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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

 

By admin

The #1 mistake you make in sales

The #1 mistake you make in sales

A week ago I had an appointment for a product I thought could help my business. The company has a good clientele and I was almost convinced to buy the product as its price was within my budget.

As I got on the call, it didn’t take long until I found myself led through a demo. When the demo ended, I’d gotten off the phone thinking the product wasn’t for us and I should keep looking.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED ? We started the call with “YES” and some how ended up at “MAYBE”.

The sales person committed the #1 sales mistake: They pitched their solution without knowing exactly what my needs were and without showing me the value of the solution he was proposing.

Before you pitch your solution, benefits and features – you must figure out the exact problem you’re solving in the first place. You need to ask about your clients’ pain points first and what their expectations are with your product. There are two benefit of this;

It will give an edge to present a solution which exactly matches their needs which can help you to hide the features that are irrelevant for them.
It gives you an idea how important it is for them; this will help you sell the product at a good cost.
Have you ever faced such a situation where you start selling without knowing what customers want?

Have you ever been in a demo where someone starts selling without knowing your expectations?

If yes… Let me know how it went and how you FIXED IT?

By admin

Sales Transformation: 3 Necessities for Groundbreaking Sales Performance

Sales Transformation: 3 Necessities for Groundbreaking Sales Performance

 

Sales transformation has come to be a new frontier in the era of rampant technical and technological shift. This is due to the ever-evolving sales environment, as well as changing communication preferences.

To bring about sales transformation in this day and age requires more than just a good pitch. There are certain measures that need to be taken, in keeping with the times. But it is doable.

The Sales Transformation Trinity

The 3 most vital requirements for effective sales transformation

1)    Using Analytics and Insight to Capture Customer Attention

A majority of customers hold insight and value received through the sales experience, as more valuable than all other aspects such as product, brand, and price-value ratio. Commercial insight is slowly proving to be the Holy Grail for sales professionals, with thought leadership taking the backseat when it comes to conversion and buying action.

This not only alludes to the information which customers are bound to find thought-provoking or interesting, but this insight will compel a customer to change anywhere from a few to all of their working and purchasing practices.

2)    Develop Expert Sellers and Strategically Superior Managers

Training sellers and bringing managers up to speed will continue, especially when the sales environment changes almost every week. These positions need to be engineered with the times and talent needs to be developed steadily.

Companies which focus on their front-line sales professionals will find it difficult to keep up with the plethora of challenges in the near future. To achieve this, a comprehensive training schedule – one which includes the managers as well as sellers – will need to be formulated.

Remember, it’s about tailoring the strategy to the ideal customer, teaching him/her something brand new, and taking effective control of the entire sales process.

3)    Align Customer Buying Processes with Internal Enablement

Sales professionals can’t be expected to remember how each customers buys, which is why it is beneficial to keep buying behaviors aligned with the skills of the sales team. This will make sales transformation the primary concern within the day-to-day sales routine of sales professionals.

Additionally, it will allow the customers to align their purchasing activities with each other, which will aid with better sales performance. Due to increasing population and more people connecting with each other, the amount of opinions and buying practices are more diverse than ever. This is why the more the customers are aligned with the content strategy, demand generation and internal enablement, the more the sales professionals will succeed with set goals.

Conclusion

The right sales ecosystem – one which features spontaneous strategic optimization – consistent managerial and seller training, as well as commercial analytics, are the key to success for sales .

Customers are brighter and more integral to the internal sales process than ever before. If a company can channel that involvement, modify it, and take advantage, it will prove advantageous throughout the year and beyond.

 

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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