Keith Rosen’s Executive Sales Coaching Blog on Selling, Leadership, Management » How to Manage Your Team

While being interviewed by Geoffrey James for an article he was writing for Selling Power magazine on what managers need to do to effectively coach their sales team when cold calling, a question regarding how effectively salespeople are qualifying their prospects surfaced during our conversation. (Geoffrey is also the author of seven books and the columnist for BNET, Business 2.0, CIO, The New York Times as well as many other publications.)

You can find Geoffrey’s blog here, which lists some of the deeper qualifying questions that salespeople must learn to ask.

To go beyond these questions for a moment, what I actually found to be intriguing were the comments that readers had posted after reading his blog. Now, I’m all for and certainly encourage feedback and comments, all in the spirit of mutual collaboration, growth and stimulating a valuable dialogue. And I applaud anyone who’s willing to take the time and post their thoughts and comments, good or bad, as I am always open to a healthy debate with those who may not always agree with my point of view or share a different perspective on the subject matter at hand.

The lesson I want to highlight regarding reader comments is this. While we all must challenge what we see and hear regardless of the source of information, we need to be mindful about how literal we are and to what degree we internalize the advice.

One person commented, “Certainly I feel that this list of questions is a good guide to a salesman for points of discussion and are generally important to him and his business, but as listed they might well cause offence. They would need to be more carefully phrased and made relevant to the prospect by careful research.”

I couldn’t agree more! After all, these questions were not written the way I would ask them either, but were extracted from a conversation we had and then written as a way to simulate new thinking regarding the additional criteria that every salesperson needs to develop a greater sensitivity and awareness around when qualifying each prospect.

Another reader commented on certain questions they agree are rock solid and the ones they feel are not.

This drives my point home. That is, take what you read and look at the spirit behind the questions or any advice, rather than just judging the question itself, black and white, yes or no, it works or it doesn’t. Thinking in absolutes leaves no room for innovation or creativity. Rigid thinking blocks the ingenuity we need to tap into that fosters change and improved results.

There are very few universal hard and fast laws when it comes to selling that work 100% of the time. Sometimes strategies work and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they work only a percentage of the time, which to me is still a huge win. After all, a 35% improvement is still a noteworthy improvement.

Looking for the ultimate fix and perfectly flawless solution quickly becomes a diversionary tactic and justification of your current performance, as well as an excuse why you do not have to change you ways or try something new.

Unless something is written specifically for you or crafted for you or for your company or sales process, we need to be reminded that we need to take the advice we read and then tweak it to make it real for us. Just like a buffet, we take what we like, leave what we don’t, and mix certain parts or ingredients together so they work for us.

Let us not lose sight of the value here. As Geoffrey wrote, “When most sales reps are developing a B2B sale, they limit questioning to generic issues like which products the prospect is currently using. Here’s a better idea: ask questions that reveal if the prospect is truly qualified to buy and how the buying decision will be made. This is not to say that product-level info is useless. But why bother to probe for that data if the opportunity isn’t real? If you have the answers to these questions, you know whether or not you’re wasting your time with this prospect, or whether you’ve got a deal that’s waiting to be done.”

Some readers of this blog actually provided some great examples of how to re-language these questions so they are more artfully crafted and positioned in a way that would make YOUR prospect more receptive.

So, keep those thoughts and comments flowing, don’t stop challenging what you hear and enjoy the buffet of knowledge in front of you.

Reality is, after all, created in the language we use.

The result is the process. A timely paradox and critical mind shift that every salesperson and manager must make if they want to transcend the mediocre performance they may be experiencing today.

Even before you can engage in the type of sales benchmarking activities that I wrote about the other day, (you can find that blog post here) or even take the time to refine your selling skills, you will come head to head with resistance to selling by the numbers if this change in attitude around how we approach selling is not fully embraced beforehand.

I was reminded how important this was during a seminar I delivered last week in NYC. At the end of the seminar, one manager raised his hand and posed this question to me. He said, “Our sales cycle has changed dramatically. Our salespeople can no longer make a call and take an order. Our product offering has been modified and as a result, the average cost of our product has increased, which has all contributed to a longer sales cycle. However, my salespeople are still reluctant to change. They’re still stuck in that transactional way of selling. They’re getting more frustrated and discouraged because sales aren’t happening fast enough, all because they’re unsure how to manage this longer selling cycle. I’ve told them many times over, that our sales cycle is no longer the way it used to be, and we need to be more patient with the process and more consultative with our customers. I’ve explained to them over and over again, that we need to modify and re-engineer our selling process in response to these new challenges, the changes we’re up against and how our customers make a purchasing decision and buy from us. What else can I do?”

As this sales manager was explaining his challenge, I was thinking to myself how important it is today, more than ever, to become process driven. Without this change in our thinking, salespeople will be unable to honor the process needed to convert more conversations into sales, let alone build out a more robust process and selling strategy that will enable them to do so. As such, the eternal conflict between our tactical strategy and our thinking will continue to rage on.
I have a detailed article on this very subject that you can find here. The original title of this article was WARNING! Goals May Be Hazardous To Your Success. Are They Sabotaging Your Selling Efforts?

As my colleague Dr. Tony Alessandra explains in the following statistics, “It’s amazing how many times success can be assured by attending to the basics of the job.” For example, in a study of 257 Fortune 500 companies, the following was found:

17% do not determine an approximate duration for each sales call.
23% do not use a computer to assist in time and territory management.
28% do not set profit objectives for their accounts.
37% do not use prescribed routing patterns in covering territories.
46% do not look at their use of time in any organized way.
49% do not determine the economical number of calls for each account.
49% do not use prepared sales presentations.
70% do not use call schedules.
75% do not have a system for classifying customers according to sales potential.
76% do not set sales objectives for their accounts.
81% do not use a call report system.

So, the question is: How can you assure your future success by eliminating these oversights?”

The fact is, companies will fail to invest the time in order to eliminate these process oriented oversights and embed these necessary changes into their process if the sales culture is too focused on getting to the result by forging ahead in an attempt to close more sales. Managers can continually push their people to become more mindful of these numbers, however, it’s the process driven questions managers need to be more sensitive to rather than the result driven questions that managers obsess over that continue to perpetuate this toxic way of thinking. Those questions sound like, “Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How much good volume did you book this month? How many leads did you run this week?” While important, these questions only focus on half of the equation. What is missing is the “How,” that is, the questions that focus on the process the salesperson needs to engage in to achieve the desired end result.

Managers need to stop coaching to the result and start coaching to the process, instead.

Become more mindful of the process that will drive the results you seek. Without the change in your result driven attitude that’s keeping you stuck in the first place, all efforts to better manage your selling strategy by a numeric formula are certain to be short lived.

For salespeople and sales leaders, the fundamental shift in our attitude that needs to occur is this; move away from being so result driven and instead, become more process driven.

We must honor this paradox and break free of the limiting thinking that confines us to the current level of performance we’re experiencing. If we truly want to excel today, realize the result is truly the process.

Here’s more on this paradox.

Stop. Just stop for the next several minutes that it’s going to take you to read this. Okay, now take a breath. Get off the treadmill for a moment and ask yourself these questions. Yes, these questions are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective around what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for.

Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers, that you didn’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed which are obstructing your view of the fuller picture; the landscape you’re trying to farm and manage when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity. Here are those questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team).

“With all the effort I’m putting forth in an attempt to generate more prospects and selling opportunities, following up and retaining existing clients to ensure that I’m bringing in as much business as possible:”

• Am I acutely aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily that would secure my success?
• Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?
• Do I know how much cold calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on) and when to call it quits and move on when attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect?
• Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)
• Am I holding myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?
• When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?
• Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)
• Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up selling and cross selling opportunity?
• Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client as well as territory management? Do you have a call report system?
• Do I have the right questions that provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

And to clarify further when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101 – Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone with you or end the meeting and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources or venders they currently have, the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall or destroy the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: Low closing percentages = misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it. So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

I’ve decided (and many of my clients and readers are on board with this as well, so I hope you’ll join us) that it’s no longer as tough as it was out there. That’s right. Strip away what you hear in the media, and look objectively at what you can control; this one telltale sign that something in your selling formula needs to be developed, modified or redefined:

If there are people in your organization, even in your industry or profession who are currently performing like rock stars, that should provide you with one very critical insight. That is, it can be done because it is currently being done by someone else!

Of course it is going to remain “tough out there” if you don’t have your defined best practices, data points and numeric formula to help support your selling efforts. After all, it’s one thing to up your game and work on developing and refining your selling skills as well as your sales management skills. However, to complement this so that you have a comprehensive solution to better performance, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the numbers that will drive your activities in the first place as you exercise your newfound selling and leadership strategies and newly developed competencies. Use these questions I’ve posed to help uncover the gaps in your data pool that in turn, will help refine your overall approach to how you prospect and sell and the measurable effort that’s required for you to do so successfully.

Here’s a very clear insight into one example of some general statistical information about the selling profession that will help you begin the process of fine tuning and developing your own data driven solution to increasing your sales.

48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
12% of salespeople only make three contacts and stop.
Only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.

Now, get this:
2% of sales are made on the first contact.
3% of sales are made on the second contact.
5% of sales are made on the third contact.
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact.
But 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.

Now, these numbers may change depending upon your selling cycle, geographic location, the dollar amount of your deliverable, target audience as well as the service or product you’re selling but the essence of this message still remains in tact. That is, do you have your own set of data available which you have used as the cornerstone to constructing your prospecting and selling strategy? If not, it’s the same as getting into your car and saying to yourself before embarking on a trip, “Okay, I need to get to a specific destination, but I’m not exactly sure which direction to travel nor how long it’s going to take me to get there.”

It’s no longer about simply ‘doing more’ but about doing more of what’s right. In our new marketplace, going out in the field and just doing more of what you did yesterday would be the same as trying to sell VCR’s, pagers and CD’s today. (Even my youngest asked me the other day, “Dad, what’s a CD?”). Your product has changed over the years and while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, this evolution must be guided by the numeric benchmarks in order to see the full, panoramic picture of the truth that surrounds your current situation. This will eliminate the costly oversights I’ve detailed earlier and ensure your future success.

We all need to be reminded of this universal law, “We resist what we need to learn the most.” And interestingly, while salespeople and sales managers are more inclined to take the reactionary, visceral attitude, “Lets just get out there and make it happen,” we need to pull back the reigns before engaging in blind sales activities and instead, start with doing what is often perceived as the more mundane, often boring task of benchmarking the right practices and then measuring their effectiveness by the numbers before embarking on these activities. Empirical data will provide the blueprint you need to succeed as well as the certainty, confidence and conviction necessary for a healthy sales mind and attitude.

After all, the greatest rainmakers realize the importance of checking the weather first so they know where the best locations are to make it rain, and have the tools to do so.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

Just announced and something each salesperson and sales team need to consider when it comes to leveraging solutions to best manage their prospecting efforts and entire sales process. Salesforce CRM customers can now deploy Landslide Sales Production System. Press release below.

Landslide Technologies, provider of the Landslide Sales P3 System, today announced that it is now available on the Force.com AppExchange from salesforce.com. Salesforce.com users can now quickly and easily add Landslide’s Sales P3 System to their Salesforce CRM deployment to add sales processes and produce a high-octane sales production system.

Landslide’s Sales P3 System is a cloud computing offering that combines sales process software, sales performance tools and personal sales assistants to provide salespeople a complete environment for increasing sales. From providing the ability to embed proven sales processes in the day to day lives of sales reps, to providing the right job aids at the right time and personal assistants to offload data entry work, the Landslide Sales P3 System is a best-in-class offering purpose-built for the sales organization.

Making Landslide’s Sales P3 Systems available on the Force.com AppExchange will allow companies to leverage their investment in Salesforce CRM to build a sales production system that transforms individual performers into a world-class team of consistent sales producers empowered to drive high-volume sales, high-value sales and higher sales velocity.

“Landslide’s integration with Salesforce CRM presented the perfect solution for us as we were looking for ways to maximize our sales productivity,” said Stu Schmidt, Vice President, Global Sales and Services, Unisfair Inc. “It allows us to continue to leverage salesforce.com’s powerful Force.com platform and CRM applications, while letting our sales team take advantage of the sales process implementation of Landslide and its personal assistant services.”

Endorsed by leading sales experts like Michael Bosworth, Jill Konrath, Keith Rosen and Jim Dickie, Landslide has been selected as a “Visionary Quadrant” company and “Cool Vendor” by Gartner Group, “One to Watch” by CRM Magazine and as an Innovative Product by Frost & Sullivan.

About Landslide Technologies

Landslide Technologies is the provider of Landslide Sales P3 System, a Sales Production System that helps BtoB companies increase sales volume. Landslide Sales P3 System is the first system that combines sales processes consistency with sales performance technology and outsourced administrative services. By institutionalizing sales processes, by providing software that leads sales people step by step from first contact to final contract, and by offloading administrative chores, Landslide Sales P3 System turns inconsistent individual performers into a world-class team of consistent sales producers empowered to drive high-volume sales, high-value sales and higher sales velocity. The company is privately held with headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA. Additional information can be found at www.landslide.com.

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange

Force.com is the only proven enterprise platform for building and running business applications in the cloud. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM applications, more than 800 ISV partner applications like those from CODA and Fujitsu, and more than 100,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com’s 55,400 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel.

Applications built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed to the entire cloud computing community through the Force.com AppExchange marketplace at www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

Click here for more information about this event and expo.

For those of you who can attend, I’ll be speaking at The New York Incentive, Rewards and Recognition Expo next Tuesday, May 12 at 11am EST in New York City. The show will be located at the Hilton New York Hotel, 1335 Ave. of the Americas, NYC. Additionally, join the industry leaders in management and marketing, including the Human Capital Institute, marketing gurus Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, and 1 to1® magazine, who are joining forces to create a special education program on Enterprise Engagement. A unique combination of speakers representing all aspects of the emerging field of engagement will also be in attendance, delivering a variety of programs.

Hours:
Tuesday, May 12, 9:00am-5:00pm
Wednesday, May 13, 9:00am-3:00pm

Here’s the description of my program.

11:00-11:50pm
Take Charge of Your Sales and Your Sales Team
To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers. Develop the discipline you need to engage, inspire and coach your salespeople into sales champions. Join Keith Rosen, author of the award winning, Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions, as he shares with you how to build and manage a world class, high performing sales team. Presented by Ziglar, Inc., www.CanDoGO.com and the Motivation Professionals Association.

Here are some additional benefits of attending this expo:
• Learn about cost-effective, results-based marketing and managing programs to increase sales, productivity and quality.

• Take advantage of customer, distribution partner, sales, and employee engagement strategies that drive performance without the upfront cost and lack of accountability of traditional marketing and management strategies.

• Learn how properly structured engagement, recognition, and incentive strategies can increase your sales, customer retention and referrals, quality and productivity.
• Get you more measurable costs for much lower upfront costs and greater accountability than traditional marketing and performance strategies.

Because The New York Incentive, Rewards and Recognition Expo offers such a unique opportunity to meet face-to-face with so many desirable brands, attendance is limited strictly to business management involved with planning and recommending incentive, promotion, rewards or recognition programs for their companies or clients.

Click here for more information about this event and expo.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

If you missed last week’s blockbuster webinar, The Sales Leadership Imperative, you can now access the recording immediately and listen to this 45 minute discussion I had with Jonathan Farrington. We focused on the most pressing questions that sales managers and sales leaders are faced with today.

Here are the questions we responded to:

1. The burning question today is, what can managers do to get their people motivated and performing at the level they need to be at consistently while still having time to focus on their other priorities?




2. Why do so many potentially good sales managers fail?




3. Managers struggle most when dealing with an underperformer and making the determination about whether to support them, do nothing or let them go. How long should you stick with a salesperson who has potential, but doesn’t produce?




4. If you had to identify just six key metrics that sales managers should use to benchmark their sales team’s performance, what would they be?




5. If coaching is the missing discipline amongst managers and sales leaders today, then why do so many coaching initiatives fail within organizations?




6. What do you think, are great sales leaders born or made? What are the characteristics of the very best?




7. What are some of the inherent challenges/barriers for management who are looking to make the shift and truly coach their sales team?

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

So, if you’re a sales manager or even if you’re not a sales manager but need to get your team producing and selling more today, you can access this recording here.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

“I know how to interview. I’ve been doing it for years.” I hear this from practically every manager or HR executive I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching or training. And today, when speaking to one of my favorite clients, a VP of HR, this statement was echoed once again.

And it’s not like these managers or those responsible for making a hiring decision are doing it all wrong. Many are quite good at interviewing people, finding the right candidates and screening out the ones that just don’t fit. I’ve just observed over the years some key areas that many people are missing the mark on when conducting an interview and determining who the best candidate for the position truly is.

Especially when it comes to topgrading and rebuilding your sales team, getting the right candidate in the right position in the most expedient way possible is more critical than ever. The cost of not doing so can be severe. And this cost is compounded when companies onboard the wrong person. Just pick up any newspaper and read about another company closing their doors or missing their sales goals to exemplify how much of a priority this is today for any organization.

Below, I’ve listed some very key questions in order to reduce mis-hires and bring on the right people. If asked and asked correctly, these questions will reduce mis-hires by about 80% or more. Yes, that’s how powerful these questions can be. I would strongly suggest weaving these questions into your interviewing process. And keep in mind, most of these questions will apply to any position. Notice that I’ve also broken down these questions by category, as well as some additional categories that you can use to build out further interviewing questions.

Granted, you may already be using some of these questions during an interview. And keep in mind, this list can be built out even further. However, it’s the collective use of all the questions that are going to have the deeper, more positive impact when choosing the right hire.

Moving beyond simply the questions that you could ask, what other things are you doing to ensure you make the best hiring decision? Keep in mind, the interviewing process is multi-dimensional. To build off this, lets look at how you manage or facilitate a simulation or a role play. Many interviewers ask questions like, “How would you handle this if you were in this situation” or “Tell me what steps you would take before calling on a key account” or even “Walk me through a strategy you would use to build your pipeline.”

While these are all great questions, they are still falling short of one critical element. That is, the language this candidate would be using to facilitate the type of conversation described in these simulations. To go deeper in determining this person’s acumen or ability, it’s critical you’re able to evaluate how they communicate, as well as their overall communication strategy that would be embedded in each of these situations I’ve described in the prior questions.

The most successful salespeople realize that sales, just like leadership and coaching, is truly a language and a way of communicating. Therefore, it’s imperative you uncover not only how they think strategically and the processes they may use but how effective this person could be when you send them out to connect with your new and existing customers. Anyone can talk a good game regarding processes and approach from the hundred foot viewpoint. But how they deliver the message in a variety of different situations is something that can’t be faked during an interview.

When these questions and the simulation exercise are used correctly, you’ll find that the need to topgrade your sales team will diminish because you’ve fixed the breakdown in your overall hiring and retention strategy; the broken component that exists in your system and where it all starts, your interviewing process.

Interviewing Questions:

Work History:
1. What were your responsibilities in your last position?
2. We all make mistakes. What would you say were a couple of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your last job?
3. If you could go back in time and fix that, what would you do differently?
4. What would you prior supervisor say if asked what your strengths and weaknesses were?
5. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and were able to overcome?
6. What were your successes? What are you most proud of? How did you achieve that?
7. What circumstances contributed to your leaving?
8. What was your supervisors name and title? Where is that person now?
9. Would your boss hire you back? Why?
10. What were his or her strengths and weaker points from your perspective?
11. Would you be willing to arrange for us to talk with him or her?

Next Position:
1. What criteria are most important to you in your next job?
2. Describe your ideal position?
3. How close does this opportunity fit your ideal position?

Excellence and Development:
1. How to you better your best?
2. How do you raise the bar on yourself and others around you?
3. How do you develop yourself and your skills?
4. How important is it to you to be the best at what you do?
5. How do you assure that happens?
6. How do/did you keep your edge in such a competitive environment/marketplace?

Accountability:
1. What does personal accountability mean to you?
2. What areas in your life/career are you most accountable? Least?
3. Give me an example of how becoming more accountable has contributed to your success?
4. Where do you feel you need to become more accountable (in an area in your life or career)?

Decision Making and Problem Solving:
1. How do you solve problems?
2. How do you go about making decisions?
3. Give me one problem or challenge you had and walk me through how you solved it using that model.
4. How do you go about making a career decision? What factors do you measure? Your approach?
5. What were a couple of the most difficult or challenging decisions you’ve made recently?
6. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you’ve made over the last year or so?

Creativity and Solution Development:
1. How creative are you?
2. How important is creativity in relation to your overall selling approach and strategy?
3. Can you provide an example how you were creative in your last position that led to solving a problem or closing a sale?

Integrity:
1. What are some of the values you have that you refuse to compromise?
2. Describe a situation where you were pressured or challenged to compromise your integrity and what you felt was best and right? How did you handle it?

Self Discipline, Time Management and Organization:
1. How do you go about organizing your schedule and your day?
2. Do you live by a set of best practices? How? What are they? (in selling, organization, etc.)
3. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline? What happened?
4. Everyone procrastinates at one point or another. Can you share the kind of things that you have a tendency to procrastinate?
5. How much guidance and supervision do you feel you need?

Self Management/State/Stress:
1. What stresses you out?
2. What do you when that happens?
3. How do you eliminate it? How do you handle it?

Openness and Self Awareness:
1. What were the most difficult criticisms for you to hear and accept?

Resourcefulness:
1. What actions would you feel you would need to take during the first few weeks here in your new position if you were to join our organization?
2. What obstacles did you face during your present/last position and how did you handle those?
3. What would you be mindful of needing to do and the resources and training you would need to secure your success here?

Tactical Sales Oriented Questions to Recruit at a Deeper Level:
You can find these questions and more on my prior blog post here:

1. What was the average size of each sale? (Dollar amount, cost of goods/services sold.)


2. What type of appointments were you scheduling when prospecting or cold calling? What was the goal here?


3. Where the appointments on site/face to face with each prospect or via the phone?


4. When actually closing a sale, did you actually sell over the phone or did you have to meet each prospect in person?


5. Did you sell a product, a service or both? (Describe how you sold each product and why there was a different approach.)


6. Did you handle the entire sales process from start to finish, including the deliverable? (Was there an account executive who you worked with, was it a team oriented approach to selling, were you only responsible for certain aspects of the sale?)


7. Describe to me the products or services you’ve sold? (Complicated or simple?)


8. Did you sell something that had an online component? Was it strictly a service? (Where they selling the tangible or the intangible?)


9. Was your product/service a “nice to have,” a “want to have” (luxury, added benefit) or a
   need to have?” (Was it a necessity, i.e. gasoline, telecom, office supplies, utilities, mobile phones, insurance, etc.)


10. What do you consider ‘prospecting’ and ‘cold calling’ to be? How do you feel about having to engage in this activity? (We’re looking to uncover how they think and feel about prospecting; their perception of it.)


11. What type of prospecting and cold calling did you do? How much cold calling did you do each day/week? (Number of calls made.) How many calls did you have to make to (get an appointment, close a sale, uncover a new prospect, etc.)?


12. Please share with me what your typical approach would be when cold calling. (Describe not only your process but exactly what you said when you were making a cold call.)


13. Who was your target audience/prospect? (B2b, b2c, C level executives, business owners, sole practitioners, were you dealing with only one decision maker or did you have to coordinate with several decision makers, influencers, committees, board members, etc.)


14. When were you calling on them? (Time, day, frequency of calls, etc.)


15. What was the average size of the company you called on?


16. What markets did you focus on? (Type of company, industry, vertical, etc.)


17. How did you get your leads/uncover your prospects? Where the cold calls you made totally cold or were you getting them from another source and then following up with them? (These would be warmer leads from trade shows, web inquiries, referrals, call-ins, direct mail and marketing efforts, etc.)


18. What were the concerns or objections that you typically encountered with your prospects? (What stalled your sales efforts?)


19. How long was your average sales cycle? (From the time you connected with a qualified prospect up until the time when you converted that prospect into a client.)


20. Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP’s, etc.?

Simulations and Role Plays:
1. If you had to make a call to a prospect who you have never spoken to, what would be the steps you would take before making that call?
2. What would that cold call sound like?
3. If you were following up with a customer to explore and uncover additional selling opportunities, what would your approach sound like?
4. Lets say you just delivered the final product/service to your new customer. They called you the next day with a major problem. They were frustrated and irate. Lets say I’m the customer in this situation. How would you facilitate that conversation? What would that dialogue sound like?
5. There’s a prospect you’ve been calling on for months. They’re finally ready to make a decision to buy and you just found out that there are two more venders now involved in this bid for their business. What would be your strategy to position yourself as the vender of choice? (What would you say, questions asked, etc.)
6. How many times do you call on a prospect before putting them on your do not call list? How do you determine that? What would your approach be? Why?
7. You’re about to visit a new potential client for the first time. What preliminary work would you do? How would you craft your presentation and set the expectations of the meeting? (What would your presentation sound like?)
8. You’ve been handed a client list of approximately 100 accounts to call on. You’ve noticed after several months, their monthly spending with you has slowly diminished. How would you handle this? What would you say?

Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:

• Persuasion
• Communication
• Presentation
• Assertiveness
• Team player
• Conflict management
• Motivation and passion
• Tenacity, commitment, perseverance
• Education

Special offer below to celebrate this achievement. Get the book 37% off and my coaching playbooks for free here. )

The other day, results were announced that my latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions received the Axiom Business Book Award and was honored with the silver medal for being recognized as one of the World’s Best Business Books of 2009. I’m humbly appreciative of this award and look forward to continuing my quest to deliver rich content and value through my writing and coaching.

Below is the press release that was sent out by the Axiom Book Awards.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Axiom Business Book Award Winners Offer Knowledge and Hope in Troubled Times

(Traverse City, MI, Feb. 25, 2009) Difficult problems require knowledgeable solutions. The current global financial meltdown may be the most difficult economic challenge we’ll ever face, requiring the best educational tools available. As the stock market tumbles and job markets tighten, where can one turn to get an edge, to survive and thrive? Read books—cutting-edge, award-winning books.

Jenkins Group and IndependentPublisher.com are proud to announce the results of the second annual Axiom Business Book Awards, honoring the best business books published during the past year. The list of Axiom Award-winning titles will assure the reading public that help is near, in a wide array of business topics, from Leadership and Entrepreneurship to hard-to-find categories like Business Ethics, Philanthropy and Business Fable.

Whether to investigate a new career or to decipher their 401-Ks, these trying times make people realize the need to further educate themselves. Finding a qualified reading list that covers a breadth of subject matter and business topics saves us time and money.

The Axiom Business Book Awards are designed to create such a list, bringing this group of exemplary business books to the attention of those eager to learn, see, and work differently to improve their careers and businesses. The awards offer a platform for today’s leading business
voices to help restore confidence among readers that all is not lost.

“We’re very excited to bring awareness to this important genre of books,” says company founder Jerrold Jenkins. “This year’s winners represent the world’s best business minds and their wisdom and knowledge is needed now more than ever. Congratulations and thanks to all Axiom Award medalists for their efforts.”

Nearly 350 entries were received in this year’s contest. See a complete listing of results at their website.
end

The San Francisco Chronicle reported the other day that if they can’t reduce expenses significantly, they will have to close or sell the business. Interesting choice of words. Why didn’t the ticker on CNN read, “The San Francisco Chronicle reported the other day that if they can’t increase sales significantly they will have to close or sell the business.”

A subtle yet critical distinction and more evidence that supports how desperately our thinking in every area needs to evolve from scarcity to abundance. Companies need to realign their focus on what really matters to drive growth and sustainability.

“Reduce Expenses or Increase Sales?” I’d go for the latter. After all, what you focus on grows. If every employee is more consumed with the survival based, scarcity and fear driven thinking that sounds like, “What can I do to cut costs?” then they are not simultaneously focusing on the more important question. That is, “What can I do to increase sales and the value delivered to our customers in order to increase retention?” Every person in your company needs to be mindful of what is needed to search out, identify and uncover new selling opportunities. But first, they need to be informed of this new line item in their job description, enrolled in it’s level of importance and then given the tools to execute on this. This is the priority today. Otherwise, the fundamental misallocation of effort which is a byproduct of this misaligned thinking within many organizations today will continue to leave more failed businesses in its wake.

Management must turn your binoculars around. Instead of looking at what you can take away to lighten your load, make each person an integral part of customer retention and acquisition. You’ll soon notice a positive change. Otherwise, the next load that is lightened can be you.

Here’s a quick survey that you can take and then check the poll results immediately. How has your company measured up? Are their efforts aligned with all of their good intentions? Are they allocating budget where it can have the greatest impact? Or, are they more caught up in searching for another place they can cut costs rather than focusing on what they need to do to boost sales? Take this poll and see how you compare against other companies. If you don’t see the poll below, go to the poll page here.

I have something timely and special I want to share with you. It’s a new guide I’ve developed entitled, Leadership Mojo. And today, I’m giving it away for free because in this economic climate, every great leader and manager needs their mojo to get their sales team selling more than ever before.

Learn what you can do to coach your team to sell more during new and more challenging times. As a complement to my award winning book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions, I’ve put together Leadership Mojo; a compilation of thoughts, ideas and strategies on the new discipline of leadership and what it takes to coach your sales team into high performing sales champions.

You may be wondering why I’m giving this away for free. Well, since every competitive edge counts today, I want to do to my part in supporting you during more challenging times.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: To ensure you receive the instructions and link to download your free copy, please make sure you have the email address mojo@profitbuilders.com in your safe sender/recipient list to avoid our email being deleted or flagged as spam. If you don’t receive our email within 24 hours, then please send a second email to the same address with the words “Second Request” in the subject line so that we can assist you.

For more information on this new eguide, click here and get your mojo.