hiring salespeople
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The Hidden Power of the Sales Candidate Follow Up Letter
- November 15, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You receive follow up letters from your sales candidates all the time, right? And you probably make notes in their files that they sent those nice follow up letters and you might even rank them higher as a result.
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How to Refine Your Sales Candidate Pool and Selection Criteria
- August 13, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you aren’t happy with the salespeople you are selecting, you can look in the mirror. Ask yourself to what degree you are putting your likes and dislikes ahead of the data. The data never lies but your eyes will tell you you’re hungry right after you eat! There is a place for gut feel, but it should never take place at selection time when following your gut means overruling the data.
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Bench Strength – The Key to Replacing Salespeople
- July 19, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to worry about your new salespeople. Once they’re on board, make sure you have a structured, effective 90-day ramp-up program to assure they succeed instead of setting them up for failure.
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Top 5 Sales Recruiting Observations of 2010
- June 29, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today, I’ll make some observations about the sales recruiting activity taking place this summer that either reinforces some of the things I’ve said in the past, or modifies my original stance.
In no particular order, but of equal importance:
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Are You Looking for Salespeople with Entrepreneurial Spirit?
- May 26, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Is it reasonable to expect your salespeople to live and breath your business? To bring it up wherever they go? With whomever they meet? Should it be part of the job description? Would it be authentic? Would it help?
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Top 10 Tips for Hiring Salespeople for Your Sales Force
- May 24, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today, we will discuss hiring for the sales force but not so much the “how” of it as much as the importance of doing it for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right manner.
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Recruiting – 4th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions
- November 16, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You must use an assessment – not just any assessment, but a world class, sales specific, predictive, customized assessment that will consistently identify people that will be top performers for you, in your business, calling into your market, with your pricing model and competition.
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Stupid Choices in the Selection of Sales Assessments
- October 30, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We had a conversation with someone who was using the CPQ Assessment. The person who was providing it to them claims it is a sales assessment but it’s a personality test marketed as a sales assessment. If you’re not familiar with my series on this then click here. They were also told that it was predictive, especially with insurance salespeople, and that they could use the same criteria for selecting their salespeople (selling a business consulting package to CEO’s) as is used for hiring life insurance salespeople.
Yeah, right.
Let’s compare the life insurance (LI) sale and this business consulting package sale (BCP):
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You Have an 82% Chance of Making a Hiring Mistake When…
- September 2, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My guest on this week’s episode of Meet the Sales Experts was Ken Edmundson. We were talking about hiring when he he said that there is an 82% chance of making a hiring mistake when management does not know how their candidate is wired. He said it’s a mistake when they are fired, they quit, or they under achieve. He went on to say that you can’t hire without an interview and a background check and you can’t hire by only doing those two things.
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10 Steps to Record-Breaking Sales Revenues
- June 30, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When things loosen up (and things will loosen up) and companies and consumers both begin spending money again, you could be in for a significant windfall. You may even have some record breaking revenue months if, and it’s a big if, you have your sales force doing all of the right things, even while companies and consumers aren’t spending money.