Six Best Practices of Assembling a Successful Sales Team

Walter Rogers Talks About the Six Best Practices of Assembling an Successful Sales Team on The Price of Business with Kevin Price

[Kevin Price]:  Welcome back to the “Price of Business.”  I am your host Kevin Price.  Talking to you about you and your business.  Going straight to my good friend Walter Rogers.  He is on every week like clockwork navigating us through the sales process, through the client relationship, customer relationship and really helping people take their business to the next level.  He’s with Baker Communications and a highlight of my day every Wednesday at The Price of Business.  Good to talk to you my friend. 

[Walter Rogers]:  Good to talk to you too.  And you’re way too kind to me Kevin.  Thank you.

[KP]:  You’re a great guy and I love the feedback I’m getting too. Very smart conversations you and I are having.  You’re making me look smart and I need all the help I can get buddy.  Tell me real quickly, what are we going to focus on today?  By the way your articles are primo.  If you’re not reading his articles at Houston Business Daily, I’m looking forward to the articles becoming a book, then you are missing out on some phenomenal content.  You do them like clockwork.  You do them before you come on the air and I’m telling you, we’re getting some great feedback about those too.  Tell us what you’re going to talk about today.

[WR]:  Oh yeah, no problem.  Last week, I’m going to do just a quick little recap, we’re currently focusing on the best practices of sales management.  Last week we talked about  a best in class example of the difference between management and leadership.  Alex Shootman came on the air and discussed about their strategy at Eloqua and successful it’s been and really creating the right kind of culture.  This week the focus is really around how do you go about building the right sales team?  If you want to get success, the best way to get there is to make sure you’ve got the right people on your team.  So, today we’re going to focus on six best practices on how to best build your sales team. 

[KP]:  Okay, very good.  I love lists, and I love the idea of best practices so that’s a great place to start.  Let’s jump right in.

[WR]:  Yeah, you bet.  I want to start by saying now, Kevin, what do you think the success rate is when you hire a new sales person?  How many time is that sales person still around about a  year later?  What would you say that success rate is?

[KP]:  I would say about 30%. 

[WR]:  Yeah, it’s about 30%.

[KP]:  Are you serious?  Am I right on that?  What do I win?

[WR]:  Think about that.  Think about the amount of energy, time, and investment that you put into a person knowing that only 30% of them are going to stick around a year later.  Not only is there a tremendous cost, a financial cost, but also a mental cost associated with that.  Of course to continue to churn through your sales team which means you’re not really building stable relationships with your customers.  Making sure you’ve really got your team nailed on the front end is one of the most important things a sales manager can do.  The six best practices that we’re going to talk about today are around:

1. Defining the criteria
2. Not waiting for the time that you need to hire a sales person
3. Knowing what the profile is
4. The importance of selling the opportunity
5. Being wary of the information that shows up on resumes
6. Hiring better than you.

Those are the six main topics we’re going to cover today.  The backdrop to all that, I’ll say there is no better time for a sales manager to be looking for sales people Kevin, with the unemployment rate as high as it is.  Companies have let go really talented individuals, so it’s a great time to hire because there is just a tremendous amount of talent out on the market. 

[KP]:  Incredible amount of talent.  We’re talking about people that you had to pay significantly more for just a short period ago, a couple of years ago. 

[WR]:  Yeah, you really did.  Competition was much more intense for jobs and so while unfortunate for everyone out of work, certainly it is a great time for employers to be looking for top talent.

[KP]:  Yeah, so now’s the time to look.  I would assume that a big part of your strategy is doing all the heavy lifting on the front end rather than after you hire them.

[WR]:  You really need to do a lot of the heavy lifting on the front end which will prevent a lot of heavy lifting on the back end.  You’re absolutely right about that.  One of the very first steps that you need to go through is really defining the criteria, the specific criteria of the individual you want to hire.  By criteria, I’m not talking about the characteristics.  I’m talking about what it is that you’re going to want this person to accomplish in the job.  Is this an inside sales role?  Is it an outside sales role? Are they going to be cold calling or are they going to be mining existing accounts?  What specifically is it that this person is going to do?  As you know Kevin, it’s selling in the field, selling face to face is very different than selling over the phone right?

[KP]:  Right, exactly.  So you need to make sure that the criteria matches what they’re going to do. 

[WR]:  You’ve got to understand your criteria very exactly because then you begin to screen your candidates against that criteria.  You wouldn’t necessarily try to convert a field sales person to an inside sales person, not that that’s not doable.  It’s just a difficult transition for people to make.  If you’re hiring primarily for an inside sales job, you probably should interview too many field sales people because they’re not going to be particularly satisfied this role 8 times out of 10.  That’s what I mean by criteria.  Another element is, I’ll give an example around is somebody going to cold call into brand new accounts or is somebody going to mine an existing install base of accounts.  Again, those are two very, very different things.  Cold calling requires a very specific kind of skill, somebody who’s got a high propensity for high volume, lots of phone calls, is very consistent, is very programmatic in their approach and can essentially deal with a lot of rejection, even though there are strategies that will help you minimize that rejection.  But that’s not for everybody.  So someone who’s been really successful as an inside sales person but primarily responsible for an established client base and hasn’t had to do a lot of cold calling…Their propensity for success in a cold calling position is not that high.  Again, not that they can’t make it, but why try to go down that road if you can find somebody who fits that criteria more specifically

[KP]:  Right, right.  Why put a square in a circle. 

[WR]:  Yup, yup.  Exactly.  The second best practice really has to do around always being on the lookout .  you never know when you’re going to need somebody first of all.  The very best sales people probably aren’t looking for work to begin with.  They’re available, but you’ve got to always be looking.  So as a manager, a leader of a sales team you’re absolutely responsible for always being on the lookout for talent and that talent can show up in any number of places.  We’ll talk about that in a little bit. You’ve got to always be on the lookout, because just because your sales team is configured today, you’ve got the people in place today doesn’t mean that it’s going to be the case tomorrow.  You need to be able to move very quickly.  Not only that, if you were to find a superstar performer that could add a substantial amount of revenue to your team you would probably try to figure out how to make room for that person.  But if you’re not looking for these people always consciously and subconsciously you may completely miss those opportunities as they pass you by.

[KP]:  Very, very good.  Obviously because…and you did a nice little overview at the very beginning, but time is running out.  Whenever you’re on it always feels like just a few minutes.  Real quickly what are all the points we’re going to cover in more detail later?

[WR]:  Yeah, so I’ll go through that.  The next—[music fades up]

[KP]:  Oh.  You heard that.  We’re going to have to get you on more often.  That was great information.  How do people get in touch with you.  I know it’s BakerCommunications.com.  Your phone number?

[WR]:  713-627-7700. 713-627-7700.

[KP]:  Hey Walter, it flew.  Sorry about that my friend.  We need to get you back on.  Walter Rogers.  Baker Communications.  Great stuff. You need to be checking them out.  I am Kevin Price.  You’re listening to CNN650