The Sales Evangelist

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by founder and CEO of Whale Boss, Ryan Staley. As a sales consultant who helps sales executives double their income, he’s learned from and watched many different organizations, thus knowing how you can hire top sellers with little experience at your company.  Why did Ryan start a consultancy firm? Ryan noticed there are many things he took for granted working for a large organization that small business owners, startups, and SaaS companies weren’t doing. That was part of the reason he founded his consultancy firm, because he wanted to coach CEOs on those things. Small businesses, startups, and SaaS companies do an amazing job building products or services, but they don’t talk to thier customers after they sell them the deal. Maintaining a structured value process will exponentially increase referrals and revenue. Ryan’s corporate job showed him the power of a good team: Working over sixty hours a week got Ryan to a point where all his relationships started to melt down. The constant travel and excessive hours meant he didn’t have time for family, friends, or himself. What did he do about it? He rebuilt himself and his mentality about work, and his job performance soared to new heights. He was given the opportunity to build a team to support his work. However, that meant he had to figure out what looked for in a new person. He determined 5 components he looked for in a new hire: Did they have a hunger to be a top performer? What was the biggest takeaway from that job and why did they leave? He would ask for people to articulate their contributions and results - if they couldn’t, their claims are BS What do they do to develop outside of work? What’s the most important thing they spend time on outside of work? People might default to family, but finding people with a passion and interest and what lights them up shows how coachable they are. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

The life of a sales manager is tough, and juggling your own obligations often means you don’t have time to coach your team as often as you’d like. Microcoaching might just be the solution for you. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by President and CEO of Salesfuel C. Lee Smith to explain his process and platform for microcoaching to improve his salespeople. Three problems with coaching today:  Coaches aren’t being held accountable. Sales managers get busy meeting a short-term quota and don’t have time for long-term staff development. Some sales managers are uncomfortable coaching. They think they don’t know how to do it or get pushback from team members. Finally, there are managers who want to put time into coaching, but there are only so many hours in the day and find it challenging to maintain momentum. Microcoaching is the solution. Short, frequent bursts of 2-6 minute coaching give sales managers the flexibility to maintain coaching momentum between one-on-one meetings through tweeting, text, or slack.  The same principles of coaching apply. Ask questions, don’t just give advice, and supply encouragement and motivation.  But instead of focusing on one big issue, focus on small tactics to provide clear questions for the team member. These “reflect and respond” questions are a significant part of microcoaching.  How do you know if your microcoaching is effective? There will still be the same issues in regular coaching: both parties must have a positive attitude about the coaching process for it to be successful. However, microcoaching through a platform like Coachfeed removes some awkward conversations that arise throughout the process. Lead by example and show them how coaching is supposed to be done. AI drives effective microcoaching With Coachfeed’s microcoaching platform, they offer different assessments to help shape the team member’s best results through microcoaching. These assessments reveal infromation about the salesperson, help dictate the coaching structure, and drive the AI engine to identify who needs coaching, what they need coaching on, and how they respond to different communication tactics. Using these creates a personalized coaching playbook for managers to use for follow-up conversations.  Everybody's journey is different because every salesperson is different. And that's a defining part of the Coachfeed mentality.  Lee’s final piece of advice? Coaching is a long-term play. You might not see the benefits initially, but you’ll be improving your salespeople and your sales process. To get in contact with C.Lee, visit his company website salesfuel.com, coaching platform coachfeed.com, or his personal website cleesmith.com This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.  Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Donald is remote on today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, as he’s speaking at the sales conference Outbound. Be on the lookout for next year’s conference! Today’s episode of TSE is simple: we’re going retro. A brief TSE history. Donald quit his job in July of 2015, and The Sales Evangelist became his full-time gig. Originally the show was only two episodes per week, but it soon expanded to three per week. (because we just love delivering sales content to all of our amazing listeners.) After participating in Podcast Movement for a couple of years, TSE started to create episodes five days a week. But we realized our listeners are busy, and five episodes a week might be too much content, so we doubled back to three episodes per week. TSE is going retro. Donald thought our downloads would go down when the episode frequency dropped. But surprisingly, it didn’t. In fact, it did better in some instances.  We want to deliver better content. More research. More awesome guests. And that takes time. To create the best content possible, The Sales Evangelist is dropping back to two episodes per week. You’ll see the same length of content but with more storytelling. We’re going back to our roots, so we’re delivering two high-quality episodes per week. Our YouTube videos are also going to be more condensed than ever. If you’re anything like us, the thought of a YouTube video longer than five minutes is a bit daunting. So we’re going to trim our videos to give you the highlights of the episode. Do you want more TSE content? Join our Sales Evangelizers groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

It doesn’t matter if you’re leading a team of one or one hundred, becoming a better sales leader can always lead to positive change within your organization. And on today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Tim Kintz to discuss four areas to promote strengths and identify weaknesses as a sales leader: lead, manage, train, and coach. Lead Managers are often the least trained employees. And especially for those internally promoted, they might not know how to navigate that change with respect to their fellow employees. As a sales leader, you need to help your employees develop long-term goals. Once those goals are in place, you can work together to set specific and actionable milestones to reach them. Manage You lead people; you manage things. Are you organized as a sales leader? Do you schedule out your day to accomplish what you need? Not only do you need to manage your time and activities, but you need to manage the statistics and tendencies of your people. Consider managing the detail-focused aspect of leading; it’s a numbers-driven component that can ensure you and your people reach your goals. Train Success is all about having a straightforward, repeatable process. Do your employees know what they need to do to be successful 100% of the time? This process doesn’t mean they’ll achieve perfection every time, but they’ll at least know what steps can get them to that goal. Training isn’t just telling, it’s selling. Show them how the training you want them to do positively affects their performance. Tim encourages his employees to take ownership of their training. If they have a hand in developing the decision or route of action, they’ll be more likely to stick with it. Mental ownership comes before physical or financial ownership. Coach Just because you know something doesn’t mean you can do it; practice and repetition are the mothers of learning. Amateurs practice until they get it right, but pros practice until they can’t get it wrong. Coaching isn’t just about providing knowledge to your people; it’s about taking time to practice with your people to help them get better. Tim’s final takeaway? You have to earn the right to be a leader. Think of your people as emotional banks. Make consistent deposits through recognition and approval so you can make withdrawals without overdrawing that account. Check out Tim’s book Fearless on Amazon or kintzgroup.com. If you want to get ahold of Tim, connect with him on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Just like for many other industries, hiring sales positions has inherited problems because of the pandemic. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Brian Trautschold, COO and co-founder of sales management platform Ambition, to discuss three things companies can do to navigate a hybrid sales workforce. Whether you’re a huge company or just a dozen people, COVID is evening the hiring playing field, and integrating these three components can help you acquire the kind of employees you want. Build a company culture, whether it be virtual or in-person. Some company cultures are just fake - think Michael Scott trying to build a culture at Dunder Mifflin. When creating your own company culture, the key is to be authentic. Recognize people as they reach their milestones, and show genuine care for your employees and their aspirations. Especially when employees don’t have the support of an in-person team, it’s easy to lose motivation without recognition. Engage your workforce to overcome distractions. There are no shortage of distractions in the virtual workplace. Whether it’s an extended lunch or a quick Netflix binge, the typical 9-5 is more elusive than ever. To give your employees the greatest chance for success, provide easy-to-use tools to hold themselves accountable. People are better at holding themselves accountable than management, especially in a virtual setting. So equipping people with the tools for personal accountability to yield better results than a never-ending stream of Slack messages. People crave development, coaching, and investment from their employers. Pre-COVID, a great relationship with management is what kept many people working at their current job. (And vice versa.) The introduction to virtual work has broken this.  While Slack can be helpful in communication, you need to have a more proactive approach. As a manager, how do you optimize coaching interactions? The key is to keep track of what you discuss with your employees. Make action steps to help your employees reach their goals. Coaching can’t be a one-off; it’s a part of a narrative. Consider creating KPIs based on the coaching to set actionable steps towards their goals. One major takeaway? Consistent, data-driven coaching is the way of the future to develop happy and productive employees. Want to get in contact with Brian? Find him on his company website, LinkedIn, or Twitter. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder, written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

The digital shift of the workplace has manifested the need for digital company culture. Digital culture is necessary to improve internal relationships at your company, but it’s integral in expanding your social reach as a company and developing a following that gives you business. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’re joined by Tacie Avedikian, VP of Digital Development at Little Bird Marketing, to learn how companies can embrace digital culture to develop a social influence. But first, what does Tacie mean by social influence? The original meaning has shifted a bit in terms of how people use social media.  Leveraging influencers from B2C platforms like Instagram or Facebook and transferring those things into more B2B platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter is critical.  The challenges of hiring new team members:  In the current age, being seen online is critical in bringing in suitable candidates. Because of this digital world, company-wide social influence is vital to attract candidates and clients. You attract candidates through sharing valuable content and having employees who advocate for your company. Despite the importance of online culture, you rarely see someone from HR actively promoting on LinkedIn and advocating for their company. When you want to look for somebody, the first thing we do is look online, read reviews, and understand company values. Companies need to ensure their company and themselves are seen and available for this process. What's the first thing if we wanted to the action plan, and who should lead this? Most importantly, ensure it’s not just one person or department pushing. It’s a team effort to create a digital culture. Learn to be authentic when sharing about the company and yourself. When you create a relationship with someone and see that you're enjoying the company you work for, people get engaged and want to know more. How can I help my team to be creative and post authentic things? Many people are at home, working with their kids right next to them. This is a shared experience that creates empathy and a connection people can bond over. Develop training, make expectations to your team of what authenticity looks like, and provide opportunities for additional training each quarter or throughout the year. Companies should regularly touch base with their team on their digital culture, whether through Slack or a team chat, to engage and develop relationships. Tacie’s final advice: Realize that things are not going back to the way they were. A digitally transformed culture is going to change the influence of your audience completely. Tacie’s major takeaway? Unseen is unsold. (We had to repeat it, just one more time.) To get in contact with Tacie, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at tacie@littlebirdmarketing.com. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder wrote by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Many tech companies view the idea of SDRs as advantageous because they deal with the tough or mundane elements of the sales process like cold calling, making lists, and following up with inbound leads. But SDRs, with the proper training and support, can be much more. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’re joined by David Dulany, founder and CEO of the research and advisory firm Tenbound, to learn how you can develop your sales bench. The elements of a good sales bench: Your SDR team is a group of people who, when needed, have learned the skills necessary to jump into a full sales position when one becomes available.  To understand which skills are most valuable, analyze your recruitment process and list out traits that make someone successful at your company. Are they tenacious, proactive, or require specific technical skills? Create a plan to incorporate training elements for each of those skills for your SDR team and develop ways for new hires to understand what they need to be successful right from the get-go. The biggest mistake we see with SDR teams is not establishing a solid company culture. The old hiring method was simply to churn and burn. But in today’s market, where employees need tools and equipment to be successful, it’s an incredibly inefficient and expensive process. In the modern world, culture is everything. A successful SDR team leader establishes that. To develop the ideal team culture, write down what you want to culture to look like. Once you have a semblance for your vision, integrate elements relating to it into your SDR training process. Sales is becoming an increasingly team-driven activity; the days of the lone wolf are long over. Provide a path to promotion. Certifications are a great way to break down the goals you want employees to achieve before a promotion. A ladder setup provides concrete goals for SDRs to work towards and promotion opportunities. David’s major tips: For SDRs, take the position seriously; it’s a critical piece of the puzzle. For people leading SDR teams, integrate structure, value, and opportunities within the SDR experience. Doing so will help people take the position more seriously and want to grow within the organization. To learn more about David’s approach to SDR development, check out his book The Sales Development Framework. Otherwise, visit his company website to find resources to help develop your sales bench. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

A challenging aspect of a salesperson’s job is business development. One way you can simplify the business development process, however, is through outsourcing. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’re joined by Tom Ancona, founder and chief strategist at ROCKyourcompany.com, to discuss how outsourcing can lead to new business development. The first step to outsourcing: visualize. Think about your goals. If you had a team of people to execute everything you want to do, what is that vision?  Work backward from that vision to determine who will get you to that point. When outsourcing, the words “you get what you give” could not be more accurate. The results and work you get are directly related to the instruction and information you provide. Develop your vision: Pretend you’re talking to a recently hired assistant - be descriptive in what you want. The more details you provide, the better the project will be.  If the project requires platforms like Sales Navigator, have at least a baseline understand of the software or platform. Hiring the right candidate can be a challenge. Selecting the right candidate might not be easy, especially at the beginning. It takes experience to find the right kind of people.  The solution? Do your homework. Read their feedback from folks they've worked with. Read both the most recent and most relevant reviews to see into their current headspace and how they’ve finished similar projects. Meet with them and ask tough questions about your expectations. If they give intuitive answers and understand what you're asking, you’ve found a good candidate.  Understand how freelance platforms operate: When you purchase projects on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr, some have an escrow account. You allocate the money before each project, but you have to approve the project before the money is transferred. This gives you a level of safety in that a freelancer has to complete the project. Don’t hand over passwords to your most valuable assets until you've worked with somebody for a while.  Tom’s major takeaway and special offer: If you're not doing it now, look at outsourcing as a potential way to break out in your marketplace, as you’ve never done before.  If you’re looking to improve your sales game with free downloadable templates, visit tomancona.com/tse for a free template download for you. To schedule a meeting with Tom, visit Meetwithtom.live to view his calendar. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Working as a sales manager can be tough. Why make it more challenging than it has to be? And without the proper guidance and support, it can be especially difficult to find the right people for your organization. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’re joined by Frank Cespedes, senior lecturer at Harvard business school, to learn his strategy for finding and retaining top-level salespeople. There are inherent challenges to hiring within sales.  Not enough people in and outside the sales function that there are challenges in hiring sales that don’t exist elsewhere. People major in engineering, accounting, and finance. There are less than 200 sales courses in the United States universities, let alone majors and programs. As a result, most learning in sales is whatever the company does. Companies on average spent 20% more per capita than they do training other positions. Most learning in sales is on-the-job learning that isn’t a challenge in other business areas. Because so much time is spent training, accelerating the productivity ramp up for new hires is crucial for hiring managers. How can you make the hiring process more manageable? Minimize the biggest hiring mistake: relying solely on one or two unstructured interviews. Research consistently shows the correlation between the ratings people get in interviews and their subsequent on-the-job performance tend to vary by .1 to .4. The perfect candidate’s chances to perform to their expected standard is about as guaranteed as a coin flip. To solve the problem, supplement interviews by including people who aren’t sales, like customer support and product design. Experience is often an important hiring criterion. But in business, there is only experience selling your product. Experience in other organizations might not indicate or guarantee success at others. The most important thing when hiring is knowing what you’re looking for. Don’t think platitudes; think the most important tasks this new person will accomplish. So what do you do? Start with the fundamentals. Performing fundamentals better than anyone else will lead to success - the who, why, and how of your customer informs you who you’re hiring for. What will the salesperson need to be good to be successful? Conversely, what might they need to be just good enough at?  To determine these behaviors, consider implementing assessments or even internship positions to judge that behavior.  The pandemic showed companies overpay for many tasks in the current sales model;  you want to focus talent on the steps that most impact the sale rather than things like lead generation and demos. Frank’s major piece of advice to someone managing the hiring process? Know what you’re looking for, start with the buying process, and don’t require platitudes of experience. Recognize that the hiring process doesn’t end with the hire. The sooner you get someone to ramp up their productivity within the organization, the better everyone is. Read Frank’s new book Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing. Want to get in touch with Frank? Visit him on his website or connect with him on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder wrote by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Does the thought of hiring a new salesperson fill you with fear? Do you dread the interview process and reading through resumes? In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald helps expedite the process of finding the perfect addition to your team by outlining three characteristics every seller must have.  You want someone curious: When it comes to identifying prospects and their motivations, salespeople need to find the root cause. They need to dig deep, ask the right questions, and find the proper intel to manage their prospects and find sales. Curiosity is asking the right questions that lead to natural conversations. But the suitably curious don’t ask questions that might be offensive or too personal. You want someone resilient. Persistency and a continual drive to work through challenges are critical for sales.  Working in sales means perseverance. The average sale takes between six to twelve touchpoints to move forward, so tenacity and stamina are necessary to succeed in any sales position.  You want someone empathetic. Pushy salespeople are no longer in style (if they ever were.) Salespeople who listen and want to help the client will find far more success than a salesperson focused on the sale instead of the person. The bonus trait: You want someone creative. Thinking outside the box is necessary for sales. When problems inevitably arise (as they do in any business), you want your office filled with creative minds who aren’t afraid to think critically and solve the problem. Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow demonstrates the importance of creativity in business. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder wrote by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com