Pat’s Blog

“Take steps to expose your people to the best ideas and see to it that they are trained in how to apply them.” — Peter Drucker

In today’s limited-resource economy, managers are challenged to get more production from fewer sales professionals. Training can help a company instill change but two important factors must be taken into account if training is truly going to pay off.

First, companies need to have the right talent in place. The reason? If an individual is not matched for the position, no amount of training will transform that person into a top producer.

Second, once the right talent is onboard, it is important to customize training for the individual sales person. A mass approach to training can be a wasted effort as sales staff already knowledgeable about the material tend to tune out. Customized training enables every sales person to achieve optimum results.

“Know the strengths of each person you hire.” — Peter Drucker

One hot topic among financial companies is how to use technology (such as CRM systems) to achieve a “deeper dive” relationship with the customer. The truth is: If the initial face-to-face or phone contact with the sales person isn’t a “Wowing” experience, the best technology in the world will do nothing to help you connect with that customer.

In today’s marketplace, logging “good” interactions with customers is not enough. Every customer interaction must be great if the company is going to capture referral business. The key to creating great customer experiences is hiring sales people who are well-matched for consultative selling. How skilled is your sales staff at building customer relationships?

“Don’t hire a person for what they can’t do; hire them for what they can do.” — Peter Drucker

I’ve been traveling a lot recently and it still surprises me how low performance standards seem to have dropped. Companies with an average production of 3 or 4 units a month per sales person is becoming the norm. When you dig deeper, the picture is even worse because on average, a significant amount of the production is done by the top 20 percent of producers. This means in reality, the average production is much less than the 3 or 4 units.

The big question facing managers then becomes, “Is it better to have a high number of sales people doing small numbers or a smaller number of sales people who can actually sell? In my opinion, the latter option is a smarter, more efficient way to go. It is less expensive dollar-wise especially when you take into account the high turnover costs and lost sales opportunities that come with hiring individuals not matched for the position.

“An organization can only perform to the capacity of its individual workers; thus, people decisions must be right.” — Peter Drucker

In our industry, one of the most common mistakes I see — at companies of all sizes — is management investing substantial resources in transforming C players into A players. This is a strategy that is doomed to fail. Why? Just as there are natural “athletes” in the world, there are also people who possess natural sales ability. Natural sales talent consists of specific innate personality characteristics formed early in life and you either have them or you don’t.

A 16-month longitudinal study examined the performance gap between A players and C players and concluded that no amount of knowledge, training, time or experience will enable an individual without sales talent to perform at the same level as someone with sales success character traits.

The smarter strategy for managers? Hire candidates who have the personality traits that correlate to sales success.

“If we didn’t spend four hours on placing a man and placing him right, we’d spend 400 hours on cleaning up after our mistake.” — Peter Drucker

Managers today have a choice: Hire smart or manage tough. What this means is that it is worth the effort to spend time upfront to select the right sales candidate than to hire the wrong person and spend countless hours trying to transform a C player into an A player. By making better hiring choices from the beginning, managers can get twice the sales performance from their sales teams.

Think about your most recent hiring decisions. Are your hiring smart or managing tough?