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27
Jun, 2022

By admin

Understanding – What Ditch Diggers and Salespeople Have in Common!

Understanding – What Ditch Diggers and Salespeople Have in Common!

 

“Using competency-based, job-specific assessment technology is an absolute must for anyone looking to up-level their hiring. Getting beyond the interview and into the heart and soul of your candidates can give you a truer gauge of can they do the job and thrive as a member of your team.

With a recession comes an increased need to hire and to protect every dollar by lessening the risk of turnover. Assessment technology…has shown time and time again how you can get in front of the eight-ball and hire qualified and dynamic candidates.”

Do you have any idea how many assessments are actually job specific?

The assessments that companies most commonly use are personality and behavioral styles assessments and as such, are not job specific.  Cue Objective Management Group (OMG).  Its assessments are not only specific to sales but also role specific, as in outside roles like account executive, account manager, and channel manager, and account manager.

21 Sales Core Competencies assessed

OMG’s sales assessments measure candidates against 21 Sales Core Competencies (and several additional sales competencies) and compares candidates to the more than 2.2 million other sales candidates that OMG has assessed. This measurement standard is “normative” while personality and behavioral styles assessments tend to be “ipsative.”  Ipsative scores provide a comparison within an individual and are NOT recommended to be used for recruitment and selection purposes because they don’t make a comparison between individuals.

Each OMG Sales Core Competency has an average of 8 attributes for a total of approximately 200 sales specific findings, customized to the specific role for which the candidate is being considered.  OMG adjusts the requirements for a positive recommendation based on the difficulty of a specific sales job and role.  Various industries, businesses, sales roles, complexities, sales cycles, price points, territories, markets, audiences and decision makers are not remotely similar so a sales assessment is only useful if those factors are considered in the scoring criteria and subsequent recommendation.

Identify a strong candidate

As an example, let’s say you were seeking to hire a ditch digger.  While you must identify someone who is strong, can use tools and dig holes, the width and depth of the hole, as well as the difficulty of the digging is more important.  Will this individual dig in sand, screened loom, compacted soil, clay, gravel, or rock?  If an assessment, even one that was specific to ditch-digging, only looked at the tools they had available and their ability to dig in general, it would not necessarily identify someone who could dig monumentally huge holes in soil with large rocks.

It’s the same with a sales assessment.  A sales assessment that scored a territory salesperson who takes orders from plant managers for industrial supplies equally with a salesperson who sells multi-million dollar capital equipment to the C Suite of the Fortune 500 enterprises, is of limited value.  When the assessment can be configured to specify the requirements for those two sales roles and distinguish between the candidates applying for those two sales roles, we have perfection.

Let’s return to part of the the quote at the beginning of this article where Linda writes, “Getting beyond the interview and into the heart and soul of your candidates can give you a truer gauge of can they do the job and thrive as a member of your team.” 

You do need a gauge, but the gauge should not be if they can do the job, but whether they will do the job.  OMG effectively distinguishes between can sell (you’ve met those ghosts – candidates you hired who are no longer with you but they still haunt you!) versus will sell (they are your top performers).  The other part of that quote which needs to be modified is where she says “getting beyond the interview.”  You shouldn’t be wasting time interviewing those candidates who can sell when you can focus only on those candidates who will sell in the specific role for which they are being considered.  Use the assessment early in the sales recruiting process to identify and disqualify the candidates that are not recommended.

OMG’s sales, sales management and sales leadership candidate assessments are legendary for how accurate and predictive they are. 

Want to

Learn More?

  1. Download a sample.

  2. Sign up for a free trial (you must be a CEO, President, VP, GM, HR Director, Sales Leader or Sales Manager)

  3. Start using OMG with Help! (An OMG Expert will contact you to walk you through the customization process and pricing options)

  4. Start using OMG Right Now on Self-Serve(limited customization, limits on quantity, no portal access, no complimentary upgrades)

   

Posted by Dave Kurlan

 

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04
Sep, 2019

By admin

Solving the Sales Conundrum

Solving the Sales Conundrum

 

What has happened to your team’s sales effectiveness? Just what are they doing wrong? Many company sales leaders and CEOs ask themselves this when turnover isn’t what it should be. And it’s why they automatically assume they need a course in sales training. But is that really the case? Could their current lack of sales be down to something more than just poor sales performance?

And, anyway, wouldn’t it make more sense to find out exactly what the underlying problem really is before going ahead and spending hundreds – or thousands – of pounds on something that could be solved much easier (and at far less cost) at home instead? In this post we’ll go some way to attempting to help you solve that sales effectiveness puzzle of yours by yourself. For instance, we’ll get you to ask yourself the following questions:

What is the real problem with sales?

The reason your sales staff aren’t doing too well could be for any number of reasons, not necessarily simply their sales performance. Could the answer be, for instance, down to a lack of knowledge about the product they are trying to sell? Then again, it could be that you, as a company, haven’t provided them with the right sales tools in the first place i.e. they may have a poor Customer Relationship Management system or poor sales materials. Is the data base any good? And on that note, is the sales coach doing his job properly? Another reason could be that your selling incentives just aren’t motivating your staff enough for them to go out and give the performance of their lives.

 

Analyse sales performance

One way to find out for sure why your sales performance is down is to analyse the performance of your sales people – do you have the right people in the right positions to begin with? Then again, you could look at the sales pipeline to find out where exactly you need to introduce some form of training and, finally, review your sales turnover. These are the three main aspects of sales activity that an analysis of should certainly start to throw light on where it’s all going wrong.

 

Find out what’s missing from sales performance

Go out on the road with your sales team and find out individually how each of them really performs. Are they, for instance, as good at closing a sale as they say they are? Is there something they are missing from their sales performance? What skills are they lacking in this arena?

Get your sales staff to be fluent

If they are lacking and embark on sales effectiveness training, then encourage your staff to practice their new sales technique. It’s the only way for a sales person to achieve fluency i.e. so they are never back-footed by a question and can answer queries instantly. By practicing they will build up that particular ‘sales muscle’ and won’t be tempted to fall back into bad habits. Golfing is an analogy which is frequently referred to in this respect i.e. it can take a golfer up to 500 swings before he or she has learned a new technique.

It’s all down to role-playing and is definitely a lot like being an actor; repeating your lines until they’re word perfect. Then again, perhaps an improvisation comedian is a better analogy – they don’t know what’s coming so they’ll have several practiced scenarios up their sleeve at the one time.

Role-playing and improvisation acting also help your sales people remain present in their conversation with potential buyers – a skill that is pretty much essential when it comes to tackling a tough sale. Not only that, but it instills confidence. Knowing he or she is not going to get wrong-footed by a customer because they have already rehearsed all the possible answers, gives your sales person an added advantage.

So, how’s your team’s sales effectiveness? If poor, could it be time to give it a proper analysis, rather than just pick up the phone and order more sales performance training? Contact us at WIN Programs for more information

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19
Sep, 2017

By admin

Do you get lots of “maybe” or “I will think about it” after your first call with prospects?

Do you get lots of “maybe” or “I will think about it” after your first call with prospects?

So far, I have posted a lot of content which tells you about general mistakes in a sales call. Today we are going to talk about the situation when you do everything right but still get a “MAYBE” as an answer.

Most people subconsciously avoid decision making after the first conversation. Every sales guru knows and advises that one needs to adjust their conversation to guide the prospect to come to a decision. This can be tricky as salespeople can become very pushy. So the big question is: how do we guide the conversation while still making the prospect feel like they’re in control?

There is a very simple solution for this: set up an agenda before the meeting. It will align you and your prospect on a plan for the meeting and make sure you’re both on the same page and moving forward together toward one of three outcomes:

  1. Yes
  2. No
  3. Figuring out the next steps – Future meeting date & agenda

By following the above process, you are avoiding a limbo stage. The main advantage of this process is that you are saving valuable time on the lead follow-ups. This can feel awkward at first but if you practice it in your next meeting and make it your own, you will start seeing positive results that you’ll want to use again and again. If you have any specific questions or suggestions about the implementation of this process, we are here to help!

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29
Jan, 2013

By admin

4 Sales force tips to develop stars sales people

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect. -William Clement Stone

Are you having trouble increasing your sales people figures? Are you thinking about running a sales force evaluation? or not really because you are still brainstorming?

The sales force evaluation will help you sell more and increase the business development opportunities of the company as every sales manager , managing director and CEO ever dream of. Is it your sales organization market share growth is your Number 1 challenge this year?

If your answer is a YES then you should be asking yourself the following questions:

  1. What if the team is not following your strategy? what to do to boost each sales person  potential?
  2. How do we keep it motivated?
  3. Do we need more products to gain market share and sell or is it better and easier to optimize our team?
  4. Are we following the right  strategy ?
  5. Is the team compatible with our strategy?

 Strategic development questions

  1. Do you need to hire stars salespeople ? or do we need to build on each sales person skills and potential for growth?
  2. do you need  more sales coaching or sales training? or No we only need to restructure our team ? what is our  competitive advantage?
  3. what is your  business development plan?

Lots and lots of  strategy questions that every one of us would like to grasp the magical answers. I can tell you that the only magic is to identify each person:

  1. process to close deals,
  2. potential  to make more deals
  3. desire and level of commitment
  4. set core competencies and to achieve all that you should start with  a sales force evaluation.

 

4  TIPS to successfully develop your force

TIP # 1:  Each sales organization should go through a sales force evaluation at least once a year.

The full overview sales force evaluation should answer the following questions:

  1. Is my sales management team efficient enough ?
  2. Is each sales person providing us with the full potential?
  3. can your  force consistently overachieve?
  4. who is reaching his full potential?
  5. can they hold my margins?
  6. Who can grow?
  7. Do we have the right core competencies?
  8. can we reach a higher market share with the current sales person?
  9. who is trainable?
  10. who is coachable?
  11. everyone has an adequate  process?
  12. how to be sure of our competitive advantage ? etc..

 

 

TIP # 2: Each managing director should look at his organization globally, so he can identify the sales force competitive edge to successfully increase market share.

  1. Are we better from the competition or worse?
  2. Is our  supervisor team and our  managers using their full potential?
  3. etc..

 

TIP # 3: Each managing director and sales manager  should have a full range of actions to improve his sales organization, market share, sales force skills and create then a real competitive advantage to drive success.

 

TIP # 4:  Each managing director should  optimized his budget for better sales training and sales coaching that will be dedicated directly to take the sales force and market share to the next level.

 

 

 

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