90% Have Unsustainable Pipelines,
• 83% Lack Written Personal Goals,
• 60% Make Excuses,
• 55% Lack Urgency,
• 45% Are Not Self-Starters, and
• 21% Have Consultative Selling Attributes.

Because prospects are more knowledgeable (due to the internet), increasingly skeptical, and empirically proven to contact salespeople much later in their buying process, hiring managers absolutely must identify a salesperson’s DNA and skill gaps very early in the recruiting process.

On Objective Management Group’s Sales Candidate Assessment Dashboard, Sales DNA is reported as a percentage.  The difficulty of the sales position drives what the minimum required score is for Sales DNA.  The candidate’s Sales DNA must correlate with the specific sales role for which they are best equipped.  For instance, salespeople who must hunt require very different attributes to be successful than those who will manage accounts.

Benchmarking, while commonplace, universally misses one critical component.  If you identify only those elements that your top salespeople have in common, the analysis is inherently flawed.  For example, in one company, executives bragged that all of their top performers were highly motivated.  That proved to be an irrelevant finding when we showed them that their bottom performers were also highly motivated.  We were able to show them that while their bottom performers had difficulty recovering from rejection, their top performers were rejection proof.  While both their top and bottom performers were committed to sales success, their top performers all scored more than 15 points higher for commitment than those of their underachieving peers.

Great data and science create a foundation for successful recruiting.  A best practices, sales-specific, recruiting process, combined with practiced, honed interviewing skills, will increase your percentage of “Will Sell” salespeople.

Join me at the EcSELL Institute Fall Summit this October in Dallas for a lively, real world discussion about the science of sales recruiting and how you can learn to attract, screen, interview, hire and onboard great salespeople.

Last week, I was at the Dallas Vistage International Conference.  When I checked into the hotel, there was a group of little girls dressed in performance dance attire.  We got onto the elevator together with several of the moms.  Now I hate to admit this, but by somewhere between the first floor and their floor, they reminded me of the shows like Dance Moms or Toddlers & Tiaras.  I was in the elevator with those kinds of moms and kids.  They weren't particularly modeling upright characters.

On Thursday morning, a dance troupe performed as a demonstration of Innovation, one of the categories for which Vistage gives annual member awards.  The Silhouettes, a Colorado dance company performing in silhouette format, was simply amazing and received a standing ovation.

That afternoon, I went back to the hotel and ran into a couple of the kids with their Silhouettes-logoed jackets.  When they turned around, I realized these were the same people from the elevator.  So which was it, those people or the nationally-recognized Silhouettes who'd performed that morning?  I made a very quick, yet strong, judgment based on no more than thirty seconds.

This isn’t surprising since research shows how quickly first impressions are formed, but it highlights one reason why sales recruiting so frequently backfires.

Judgment can work both ways.  I could have seen the girls in the elevator and thought, “What loving and committed parents. It’s wonderful seeing young girls doing something they love and having fun.”

Salespeople are successful not simply because they're presentable, articulate, engaging and people are comfortable being around them.  They're successful because they're highly-skilled listeners, ask great questions, follow a well-defined, structured process, are unburdened by sales-specific weaknesses and receive ongoing behavior-based coaching.  Most importantly, they may not be anyone like you or other successful salespeople in your company.  This is not to say that you should hire people who don’t share your vision, support the organizational culture nor interact well with employees.

The problem is that we often quickly judge sales candidates based on their presentation and posture.  Most successful salespeople are effective in these areas, but this doesn’t mean they have great hunting skills, are capable of engaging in a comprehensive business discussion and are skilled at helping people understand the complexity and importance of the challenges which they face.

Let me illustrate this by way of a question.  Have you ever hired a salesperson who had all the right stuff during the interviewing process, yet was not successful once you hired them?  The answer is almost always "yes".  Why does this so frequently happen to sales managers, executives, human resources and sales operations professionals?  My experience is that judgment is a significant factor.  Other contributors are lack of testing, using the wrong testing (data gathered in a non-sales context), following poorly-defined sales interviewing process and pressures to hire.  Hiring managers must be highly-skilled at seeing past first impressions, avoid emotional attachment with candidates and finally, practiced and trained on behavioral-based interviewing designed specifically for sales recruiting. 

How is judgment affecting your sales recruiting success?  Does your organization have the right stuff when it comes to hiring salespeople and sales leaders?

Find out how you can improve your sales recruiting.

In the movie “Ghostbusters”, Bill Murray’s character closes a deal when he says to the New York City mayor, “You will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.”  After a long pause, the mayor agrees to work with the Ghostbusters to save the city.  If you haven’t seen this movie clip, be sure to watch it.  

Being intentional in sales allows us to create “magical moments” where everything changes thereafter.   In this clip, the Ghostbusters first explain the consequences of the problem.  Bill Murray then puts the solution in a context about which the mayor cares (registered voters) and then goes silent to let the moment happen.  How often do your salespeople trample their work with too much dialogue?

Magical moments can’t necessarily be planned; they must just happen.  They’re caused by chemistry, emotion, process awareness and the willingness to take a risk.  

So what are magical moments?  They’re points in the process when bonding happens, insight occurs, prospects get emotionally connected to the issue, trust is demonstrated and prospects know you “get it”.  

Intuition helps a lot.  For example, how is the person likely to feel when you first meet?  What can you do to improve the connection?  When you sell to a friend, “your relationship” is the elephant in the room, so acknowledge it, validate its importance and ask if you can agree to put it aside during conversations.  

In a recent meeting, we heard an SVP demonstrate his intimate understanding of the business and how it works.   It was comprehensive, succinct, passionately articulated and offered a vision with enough detail to bring it alive.   My colleague recognized this and commented that his description was the most clearly-articulated message that he’d ever heard.  You could see how much positive impact this had on the SVP physically and it was a magical moment.  Afterward, his peers said that they too were blown away by what he’d said and thanked us for recognizing and acknowledging this.  

Salespeople often go too fast on sales calls.  Sometimes they need to slow down to speed up.   Intuition and the universe talk to us all the time but we don’t always listen well.   When someone says something that impacts us, we know it.  The challenge is do we take a risk and respond.   Risk is a funny thing.  In sales, it’s virtually nonexistent since we typically haven’t closed the deal yet and therefore have nothing to lose.  However, our fear convinces us that we’re in danger and then provides a crazy rationalization for not acting.

Magical moments are always around us.  Your salespeople need to learn to see them and act on them.  The irony is that when we do so, it’s frequently by accident.  Then we’re awed by what happened!  The key is to be intentional.  

Being intentional can be taught and fostered through role-playing and coaching.  To learn more about growing in this area, feel free to contact me.

Quantum physics has shown that matter vibrates at a specific and measurable frequency.  Of course, this includes human beings.  What’s really interesting is that frequency changes based on our emotional state and we attract energy vibrating at similar frequency.

This law of nature, like gravity or cause and effect, is termed The Law of Attraction.  It means that our emotional state attracts people and circumstances consistent with what we are feeling. 

Think about salespeople who are on a roll.  Success fosters the opportunity for more success.  When they get in a slump, it's very hard for them to get back on track.  Whether you want to believe it or not, this dynamic affects us in every aspect of our lives, whether we are in sales or not.  It also greatly contributes to our happiness.

When a salesperson is in a slump, the following thoughts could manifest: 

• Business is hard right now.
• I can't seem to get anything closed.
• If I don't fix this soon, I'll be in trouble.
• This isn't fun anymore.
• I must be doing something wrong.

Imagine how this thinking might affect them.  What happens to their mood and attitude?  Are they more or less likely to conjure up bravery and passion?  And how does this affect how prospects and clients perceive them?

Consider the impact of a CEO who may exude negative energy compared to another executive who radiates passion for success, commitment to excellence, personal improvement and enormous commitment to their employees’ well-being.  My belief is that the difference, between highly successful companies and underperforming ones, is determined by the nature and consistency of its employees’ energy.

Integrating this principal into your organization isn't easy.  Witness the effort and challenges of culture change resulting from mergers and acquisitions.  It can have a profound impact on your team, company and you.  Identifying the specific non-supportive beliefs, by which your sales force is affected, is critical to the coaching and development process.  For example, a salesperson who is uncomfortable talking about money will avoid this conversation despite the agreed-upon call strategy.  Of course it all starts with the individual.  We need to bring the right attitude, state of mind, passion and energy, which our companies and teams need.

My challenge to you is to implement the following for the next month and see what happens: 

• Focus and talk about positive things and avoid the negative.
• Give people your undivided attention.  Listen to them, not about what you’re thinking.
• Keep a gratitude journal and read it daily.
• Acknowledge people as human beings, not employees.

Last night, I had the pleasure of listening to Aaron Davis, a member of the 1994 Nebraska National Championship football team.  His enormously passionate message offered practical thoughts on sales leadership and our challenges.

It’s said that all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten. Examples include: 

• Share everything.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
• When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder.

Aaron’s message, like the kindergarten lessons, was timeless and applies to every aspect of our lives from being a successful sales leader, parent, spouse, friend or employee.

• Find out what your “why” is and live it.
• Listen more than you speak.
• Discuss the elephant in the room.
• Make sure everyone understands and believes the purpose and intent.
• View change as an opportunity.

None of these ideas are new.  They have been passed down from generation to generation.  What’s important is how we live and manifest them in our daily lives.  As I thought about Aaron’s message, it struck me that sales leaders assume that if we properly communicate and reinforce these principals, our salespeople will integrate them into their selling habits.  While intellectually this is true, it doesn’t mean our team member will be able to do this without help.

For example, it’s intuitive that having clearly-defined personal goals will lead to better results.  Going to the gym, making the weekly date night a priority, calling your friends or relatives and being mindful of what we eat make sense.  In sales, Desire and Commitment are the two most important drives of performance - Commitment being paramount.  The real issue is why this is important to them.  This is the more difficult question to answer, one with which many sales leaders are woefully inconsistent and ill-equipped to help their people answer.

The biggest problems which we face are the non-supportive beliefs of our salespeople. As Aaron put it, championship teams don’t spend time thinking about why they might lose.

The good news is you can identify these non-supportive beliefs and the limiting weaknesses which influence the “why”.  The chart below comes from a top-performers vs. non-performers blog post which my colleague Dave Kurlan wrote.  It empirically identifies what sales leaders need to know to help their salespeople improve.

If you are committed to being a top-performing sales leader, you must coach your people on the real issues.  To do this, you need to know what they are.