Category: Startups

What Are You Doing to Improve Your Leadership Skills?

The last two years have been a challenging time for sales leaders as we’ve tried to navigate remote leadership, the Great Resignation, and a global pandemic. So, I hazard to guess that you might not have had professional development at the top of your radar. It’s your responsibility to ensure that you’re a better and more effective sales leader each year. When you interview sales rep candidates you probe ...

February 23, 2022

The Cost of Not Having Buy-In

WARNING – If you found my last sports-related blog post 2 weeks ago boring and something you couldn’t relate to, I’m sorry, but I’m back with more leadership lessons from Big 12 Football. Yesterday, Lincoln Riley, Head Football Coach at SEC-bound (not bitter) Oklahoma Sooners, announced that he was leaving OU for USC with NO warning, NO discussion, and NO explanation. After the sports and Twitter universe took a collective gasp, they ...

November 30, 2021

Go for 2 and the win!

“We made the decision early. If we scored, we were going for two — going for the win.” – Coach Leipold Something amazing and very unexpected happen last week. The Kansas Jayhawks beat The Texas Longhorns at DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. That’s right, we’re not talking about the top-ranked KU Men’s basketball team. No sir, y’all, we’re talking about the 1-8 Kansas Football team! The 31-point underdogs beat the SEC-bound ...

November 17, 2021

5 Steps to Hiring the Right Sales Person: Step 5

Step 5 – The Formal Offer You’ve spent the last couple of weeks narrowing the field from 100+ resumes to one final candidate. Now, it’s time to close the deal. You’ve come this far so we don’t want you fumbling the ball on the 2-yard line. Here are the steps I take to ensure I seal the deal. The Verbal Offer I call the candidate a day after the last ...

October 13, 2021

5 Steps to Hiring the Right Sales Person: Step 4

Step 4 – Assess and Educate Them After doing the Behavioral-based interview, you should have a good idea what makes your candidate tick. Now is when I like to run them through some sort of assessment to see if they have the same competencies as other successful sales reps. who are doing the job today. I like to run the candidate through a Sales Profile Assessment by Wiley & Sons, ...

October 13, 2021

5 Steps to Hiring the Right Sales Person: Step 3

Step 3 – The Formal Behavioral-Based Interview The candidate has made it through the resume review and the phone screen, now it’s time to meet them in person or virtually and learn more. Introduction I’ve been using a behavioral-base interview for many years. I believe the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior (this is true in dating too!). As a result, I ask a series of behavior-based questions ...

October 13, 2021

5 Steps to Hiring the Right Sales Person: Step 2

Step 2 – The Phone Screen In Part 1 I reviewed how I attract and select candidates to move onto the next step, the phone screen. Now it’s time to meet the candidate. If they pass the resume review, I do a 30-minute phone screen, NOT Zoom meeting.. All sales jobs require you to be effective on the phone. So, the candidate needs to be able to communicate in an efficient, articulate, and ...

October 13, 2021

5 Steps to Hiring the Right Sales Person: Step 1

Step 1 – The Job Description and Resume Review The first step, when I go in search of a sales candidate for a client, is to help my client put together a hiring profile of the ideal candidate. I ask my clients the following questions: What traits do the most successful current or former employees have? Tell me about reps that didn’t work out Are there deal breakers such as ...

October 13, 2021