We wrote about cold call reluctance earlier this week (see My New Hire Won’t Make Cold Calls). Qualifying a prospect is one of the most critical phases in the sales cycle is another area where we see reps exhibiting reluctance. After the initial call is made, qualifying is one of the most feared phases in
We hear this story a lot. I recently hired a new sales person. During the interview process they seemed like a great hunter. They pursued me during the hiring process and actively closed me during our final interview. Now that the rep is on-board, it seems they won’t pick up the phone to save their
There are countless articles on how to build a high performance sales team (including ours: How To Create A High-Performance Sales Culture), so we decided to take a lighthearted look at how not to build a sales team. Only look for talent when you need to hire – If a hiring manager looks for talent
Reference Checks Reference checks are one of the most critical ways to validate the traits and performance abilities of a potential sales hire (see The Importance of Reference Checks in Sales Hiring). Unfortunately many companies make up their mind to hire someone and then perform only cursory reference checks or, surprisingly often, none at all.
There are many different types of sales roles, but traditionally there have been two main divisions in selling: those who sell to the people that come to them (inside sales, aka in-house sellers, aka inbound) and those that go out and hunt down their own prospects then close the deal (outside, those who sell on
When our research tracked 20,000 new hires, 46% of them failed within 18 months. But even more surprising than the failure rate, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill. The attitudinal deficits that doomed these failed
There are literally a million different varieties of sales roles from those that handle inbound calls for information to those that manage existing relationships and those that open new accounts. The most coveted type of sales professional, what we tend to call, ‘Hunters’ pound the pavement (or the phone as the case may be), find
In the weeks to come we are going to address the various questions that a VP of Sales or CEO are faced with as they are looking at developing a kick-a$$, bullet-proof sales recruiting strategy and process. These strategies will apply whether you are a VP Sales/CEO of a enterprise or a small company. The topics
Never underestimate what you can learn from checking the references of someone you are thinking about hiring and never get so enamoured by a prospective hire that you don’t bother to make reference checks part of your hiring process. Here are some of the most insightful things we have learned from years of checking sales
When we say that sales people often do their best selling during interviews, we know that we sound like a broken record, but that doesn’t change the fact that getting past the sales job is a critical challenge in sales hiring. There are many ways to figure out the “real” salesperson during the hiring process,
