Sales: Is it Art or Is it Science?

That’s a question I’m often asked about business-to-business selling.
I define science (in this application of the word) as the ability and willingness of a person to follow a set of processes in order to carry on the business of day-to-day selling. Examples would be formal planning, the use of checklists, dependence upon research, vigilant qualification, [...]

Hiring Salespeople: Reference Checking

Eliot Burdett posted a comment on my post about lying on resumes.  His own blog has a terrific list of challenges for those hiring sales people.  Here is his seventh point:  “Performing reference checks on someone who is employed is challenging due to confidentiality. (There are always managerial contacts that can be approached, although you may have [...]

Lying on Resumes

I’m still in Ireland. Back in Dublin after a few days of R&R in West Cork and County Kerry. Beautiful country and great people. We even had four days of terrific weather, which is a bit unusual here.
One of the topics of we discussed in today’s session of the DIT International Selling Programme, where I [...]

The Sales Hiring Epidemic

As I mentioned in my earlier Springsteen post, I’m in Ireland, “on tour” delivering a series of workshops for sales executives.  One module covers hiring sales people.
Directly responsible for hiring the wrong sales people are the sales leaders who haven’t developed that skill and don’t have a process. At the root of the problem, however, [...]

Selling With Competence

I’ve written and spoken alot about the subject of the fitness of salespeople with respect to their jobs.
Brian Lambert, who is both the Chairman of the United Professional Sales Association, and Director, Sales Development & Performance for ASTD, invited me to contribute to a whitepaper on the subject of salesperson competency.  (In fact I’m a [...]

The Challenge of Hiring Effective Salespeople

There have been some dismal statistics put forth by firms such as CSO Insights and Sales Benchmark Index about two related subjects: (1) the lack of performance by, and (2) the tenure of, salespeople.  HR Chally has done research in this area as well. The fact is a lot of money is being spent on tools, [...]