When hiring a sales manager ideally you want someone who is wired to coach and grow your team.
Many sales people are wired to compete and win, not to be nurturers and coaches. When interviewing for sales managers, I’ve found this one question is a tell all.
The fact is, I’ve had only a small handful of candidates answer this question really well.
What if 10 years ago I told you that the average adult in 2018 would spend 11 hours a day interacting with media? Would you have believed me?
It goes without saying that in sales those who have advanced communication skills are more likely to be able to sell more complex deals, write more business, and convert a higher percentage of that business.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll paint a picture by sharing two examples with you:
So why would a leader discourage curiosity in a business or a sales force, when both employees and leaders know it is so important?
Are you curious to know why?
Shocking as it is, leaders discourage curiosity in a business or a sales force, when both employees and leaders know it is important
Turns out according to research by Francesca Gina, a professor at Harvard Business School (HBR Journal September-October
Fear
Fear plays a big role in why we don’t ask enough questions or the right questions
Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a reluctance amongst sales people to ask questions that are provocative Provocative questions are essential when helping a prospect or customer to consider change, yet some sales representatives are uncomfortable asking these questions Why is this?
After discussing it with a few Momentium coaches, we
Abraham Maslow said in 1966: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
My observations when working with sales teams is that they know they need to ask questions, yet they have rarely thought a lot about their questions. While they may use some open-ended questions, most of their questions aim at getting information about the current state of the prospect. Without realizing it they have one tool and they are treating every question like a nail.
The outcome is simply this – few of the questions are powerful.
No matter what your organic growth strategy is, having well-trained talent to support that strategy is a key ingredient.
Recently, I read a Harvard Article, How We Made our Sales Training More Effective by Making it Harder by Jeff Winters, it made me chuckle. So many companies view training as simply a box they need to check. It looks good if I give my team some training, or I’m expected to give them training, etc. Consequently, companies typically chose training that is easy for everyone involved.
Protecting margin is one of the key aspects of “perform” for a sales force.
Recently we were gaining insight into one of our customer’s sales goals. To do this we explored the current Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) they used to measure sales success. We then asked them to share how top performers were doing against the KPI’s.
What we heard was not as uncommon as you might think. The senior team shared that they were having challenges around defining their top performers. Why? There are several reasons top performers are mislabeled. In this case, it was one of the most common mistakes.
The price vortex is time-consuming. It is easier to do a strong job at the beginning of a selling process than find yourself spending it at the back end of the process trying to protect margin.
After working with thousands of sales representatives, and many over a 3-year period, we have had the opportunity to analyze what top performers have in common.
The outcome of this analysis has pinpointed two of the most important questions you can ask when hiring sales talent.
