Sales Executives

By:  Brenda Bryant

While analysts and economists may disagree on the solution to an economic recession, they all agree that job creation and wage rates play a critical role in economic growth. You may be inclined to believe the issue today is a lack of jobs, citing job cuts and layoffs as support. However, the winners of the Nobel prize in economics for 2010 disagree–it may be a lack of proper job training.

Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on wage formation through search markets. Professor Diamond is known for his conclusion that higher levels of unemployment insurance can actually lead to job creation, a point hotly debated by politicians. Mortensen and Pissarides are well known for their work in finding a negative relationship between the number of jobs and the level of unemployment.

Applicants Lacking Job Skills Training

These three economists have developed theories which explain how so many people can be unemployed with a large number of job openings on the market. Put together, their work suggests the issue is not lack of jobs, but lack of an efficient market to match employers with the right employee. This is especially the case in terms of skill set. Recruiters and temp agencies believe the issue is not a lack of jobs, but a lack of qualified candidates.

Doug Beabout, CPC, of The Douglas Howard Group believes the skills gap will only grow in the future. “There will be between six and eight million jobs open by 2013, and that’s just representing the jobs that exist right now, with no growth in the economy taken into account,” said Beabout.  He continues, “There will not be people in our population who can do these jobs.”

Skill Sets that Can Make You More Competitive

The Pacific Northwest, Texas, Arizona, Silicon Valley and the Mid-Atlantic regions all cite a lack of employees with the right skill set. Those employees lucky enough to have this coveted skill set are paid higher salaries and receive higher bonuses. It is not surprising that the coveted skill set revolves around technology.

In 2010, the Global Knowledge/TechRepublic 2010 Salary Survey conducted a survey of key decision makers. They listed Windows administration, network administration and security as the primary desired skill-set. Database managers for Oracle, IBM and Sybase are also in high demand and the demand for those in mobile and web application development continues to grow.

From a broader perspective, organizations are looking for project management skills, experience in health care technology and management, software engineers, virtualization or data storage experience and business analysis.

Business analysis includes strategy and organizational behavior, project or work place transition specialists and implementation strategists. Business analysts with business process improvement experience are also highly sought after.

Who Gets the Bonus?

A recent survey by Mercer suggests employers plan on sharing built up cash reserves on their current employees rather than hiring additional employees. The survey, which has been conducted for more than two decades, includes responses from more than 1,100 employers and includes the pay of more than 12 million employees.

On average, employers plan on increasing base pay by 3 percent in 2012, with the top performing employees expecting to see an increase by an average of 4.8 percent. Many employees are doing the work of two or three people after layoffs and these raises give top talent a reason to stay.

Furthermore, and even more disturbing for the average employee, is the gap between top and average talent. Employers are investing more money in on the job training programs for top talent, which enables these lucky few to focus on career growth rather than job protection. The practice is known as segmentation or differentiation.

The only way for the average employee to close the gap is to invest in their own, self-made, job skills training program. The challenge is figuring out which skill-sets have the highest utility; that is, pay the most, for the shortest amount of training.

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.

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Locally, I am on the board of the Nashville Association of Sales Professionals www.nashville-nasp.org. This association has been one of the most positive affiliations in my professional career. Our group meets once a month and we bring in sales trainers, motivational speakers, business leaders and others to provide a 45-minute lunch presentation for our members. The programs are inspiring and motivating but, more importantly, the people I meet there are special. I truly believe I am meeting with the Top 10% sales and business professionals in this group. This is a voluntary association so people join because they WANT to and because they want to better themselves. We are the "do-ers".

I have made life-long friendships within this group and I learn something new every meeting. Maybe it’s NOT true you cannot teach an old dog ("broad") new tricks . No matter how little or long you have been in sales, you’ll learn something. And I always tell everyone to plan their toughest sales call right after the meeting as they will leave "pumped up" !If you are local, come check out our meeting next week on May 11 when a Brian Tracy trainer will be training us on selling smarter- not harder. You can find more information on our website www.nashville-nasp.org,

If you are not in Nashville, look in your phone book for any sales association such as National Association of Sales Professals or Sales & Marketing Executives.

Oh, and by the way, the largest placement I ever made came from a friendship I made from NASP. That was NOT my reason for joining or  for staying  a member but it sure was a nice bonus .

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You would think the title of this blog entry would be elementary but, every day, I find candidates/job seekers struggling to give the "right answer" that the hiring manager wants to hear. NO ! Be yourself. I tell everyone I send out for interviews to be themselves. You want to be hired for who you are- not what you think they want you to be. Hopefully, that will be one and the same but, if it is not, all the better. You will ultimately not be happy in a job if you are hired for something you are not and you will not be successful either. Oh, you may have some measure of success for some length of time but it will wear you out trying to be someone else.

By all means, working on the wording of your answers is important. How you say it it always important. But truthful answers will always win out and, subliminally, the hiring authority probably has an inner sense send off a warning when they think you are being insincere or false. Haven’t you had that happen to you when you suspected someone was telling you a untruth? Imagine how much experience the hiring manager has in listening to the inner voice,

So, my advice is to know your stats (growth, percent of quota, etc.) and focus on your wording but don’t exert energy thinking "What does he/she WANT me to say?". And good luck.

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