Cold Calling All Brians and Kevins

This article was written by Mike Carroll at Intelligent Conversations.
It stars me!
Thanks Mike!
Ev

Cold-Calling-all-Brian-s-and-Kevin-s

Yesterday, in celebration of St. Patrick's Day, my new sales person sorted his prospect list to create a sublist comprised of Presidents, CEO's and Business Owners named Brian or Kevin. I think he also searched for executives named Bridget, Molly, Liam and Fergus, but he couldn't find any in our database. The calls sounded something like this:
"Hi Brian, it's Everet Kamikawa."
"Hi.... Everet..."  
"Brian, it doesn't sound like you know who I am...."
"No, I don't."
"That's ok, I'm not sure we've met. Can I tell you why I called you this morning?"
"Sure."
"I'm calling everyone in my database named Brian to wish them a Happy St. Patrick's Day and tell them about some trends we're seeing in the market. Happy St. Patrick's Day!"
"Thanks, that's pretty funny. So tell me, what do you guys do?"
And that's how most of the calls went. This approach was both funny and unexpected, which lowered their "sales defense shields" and allowed Everet to get into productive conversations about how we help growing companies grow even faster by fixing the people, systems and strategies that impact sales. Out of 39 cold calls he had 7 conversations and booked 3 appointments, which is a pretty good day when calling the C-level.
Who says you can't have fun while making cold calls?

Before You Hire A Sales Superstar...

The most important decision you as a manager have to make is hiring the right salespeople and recruiters to represent your company and sell your services or products.
If you hire the right salespeople the company and everyone in it makes money and we all win.
How do you do it?

OVERVIEW Every sales manager battles with finding that one person who is going to be a sales superstar. Make the right decision and you’re a rock star! Make a mistake and the consequences are severe and long lasting. Before you start recruiting you need to understand:

• Why traditional hiring processes don’t work for sales people
• The critical steps you must take to shorten the time from hire date to revenue production
• Why sales people are different and how the unique challenges they face compared to other new hires raises the stakes in terms of making the right hiring decision
• Understanding the true cost of a sales hiring mistake (typically 3x annual salary)
• Identifying exactly what you are looking for in a new sales person and what they need to have done successfully to thrive and produce at your company
• Writing the killer ad that will attract the best candidates for your position – and allow the weaker candidates to opt out before they even apply
• Sourcing – where to find the best candidates and how to stand out in a crowded field of potential employers
• Screening – understanding how to tell the difference between sales people who can sell from those who actually will sell
Thanks!
Everet Kamikawa"A Heck of A Nice Guy"

Should Salary be in a Sales Job Ad

I've read, written, and rewritten thousands of job ads in my career. When clients ask for feedback on an ad, the number one place where I get the most resistance from clients is when it comes to including the salary in the job ad.

Let me paraphrase recent conversations with clients:

Client: Should you include the salary in your sales recruitment ad?
Ev: YES!

Client: Then my competition will know what I'm paying.
Ev: Your competition already knows. Competitors know competitors and people talk. Salespeople talk to other salespeople in the industry. Previous job seekers have told other job seekers. There are websites that give salary ranges for industry and markets. If competitors really want to know what you are paying your salespeople they can find out pretty easy. I've even had a manager that had no problems telling customers and prospects how much I made!

Client: Should I lie about the salary and put a high number in the ad?
Ev: No! Don't lie. You don't have to put every little nuance of the compensation package like all the various bonuses, incentives, and contests you do, but you should give a realistic number that the salesperson can hit if they do the work.

Client: If I put the salary in the ad I'll attract just those candidates that are looking for the money.
Ev: Depends on what the rest of the ad says. If you are paying a base of $100,000 and don't explain anything else about the job except cliches, you will get people that apply just for the money. If you qualify what they have to do to get that $100,000 (call on presidents, travel 40% of time, etc.), then you will discourage people that don't have the skills from applying.

Client: I don't talk about money with others so I'm not going to put it in.
Ev: I understand that some people are not inclined to talk about money because of where and how they were raised, or it hasn't been relevant to their job. Salespeople HAVE to talk about money with clients and prospects all the time. If YOU can't talk to them about money, how can you ask your salespeople to talk to their clients about money?

Client: Good salespeople don't care about money so much as opportunity and the challenge of closing the business.
Ev: Partially true. Opportunity needs to be there. The opportunity has to be in the form of two main things:
1. opportunity to make a ton more money than current/previous job
2. opportunity to advance into a sales manager role, or different role in the company that the salesperson covets.
There are some people that thrive on the challenge of selling a particular product/service in a particular market/industry, however all salespeople face the "challenge" of closing business so that is not a unique selling point unless the product or service you provide is so unique that the challenge of closing the business is an experience of its own. Selling old Formula One cars might be a good example. http://www.f1-sales.com/stock.htm

Client: If my salary is lower than what people are expecting they won't apply.
Ev: Better they know ahead of time and don't apply than get through the system and waste your time to turn down your offer at the end of the process.

Client: What I can afford to pay a salesperson won't attract the top talent.
Ev: I love this question. Good salespeople exist at all skill and income levels. It is more important to get a salesperson with the right sales skills, desire to be in sales, and commitment to being the best in sales, than it is to get someone who has made six figures in the past. Find me a person with the right desire and commitment and I can teach them selling skills. If their head isn't on straight about sales as a career, it doesn't matter how old or experienced they are in sales and they won't listen to what I'm trying to teach them. They will ultimately fail. I'd rather have a sales team made up of people that previously made $30k-$50k, had hunting and closing skills that were rough around the edges, and with a desire and commitment to succeed rather than a bunch of slicksters that grew comfortable with their money and forgot how to dig for new business.

Client: Yeah that is nice. I still can't afford to pay top talent.
Ev: I wasn't finished with my diatribe yet...
Make the base the smaller part of the compensation plan. Offer a higher commission rate than your competitors. Usually a radio salesperson lasts between 2-3 years at a station. The radio station group I sold for years ago was notorious for retaining top talent for 8-10 years or more. Why? They had good management and paid commissions 1-5% higher than the competition. That was reflected in customer loyalty as they had the comfort of always dealing with the same salesperson who understood their business.

Client: I only want people that have made six figures in the past.
Ev: Why? Is it really necessary to sell your product in your market (sometimes it is!)? What is more important, how much money they made in the past or what their skills and mental make up is? Either way, see the above answer.

Client: How much of base should I offer?
Ev: Generally salespeople want to know that there is some sort of base to cover mortgage, childcare, and maybe one more concern. If those bases are covered it is less distracting and the good salesperson can be excited about the unlimited potential. It obviously has to make sense for your level of business income as well.

Client: What about the commission rate?
Ev: General guidelines here. Start by looking at the industry norm. If your business can warrant it, increase it by a couple of percentage points. More importantly, DON'T place a cap on commissions. As the salesperson sells more the company should make more. Sliding commission scales are a bit dumb too because the penalize the salesperson for bringing in bigger deals (companies or management can be concerned that salespeople are making "too much" money). I've seen salespeople bring in million dollar deals, only to split it up into two deals because the commission rate on $500K was greater (15%) than $1M (12%). The company was concerned that they would have to write a $150K check on the $1M deal and that was "too much" to pay one person. That is stupid and a disincentive. In the example above the salesperson still got their $150K commission.

To summarize my advice for what to put in an ad would be:
1. list realistic first year earnings
2. specify a base
3. is it a commission, or draw
4. what are bonus plans based on (margin of deal, volume of deals, etc.)
5. costs the salesperson has to cover
6. in the case of straight commission how many months salary should they have in reserve
7. average sales cycle
8. who are they calling on (position titles)
9. how much competition in market
10. other benefits besides the traditional (health, life, etc.) like car allowance, or sports tickets, restaurant trade, anything else the sales person can see as adding to their income or subtracting from their personal expenses

Ev
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"

The Pipeline of Success

Like all good salespeople I'm always looking for ideas to improve myself.
One of the ways I do that is to read articles. Ones that have a big impact on me I keep a hard copy of so I can read it again later. At least once a year I go through them all and make sure they are still relevant to my life as a salesperson.
Some articles are saved and some are tossed. Below is an article by Jeffrey Gittomer that has survived my test of time:

The pipeline of success.
An excerpt from Jeffrey’s
Sales Bible: New Edition

I am about to present you with a formula and a challenge.

If you’re looking for a magic formula, go read a book on the life and times of Houdini.

If you’re looking for magic, that’s different. You have all the magic needed to double your present income. All you have to do is learn to execute the tricks.

Here is the theory behind the formula. These questions will provide the answers to your sales earning capacity:
• How many sales do you want to make per day, per month?
• What is the dollar value of your average sale?
• To make your goal, how many dollars in sales do you have to make per day, per month?
• How many prospects do you need to see to make a sale?
• What is the set of numbers you need to get to these answers?

Want to do it in 30 days? Easy – up your urgency. Get committed. I can supply the jet plane. It’s up to you to provide the jet fuel. When I started out in sales, I used to pick up the paper and read the obituaries until I found someone who was close to my age. It lit a candle under me for weeks.

Here are the 12.5 elements in the formula…
1. Your attitude. The key to your success. Get CDs now. Listen two hours a day for six months. Stop doing or listening to negative things.
2. Your goals. Set them today. Read the 6.5 steps in the Post-it Note section again (page 47). Use the Post-it Notes beginning right now.
3. Your networking. Find out where your best customers and prospects meet (trade association, chamber, club). Begin attending every meeting you can. It is imperative that you attend regularly.
4. Your power questions. Write ’em. Learn ’em. Use ’em.
5. Your power statements. Write ’em. Learn ’em. Use ’em.
6. Your sales tools. Figure out what tools you need and get ’em.
7. Your sales knowledge. Get sales skills CDs and listen to them. Alternate with the attitude CDs. Use the idea as soon as you hear it. Read every chapter in this book twice. One chapter per day.
8. Your preparedness. Are you truly ready to sell? If you are, you will. If you’re not, you won’t. The opposite of preparedness is failure.
9. Your follow-up. Tenacious, creative persistence that leads to a sale.
10. Your sales numbers. Making yourself see the numbers you need to build your pipeline and keep it full. Find your formula and use it.
11. Your prospect pipeline. Seeing the proper number of people a day who are qualified to buy builds your pipeline. The key to double income is having the right number of prospects ready to buy.
12. Your commitment. Write it to yourself. Tell others who will help you. Your commitment is your personal promise to yourself. Keep it at all costs.
12.5 Your self-discipline. Your determination and ability to achieve your goals and live up to your commitments.

There is a sales adage that says, “Your chances for success increase in proportion to the number of sales calls you make.” It’s amazing how the truth can be so simple. If it’s so simple, why don’t you do it?

Good fundamental sales skills and solid product knowledge are meaningless unless you see and follow up the proper number of prospects.

Seeing the numbers creates a pipeline…the number of prospects at or near the buying point.

A quick check of your numbers will reveal why your sales are booming or slumping…

If you appoint and present to 10 prospects, two will buy no matter what you do and two won’t buy no matter what you do. The other six are on the fence and will buy or not buy as a result of what you say or don’t say. A sale will be made either way. Either you sell them on yes, or they sell you on no.
The above is still true 10 years after I received this article through a subscription to Gittomer's newsletter. Thanks Jeffrey!

Ev
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"

August Jokes

Jokes for August 2010 (Always clean enough to tell your mother):

Where does a boat go when it gets sick?
(The doc)

A woman walks into a vet's waiting room.
She's dragging a wet rabbit on a leash.
The rabbit does not want to be there.
"Sit, Fluffy," she says.
Fluffy glares at her, and sopping wet, jumps up on another customer's lap, getting water all over him.
"I said sit, now there's a good Fluffy," says the woman, slightly embarrassed.
Fluffy quite miserable and perhaps feeling rebellious, squats in the middle of the room and urinates.
The woman, mortally embarrassed, shouts,
"Darn it Fluffy, will you be good?!"Fluffy then starts a fight with a Doberman and pursues it out of the office.
As the woman leaves to go after it, she turns to the rest of the flabbergasted customers and says,
"Pardon me. I've just washed my hare, and can't do a thing with it!"

THE POTATO
Girl Potato and Boy Potato had eyes for each other, and finally they got married, and had a little sweet potato, which they called 'Yam.'
Of course, they wanted the best for Yam.
When it was time, they told her about the facts of life.
They warned her about going out and getting half-baked, so she wouldn't get accidentally mashed, and get a bad name for herself like 'Hot Potato,' and end up with a bunch of Tater Tots.
Yam said not to worry; no Spud would get her into the sack and make a rotten potato out of her!
But on the other hand she wouldn't stay home and become a Couch Potato either.
She would get plenty of exercise so as not to be skinny like her Shoestring cousins.
When she went off to Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Potato told Yam to watch out for the hard-boiled guys from Ireland and the greasy guys from France called the French Fries.
When she went out west, they told Yam to watch out for the Indians so she wouldn't get scalloped.
Yam said she would stay on the straight and narrow and wouldn't associate with those high class Yukon Golds.
Mr. and Mrs. Potato sent Yam to Idaho P.U. (Potato University) so that when she graduated she'd really be in the Chips.
But in spite of all they did for her, one-day Yam came home and announced she was going to marry Tom Brokaw.
Tom Brokaw? Mr. and Mrs. Potato were very upset.
They told Yam she couldn't possibly marry Tom Brokaw because he's just.....a “COMMON TATER”.

Feel free to submit jokes to share for September!

Everet Kamikawa
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"

Summer Doldrums for Recruiters & Salespeople

Has your sales team hit the summer doldrums? August can be a tough prospecting month as your team hears "They are on vacation but be back in a week" again and again.

When this happens it's really easy for your team (and your company as a whole) to fall into a slump. Suddenly everyone is in the "no one is around so why try" trap. As your team makes fewer and fewer calls as they make fewer connections - and you'll see the impact on your top line in a few months (depending on the length of your sales cycle).
What's the best way to get out of this slump? Proactively focus your team on ideas to finish the year strong and build momentum for 2011.
In order to jump start your team when they return from Labor Day weekend, take a few moments now to plan the agendas for your weekly September meetings. Set aside part of each meeting to focus on a different area that can drive revenue this year and build momentum for next year. Potential topics to consider include:
• Top five (5) prospects
• Top five (5) customers
• Budget discussions
• Referral campaign
• Building momentum into 2011
As we see the end of August approach, now is the time to prepare for a year-end push and to focus your team on the right activities to drive strong results. Good luck and stay focused!
If you cringe at the phrase "Summer Sales Slump," it's clear it's taking place at your company.

Ev As A Company Spokesman

A short 45 second video I starred in during 2010:



Thank you!

Ev
"A Heck of a Nice Guy"

Summary of the Salesperson Recruiting Process

For years I've heard recruiters talk about how frustrated they are with recruiting good salespeople. You've read my views and experiences when it comes to recruiting salespeople over the years and I hope you've taken the advice and put it into practice.

Dave Kurlan, author of Baseline Selling wrote a great summary of the recruiting process for salespeople. It summarizes everything I've said for years about the recruiting process for salespeople. Here is his article:

When you are in the process of recruiting salespeople, there are a number of KPI's you can track to reveal how effective you are at finding, attracting, assessing, screening, interviewing, selecting, hiring, on boarding and retaining great salespeople. Yes, each of the topics just mentioned are pieces of the sales recruiting process and they can all be tweaked, improved and refined until you get it just right. It's sort of like cooking with the only difference being that I can't cook (grilling doesn't count) but I can sure find the right salespeople.

Your candidate pool is comprised of the quantity and quality of candidates who respond to your online posting. If you are not happy with either the quality or quantity of your pool, then your ad, title or job site settings are to blame. Tweak those as you would your recipe ingredients. In about 9 out of 10 cases that I've seen, the ad is to blame. Describe the candidate you need; not the darn opportunity or company!

If you aren't happy with the number of candidates who are getting recommended by your assessment, your assessment criteria could be the reason. However, if you remove or reduce some criteria you'll be compromising on the quality of the candidates. Once again, it is more likely that you need to tweak your ad. See above.

If you aren't happy with the candidates you speak with by phone, you can add criteria to your assessment and you'll simply have fewer candidates that get recommended. Then you won't waste your time talking to frauds, wanna be's, and morons!

If you find that the candidates who make it all the way through to your first interview aren't the quality you were hoping for, your phone screening call is probably to blame. You probably aren't being tough enough with your questions or your scoring is too generous. You must be fast and firm on that phone call!

Finally, if you aren't happy with the salespeople you are selecting, you can look in the mirror. Ask yourself to what degree you are putting your likes and dislikes ahead of the data. The data never lies but your eyes will tell you you're hungry right after you eat! There is a place for gut feel, but it should never take place at selection time when following your gut means overruling the data.

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

Thanks Dave!

Here is a link to the article and Dave's blog:http://www.omghub.com/salesdevelopmentblog/tabid/5809/bid/13783/How-to-Refine-Your-Sales-Candidate-Pool-and-Selection-Criteria.aspx

What to Look for When it Comes to Hiring a Salesperson?

What do you look for when it comes to hiring a salesperson?
I recently asked several sales coaches, sales authors, and sales trainers what employers should look for:





Dave Kurlan of Objective Management Group (www.objectivemanagement.com)and Author of Baseline Selling



Mark Green of Performance Dynamics Group (www.time-for-change.biz)



Howard Popliger of Epic Development & Evaluations (www.epicdevelopment.ca)



Sales Expert Adam Boyd of Market Sense (http://www.ms.sandler.com)

Avoid Job Posting Cliches

I've rewritten thousands of job ads in my career. Despite my best efforts, there still seems to be a plethora of cruddy ads out there. I'm forming an army of converts to go out and evangelize my job ad writing tips.

Here is the first shot fired from our job ad writing cannon:

Avoid cliche words and phrases!

"outstanding growth potential"
"highly motivated"
"competitive salary"
"complete benefit package"
"fast paced"
"be your own boss"

Words like these don't tell the job seeker anything! Get rid of them.
THEY WILL NOT HELP YOU ATTRACT THE TALENT YOU WANT!
EVERYONE has good pay and benefits, however one job seekers idea of good pay and benefits may not be another persons idea of good pay and benefits.

I talk with job seekers who are applying to clients all the time.
They say that these words tell them nothing about a particular job.
These words started being used to save money in newspaper ads, where you pay by the word. The perception among advertisers was that job seekers would know what was meant by these words.
When it was only the newspaper that provided job ads, job seekers just had to accept it.
That changed with online job ads.
Online job seekers are used to seeing longer, more detailed ads.
They are used to scrolling down the screen to see more information about a job.
Job seekers see a well written and informative ad by a company as a place that shows a certain level of care for its employees.

Job seekers would much rather know that they are:
-expected to be at a job from 7am to 7pm,
-call on presidents and CEO's,
-and sell $200,000 packages in a market with five competitors,
The above lines actually tell the job seeker something about the job rather than generic words like "fast paced environment."
What does "complete benefit package" include? Dental or vision?
In addition to traditional benefits like health care, does the benefit package include non-traditional benefits like concierge service for dry cleaning, or a monthly employee massage, maybe an employee lunch cooked by the president? Does "outstanding growth potential" mean growth in earnings or in management? If a job seeker does X, does that mean they will be promoted to Y in a certain amount of time?

Stop being generic and start being specific and you will see a change in the type of candidates that apply to your ads!
Will you be one the soldiers in my army? Can I get an amen?!

Ev
A Heck of a Nice Guy