Sales Executives

By:  Jeff Clark

With the rise of social media, today’s consumers are seeking personalized, one-on-one interactions with the companies they do business with—but they don’t always receive them.

Sadly, generic marketing and advertising messages are still prevalent. Only now, with the rise of smart-phone use and consumers surfing back and forth from viewing family holiday photos on Facebook to reading their email, sending personality-free corporate messages is less effective than ever.

Here are a few suggestions to help you humanize your email marketing content:

• Avoid robotic language – Don’t let your emails consistently sound like a sales pitch. Read copy out loud to ensure it sounds conversational. Spend less time talking at your customers and prospects and more time paying attention to their behaviors and listening to them via social networks, community forums and surveys. Speak to them like they are human beings—because they are!
• Reevaluate your content – You don’t always need more content, just a different kind. Make sure your email arsenal includes messages designed simply to inform, entertain, surprise and provide value rather than sell. Use your blog, Twitter and Facebook posts or even your customer support staff. Listen to the questions that your customers and prospects have, and then use your emails to help provide answers and insight. All of these can be great resources for a new angle on content.
• Use humor – People like to laugh! Consumers enjoy and respond well to humor. Adding a touch of fun to your messages is an attention-getting way to add personality. The voice used in your email messages should be the most logical extension of your company and its brand or image.
• Incorporate customer and employee voices – According to Nielsen’s 2009 ‘Global Online Consumer Survey‘, customers and prospects place tremendous value on peer opinions and reviews, even more so than on ads. Add content such as peer reviews and testimonials to give your emails a more human feel—and increase your revenue.

As you begin to add personality to your content, remember that ‘humanisation’ isn’t just a new buzzword—it’s a way of marketing that brings your customers’ and employees’ personalities into your company messages. Humanization is now an expectation, so drop the ‘corporate speak’ and communicate with people like they are, well, people!

By:  Alice Heiman

So how do you find good salespeople in a market like this?  There are several things you can do and the first is read, You’re Not the Person I Hired, by Boydell, Deutsch and Remillard.  I highly recommend it.  It is a great “How to” guide and there are so many things covered that most of us don’t think about.  After reading it, I confirmed my feeling that the vast majority of you should find a professional recruiting agency to do the work.  I know that many companies believe they can’t afford this but I have learned over the past 10 years that it almost always costs more to try and recruit and hire on your own unless you have an inside recruiter and plenty of HR people to help.  A bad hire can cost you big dollars but worse it may hurt your reputation.

Knowing that despite my urging many of you will hire salespeople without assistance I am going to give you my best tips on how to improve your hiring process.

• Interviewing Questions
• Series of interviews
  • On the phone
  • Face to face
  • Team
• Check References
• Background check, financial check
• Offers
• New Hire Training
• On going training
• Retention

Recruiting

Job Description – Recruiting starts with an excellent job description and performance standards.  Once everyone agrees on those the job ad can be written.

Job Ad – A well written job ad will attract the right kind of people.  The authors of You’re Not the Person I Hired have a great example in the book.  The job ad should be about the person, not your company.  It should describe the attributes the ideal candidate will have. It should entice high performers to send you their resumes.

Ad Placement – this is crucial.  The best written job ad will do nothing for you if the right people don’t see it.  The first thing I recommend is to send the ad out to everyone in your company. Someone who is already and employee may be interested.  Then ask them to refer anyone they know who is interested. Ask them to send it to colleagues, family and friends in the local area.  EDAWN does a great job of this and they find excellent people.  Post the ad in Career Builders and on Monster.com and then get creative.  Find other job posting sites within your industry.  Be sure the ad is posted on your own website.

Interview Process

Prepare Questions – You would do well to consult an expert here.  All of the questions should be planned in advance and address the requirements in the job description and ad.

Behavioral interviewing is the way to go.  According to Quintessential Careers (www.quintcareers.com) “The premise behind behavioral interviewing is that the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations. Behavioral interviewing, in fact, is said to be 55 percent predictive of future on-the-job behavior, while traditional interviewing is only 10 percent predictive.”

There is a lot of information in books on hiring and on the internet.  QuintessentialCareers.com is one I have used.  It has some good examples of behavioral-based interview questions and other resources.  There is also good information in You’re Not the Person I Hired.

It is important to plan all of the questions in advance.  You should plan appropriate questions for each interview. The first interview on the phone serves as another screening, so questions that will screen the candidate in or out should be asked.  The second interview may be face to face one to one or with a team.  Everyone involved in the interview should be prepared to ask questions.  There should be questions about past situations and performance that will indicate the candidate’s future success as well as questions to determine the character of the candidate.  A third interview may be necessary and more questions that will reveal the character and potential of the candidate should be asked.  It may be helpful to ask some of the same questions during the different interview sessions to see if the candidate answers consistently.

In order to be successful in comparing candidates the same questions should be asked to each.  Another thing to consider is that when you have several members of your organization participate you need to make sure each knows what role to play during the interview and what questions to ask.  Determine that in advance and do a run through so that everyone is comfortable.  It is important that the person who will manage the new hire and some of the people who will work with the new hire be involved in a team interview.

Resume Screening – the toughest part but if you have a solid job description and placed a good ad you should have some good resumes.  It is easy to look good on paper; it is also easy to look bad.  Immediately eliminate any resumes that are sloppy or have errors.  Next start looking for results not job duties.  Does the candidate state the results achieved at previous jobs?  Does the candidate have the needed education and skills?  Has the candidate been in similar work situations?  Is the language used positive and engaging?

Look at as many resumes as you can.  It is not always possible but I recommend that you find at least 3 candidates before you start the interview process.  This gives those involved in the interview process some means of comparison.  Do what you can to get several at the same time because candidates won’t wait weeks to see if you are interested, someone else will snap them up.  A good job ad properly placed should bring you a good amount of resumes to choose from.

Plan a series of interviews

Phone Interview – The first interview should be on the phone.  Explain your interview process to the candidate.  Ask if they have looked at your website and what they know about your company and the product they will sell.  If they say nothing or they know very little and you are still interested ask them to learn about your company and get back to you, but typically that is the end of the interview with me.

Use a standard set of questions to screen all aspects of job related fit. For example, one of my clients has a non-negotiable requirement.  The candidate must be able to handle a 200lb piece of equipment that they will have to take in and out of a van and push into doctor’s offices in order to do a demo.  So questions need to be designed to careful screen this ability with out discriminating. Questions about credit, references, why they are looking for a job, current income anything that will screen them in or out should be asked here and marked on some type of rating scale.  This interview could be done by someone in HR or an admin. to save time.  It is not something a sales manager should be doing.  The purpose of this interview is to see who will continue on with the process.

First Face to Face Interview – Check out the obvious – manners, dress, attitude, posture.  I recommend starting with a tour of your office and facilities.  Make introductions to people who might work with the candidate.  Make the candidate feel at ease so they will be able to give their best performance.  Watch to see how the candidate interacts with people and note the type of questions asked.  If the interview goes well, some companies schedule the candidate to shadow a successful salesperson.  This can be done for several hours or a whole day.  At the end of that time you can meet again to answer questions.  This can be very enlightening for both you and the candidate.

I also like to ask the candidate to come up with ideas for selling the product or service.  I ask how they will generate leads and how long it will take for them to become the top salesperson.

Second Face to Face Interview – This can be team or one to one.  If appropriate, I recommend taking the candidate out for a meal.  I do this for a couple of reasons.  First it gets them out into a different setting and I can watch the reactions.  It provides a different setting for conversation.  If the team goes to lunch you can watch to see how the candidate interacts with each person.

Second most sales jobs require meeting customers for meals I want to be sure they have the manners and business etiquette required.  I want to be sure they can handle eating and holding a conversation at the same time.

References and Checks

Check, Check and Check – I can’t tell you how many problems I have heard about simply because references were not checked.  You read about senior executives who didn’t really have degrees from universities or who lied about prior jobs or reasons for termination and yet references still go unchecked.  Hiring the wrong person is a very expensive mistake.  It is worth someone taking the time to check references.  Someone at your company must be responsible for doing this.

• Personal  - check at least 3
• Professional – minimum 3 employers.  The best case is to check with 2 co-workers, 2 people who managed the individual and if you are hiring a manager 2 people who worked for the candidate.

Ask touch questions like how does the candidate handle pressure?  Tell me about an incident with a customer that the candidate handled well. Tell me about one handled poorly.  What would you say are the strengths of the candidate?  What are the weaknesses?  How would you describe the candidate’s personality?  Look for consistency in answers from those who talk about the candidate.  There are professionals who do nothing but check references and if you use a professional recruiter they may do this for you but be sure they are checking in all of the areas and with multiple people.

There are websites you can use to do financial and background checks.  It is important to note that you need to get permission from the candidate to run these checks.  I often ask, “Is there anything you would like to tell me before I run these checks?”  There can also be legal ramifications.  It is important to check with your HR department or your employment law attorney to be sure that you do all of this correctly.

Here are some areas you will want to check.

• Education
• Background – Criminal and DMV
• Financial

Personality and Performance Survey

I urge all companies to do some type of testing and assessment before hiring.  It is important to be sure that simple things like computer skills are verified.  If you require salespeople to input information into any type of sales force automation tool then typing proficiently is a must.  Can they write a letter or email to a client that is acceptable?  Do they know how to use email?  If they don’t know these things then you better be willing to teach them or not hire them.  How quickly does this person learn?  What is the personality type of the successful salespeople at your company?  Does this person match?  There are many different types of assessments to help you determine these things, find one that is suitable for your company.

Making the Offer

Be sure that you have everything ready to go before making the offer.

Read chapter 13 in You’re Not the Person I Hired.  The authors say, “Never make an offer unless you are absolutely sure it will be accepted.  Once accepted you should have everything in place to provide a smooth transition and training period.  Don’t wait until after they accept to have everything in place.

By: Mike Elk

Last year, the leaders of the U.S.-based foreign labor and supply company Global Horizons were indicted in what the Department of Justice considered the biggest human trafficking case ever brought by the federal government. They were charged with holding 400 Thai guest farm workers in the United States against their will in conditions that essentially amounted to slavery.

The workers were given guest visas to work in the United States under the H-2A visa program. They were kept under brutal conditions under armed guard in Hawaii and forced to live in substandard conditions in hot shipping containers “with no carpet, beds, furniture, indoor plumbing, kitchen or air conditioning,” according to federal investigators. They were under constant threat of violence from gun-toting guards, and on one occasion a guard told the workers they would be shot if they tried to escape.

Several company officials have already pleaded guilty in plea bargain deals and several others are expected to stand trial. In 2006, when the workers’ maltreatment was discovered, the Department of Labor also debarred Global Horizons from participating in the H-2A agricultural guest worker program for the mandatory three years; it issued an additional three year debarment in 2009. Last week, a judge upheld the three year debarment after Global Horizons appealed it.

As I have previously written for In These Times, with the U.S. government giving out $530 billion dollars a year in federal contracts, debarment is a powerful tool to force corporations to obey laws that would help protect workers and their communities. But despite laws that forbid law-breaking companies from receiving government contracts, the federal government rarely enforces them.

But is debarment of Global Horizons—and similar scofflaw companies that supply workers to the United States—from the H-2A agricultural program really enough to stop human trafficking here?

“This is obviously a step in the right direction. This company shouldn’t be getting new government contracts,” says David Madland Director of the America Worker Project at the Center for American Progress. “However, you can also see that it’s so limited. It’s just for this particular program. In theory, they could keep getting other types of contracts and grants.”

The company—whose president, incidentally, sued CorpWatch in late 2006 over a story written by In These Times Contributing Editor Kari Lydersen about the abuse of Thai farm workers—did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this story.

Companies like BP have been barred from receiving contracts due to past environmental abuses in one part of their company, but were able to continue receiving federal contracts in parts of their company not affected by debarment.

As I wrote in February, only a handful of major corporations that have committed major crimes have been suspended from receiving government contracts since the mid-1990s, according to testimony before Congress by the Project on Government Oversight: “General Electric (for a period of five days); now-defunct companies WorldCom, Enron and Arthur Anderson; Boeing (which received multiple waivers to receive new contracts during its suspension); and IBM (for a period of eight days in 2008). The rules are not enforced vigorously due to a lack of resources and a lack of clear government guidelines for enforcement.

Some labor and immigration advocates claim that the guest workers program as a whole is the problem and that debarring labor recruitment and supply companies that abuse the system won’t solve anything.

“Debarment of Global Horizons is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t solve the problem. It eliminates one party, but what about the farms doing it?  There still are tons of recruiters working overseas to recruit new workers for these farms,” says Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) President Baldemar Velasquez, whose union represents 23,000 farm workers in the United States.

Oftentimes, a company like Global Horizons, which functions as a middleman to recruit and provide labor to farms, will go out of business when it is debarred. However, the farms that use that slave labor will continue to operate. The farms are protected due to the limited legal liability of using a middleman labor contractor. New groups recruiting and providing guest workers will spring up in their place and continue to provide people for those same farms.

“Anytime you have a guest worker program, it is inherently very corrupt,” says Velasquez. “They are all slave labor programs to begin with because there is no oversight on the sending country.”

Often workers are forced to sign outrageous contracts or fees, wherein they mortgage their families land in order to pay for their trip to the United States, as the Thai workers did. Many workers fear speaking out to government regulators because they fear they might lose their family’s land overseas.

“This problem is not going to be solved by regulation by government,” says Velasquez. “Farm workers have to have an organization [through which] they can air their complaints without a fear of retaliation. They need some type of organization, such as a union, in place so they can police their own experience. This is the only way we are ever going to really eliminate the problem of forced labor in the United States.”

By: David Gardner

Americans gave up vacation time worth a staggering $67.5 billion last year and worked instead, according to a new survey.

With the recession still biting hard on Main Street, all work and no play has increasingly become the norm.

The average American employee got 18 paid vacation days in 2010, but only used 14 of those days off.

Altogether, Americans gave up 448 million earned vacation days last year.

Using the average full-time wage of $39,208 – that adds up to $67.5 billion worth of time.

The Expedia.com survey revealed that workers in Europe are much more determined to claim their time off.

Workers in France got 37 vacation days last year and used 35 of them while the average worker in the UK took 25 of their 28 days of paid leave.

Only 38 per cent of Americans quizzed by the travel booking website said they took all of their vacation days.

Some say their bosses frown on them taking time off, others say the financial climate is still so tough that they simply can’t afford to stay at home.

Even when they do escape from the workplace, 72 per cent said they still checked in with the office, said another poll from Rasmussen Reports.

But analyst Scott Spiker, CEO of First Command Financial Services, told CNN that Americans may have an ulterior motive for going in on their vacation days.

‘Vacations tend to suck up money,’ he said. ‘They tempt people to spend more, save less and take on more debt.

‘By forfeiting some of their vacation days, Americans are trying to eliminate the temptation to spend money,’ he added.

‘Headcount is so low, salaried employees are probably doing a job-and- a-half minimum, maybe two jobs, and they can’t get away,’ Mickey Kampsen, president of MRINetwork’s Management Recruiters of Charlottesville, also told CNN.

‘They are trying to bring as much value as possible to their company in order to keep their job,’ she said.

‘You’ve got to show you are one of the loyal soldiers.’

By Ivana Taylor

Slow Down, Sell Faster: Understand Your Customers’ Buying Process and Maximize Your Sales.  The author, Kevin Davis (@toplineleader on Twitter)  has over 30 years’ experience in sales and wrote Getting Into Your Customer’s Head back in 1996, so you know that he’s been drinking this lemonade for a long time.

What’s Inside the Book

Davis combines academic research and practical experience to generate a sales system you can use to not just improve your top line, but your bottom line as well.

Part I of the book is devoted to the actual sales system.  One thing I really like about this book is that it is actually written for an industrial or complex buying process.  Davis references established experts Webster and Wind, who have studied how bigger organizations make decisions to select a supplier.  And he uses decades of research and melds it with practical, real-life ways that business-to-business purchases are made.

Part II expands on the selling system by introducing what Davis calls the eight roles that you have to play in the customer’s buying process:

1. Student: Use Knowledge to Gain the Edge
2. Doctor: Diagnose Small Problems, Define Big Needs
3. Architect: Design Customer-Focused Solutions
4. Coach: Make a Plan to Defeat the Competition
5. Therapist: Understand and Resolve a Buyer’s Fears
6. Negotiator: Reach a Mutual Commitment
7. The Teacher: Teach Customers to Achieve Maximum Value
8. The Farmer: Cultivate Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Part II contains one chapter on coaching to the eight roles.  It’s written for sales managers and the people who work for them.  It provides a series of cheat sheets and troubleshooting tables to help sales managers and sales reps debrief sales calls.

If you’ve had any professional sales training, you will recognize many of the principles and techniques represented in this book.  For example, I’ve had Sandler Sales Training, and I easily recognized what I call the 10-point scale technique.  Simply ask your customer to rate the solution you’ve come up with like this: “On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is ‘not at all what I want’ and 10 is ‘this is the perfect solution,’ how would you rate the solution we’ve discussed?”  If they answer anything less than an 8, ask, “What would you need to see to bring that to a 10?”

The book is full of strategies, tips and hints at every level and at every point of the selling process.  Davis uses a layered approach where he introduces the selling system, then overlays the roles of the salesperson through the buying process and guides the reader to success.

Here are just a few examples of some of my favorite pieces of information:

The Decision-Making Hierarchy: This is perhaps the simplest and best description of what’s important to each level of the organization and how you should structure your message:

• CEOs – They are at the top of the pyramid, and profitability is what you should focus on when talking to them.
• Mid-Level Managers – The middle or core of the pyramid.  These people are most concerned about solving operational problems.  The departments typically represented here include marketing, operations and customer service.
• Support – This is the base of the pyramid and includes accounting, purchasing, training and legal departments.

While most books tell you to aim straight for the top of the pyramid, Slow Down, Sell Faster reveals the truth that most salespeople don’t have anything of substance to say to C-level execs until they’ve gotten their feet wet a little further down the pyramid.

Slow Down Sell Faster Is a Serious Sales Book Focused on Sales Training and Improvement

This is a fantastic book for any business-to-business, technical or industrial CEO with full-time, direct salespeople who sell high-priced, high-involvement products and services to companies where more than one person is involved in the decision.

Don’t expect to read Slow Down, Sell Faster in one sitting and then see immediate results.  This is a comprehensive, detailed and perceptive book about complicated sales situations.  You’ll want to read this book section by section and then take the time to implement and practice specific strategies.  I’d recommend that you visit the Slow Down, Sell Faster section of Kevin Davis’ website where you can download Chapter 1, “Why Slower is Faster,” and experience the book for yourself.

Overall, this is an extremely powerful book that will challenge your thinking and your sales process.  And like a good workout and diet, I think you’ll find the results well worth the effort.