First up, please allow me to assure you that I haven’t lost the plot. Over the years, most of my clients have asked if I would help them attract and hire new salespeople into their businesses, with a great number of successes. It’s a core part of my business, but hiring new sales staff right now might be a mistake for you and here’s why.
What is crystal clear to me, is that if you believe you can simply hire your way to sales success, you’ll most likely be setting yourself up for costly disappointment. Our research shows that every time a new sales hire goes wrong, it costs the business a whopping $120,000.
If you’re serious about attracting and then keeping great salespeople, before you do anything, ask yourself these questions:
Do we have effective sales managers who hold their team accountable, or ones who avoid challenging their people and are happier being one of the gang?
Do we provide ongoing sales, industry and product training or just expect our salespeople to know it already and get on with it?
Does our business really embrace coaching and mentoring or like most, just pay it lip service?
Is there a clear correlation between results and rewards for our salespeople or is this an area of confusion?
Do we offer a career path for our top performers?
Create the right environment first, ensure it stays in place and then you’ll have every right to expect the best salespeople will want to come and work with you.
If you would like to learn more about how you can transform your sales organisation, you can contact me directly on 0416 115266 or email me at
The most common gripes that salespeople share with me about their current employers, concern lack of career opportunity and skills development. That often, what they were told would happen in the interview, doesn’t play out, and as a result, they disengage and want to move on.
Weak, underperforming salespeople, the excuse makers with lousy attitudes, should be moved out straightaway, but businesses must have the best environment for all if they’re going to attract, and crucially, retain strong sales staff.
Our research shows that just 6% of salespeople are elite, with a further 20% being good performers for their employers. The other ¾ struggle to make their numbers.
So, what does this tells us?
Quite simply, that it’s hard enough to find good sales staff in the first place, so it surely makes great sense that every effort must be made to keep them.
According to IBM’s 2014 report, The Value of Training, “Employees who don’t feel they can achieve their career goals with their current employer are 12 times more likely to consider leaving. With new employees, this number skyrockets to about 30 times more likely.”
The cost of replacing a sales person is upwards of $120,000, so there’s every reason to make sure that you have an ongoing development program for them in place. But, my experience shows that whilst most organisations happily splash out on recruiting costs, some baulk at the idea of spending any money to train their salespeople. Then they wonder why the good ones leave them.
A real standout for me, is that the strong salespeople I talk with, are always the ones who get most excited by the promise of being coached and developing their skills. It’s a key decider for them to join one potential employer over another. My findings are supported by The Computing Technology Industry Association, who report “62% of employees say that professional development contributes to their job satisfaction.”
So, I encourage you to take a long look at exactly what your business is doing right now to ensure the development of your sales team. What current, ongoing programs do you have in place? Do your sales managers know how to coach? Have they ever been trained in sales management? Most haven’t. How much time are they spending on coaching, training and mentoring their salespeople? (Hint, it should be about 75% of their time).
As CEO, the buck stops with you, so don’t make the mistake of passing this crucial matter onto your sales manager. Instead run with it yourself, and build a successful sales organisation through effective and ongoing development of your sales staff.
Finally, a request to all my readers.
I am committed to writing regular “Food for Thought” articles, so I may share with you my ideas on how you can build a strong sales organisation and grow revenue. If you have any challenges or successes you would like to share with me, I would love to hear from you.
You can contact me directly on 0416 115 266 or email me at
Following last week’s article about onboarding and keeping good staff, the topic has stayed front of mind due to two conversations I’ve had since.
The first was with a great candidate. He’s currently a very senior sales leader with one of Australia’s best-known organisations, but after many years with them, has decided to leave. When asked why, he explained that incentives, bonuses and commissions, have now been scrapped for all, with the exception the CEO, whose bonus remains. Nice one. He told me staff morale is rock bottom.
My other conversation was with the founder of a still young business that has grown exceptionally well, and now, for the first time, needs to hire a new business sales person to start taking them to the next level.
The challenge they have is a cultural one. You see, their client relationship managers do not receive bonuses, but they’ll need an incentive scheme now, if they’re going to attract a new business development manager. They get that they’re going to have to break the mould, and that it may cause some rumblings, so we’ll be working on the best way for them to sell it in. Because without it, they won’t attract the calibre of person they need.
So, two examples of how staff incentives can be a minefield, one a clear example of how to demoralise your team in one fell swoop, the second an illustration of why you must be prepared for pushback and resentment if new incentives are not properly explained and introduced.
Always be wary when salespeople tell you that “money isn’t that important to me”. Translated it means “I’d rather not prospect and look for new clients, instead I’ll happily morph into an account manager”.
Whilst our research shows most of us are intrinsically motivated, the want for reward and to earn more money must remain a key driver for salespeople whose job it is to search out and win new business. There must be a financial incentive for them to justify the disappointments and rejection they face daily, otherwise what’s the point?
My recommendation is to offer a realistic, achievable incentive scheme. Leave it uncapped, after all, the more your salespeople earn the better the business is doing, so why put a ceiling on it. Usually managers can be rewarded with an annual bonus, based on what their team achieves. For salespeople, I like commissions to be paid quarterly. This protects the business from a one-month wonder, and is a short enough period to keep the sales person motivated.
I am committed to writing regular “Food for Thought” articles, so I may share with you my ideas on how you can build a strong sales organisation and grow revenue. If you have any challenges or successes you would like to share with me, I would love to hear from you.
You can contact me directly on 0416 115 266 or email me at
Last week I presented to a group of CEOs, and they were keen to discuss the trials and tribulations around finding and keeping good salespeople.
We had a really good conversation, with me highlighting that the average cost of a bad hire is $120,000. All nodded in agreement, with a couple suggesting a higher figure.
Since then, I have been thinking about the “keeping” good salespeople bit, and wanted to share my thoughts with you.
According to The Aberdeen Group, “organisations with a standardised onboarding process see 50% better new hire retention”. It’s also vital to have the process ready to go from day one, as data from The Centre for Generational Kinetics shows that “33% of employees know whether they want to stay long-term at a company within 1 week on the job”.
HR will be able to implement any refinements to what you already have in place and run with this. Also, they might want to adapt the process for other, non-selling roles.
These are some of my recommendations for what should be included for new sales hires.
Start by establishing which staff member is going carry out what topic with the new employee, when it’s scheduled to happen, and ensure that you get the confirmation that it has been done.
Example topics might include “Organisation Structure” – HR manager on 23rd August, “Product Training” – Sales Manager on 24th August, “Our Pricing Structure”, “Our Value Proposition”, “Our Competition”, “Goal 1st Week”, “Accountable – To Whom” etc. etc.
We advise our clients that this should happen over the first 90 days. However, when reading up on this subject, others recommend that the onboarding process run throughout the first year. I think this is sound advice and would suggest all essential topics be covered off in the first 3 months, supported by follow up monthly sessions, to give new information and check in with the person.
This check in time allows your managers to answer any problems the new staff member may have, and importantly, is also a great opportunity for them to evaluate the person’s level of enthusiasm, if they’re resisting the chance to develop, whether they make excuses and complain unduly. If they’re not engaged they’ll perform poorly, so look out for signs and nip any problems in the bud.
Finally, I am updating the “Onboarding” form we share with our clients when hiring on their behalf, and I thought, if you’d like a copy, which you may want to adapt and brand to your business, let me know by replying to this email and I will send it to you.
I am committed to writing regular “Food for Thought” articles, so I may share with you my ideas on how you can build a strong sales organisation and grow revenue. If you have any challenges or successes you would like to share with me, I would love to hear from you.
You can contact me directly on 0416 115266 or email me at
It’s clear that the job of a sales person is considerably harder than it used to be, and business leaders need to ensure that they have the necessary procedures in place if their salespeople are to succeed.
Those that choose not to, will invariably face a revolving door of expensive underperformers.
My first sales role was back in the ‘80s, it was commission only, so I had to sell, there was no Plan B. But, I was blessed because my MD was the most sales focused leader I have known.
Every morning, without exception, he ran a sales meeting which would last for one hour. Everyone announced the number of meetings they had done the previous day, the orders they had won and all the numbers were put onto the whiteboard for all to see. It was simple, staff were held accountable and it was obvious that those who put the most activity in, continually shone the brightest.
Team managers spent part of every day in the field with their people, developing and coaching them and there were continual new business prospecting sessions, at which competition to get the most appointments was encouraged and rewarded.
This focus on daily sales development worked for me, and set me on my path. I really don’t know how I would have fared without it.
Plus, we must acknowledge that selling was so much simpler then, compared with what your salespeople contend with today.
Buyers are far more knowledgeable, information is everywhere and many industries have lead their customers to expect a discount. Doing more for less is widespread, yet customer loyalty is harder to achieve.
So, this beggars the question, “What’s being done better today to prepare salespeople for this new reality?”
I can only tell you what I have learned from my talking and working with hundreds of CEOs, sales leaders and salespeople, and my answer is “very little”.
For your business to succeed, your salespeople can’t be allowed to simply carry on doing what they’ve always done. Instead, they need to reposition themselves as trusted advisors, but to do this, will firstly need a healthy, coachable sales mind-set and secondly be taught to use a proven selling process that enables them to uncover the prospect’s most important buying criteria, and then have the skills to propose a tailored solution that directly solves that issue for them.
Compounding the problem, too many sales managers are simply “winging it”. They’re getting promoted to lead others without being taught how to properly manage a group of salespeople, to train, mentor, coach and hold them accountable. So, if you need a starting point, be clear about how effective sales management is, and if it’s not great start by fixing that problem.
I strongly believe that creating a strong sales organisation isn’t rocket science, and when done properly, salespeople are then able to articulate the true value of what your business offers and avoid the slippery slope of discounting.
I am committed to writing regular “Food for Thought” articles, so I may share with you my ideas on how you can build a strong sales organisation and grow revenue.
If you have any challenges or successes you would like to share with me, I would love to hear from you.
You can contact me directly on 0416 115 266 or email me at
I have written this because of the feedback I received from last week’s article titled “We struggle to attract and hire good salespeople”, with readers telling me how much they need to find strong sales “hunters”, to bring in fresh clients.
Not a new problem, however, there are reasons why it’s a common one.
Let’s start by examining what the right person for this role will look like. The selling skills set they will need, their mind-set and beliefs. Once we’ve delved into this, we need to understand the environment they’re going into and whether it will support or hinder them.
Picture a lion. He or she needs to constantly hunt, and to survive, be good at doing it. Translated for sales they must be driven by a strong desire to be successful, combined with the commitment to do uncomfortable (but, I stress ethical) things they’d rather not, probably most days. Motivated, they are accountable and take full responsibility for their activities and results.
The lion knows they will be directly and consistently rewarded for their efforts.
When young and inexperienced, they are trained by their parents, and learn the essential skills needed to survive. They are toughened up to handle failure, to believe they will succeed and must persist.
Professional salespeople, the trusted advisors you need to hire, always aspire to work in a business that offers them ongoing training and development, but many organisations are woeful when it comes to getting this right.
For top performers, this is more important to them than a few dollars here or there, so if you are serious about getting effective new business salespeople in, I encourage you to review what you have in place now, and ensure you are offering a clear development path for their sales career.
Also, like any successful pride of lions, a top performing sales person needs to be part of an effective team, with a strong leader. Great salespeople demand clear and decisive management to keep them engaged and accountable, so if your sales managers are below par, you will likely struggle to keep them.
Now, put that lion into an environment where they don’t receive quick rewards and it will soon lose interest in hunting. Instead, it will become complacent and search out its next meal from another lion’s efforts, and if that doesn’t work out, ask for a transfer to a zoo where it will cared-for and fed by a friendly keeper.
All sales organisations need some hunters, but many don’t have the right rewards mechanism in place to let them flourish. “I need her to focus totally on new business, but our policy is to pay an annual bonus”. “Plus, if the other lions in the team don’t do their bit, they’ll be no bonus paid to her at all”.
Compare this with the sales person who manages a portfolio of accounts. He doesn’t need to hunt and face rejection. Some clients are cultivated for growth and like a farmer, it is fitting that the sales person, and the account management team be rewarded “seasonally”, by way of quarterly or annual bonuses, after the crop has been harvested and sold at market.
A lot of CEOs have told me it’s difficult to run one scheme for their new business salespeople and another for the rest. That often the lines are blurred around who is responsible for the win, that he couldn’t have closed the sale without the help of the technical guys. I get this, but encourage you to find a way that is simple and achievable.
Finally, a request to all my readers.
I am committed to writing regular “Food for Thought” articles, so I may share with you my ideas on how you can build a strong sales organisation and grow revenue. If you have any challenges or successes you would like to share with me, I would love to hear from you.
You can contact me directly on 0416 115266 or email me at
One of the most common problems shared by the delegates at our “Sales & Revenue Growth Masterclass” last week, was how hard they are finding it to attract strong salespeople into their business.
This is a key challenge, and one that needs to be got right, if you are to build a high-performing sales team.
If this problem hits a chord with you, be objective, and ask yourself, “what specific sales recruitment processes do we have in place that ensure we hire strong performers and protect us from making mistakes?”.
Mistakes made when hiring sales staff are widespread and expensive. We ask our clients to work out the costs and averaged out, the money lost on a bad hire is $120,000.
So how do we protect ourselves from hiring a sales ghost?
Firstly, allow me to explain what a sales ghost is. It’s our name for someone who looks and dresses like a sales person, has all the patter and charm, a strong resumé and always interviews well. Impressed, and sure they will solve your sales problem, you enthusiastically bring them on board, only to realise, usually about six months’ later that they can’t sell.
When asked to work with our clients to bring in strong salespeople for them, we follow a proven process, I will share an overview format which you should find helpful.
First thing, if you do find that elusive sales star, will he or she be coming into an environment that’s going to make them want to stay? Will your sales management keep him or her engaged? Do you have the right remuneration structure, one that will directly reward sales success? What training will you be giving? Are you 100% sure on role clarity? Do you have a decent onboarding program?
Assuming you have these covered, it’s time to start searching.
Be clear what the role is, sales manager (not just a title, but manages a sales team), someone who will hunt out new business, often referred to as a BDM, key clients or general accounts management.
Write a great job advertisement. Don’t ramble on about your business like everyone else does, instead make it clear what’s in it for them.
Research the market and be crystal clear what salary package will be offered. The base salary, a genuine realistic commission, car allowance, or if supplying a vehicle, exactly what it is, and superannuation. When doing this for a client, I always detail these things in my first conversation with the candidate and make a point of asking them exactly what their current salary package is. There must be alignment here, ideally a step up for them, but take great caution when a candidate has been earning a lot more and then tells you that the money isn’t that important to them.
Rather than rely on gut feel, we recommend using a specific sales assessment tool to flush out the sales ghosts, tailored for the role with a comprehensive list of criteria. Find the right tool, trust what it tells you and stick by the results.
For those who get through, hold short phone interviews. Ten minutes is plenty of time to hear how they build rapport. If they leave you feeling unimpressed, they’ll have the same effect on your prospective customers!
The first interview should follow the lines of an audition, you need to see how they perform when put under pressure. Once you have your final shortlist, I recommend no more than 3 candidates, hold second interviews, and if possible ask a colleague to join you as an observer.
You must do refence checking, but if you do find the one you want to hire, don’t delay and if possible, make them an offer to join you on the spot.
Last week, I visited my local branch of a well-known, nationwide retailer to buy a new projector. Shane, the salesman had already organised a printing job for me, and knowing that I was looking to purchase a projector had emailed me details of three models in advance.
The print job collected, we moved to the IT section. I had already, sort of decided which one to buy and assumed we’d get the whole thing sorted in a couple of minutes. But Shane was not going to take the easy quick sale, without first understanding what my needs were.
Instead, he started asking me a series of questions. “How many people do you present to at a time?”, “What is the size of the screen?”, “Do you need to play videos?”, “Do you need audio?”, “What graphics does your presentation have?”, “What level of picture quality do you expect?”.
He quickly understood the things that were important to me and successfully planted enough seeds of doubt about buying the cheaper projector I’d had in mind. The more expensive machine would “future proof” me, offer the capability to do things that I might want to do further down the track, give the best quality picture. I don’t have to think about possibly upgrading in a year or two.
Shane opened the box to check all the right cables were included. He knew I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. I needed an extra one. He asked me how far it might have to stretch and I bought the longer, more expensive cable, just in case.
I was really impressed by his professionalism. He’d tapped into my desire to have the best and avoid any nasty surprises.
Once the paperwork was done, we started talking about sales training, he’d read the sales workbooks they had printed for me. Shane explained that all the store’s salespeople take part in half hour training sessions every day and a full hour of training every Saturday. They learn about new products in their own area and other departments, so they can maximise any cross-selling opportunities.
Compare this with another situation that also happened last week. A sales person I have known for a couple of years rang me for advice. I naturally feel pleased when someone asks me for guidance and we spent about 20 minutes on the phone. He was concerned about his future career and what to do. I asked him a lot of questions, one of which was “what specific sales training and coaching have you had since joining 5 months’ ago?”, to which he replied “I haven’t spoken with the sales director in 5 months. The only training, he gave me was a 30 minute OH&S training session”.
The sales director has recently been moved out. The business in question is not small or inexperienced, but part of a multi-national organisation.
The first story is a terrific example of what every sales team should be doing. The second, is indicative of a big problem that is far too common.
Developing your sales team is not a “nice to have” which may depend on a discretionary budget. It’s an essential component of running a sales group, it must be budgeted for and be set as a corner-stone for every business that employs salespeople.
He’s a divisive character, but he’d be great at fixing an underperforming sales organisation.
The media often portrays him as a rude bully, but I watched a few of his TV programs recently and whilst he can certainly be abrasive, saw an inspirational, tough, focused and caring individual in action. Someone who wins the hearts and minds of the team he’s working with and gets results.
If you haven’t seen any of the programs, here’s a quick summary….
He is tasked with turning around struggling restaurants and hotels. He’s usually their last hope. The owners are up to their eyes in debt, marriages are strained, everything’s riding on the business and almost without exception the owners are part of the problem and in denial.
Have you ever met someone in the hospitality industry and wondered what on earth they are doing working in it? Well, you get to see plenty of them.
Gordon starts off by assessing the business. He looks at presentation, décor, how the staff are dressed, the menu, training and processes, levels of hygiene and cleanliness. He then sits down with the owner(s) and gets the true financial picture and lays out exactly what’s going to happen to them if things don’t change quickly.
It’s always a lack of sales that’s the problem.
An authority in his field, he always has a clear plan.
Gordon remains objective throughout and crucially, has the courage to tell it how it is. He spends time with the staff, often uncovering a hidden gem. The major problems are invariably with the owner and their senior staff, the head chef or hotel manager. They’re the ones who are failing, often with the owner being completely blind to the shortcomings of the key person they have entrusted their business with.
Gordon clearly has no need for approval. He’s not there to be their friend and doesn’t care if people like him or not. He’s there to do a job. He’s not interested in managing by consensus, instead he explains what needs to be done, how it’s going to happen and by when. Staff are encouraged to be part of it, those who don’t want to change are given an ultimatum and if they choose to leave that’s okay.
This got me thinking about a sales organisation we evaluated a couple of years ago. The assessment reports highlighted a long list of problems that needed fixing. However, the client was not prepared to spend the time and money on making the necessary changes. Recently, I rang the director I had dealt with and asked what, if any new processes they had since put in place. As I anticipated, the answer was none. Keen to help them get something moving, I asked whether he and a senior colleague from the sales team would like to attend a sales masterclass I was hosting.
The response was “I’ll run it by the guys and see what they think”. I didn’t hear back.
Rather than take control like Gordon Ramsay, his plan was to run it by that same group to see what they thought. That type of leadership is worthless. It’s like Gordon knowing the quality of food and service is rubbish and then leaving any decisions on how to fix the problems up to the chef and his staff.
When running a sales organisation, don’t wait, expecting your sales staff to make the changes needed. Because they won’t.
As a business leader, I encourage you take ultimate charge of your sales organisation, because the buck stops with you.
This was the response the newly appointed customer service manager gave me when I was trying to sort out a problem with my car last week.
Because the service team had been unwilling to have a courageous, perhaps confronting conversation with me, what started out as a “goodwill” repair, has turned sour.
My car had been running rough for a few weeks and because it’s a common fault, it was suggested the local importer might contribute to the repair costs. The warranty had recently expired (of course), so I reckoned any help with the bill would be bonus.
After three weeks with them, the authorised dealer had done the repairs. I started the car up and it was still running badly, so I complained straightaway. It transpired that the importer had sanctioned the repair of just one component, and my customer service advisor sent me an email stating, “I understand/agree that the “best practice” would generally be to replace all fuel injectors to eliminate them as the cause, however, with a goodwill claim, they will only cover single parts that have actually failed.”
I explained that if they’d just let me know, and given me the right advise, I would have instructed them to do the job properly, and paid the extra.
It got me thinking about how many sales problems arise and snowball, because sales staff avoid having that necessary, often uncomfortable conversation. I understand why this happens, it’s because they haven’t been trained in how to handle these situations. As a result, they are nervous about upsetting a client, so opt instead to keeping their mouths shut and hoping the problem goes away.
In my case, a simple explanation early on would have solved the problem. I could have then decided on what I wanted them to do.
Instead, the goodwill has turned sour and I have switched to another mechanic.
It’s tough enough to win a client in the first place. Keeping them sometimes necessitates having courageous conversations. Be certain your sales and customer service teams are trained and able to hold these discussions with confidence.
