Andy Paul's Blog, page 21

653: How to Hire Salespeople w/ Bridget Gleason

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Andy has read a book to discuss: Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again: Selecting Candidates Who Are Absolutely Driven to Succeed, by Chris Croner, based on the idea that you can identify candidates with drive.
Chris lays out in the book a detailed process about what drive is and how to identify it in the candidates you are looking to hire.
Chris says there are three elements of drive. The first is a need to achieve outstanding results by virtually whatever it takes to succeed. It involves tough goals. The second element is a love of competition with self and others.
A sale is viewed as a contest of wills with the customer. There is always an adversarial element there. The third element is optimism. They are certain of their ability to win. Andy relates to these elements. Achievement is key.
Andy relates his love of competition to his performance in business, bicycling, and swimming. Bridget is so competitive that she has to be really intentional about ‘hobbies,’ like golf.
Andy’s current competition in business is with himself more than against others. As Andy reflects back on top producers he has observed, he sees they have these three elements of drive.
Andy refers to his recent conversation with Libby Gill, author of The Hope-Driven Leader: Manage the Power of Positivity at Work. Optimism is hopeful. There is a science that has risen around the study of hope and positivity.
Hope is optimism or expectation with a plan. The ability to succeed and the desire to succeed have to be matched by the belief that you can succeed. Chris’s company, SalesDrive, offers an assessment tool for drive.
Andy also read Recruit Rockstars: The 10 Step Playbook to Find the Winners and Ignite Your Business, by Jeff Hyman. Jeff advocates a data-driven process for hiring to mitigate the emotion from hiring. He uses a scorecard.
Jeff advocates that three or four people interview a candidate and keep score, asking the exact same questions in the exact same order. Jeff offers example questions and recommends assessments and testing.
Reference checks are meant to be disqualifiers, not validations of decisions you already made. First impressions can also be disqualifiers.
Andy recommends both books for hiring salespeople.

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652: How to Hire Sales Rockstars w/ Jeff Hyman

Jeff Hyman, Chief Talent Officer at Strong Suit, and author of Recruit Rockstars: The 10 Step Playbook to Find the Winners and Ignite Your Business joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Jeff says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is the high degree of competition that makes it really hard to differentiate themselves through the noise. Be laser-focused about your unique selling proposition.
Jeff’s book gives a plan to follow to hire ‘A’ players, as mentioned in his book. The book is designed to help reduce the risks attached to bringing on new employees. Hiring is inherently very risky.
Relying on gut feel, trite questions, or the promise of a ‘Rolodex’ is not a good hiring policy. The cost of hiring a bad manager is 7X their salary. This understates the severity of the potential damage they can do.
Jeff’s book offers a standardized process to take the emotion out of the hiring decision. We are subject to emotional biases in the recruiting process. Making it data-driven increases your chance of a good hire.
A rockstar is one who will perform in the top 5% of people available for the role at the compensation you can afford to pay. An objective process finds that person. A rockstar can only be a rockstar if they are set up for success.
Jeff tells how he looks for up-and-comers who will see the position as a big advance. Andy suggests hiring into sales the rockstars in other departments. Author Anthony Tjan recommends choosing goodness over competency.
Herb Kelleher of Southwest hires for attitude and trains for skill. You can’t train niceness. It’s critical to let people with hateful attitudes and bad behaviors go, even if they are star players. Have talent ready to replace them.
Make sure the interview team agrees on what they want in the “DNA” and the competencies for success in the role. Make a benchmark scorecard. Interviewers ask each candidate the same questions in the same order.
Jeff says do not post a bulleted list of ‘must-haves.’ Use a well-crafted ‘job invitation,’ that has an emotional connection to it talking about the company, industry, opportunity, upside, and growth that invites rockstars.
Jeff recommends hosting a short video that features authentic conversations with some of your best folks with half of them being women. A video should be part of every job invitation.
Reference checks — Jeff checks ‘referenceability’ over the phone. ‘Who would you give me for manager references?’ He also checks social media.
The ‘test drive’ is the single most predictive step in recruiting, but it is usually skipped. Jeff gives an example of giving a candidate role-playing calls with a product data sheet. Do they crave feedback or get defensive?

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651: Any Good Strategy Starts with Hope w/ Libby Gill

Libby Gill, executive coach, leadership expert, speaker, CEO of Libby Gill & Company, and author of The Hope-Driven Leader: Manage the Power of Positivity at Work, joins me for the second time on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Libby says hope is not a plan or a strategy — but — giving strategies to a hopeless workforce does not work. First, infuse the workplace with positivity; then strategies can work and growth can be achieved.
Libby explains happiness and hope. Both are positive. Hope is attached to actions moving toward a vision. Hope is the confidence that you can “make it happen.”
The world is changing. Right now, we may be experiencing the slowest rate of change we will ever experience! Hope is the fundamental belief that change is possible and that your actions control your outcomes.
Libby notes Amazon and Uber as radical recent changes that no one notices anymore. Change continues to speed up around us. We need to embrace change with attitudes of hope, happiness, and optimism.
Libby discusses servant leadership she observed in training she did at Abbott and how the leaders interacted with their teams. She explains how leaders can help individuals to relate to where the company is going.
67% of the workforce is disengaged, according to Gallup. Many employers think this is a low estimate. Gallup says $400 billion is lost yearly by the lack of productivity.
A team that is “fired up” in spite of stress and change can overcome these difficulties together.
Libby talks about women causing change in the workplace with the #MeToo movement. She talks about the dynamics the Millennial generation brings. They will outnumber Boomers in 2020. It’s time to work together.
Have we leaders changed in a rapidly-changing world? Do we have values and do we follow them? Do we hire for values and principles? How do individual values inform team values? What have we done that makes us proud?
Libby shares a case study of a leader who decided to go personal with his direct reports. After a couple of months, people began to get to know each other as humans. Communication, collaboration, and results improved.
Libby uses herself as a case study of sharing personal vulnerabilities as a keynote speaker, and what results she obtained. People received hope for themselves through the shared humanity. Success comes after setbacks.
C.R. Snyder, Ph.D., called ‘waypower’ multiple pathways to an end goal. Define the goal to your team and let them get they using their own tools and methods; check in for milestones. Some managers resist this level of freedom.

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#650. Consuming too much sales advice will mess you up. With Bridget Gleason.

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

As a follow-up to The Dunning-Kruger Effect mentioned in last week’s episode, Andy says that sales information is so abundant that it’s hard to know what has value to you and what is a distraction. We are consuming too much.
Explicit Monitoring is when experienced professionals become so focused on their actions that they make mistakes. This is seen when a pro golfer has changed their swing and has to think it through each time.
Andy saw a struggling NBA player so paralyzed by the coaching advice given to him that he could hardly get a free throw to the rim, which had been automatic for him.
This can happen to us in sales as we focus more on tips, techniques, and advice until we are distracted from focusing on the buyer.
Another psychologist calls this the Self-Focus Vortex. You have all these bits of advice going through your mind about what you should be doing and you get distracted from what you are doing.
Bridget talked to one of her reps recently who is great with the process but goes rigid when he gets on a call. He is so tied to thinking about the process that he does not fully focus on the client. She suggested relaxing into it.
You can’t take everything in at once. Find a way to add changes to your process that works for you. Bridget told her rep that when he gets more comfortable and confident, this won’t be an issue for him anymore.
Andy says we need to teach people to consider their process as a funnel. You can put a lot of improvements in at the top, but leave the bottom narrow, so you serialize what you adopt and don’t try it all concurrently.
MIT researchers found that the best practice for integrating changes into a process is to master the changes one at a time.
In your process, choose one new behavior, visualize how you will use the behavior and how the client will respond, role-play it at least 10 times before they try it, and try the new behavior with one buyer. Master it and use it.
When you develop the unconscious mastery of the new behavior, add another new behavior to your process in the same way. Practice and role-play are irreplaceable. Ask your peers to work with you. You might inspire them.
It’s essential to keep learning about sales. Carefully absorb the new learning into your process. You won’t implement 10 new things in one day. Prioritize what you will learn. Role-play one new thing at least 10 times.

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649: Using Data to Drive Changes in Sales w/ Fred Shilmover

Fred Shilmover, Founder and CEO at InsightSquared, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Fred says the single biggest challenge facing salespeople today is having a lot of information but not a lot of insight. We have information but need better behavior.
People overestimate pipeline conversions through. The stage percent is not set. It changes over time. InsightSquared nuances conversion percents by statistics of sales reps and the likelihood of closing in this period.
Fred talks use cases. For example, individual rep management, ramping, and coaching and pipeline management. Each has its own cadence. The time for coaching is before the sale, not the day of it.
Fred notes the industrialization of sales and the consumerization of IT, the ongoing transfer of sales from outside to inside, and enabling technologies, such as InsightSquared, that help develop relationships remotely.
Sales require more of an engineering management style for operations. It balances BDRs and AEs in the pipeline, operating like a factory. Tech creates efficiencies around the human touch that give a rep more time to connect.
InsightSquared has all the reports you wish your CRM did. Fred talks about the revenue research that went into its development. For ease-of-use, it’s consumer-grade with fast time-to-value. People come to the library of content.
Fred says they help people with an imperative to change. InsightSquared has worked with thousands of changing organizations. They have tools to diagnose where a company is, in revenue. Fred explains the tools.
Their ICP is a company who has invested in sales operations and has an imperative to change. More small companies are investing in sales operations. The product users range from executives to sales managers.
InsightSquared becomes the tool to run pipeline meetings, monthly coaching, and weekly forecasting. It drives the most value when it is embedded into the management workflow with sales operations.
InsightSquared is in the sales tech stack wherever they can provide value. The sales tech stack is owned by sales operations. The best success is seen when sales leaders who think like engineers pair with sales operations.
InsightSquared helps allocate people’s time correctly and helps them execute sales plays against the right accounts.
Analytics identifies trends, finds anomalies, and combines them with an investigation. Focus on the industry that gives the best returns. Sales operations identify the gold.

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648: Use Charisma to Create Powerful First Impressions w/ Tom Payne

Tom Payne, President, Essential Growth Solutions, LLC and author of Selling with Charisma: The Sales System Used — Unwittingly — By the World’s Best Salespeople, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Tom says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is access to proven techniques; things that actually work and are beneficial. Some elements of verbal charisma are not easy. For example, good stories.
Tom sets a mindset in prospects that he is an honest broker of objective information, contrasting a competitor against his product inoffensively. This wins sales.
It comes down to nonverbal behaviors that back up what you say. Have an expression of authority, strength, and warmth. You are rarely challenged with those attributes.
Tom discusses his book, Selling with Charisma: The Sales System Used — Unwittingly — By the World’s Best Salespeople. Charisma is enchanting and magnetic.
Nonverbal behaviors drive charisma. Charisma enables a salesperson to project emotion to the customer. It’s a subconscious process for both the salesperson and the customer.
People learn subconsciously from childhood how their smile affects others. It becomes part of who they are. That can’t be taught directly from one person to another. It is learned by practice and experience.
Tom is an introvert. He has sold with charisma. Anyone can learn it and it doesn’t take long. It requires learning to control nonverbal behavior. Tom teaches through exercises that helped him develop charisma.
Strength is a projection that “I can get the job done for you.” Warmth is assurance that “I am an ally to you.” Warmth is relaxed and gentle. Strength is a force. They can be blended into charisma.
Tom gives a personal example of answering a hostile attack with strength and warmth. In an hour he won the sale. Charisma generates credibility, trust, likability. It attracts people to you. It brings emotions to the surface.
Facial expression is a key nonverbal cue. People assess others in less than one second of seeing their face. Likability is determined by smile and cast of eyes. Tom’s system programs how nonverbal cues are expressed.
A sales manager has to recognize nonverbal behavior at a deeper level than most people. Watch political debates for nonverbal cues. Tom describes Jeb Bush’s nonverbal cues. A first impression is hard to change.
Practice visualization before a new sales situation. Back up visualization with positive self-talk: “I radiate confidence and warmth because I know I am up to this situation.” “I am outgoing.” Tom closes with a story.

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647: Relationships Matter in Sales w/ Bridget Gleason

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The topic is ‘relationships.’ Andy saw a recent LinkedIn video claiming that relationships in sales don’t matter. Andy disagrees completely but there are some who believe that. Do they know what ‘relationship’ means?
Relationships and trust are linked and depend on each other. Bridget says even when she buys online she still has to trust the company and feel a relationship with the brand or get a recommendation before purchasing.
Bridget shares a story about an online purchase that needed a customer service adjustment. The vendor staff was very timely by email and responsive to her needs. The experience gave her a sense of a trusted relationship.
Andy sees relationships as the way that two or more (objects or people) are connected or the way that two or more people regard or behave toward each other. This is all integral to sales.
Having a relationship with a buyer does not mean your customer becomes your close friend. Ideally, you feel positively toward each other, leading to trust, which inspires them to do business with you.
When the buyer trusts the seller, the buyer opens up about their real challenges and allows the seller to ask meaningful questions that create a productive inquiry.
Andy refers to The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M.R. Covey and The Trusted Advisor, by Maister, Greene, and Galford. Covey points out four key cornerstones of trust are Motives, Integrity, Competence, and Execution.
Andy notes that there has to be a relationship in place for you to demonstrate these cornerstone qualities; without a relationship, no one cares about trusting you.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias that when people start to learn about something, they assume themselves to be more competent than they are. Experts they don’t consider themselves to be expert but learning.
Andy, after 40 years of selling and 650 podcasts, and reading 250 sales books, continues because he considers that there is so much more for him to learn about selling. Bridget feels she also has so much still to learn.
The statement that relationships are unimportant could have been made by person inexpert in sales suffering from The Dunning-Kruger Effect. There will be more about relationships in a future episode.
Andy, as an introvert, knows that building relationships can be learned, and practiced, like a habit. Relationships are a normal part of life and of sales.

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646: Building Authentic Connections w/ Godard Abel

Godard Abel, Co-founder/Executive Chairman of G2 Crowd, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Godard says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is breaking through the ‘noise’ of the many technologies and vendors. Salesforce AppExchange has 5,000 apps. He suggests personalization with context.
An authentic connection can start with what you write to your prospect. Pick up the phone and call, for a better connection. Be prepared for an in-depth conversation. There’s nothing like talking to a human.
Humanize your email communications. Putting a name in the blank is not adequate personalization. Godard uses phone calls more and emails less, once it “gets real.”
Make quality phone calls for quality relationships. Godard also networks as much as possible. Conferences are like college reunions. He knows someone in every G2 Crowd account. This makes outreach easier.
G2 Crowd is a review platform for business technology for all types of enterprise software and services. Godard was looking for timely third-party validation and decided to fill the niche.
G2 Crowd reviews are all by real people, validated by their LinkedIn identity. You can see your connection to the reviewer. You can filter reviews by your first-degree LinkedIn connections to see what your trusted peers say.
G2 Crowd gives customers a bigger voice. Entrepreneurs invite customers to give them reviews. This allows prospects to evaluate and pick software more quickly.
Godard explains the business model. It’s free for startups with optional marketing solution upgrades. Premium listings can include embedded demo videos, marketing content, and G2 Crowd browsing analytics.
G2 Crowd focuses on their core of enterprise business technology software and services. Technology advice is mission-critical across industries. Godard tells how G2 Crowd benefits the tech industry vendors and buyers.
Godard cautions startups selling to the enterprise to be aware of the long sales cycle due to the consensus the buyer needs to build. At a minimum, it takes many months. You really need a specialized team.
A rep calling into an enterprise from a startup has no name recognition or credibility. It takes time to build credibility. The rep has to be comfortable being the underdog. You can’t hire for the rep’s ‘Rolodex.’
Godard says it is easier today than a decade ago to scale B2B SaaS company. If you use the technologies in a smart way, you can still build authentic human relationships.

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#645: Sales is an Endurance Sport w/ Brandon Bruce

Brandon Bruce, COO and Co-founder at Cirrus Insight, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Brandon says the biggest challenge facing sales reps today is adapting to the fact that what used to work for years has diminishing returns. Five years ago, the biggest email list won. Now it takes intriguing content.
Making it easy for the customer to do business works well for Cirrus Insight. They share their calendar on their website. Customers set an appointment (or request a call) on the “Schedule a Demo” page and a rep will be ready.
Words matter. Show that you are making a meeting convenient for the prospect if they want to meet. Use the best copywriters on the emails and content.
Writing is one of the human skills of connection. People who can show character and the values they stand for are in high demand. People need soft, collaborative skills, not just technical skills. Where do we train these soft skills?
Brandon talked to business students at both Maryville College and the University of Tennessee. They have marketing classes and finance classes, but no sales classes. Shouldn’t we include sales in business school?
The rise of digital marketing has created a sense that startups only need to put up a website, send some emails, buy some PPC ads, and call it sales. No. You need to talk to prospects and customers.
Brandon talks about a 508-mile bike race in the Mojave/Death Valley. It took him 35 hours and 7 minutes, which included a 17-minute nap because he had been hallucinating. It ended at 29 Palms. He was in fifth place.
Business is an endurance sport. How do you navigate a sale that might take a year to close? How do you build up a business over a decade, so it has staying power? Just keep working on that problem. Keep chipping away.
Andy sees it as a matter of character and preparation. Persistence and resilience are character traits. Grit is a character trait. Get to the answer or give it your greatest effort. Brandon tells how he prepped for his bike race.
Brandon talks about doing randonneuring bike races. Andy equates race preparation with sales preparation. Define your values, goals, and what you stand for. It comes out when you talk to people.
Don’t work a lot of surprises into your pipeline. Have transparency, accountability, and reasonable expectations.

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644: How to be a Sales HERO w/ Bridget Gleason

 

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The topic is ‘values.’ Andy cites Tony Tjan and invites listeners to review Episode 621 and read Tony’s book “Good People.”
Andy’s new acronym for personal values is HERO: Helpful, Empathetic, Responsive, Open-minded.
Being Helpful is essential. Too often, in sales we think our job is to get an order. The job really is to help the buyer quickly gather the information they need to make a good decision with the least investment of time and resources.
The buyer considers it to be a strategic advantage when they can make good decisions quickly. This is what the buyer wants. The sales rep can help the buyer, provide service with a smile, and have fun doing it.
Being Empathetic is more than knowing the persona. Engage the prospect and listen to them attentively to demonstrate your empathy. Andy says learn to listen slowly to understand without jumping ahead.
Pause a second after the customer answers and think before replying. Don’t default to the next scripted question.
Being Responsive is an advantage for the rep. Reps who don’t make the prospect wait are helping the prospect make a good decision quickly. Network in your company to get quick turnarounds on resources for your prospects.
Andy read an article that responsiveness is wrong because sales reps will go for the quick answer instead of the right answer. Andy disagrees. A rep will not risk the sale with careless incorrect quick answers.
Being Open-minded means not to assume what the customer’s answer will be. It’s not going to be the same answer every time. Treat every customer situation as being unique. Listen to learn.
It takes a lot of deliberate thought to be open-minded. Try to see another viewpoint. It takes vigilance. Selling is a deliberate act. Be thoughtful about every action. The more deliberate you can be, the more successful you are.
In sales, you just have to be better than the others.
Andy cites Herbert Simon, people are by and large looking to make good enough decisions. You can help them achieve what they need to achieve. Be a HERO.

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