Our new national health care technology client is currently filling several positions for the challenging role of inside sales person who also provides customer support. Located just outside of Boston, they are seeking ideal candidates right now.

This position requires proven track record selling services over the telephone, working knowledge of PCs, and proficiency in using the Internet. Successful candidates will identify customer issues that are impacting value, and support these clients in getting the issues resolved.

This sales and customer support role involves working with the customer support group to help grow new client base, provide telephone training, and on-going customer support.

To be considered now, forward resumes to editor@getbettersales.com. Because final candidates will be required to complete our assessment, you can leap frog the competition by completing the questionnaire here.

Like many companies in this current economic cycle, I am repositioning my business to offer fewer services to a smaller market. It’s all about focus, right?

I will no longer overwhelm every prospect with dozens of best practice tools for every business owner or manager ‘under the sun’. Instead, the new Get Better Sales will focus on how people and process power business growth in companies selling products and services to other businesses.

Throughout the process of achieving my Target Teams Strategic Talent Advisor certification , we have been able to help different clients align their talent strategy with business strategy. This is a critical success step for every business hoping to survive and/or thrive through this economic cycle. Not only should a person be the right fit for the job; the job should be the right fit for the person, and these Target Teams solutions help ensure the perfect fit through their ’spot on’ accuracy.

The power behind these employee engagement tools has provided a positive growth experience for every single one of more than 100 different individuals. In addition to displaying the natural performance styles of each person completing the questionnaire, the results identify how each individual modifies their natural styles to fit within the confines of their job.

Employees who modify their natural styles in at least two categories, easily identify with the additional stress in their work lives. This allows managers to make immediate changes by providing necessary support or reassigning people to a different position that is a more natural ‘fit’. The closer the job fit to the natural styles, the happier the employee, the more productive the team, the more profitable the company.

Mr. Jake Jacobs, Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for ABnote North America wrote last month, “To a person these discussions were most positive and gave everyone great insight into each of our styles and ambitions and why we do the things we do…I can tell you that in my 25 years of sales management I have never known my staff and their potential better and understand what gets them motivated for the cause.”

Because the graphic designer who put together the old GBS logo identity was not available to enhance our brand identity, I posted an ad on Craig’s List. I was implicit in stating that this was an initial project from which I would build a long-term relationship with the right person who most closely ‘fit’ my expectations.

The variety of responses was intriguing. Everything from professionally designed resumes to formal boiler plate responses, to generic RFPs complete with links to online samples, to some who only replied with a cryptic text E-mail message.

I took the five strongest proposals and invited each designer to complete the Target Teams questionnaire. Their familiarity with these important new service offerings would both help them create a truer identity for Get Better Sales, and give each of us comprehensive guides to manage our mutual expectations, as I would share mine with him/her.

Incredibly, three of the final five did not have creativity as one of their top three hidden ambitions. That suggests each of them are working in a field that is not a good fit for how they naturally align themselves with success. The two strongest remaining applicants had almost identical natural styles and hidden ambitions. The final decision was easy: our new designer showed almost a complete absence of modifications. (I’m not sure anyone in the world has a complete absence of modifications.)

Perfect Fit

This illustration shows how he modified by just -2 in three of the four different categories, and by just +1 in the other. His work as a designer was such a wonderful fit with his natural styles, it would be very difficult for him to find any other line of work that was more rewarding.

Who on your team has the performance styles that naturally fit the expectations of their current role? What changes might you make that could make them more productive and easier to manage?

It is a tough climate today for many businesses in many industries. But, when asked this week how his sales team was doing, Bob Martellio, VP Sales for Northeast Copier Systems, (NCS) reported, “We are at 117% of this year’s sales plan in total team production, despite this economy and longer sales cycles.”

Even though the office equipment industry is very competitive with rivals undercutting prices every day, NCS is one of the few businesses today reporting strong growth. Asked to explain he said, “We know exactly who fits well into our system. We rely on the same system we put into place several years ago, and September was our best month EVER!”

Last year they didn’t have the right mix. They ‘took a chance’ on a couple candidates they thought would be successful, but didn’t work out in the end. “They just didn’t fit in.”

“We also realize that there is not one system that fits all companies”, he continued. “We’ve made ours our own, and made changes when we’ve needed.” When asked to boil it all down to the most important reason for this year’s growth, he said,” We invest in our people.”

How do you know you have the right people in the right roles today? Without a clear understanding of the right person to fit into the organization, sales managers and business owners take chances every day when hiring new candidates and managing existing sales people.

Kevin Shea, National Sales Manager for W.J. Deutsch & Sons is, ”Having our best year yet!”  We know who we need on our team, so it’s so important to find the right fit. I work them all pretty hard but they know exactly what is expected of them, and I help them get there. He explained, “Every one is helping each other because we need to work together to achieve our goals and outperform the competition.”

Instead of ‘hoping for the best’ , using a comprehensive assessment provides a coaching guide to be explained and shared between management and the employee. It creates a brand new dynamic that increases productivity and personal fulfillment which drives higher retention.

Sales can’t grow without a cohesive team who are motivated and supported to grow as individuals. Sustained growth is elusive these days for many businesses, and it REALLY is all about your people. And, when they’re all pulling in the same direction, every one wins.

Auditing your current sales team is the best and fastest way to understand how to get better sales with your current people. Discover how coach them to better performance by tapping into their the natural styles and see how their individual ambitions their actions. Experience the accuracy and quality of our comprehensive free assessment here.

I will be sharing many of the tools Bob has used to achieve consistent growth over many years in my next workshop, “Making Sales People More Productive in 90 Days or Less,” which takes place on December 4th. Click here for an explanation of the best practices all attendees will receive as part of the Sales Management’s Best Friend Starter Kit in this hands-on workshop.

Whenever companies bring on a new hire who doesn’t last more than six months, much more than the [tens of] thousands of dollars of spent payroll are lost. Team morale suffers along with work flow disruption. On-boarding and training efforts are wasted. Customer-facing staff changes bring unease into the marketplace. The list could go on and on; suffice it to say the hidden costs of poor hiring can be daunting.

In the April 4th, 2005 edition of Newsweek, Jack Welch said, “Hiring good people is hard. Hiring great people is brutally hard. Nothing matters more in winning than putting the right people on the field.”

Gut Feelings

Most companies large and small, continue to prepare for new hires they way they’re used to. Hiring managers run an ad, collect resumes, interview the stronger candidates, check references on the final one or two, and then trust their gut feelings. When more than one hiring manager is involved, differences easily come to light when one person’s gut feeling doesn’t match the other. At the end of the day, many hiring managers cross their fingers and ‘hope for the best.’ It doesn’t have to be that way.

Take an X-Ray

When interviewing to become a financial consultant for a major investment house 9 years ago, Edward became upset because his hiring manager had promised to show him the results of the assessment he was being forced to take prior to being hired. The manager never shared those results and he’s long gone, yet Edward’s a top producer today.

A lot has changed with hiring tools in the past 9 years. Today, it’s like taking an X-Ray. Not only can you easily see what the personal styles are of your strongest candidates, but also how they might modify those styles to ‘fit into the job’. The more modifications they have to make, the harder it will be for them to meet the demands of the job.

You can also learn their specific strengths, understand what their ideal working environment looks like, and get directions on how best to communicate, motivate, and manage them for best results. Sure, you have a team and a business to run, and you want to operate it as most effectively as possible, but, finding the person with the right credentials for the open position is only half of the equation. Matching the natural styles of the right candidate to your position is critical for long-term success due to stronger satisfaction levels and personal fulfillment.

You’d Be Crazy Not To

There are also seven hidden ambitions we all share that are revealed through each comprehensive X-Ray. All seven are listed in order of influence on each individual.

Different positions call for different ambitions. You would want hunters who close new business opportunities to have the economic and political ambitions in their top two. You would want farmers to have altruism as one of their top three. Not only would you want accounting and bookkeepers to have different personal styles, but they should also have theoretical as one of the top two ambitions driving them.

This powerful insight not only matches the right job to a new hire, it can identify reasons why existing staff aren’t satisfied in their current positions. Instead of firing them outright, take an X-Ray to reassess, and then move them into a different position. You’d be crazy not to.

It’s All Yours

The fact that candidates have demonstrated success is sales, administrative, or operational roles in prior companies doesn’t actually predict any level of success in your company. They’ll need to ‘fit into’ your expectations, job role, and culture.

In the world of sales, great hunters can be just so-so farmers, and vice-versa. Individual ambitions graphs will highlight those differences for you along with the personal styles. You can’t see this anywhere else but through the X-Ray.

See just how powerful this X-Ray is for yourself. FREE. For a limited time, we will also debrief you on your results; no obligation, no hard sell.

Test drive it here (or have one of your current staff complete this simple questionnaire) by clicking on the link, and make sure that you answer all the questions in one sitting, as they relate to work, and without any input from others. Take the X-RAY by clicking here.

June 4, 2009 - Hopkinton, MA - Guaranteed Better Sales Managing Partner, Mr. David Hamacher will present the half-day interactive workshop, Making Your Sales People More Productive in 90 Days or Less at Cambridge College on Friday, June 12th, from 7:30 - 11:30 am.

“One of the workshop modules illustrates how our proprietary WASPR action planning and coaching tool has increased individual sales production 25-30% for everyone who has ever used it, and every attendee will get their own to take with them as part of their comprehensive workbook.” Mr. Hamacher explained. “Another module demonstrates how to take the guesswork and gambling out of hiring new sales people. I’ll also share the secrets our Sales Managers of Distinction use to get 100% of their sales people using their sales automation (CRM) systems 100% of the time.”

“The content includes critical modules from my book in progress, Getting Better Sales: How Businesses Grow Sales Year after Year after Year, and draws upon case studies from my work with AT&T, Siemens, and Xerox,” Mr. Hamacher said. “It’s geared toward business owners, VPs of Sales and/or Marketing, and sales managers. I will be sharing best practices from those companies which have grown sales year after year after year, through the last down cycle following 9/11.”

This presentation of Making Your Sales People More Productive in 90 Days or Less is part of the Classroom Series sponsored by the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce. For all the details,  go to the Chamber site here. Seating is limited, and available for pre-registrants only.

About Guaranteed Better Sales
Guaranteed Better Sales is a wholly owned subsidiary of Communicon Consulting Group, Inc., which has been providing sales improvement services to more than 300 businesses in different industries since 1994 customizing management best practices and technology implementations.

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