View the Video of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes

March 26, 2012 by · 1 Comment

Top Ten Hiring Mistakes - Hiring Errors

On our Hire and Retain Top Talent Blog, we recently posted a video of our Research Project titled The Top Ten Mistakes in Hiring. You can download a copy of the Executive Summary of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes Research Project by clicking here. The blog post with the video of the Top Ten Mistakes in Hiring can be found by clicking here.

In the video we identify which of the 5 components of our Success Factor Methodology can be used to overcome each of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes.

We teach the Success Factor Methodology in our popular workshop “You’re NOT the Person I Hired” which is named after our best-selling book by the same title. You can download a digital version of our book on raising hiring accuracy and eliminating hiring mistakes by clicking here.

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: hiring top talent · Tagged: , ,

Finding good sales people

January 5, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

 

Dave Kinnear, Vistage Chair, posted a wonderful article (I’m biased of course) on his blog to one of our most popular blog articles titled “Why is it so hard to find great salespeople?”

Dave wrote this article over a year ago – and it’s just as relevant today as it was when he originally posted the article. His call to action to companies to change the way criteria is set for hiring and performance, incentives, and expectations is frustrating to read since not a lot has changed in sales hiring over the last 10 years. Most companies are still stuck in an antiquated, ancient, tribal, and traditional approach to hiring and managing a sales team that is broken.

Until the basic paradigm shifts of how to define success, how to fish in deep waters for the best sales talent, how to motivate the best performers, and how to keep the best talent changes – most companies will continue to experience mediocre results in their sales teams.

Here’s a small quote from Dave’s article:

 

My friends at Impact Hiring Solutions posted an article on their blog answering a question I hear a lot: “Why is it so hard to find great salespeople?” They are right it is hard, and I think we should listen to their solid understanding of how to properly hire a sales person. However, there is a trap waiting for you. It’s a pretty significant trap; and it’s this . . . . Do you know what it takes to be successful in sales in THIS market or are you going to build your success factors based on past experience. Now, I’m not talking about setting the measurable goals part of this process. You know how to determine what the top line, bottom line and profit margins need to be. I’m talking about what makes a salesperson successful in the present economy. And if you follow the Impact Hiring Solutions guidelines, how will a person demonstrate that they have achieved the success factors in other companies and in this market?

 

How do you define success for top performing sales professionals? Have you changed your methods of where you go to find these candidates? Have you evolved your process of what you do with these top performing sales professionals once join your company? OR we will still using the same approaches from 10-20-30 years ago?

If you would like to read Dave Kinnear’s full article on what needs to change to hire and retain top sales professionals, click the link below:

Finding Good Sales People

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: hiring top talent, sales management · Tagged: , , ,

Is the Issue of Delayed Gratification Important in Success vs. Failure?

August 13, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Vistage Chair Mark Taylor, put forth the interesting idea that perhaps success or failure is determined by delayed gratification.

Here are a few of the comments Mark made in his blog post:

 

In this six minute TED talk, Joachim de Posada, author of Don’t Eat The Marshmallow Yet!: The Secret to Sweet Success in Work and Life, shares a telling experiment on delayed gratification — and how it can predict future success. This must see video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow is very funny and teaches an important lesson for leaders, the key difference between success and failure is not merely hard work or superior intelligence, but the ability to delay gratification.

 

Mark took this idea to another level by linking emotional intelligence to delayed gratification.

Would you agree delayed gratification is important to measure? Is it a important behavior trait among your top performers.

Is measuring this possible in an interview?

Are you someone who delays gratification?

My experience of having interviewed with my partner over 250,000 candidates over 25 years and having conducted over 1000 search assignments – is that most top performers in the corporate world want immediate gratification. They have a need to see a project or task completed and want feedback on how the did immediately. They are intensely goal/target focused and have an ability to plow through obstacles, problems, roadblocks to complete projects. Can you be someone who delays gratification, yet be someone who is also execution oriented?

It’s an interesting idea to consider – although I’m not yet convinced this is the core issue of success vs. failure. In roles requiring a high degree of urgency in completion, would this potentially be a negative?

If you’re interested in reading the full article Mark posted, click the link below:

Here is the key difference between success and failure

Barry Deutsch

PS: Mark did a great job of illustrating how you can manage content for your target audience and use it as a tool to engage, promote discussion, brand yourself, and establish your thought leadership. If you’re a speaker, consultant, or sales professional, do you do this with your network on a frequent basis by leveraging social media, such as LinkedIn and Blogging? The additional lesson is that I find this interesting article that Mark wrote, quoted him, linked to his material, gave him full credit, and put my own thoughts around his blog post. This technique of sharing information with your network is called content curation – are you doing this with your most important connections?

Filed Under: culture, employee peformance, hiring top talent · Tagged: , , ,

Do Sales Managers Realize They Are Making These Mistakes?

August 8, 2011 by · 1 Comment

 

Why does Benjamin Franklin’s quote about the definition of insanity seem so appropriate for many managers – especially sales managers?

In an interesting article on the Sales Archaeologist Blog, Frank Belzer laid out his Top Ten Mistakes that he sees Sales Managers making over and over again. I’ve listed a few items from the Top Ten List below. As you look at this list – has the sales manager or executive in your organization making these same mistakes year after year?

In our executive search practice for sales leadership, we’ve noted that most replacement searches are not due to lack of competency, intellect, knowledge, or past experience. Frequently, it’s the inability to execute around basic and fundamental elements of best practices in sales management. There is no magic formula or pixie dust that separates top performing sales managers from weak sales managers.

The difference between the two groups in terms of results and outcomes is dramatic. The number one element that separates these two groups – top talent vs. weak performers – is in the execution of sales management best practices, which are nothing more than common-sense approaches to good management. As you may recall, measuring the ability to achieve flawless execution is one of the 5 Core Interview Questions in our Success Factor Methodology. Many companies make mistakes in hiring by not probing and validating at a deep level the ability to execute.

Here is the Top 3 on the Top Ten List published on the Sales Archaeologist Blog:

 

  1. Your sales people learn to be consultative with your clients by your example being consultative with them. Everyone wants their sales people to be consultative but so often managers operate through ultimatums, quick commands or terse comments – not consultative.
  2. Your sales people learn how to listen because you listen to them.
  3. Your sales people learn how to make your prospects feel comfortable with change because you demonstrate how it is done when changes need to be made on the team.

If you would like to see the rest of the list, click the link below. Are you up for measuring your sales manager against this list?

The Top Ten Mistakes Sales Managers Don’t Even Know They Are Making

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: sales management · Tagged: , , , , ,

Is Your Sales Team Learning and Growing?

March 2, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Do your sales managers and sales professionals continually and proactively learn and expand their knowledge/skills as sales experts?

I’m sorting through the thousands of blogs I follow on a weekly basis and I come across this blog posting in the sales arena for the top 50 sales blogs based on Hubspot’s Grading Tool. Sean Black at the SalesCrunch Blog pulled this list together and here’s a short summary:

Here at SalesCrunch we follow well over 200 of the best sales blogs each day! This is obviously far too many for any normal human to filter and process. So when we saw Hubspot post their Top 100 Marketing Blogs using the new groups feature in Blog Grader last week we were super excited. We immediately decided to feed our list of 200+ blogs into the tool to generate  the SalesCrunch Top 50 Sales Blogs. The list is generated according to the “Grade” in Blog Grader and is updated daily so the list is always accurate and up to date.

It started me thinking about your sales leadership and sales staff.

What is your sales team reading, researching, and studying to become more adept at selling, sales management, negotiation, prospecting, leveraging social media to generate leads and referrals? If your sales management and sales team is a lot like the thousands of sales professionals I’ve interviewed over the years, then they are probably doing NOTHING on their own unless you force-feed it to them.

One of the differences between average/mediocre sales management-sales professionals and top talent is that top talent never stops learning. They are like sponges. They cannot get enough new information to become better at their craft. The best part is that they don’t wait for you to teach them or provide learning opportunities. They seek it out on their own.

Do you agree with this statement – top talent never stops learning?

What type of people do you have in your sales organization – average/mediocre staff waiting for you to give them learning opportunities OR are they top talent sales professionals reaching and grabbing for every ounce of information they can find that will help them become more effective?

In our Sales Recruiting Division of our Executive Search Practice, we’ve started to require our recruiters to ask questions about continuous learning to separate out the top talent.

Some of these questions might include:

  • What are 3-5 books you’ve read recently on a sales related topic?
  • What are your favorite sales learning/education blogs that you follow regularly?
  • What sales learning/education forums-groups do you belong to on LinkedIn or other platforms?
  • Where have you found recently a great idea or tip on sales that has improved your capability or skill?
  • Walk me through the learning you’ve proactively sought out over the last year or two to become better in sales – learning that your company didn’t provide or give to you.

These are just a few of the questions we probe to try and validate is this sales candidate a top talent individual and are they a continuous life-long learner. Are they growing and expanding their capability at a rapid pace?

Is it time to look at your sales team and score them along a learning/personal growth matrix? How about changing your sales interviews?

I’d love to hear your feedback from your next sales interview when you pose these questions to a potential candidate. Would you be comfortable asking these questions? Do you believe they start to get at important traits of success for top talent sales professionals and sales managers?

To read the full blog post by Sean Black, click the link below:

SalesCrunch Top 50 Sales Blogs 2011

 

Barry Deutsch

P.S. We have launched our new 30-day e-course for personal service providers and sales professionals on how to leverage social media to attract customers and clients. You can read more about this exciting e-course offering in the blog sidebar or by clicking the menu item at the top of the blog.

Filed Under: sales management · Tagged: , , , , ,