FROM JIM SIRBASKU’S DESK
How to Blend Science with the Art of Sales Excellence

You are bursting with pride at your most recent hire in the sales department. You lured the guy with a high sales quota from his job at Giant Company to work with your small, entrepreneurial startup and told him you wanted him to work the same magic for you that he worked there. You believe he can do it or you wouldn’t have gone after him. He believes he can do it or he wouldn’t have left his job there to come to work for you.

He arrives wearing his best suit and carrying his updated Rolodex. You put him in a great spot and wait for superior sales figures. And wait. And wait some more. The sales figures you expected never materialize, even though he’s always on the phone and seems to be rattling lots of doorknobs.

You try to analyze the situation and can’t put your finger on the problem. The gears just never seem to mesh. He’s always out of step with your expectations and never quite reaches the level of performance you see in your sales leaders. Or he reached a certain level and never went beyond that. Now he is marching in place.

Such disastrous hiring doesn’t have to happen, yet it often does. Why?

It’s linked to a belief that excellent salespeople are born, not made, and that sales success in one place easily translates to sales success anywhere. These beliefs ignore the fact that a great part of the top salesperson’s success at his previous company was linked to that company’s culture. Oh yes, a previously successful salesperson can be successful in your company too. But success in your company will depend on you redefining his role, training him well, and both of you thinking about selling for your company in a different way. In short, you can’t import his previous success without key changes.

Prior sales success is often the sole criterion that hiring managers look at when considering a candidate for this crucial position. After all, that star by the quota line is a quantitative measurement. You don’t get to count the notches in the belt of most other employees. So why is a previous track record a bad thing to look at?

It’s not, unless it’s the only thing you are looking at. Don’t let your search end there. Look within as much as you do without. Study your own company and customers, and think about what you want sales excellence to look like. Only when you have discerned what your company’s culture requires can you begin to develop a profile for what your top salespersons should look like.

Doing this is not terribly hard if you are willing to look at people in your company who are already tops in sales and still growing, achieving ever-higher quotas and building on their successes. They will provide you with the standards you need to hire future top salespeople.

Elsewhere in this newsletter and in magazines, books and online, you can discover the attributes of top salespeople. I won’t repeat them here. What I will impart is this: Failures at sales are mostly due to a person’s underdeveloped skills and to selling the wrong thing. You can put someone with good skills in a nice suit and give her lots of contacts, and she still won’t be able to sell if she doesn’t have the right attitude, vision, skills and training that you provide.

Also consider that good salespeople are not necessarily born. Some make it look so easy that it seems like native ability, but just like any job done well, a talent for selling takes training, practice and commitment. Yes, there’s an art to attaining superior sales, but art is not magic. If you combine the right characteristics that assessments can help you discern with the right training, hiring top salespeople is a science that enhances the art.

Jim Sirbasku, CEO
Profiles International

10 Steps to Keeping Your Top-Performing Sellers

1. Make sure they fit the job before you hire them. Don’t just hire a warm body to fill an open position.
2. Feed their confidence by encouraging them to take ownership and rely on their own decision-making skills; empower them to help their clients without having to clear every decision.
3. Coach them on the power of persistence; suggest they follow up phone calls with emails and meetings with thank-you notes. This helps keep the salesperson and the company’s name in front of the client.
4. Educate them on your organization’s mission and values as well as the products or services they sell. This will help them believe in what the company stands for, as well as what they are selling.
5. Define specifically what kind of performance the company wants and how you will measure that performance.
6. Know what’s most important to them on the job and meet their needs. Provide them with the resources they need to do their job well: reliable phones and fax machines, transportation, assistants to help with paperwork.
7. Ask them to help you recruit their talented colleagues who would be a good fit with your organization.
8. Promote them only if they demonstrate the desire and the ability to do the new job. Doing well in one area does not mean a top performer will do just as well in the new position. He or she may not want to move up. If not, offer new training that will help the employee grow in his current position.
9. Be open to new ideas and products. Top performers often see a way to do their job better.
10. Encourage honesty and integrity; don’t ask a top performer to do something you would not do.

CASE STUDY
Identifying Sales Leaders with Profiles Sales Indicator™

A top salesperson at any company is pretty easy to spot by her healthy sales earnings. Less easy to identify is the great candidate for your particular sales opening. Even if she demonstrates a successful record at her current company, does this mean she will be just as productive in your organization? Not necessarily; organizations can differ significantly in size, mission, and products sold.

One staffing organization located in the Midwest wanted to enhance sales productivity. It found a customized solution using the Profiles Sales Indicator™.

Method
First, the organization looked at the sales totals of 13 recruiters. Using these totals, the company classified six of the 13 as top performers, with average sales earnings of $107,011. It classified seven of the 13 as bottom performers, with average sales earnings of $40,977.

Then, using this sample of recruiters and the Profiles Sales Indicator™, the employer developed a Job Match Pattern describing the qualities of the existing top performers for the recruiter position. The 13 recruiters were then matched to this pattern. A Job Match Percent of 79 best identified the top performing employees. The employer selected this as a benchmark, meaning that 79 percent or higher should identify a top performer.

Of the 13 recruiters, six obtained a Job Match Percentage of 79 percent or greater. Five of the six, or 83 percent, were top performers. Additionally, five of the six registered above the 79 percent benchmark. One of the seven bottom performers (14 percent) achieved the same mark.

Results
A detailed examination revealed that the average sales generated by recruiters in line with the Job Match Pattern at 79 percent or higher was $97,730. Meanwhile, those who did not match the pattern at 79 percent showed averages sales of $48,932.14, a difference of almost $50,000.

Sales Quotes

"All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.” – Tom Peters, management consultant

“If you don't risk anything you risk even more.” – Erica Jong, author

“People get caught up in wonderful, eye-catching pitches, but they don't do enough to close the deal. It's no good if you don't make the sale. Even if your foot is in the door or you bring someone into a conference room, you don't win the deal unless you actually get them to sign on the dotted line.” – Donald Trump, business mogul

“No matter how good you get you can always get better and that's the exciting part.” – Tiger Woods, master golfer

“Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.” – Peter Drucker, writer, management consultant, professor

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” – Les Brown, motivational speaker, author

PROFILE SALES INDICATOR™
First, let’s look at the Profiles Sales Indicator™. This assessment measures the essential qualities of a salesperson, including competitiveness (how persuasive, confident and assertive is she?); self-reliance (does he work independently?); persistence (is she tough when necessary?); energy (can he maintain the company’s pace with zest and enthusiasm?); and sales drive (can she envision success?).

PROFILEXTSALES™
Next let’s examine the special qualities of the ProfileXTSales™ assessment. Salespeople work in an increasingly competitive pressure cooker. It’s no wonder that 38 percent of salespeople say they plan to leave their jobs within two years (2006 Sales Performance Study, Miller Heiman). Companies clearly need an advantage in recruiting, hiring and retaining top performers. The PXTS™ puts sales leaders in prime position through its identification, development and retention capabilities.

This assessment gives key information on a person’s thinking style, behavioral characteristics and occupational interests. Its use extends beyond the job candidate to current employees, predicting which ones should play a role in strategic succession planning.

Research consistently demonstrates that more than half of those in professional sales lack the basic attributes required for success in this difficult profession – attributes that world-class salespeople possess as natural gifts or develop through training or single-minded focus. Of the remaining half, half of these have the potential for success in some form of sales, but are currently selling the wrong product or service. That leaves about 25 percent to sell about 80 percent of the world’s products and services.

Enlightening, isn’t it?

That’s why it’s important for you to have a keen understanding of the attributes of world-class salespeople. If you can recognize them, you can hire more of them! You can also tell when salespeople on your team need training and support, and you’ll have a good idea of what they need.