Understanding the Sales Force

That was the question posed to me yesterday while speaking at the Crystal Palace in Livingston NJ.

To effectively answer that question one must ask another question, that being, what is the largest number of salespeople a sales manager can manage?

When a company is ready to hire someone for its first sales role, they often face a big dilemma:

Should it be a salesperson?
Should it be a selling sales manager?
Should it be a selling Sales VP?

Yesterday I spoke to the Distributors for Billington Wines in Washington DC. One attendee asked about my comprehensive guidelines for on boarding new salespeople during the first 90 Days. I believe that most companies set their new salespeople up for failure. I believe you should prepare your new salespeople for success. While I have probably posted about this subject on various occasions, I’ll try to get it all in here.

Executives in small to medium sized businesses have a tendency to become ecstatic when they have the opportunity to hire someone who was with a Fortune 1000 company. They immediately think, “Joe worked at Xorex” or “Suzie used to be at MBI” or “Phil was with Tfosorcim”. And they think, “If they bring some of that big company magic to YSTI-YSTIB, we’ll do great!”

I was forwarded an email that originated with from a colleague’s client that read, “…Many candidates are advised to not take on line sales assessments before at least a phone conversation.”

Hiring salespeople is scalable until you get to a dilution point – very similar to the expansion that took place in baseball. When I was growing up in the 1960’s, there were 16 teams and expansion made it 20. Today, there are 30 teams and despite integrating more African American players, then Latin players and now Asian players, there isn’t enough pitching or depth on most teams. Pitchers with ERA’s above 5.00, who never would have made it to a major league team 40 years ago, make 40-50 appearances a year. And hitters that can’t run, throw or catch, but hit home runs from the cleanup spot as designated hitters, would never have risen beyond the minor leagues back then.

The following email was recently forwarded to me. As you read it, look at the descriptors which the client references in the personality assessments. They’re not sales descriptors, so in essence, we have another example of an assessment which claims to be measuring one thing, but actually is measuring another:

Somehow, I got thrown into the middle of an internet disagreement between Brad Smart, author of Topgrading, and Bob Corlett, a blogger who calls himself The Staffing Adviser.

The latest interview between Jonathan Farrington, CEO of TopSalesWorld, and me is available here.

We discussed why only 17% of all sales managers are effective at coaching and the conversation was very enlightening.

It only takes 15 minutes to listen to the entire Podcast and you won’t be disappointed.

So why aren’t more sales managers effective at coaching salespeople? Here are my top 19 reasons and I left #20 open so that you could add your two-cents worth.

When Objective Management Group (OMG) evaluates a sales force, 1 of the 26 questions we answer for clients is, Can You Shorten Your Sales Cycle?”