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By admin

Understanding – What Ditch Diggers and Salespeople Have in Common!

Understanding – What Ditch Diggers and Salespeople Have in Common!

 

“Using competency-based, job-specific assessment technology is an absolute must for anyone looking to up-level their hiring. Getting beyond the interview and into the heart and soul of your candidates can give you a truer gauge of can they do the job and thrive as a member of your team.

With a recession comes an increased need to hire and to protect every dollar by lessening the risk of turnover. Assessment technology…has shown time and time again how you can get in front of the eight-ball and hire qualified and dynamic candidates.”

Do you have any idea how many assessments are actually job specific?

The assessments that companies most commonly use are personality and behavioral styles assessments and as such, are not job specific.  Cue Objective Management Group (OMG).  Its assessments are not only specific to sales but also role specific, as in outside roles like account executive, account manager, and channel manager, and account manager.

21 Sales Core Competencies assessed

OMG’s sales assessments measure candidates against 21 Sales Core Competencies (and several additional sales competencies) and compares candidates to the more than 2.2 million other sales candidates that OMG has assessed. This measurement standard is “normative” while personality and behavioral styles assessments tend to be “ipsative.”  Ipsative scores provide a comparison within an individual and are NOT recommended to be used for recruitment and selection purposes because they don’t make a comparison between individuals.

Each OMG Sales Core Competency has an average of 8 attributes for a total of approximately 200 sales specific findings, customized to the specific role for which the candidate is being considered.  OMG adjusts the requirements for a positive recommendation based on the difficulty of a specific sales job and role.  Various industries, businesses, sales roles, complexities, sales cycles, price points, territories, markets, audiences and decision makers are not remotely similar so a sales assessment is only useful if those factors are considered in the scoring criteria and subsequent recommendation.

Identify a strong candidate

As an example, let’s say you were seeking to hire a ditch digger.  While you must identify someone who is strong, can use tools and dig holes, the width and depth of the hole, as well as the difficulty of the digging is more important.  Will this individual dig in sand, screened loom, compacted soil, clay, gravel, or rock?  If an assessment, even one that was specific to ditch-digging, only looked at the tools they had available and their ability to dig in general, it would not necessarily identify someone who could dig monumentally huge holes in soil with large rocks.

It’s the same with a sales assessment.  A sales assessment that scored a territory salesperson who takes orders from plant managers for industrial supplies equally with a salesperson who sells multi-million dollar capital equipment to the C Suite of the Fortune 500 enterprises, is of limited value.  When the assessment can be configured to specify the requirements for those two sales roles and distinguish between the candidates applying for those two sales roles, we have perfection.

Let’s return to part of the the quote at the beginning of this article where Linda writes, “Getting beyond the interview and into the heart and soul of your candidates can give you a truer gauge of can they do the job and thrive as a member of your team.” 

You do need a gauge, but the gauge should not be if they can do the job, but whether they will do the job.  OMG effectively distinguishes between can sell (you’ve met those ghosts – candidates you hired who are no longer with you but they still haunt you!) versus will sell (they are your top performers).  The other part of that quote which needs to be modified is where she says “getting beyond the interview.”  You shouldn’t be wasting time interviewing those candidates who can sell when you can focus only on those candidates who will sell in the specific role for which they are being considered.  Use the assessment early in the sales recruiting process to identify and disqualify the candidates that are not recommended.

OMG’s sales, sales management and sales leadership candidate assessments are legendary for how accurate and predictive they are. 

Want to

Learn More?

  1. Download a sample.

  2. Sign up for a free trial (you must be a CEO, President, VP, GM, HR Director, Sales Leader or Sales Manager)

  3. Start using OMG with Help! (An OMG Expert will contact you to walk you through the customization process and pricing options)

  4. Start using OMG Right Now on Self-Serve(limited customization, limits on quantity, no portal access, no complimentary upgrades)

   

Posted by Dave Kurlan

 

By admin

Sales Transformation: 3 Necessities for Groundbreaking Sales Performance

Sales Transformation: 3 Necessities for Groundbreaking Sales Performance

 

Sales transformation has come to be a new frontier in the era of rampant technical and technological shift. This is due to the ever-evolving sales environment, as well as changing communication preferences.

To bring about sales transformation in this day and age requires more than just a good pitch. There are certain measures that need to be taken, in keeping with the times. But it is doable.

The Sales Transformation Trinity

The 3 most vital requirements for effective sales transformation

1)    Using Analytics and Insight to Capture Customer Attention

A majority of customers hold insight and value received through the sales experience, as more valuable than all other aspects such as product, brand, and price-value ratio. Commercial insight is slowly proving to be the Holy Grail for sales professionals, with thought leadership taking the backseat when it comes to conversion and buying action.

This not only alludes to the information which customers are bound to find thought-provoking or interesting, but this insight will compel a customer to change anywhere from a few to all of their working and purchasing practices.

2)    Develop Expert Sellers and Strategically Superior Managers

Training sellers and bringing managers up to speed will continue, especially when the sales environment changes almost every week. These positions need to be engineered with the times and talent needs to be developed steadily.

Companies which focus on their front-line sales professionals will find it difficult to keep up with the plethora of challenges in the near future. To achieve this, a comprehensive training schedule – one which includes the managers as well as sellers – will need to be formulated.

Remember, it’s about tailoring the strategy to the ideal customer, teaching him/her something brand new, and taking effective control of the entire sales process.

3)    Align Customer Buying Processes with Internal Enablement

Sales professionals can’t be expected to remember how each customers buys, which is why it is beneficial to keep buying behaviors aligned with the skills of the sales team. This will make sales transformation the primary concern within the day-to-day sales routine of sales professionals.

Additionally, it will allow the customers to align their purchasing activities with each other, which will aid with better sales performance. Due to increasing population and more people connecting with each other, the amount of opinions and buying practices are more diverse than ever. This is why the more the customers are aligned with the content strategy, demand generation and internal enablement, the more the sales professionals will succeed with set goals.

Conclusion

The right sales ecosystem – one which features spontaneous strategic optimization – consistent managerial and seller training, as well as commercial analytics, are the key to success for sales .

Customers are brighter and more integral to the internal sales process than ever before. If a company can channel that involvement, modify it, and take advantage, it will prove advantageous throughout the year and beyond.

 

By admin

Do you get lots of “maybe” or “I will think about it” after your first call with prospects?

Do you get lots of “maybe” or “I will think about it” after your first call with prospects?

So far, I have posted a lot of content which tells you about general mistakes in a sales call. Today we are going to talk about the situation when you do everything right but still get a “MAYBE” as an answer.

Most people subconsciously avoid decision making after the first conversation. Every sales guru knows and advises that one needs to adjust their conversation to guide the prospect to come to a decision. This can be tricky as salespeople can become very pushy. So the big question is: how do we guide the conversation while still making the prospect feel like they’re in control?

There is a very simple solution for this: set up an agenda before the meeting. It will align you and your prospect on a plan for the meeting and make sure you’re both on the same page and moving forward together toward one of three outcomes:

  1. Yes
  2. No
  3. Figuring out the next steps – Future meeting date & agenda

By following the above process, you are avoiding a limbo stage. The main advantage of this process is that you are saving valuable time on the lead follow-ups. This can feel awkward at first but if you practice it in your next meeting and make it your own, you will start seeing positive results that you’ll want to use again and again. If you have any specific questions or suggestions about the implementation of this process, we are here to help!

By admin

Cost Optimization or Cost Cutting?

Cost Optimization or Cost Cutting?

 With the steady increase in inflation around the world, the overall purchasing power of consumers has declined by a huge margin, making it very difficult for businesses to survive in the market. Is cost optimization or cost cutting the solution for companies to keep on their volume and margin?

Yes, optimization costs is the first natural reaction that comes to the C level mind however what they have to realize is that there are other options out there that can help businesses achieve growth. There are many factors that should be considered when deciding on choosing cost optimization.

Here’s some guidelines on different cost optimization strategies and how to implement them into your business module.

Implement strategy changes

Before you start optimizing costs, it’s essential that all of the transactions that take place during the operation of your business are accounted for. The human resource talent are also assessed to select the best team in the back office and the star sales people that will compete in difficult times.

Optimizing cost based on the next 2 to 3 year business strategy is essential. This will help you analyze the different aspects of your business module and where you can make changes to implement the correct strategy. It is vital that you cut costs in such a way that it does not have a detrimental effect on your business. Here are a few options to guide the C level in the right direction:

  • Time consumption of the operations in each department
  • Assessing the ability and potential of sales people to compete in a tough environment.
  • Their ability to be accountable and their desire to do whatever it takes to achieve success.
  • Balancing between back office and front office while focusing on team building and communication.

Drastically change the cost structure

The cost structure of your business refers to all of the fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs are those costs that do not fluctuate, such as overhead costs – like rent payments – while variable costs are defined as a cost that varies with output.

In order to drastically change the costs structure, you have to consider all of your fixed and variable costs and see if there is any chance of reducing the overall operating costs of your business. For example, focus on your production cycle. See if it is possible to purchase your raw materials from a different vendor that charges less, or reduce the fixed costs by moving the business to another location where the rent is lower.

Meeting the economy of scale

One of the most important challenges to consider is to try to minimize the cost of purchasing to be able to meet the pressure on retail prices.  The economy of scale will be met through re-negotiating the deals that customers will take advantage of because of a better price offering.  Since costs have decreased, you can offer your product at more exciting prices which might help you maintain or increase sales.

Have in mind that not all incremental strategies will get you the desired results, especially if while designing it you don’t closely take into consideration competition, new entrants to the market and parallel business activity that might affect your business strategy.

Redesign or reorganize

This is an important question to ask when deciding on how to implement cost optimization strategies. Many companies fail to execute such strategies as it tends to be difficult to apply a new design in an operating business module.

In order to survive in today’s market, it is imperative that businesses adapt their internal business structure to make sure that they are operating at an optimum level with no excessive costs. First, you have to determine what aspects of your business are ineffective, such as work flows. Then, you have to implement strategies that will improve efficiency in order to reduce costs.

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