Although the mutual fund industry repeatedly tells you that “past success is no indication of future success” when investing in mutual funds, I far prefer to put my retirement savings in 5 star funds instead of 1 star ones, don’t you?

Likewise when screening a new sales hire, the presence of recurring, frequent past accolades in a sales candidate are about the closest thing you can get to guaranteeing future sales success with any new sales hire.

When screening a sales resume for accolades, you must keep three things in mind:

1. Where are the accolades?

As we discussed in previous blog posts, accolades do in fact, rule the day. When screening a resume the big thing to look for is not only do they have some, but almost as importantly is, where are they placed in the resume? Are they at the bottom of each paragraph? Are they at the top?

The real key is the higher they are, the more important they are to the candidate. As a sales manager, this is a very important point when screening sales candidates: the higher they are under the category for each job they have had, the more important they are to the candidate.

You want a candidate that has an overabundance of “drive to succeed” – a person like this lists their achievements first, not last. However, if a candidate does not have any accolades, then knock them out immediately. Bottom line: the higher on the resume the better, the higher and more prominent they are in the text, the more important the accolades are to the candidate.

2. Are the accolades consistent in each job they have had?

You need someone to produce consistent results. Anyone can catch “lightning in a bottle” once and have one really good year. But can they perform at a consistently high level for you year in and year out?

“One warm day in April does not make a summer”…and likewise,  one lone Pinnacle Award from 1998 does not make a great salesperson!

You want consistency – so look for strings of accolades at every sales job they had. Look for national rankings, regional rankings and local rankings, all three are important. The more there are on multiple years, the better.

3. Compared to what?

Do the accolades have a “…out of 165 sales reps” qualifier that tells you truly where they were ranked versus their peers?

It’s one thing to be “#2 in the country”, but if there are 3 reps in the country, its not quite as meaningful. Obviously, the sales rep who was “#2 in the country out of a sales force of 303” is a little bit more impressive of a statistic. Check for documentation of these rankings when you interview them, if you think it looks fishy.

But always, look for these qualifiers to get a better sense of where they truly stand versus their peers. The higher the ranking out of the more peer sales people group, obviously the better.

To learn more about sales management, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Post a comment below and tell me your insights on accolades. Do you think they’re as important as we state here? We welcome your comments.

Although a few are bound to slip in, in order to prevent this from happening to you, there are a number of ways that you can screen out a great sales rep resume, prior to actually meeting with them face to face.

Your sales recruiter will help you with this enormously…as long as you’ve carefully followed the steps in our previous post on how to find a top notch sales recruiter.

In combination with a solid recruiter who understands both you and your company’s hiring requirements, using these  steps can help you to cut out a lot of the ‘time waster’ interviews, so you can focus your time on the cream of the crop.

When analyzing a resume, the first and most important part is the layout.

The layout can give you deep insights into broad characteristics of the candidate. Since every resume is a direct reflection of the candidate, you need to carefully scrutinize the layout – as it subtly tells you the importance of many details are subliminal “clues” that are so important to uncover from your candidate prior to hiring them.

So carefully review how the descriptions, achievements, dates, descriptions and accolades flow together.When you do this you’ll get a good sense from the flow of the layout what the subtle character attributes of the candidate may be.

Here are 5 things to specifically look for when it comes to resume layout:

1. Is the layout neat?

A neat layout means the candidate is clear, well-put together and organized – all character attributes that are desirable in the sales world. Although these three things are not included in the “The Fabulous Five”, they are very important character traits much needed for success in sales.

2. Is the layout well-organized

This will give you key insights into the candidate’s organizational skills. The more logically organized the better.

3. Does the layout follow a logical direction?

Is there a job description blurb first under each heading, then accolades as to how well they did in that position? If the accolades are on the first line on some headings and last in others, you may have logic issues with the candidate. Common sense is not all that common, but you need your candidate to have it; this organizational part of the resume you can pick out very quickly.

4. Is it well written?

If you have trouble figuring out what the candidate did by deciphering the text of the resume, you can bet she’ll have trouble articulating the same to you in an interview. She’ll also have a very hard time communicating to you clearly on emails and written communications as well. Look for clear, direct language, well articulated and logically thought out.

5. Are there any typographical errors?

Are there any typographical errors? If there are, immediately take a pass on the candidate. Typos on resumes are inexcusable, and I am continually amazed at how many resumes I see with egregious spelling and grammatical errors.

Any typos really means the person does not have the attention to detail that you absolutely require as a top-performing sales manager. It also means they can’t write! How can the candidate close sales, write up sales proposals and complete the necessary customer follow up when they can’t even spell hit “spell check” prior to sending their resume to you? Needless to say, typos are a big red flag.

These 5 tips will help you to get rid of the dead wood and take you one step closer to finding your ideal sales candidate.

To learn more about hiring salespeople, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Post a comment below and tell me what methods youve found to properly screen a sales applicant’s resume?

With the hundreds of sales resumes you will likely screen for the position that you have open, you really need a methodical way to screen a resume and get the sense of what the candidate is all about.

The problem is if you list your openings on any of the online job posting sites like monster.com or hotjobs.com , you’ll end up getting deluged with resumes and just get muddled in the muck, so to speak.

A lot of companies have an internal recruiter, which is a great help…however you still need to have direct contact with the person who’s actually talking to the candidates initially.

Whether you’re using an internal recruiter or and external recruiter, you’ll need to teach the recruiter about the essential qualities you are looking for in your ideal candidate. In The Sales Management Mastery Academy, we call those “The Fabulous Five”.

After you’ve done Step 1 and have written out your “Fabulous Five”, now you’re ready to find a good recruiter.

Here are a seven steps to getting a great sales recruiter:

1. Look for recruiters who specialize in sales recruitment – there are tons of recruiters out there, but only a handful specialize in sales exclusively.
2. Find a recruiter with a long track record of success – there are plenty of “fly by night” sales recruiters out there, so make sure they have been in the game a while, because experience counts.
3. Find sales recruiters who have extensive experience with national expansions, product launches  and regional expansions – if the recruiter has done well here, then chances are they can handle your singular request.
4. Ask them about thier track record of success and “stick rate” – meaning how many of the candidates they placed are still employed with the organization they recruited them for? There’s no real way you can validate this, but it is extremely helpful to ask.
5. Ask what they feel are the core attributes of “the ideal sales candidate” – if their answer overlaps your “Fabulous Five” (or at least three or four out of the five), then you’re on the right track.
6. Ask the recruiter what kinds of questions they ask in the screening. You’ll still have to do a fair amount of screening in your actual interviews, but making sure the recruiters are asking “knockout questions” prior to you talking with them will save you hours of time.
7. Ask yourself is this someone I can work with? If you have no level of rapport with them, it may be difficult to constantly be fielding their calls. Remember that you’lll be talking to this person alot, so make sure you connect with them.
8. If need be, inquire about their fees and direct them to the correct person within your company to negotiate rates.

At Top Sales Manager Blog, we highly recommend these two excellent recruiting firms: Briand Fiorella Search, Inc. and Treeline, Inc. Both firms have placed top sales superstars for a wide-range of industries – with particular expertise in the medical field.

Once you’ve found your recruiter, then give your recruiter your list of the your “Fabulous Five” criteria – ask them what kinds of questions they would ask to uncover those characteristics in an initial screen.

Remember that a resume is a very good initial guide to the who, what and where of a sales candidate – what is says and where it says it speaks volumes about the candidate’s character attributes. And resume screening is just the very first step in the whole process and a very important one.

So save yourself hours and hours of time, hire a sales recruiter and have them do the screening for you. You’ll save hours of needless work by hiring an outside source to screen and recruit suitable candidates for you and you’ll get a whole lot more talent to interview in half the time.

To learn more about sales management training, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Leave a message after this post for your comments and feedback.

Maybe, the one you just let go just couldn’t cut it…

Or maybe, your company is going through an expansion and you have to hire three more…

Or perhaps your best rep just got promoted, congratulations by the way…even though it does stink for you.

So what do you do?

Beware however, the tendency is to do a “one and done” interview and hire, you will regret this very poor decision later…trust me, Ive done it and it’s the worst thing you can do.

What you need is a strategy to screen resumes, determine which ones you want to either phone screen or interview, then interview, then hire.

You’ve go a lot to do, you are busy and getting busier by the second.

Well for the next few posts, we will be gong through this entire process step-by-step so you make the right decision, minimize the chances of making the wrong decisions, and hire the next sales superstar for your team.

So let’s get into the first step in the entire process of interviewing: resume screening.

Step 1: Examine your hiring criteria

The first real step is to identify what your hiring criteria really is.

Like many companies, you most likely have a job posting somewhere on your company’s website for all to view to the world. It may go a little something like this:

• A Bachelors degree in Business, Marketing or the Life Sciences
• 5 years successful front line sales experience including strong “closing” skills
• Knowledge of the healthcare industry and the general economics of business
• Ability to develop and sustain strong customer relationships
• Strong business planning and organizational skills
• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills
• Solid PC skills including knowledge of Microsoft software
• A valid driver’s license

Well there you go, all you need to do is find all that and you’re on your way to hiring a sales superstar!

Hardly. I’m guessing that this is not the exact candidate you’re looking for….

The problem is that with most postings looking like this, there is really nothing in the posting that will help you to screen out the resumes you don’t want and help you bring in the ones you do want. Nor does it give you any indication of the types of talents that you are actually looking for.

So, Step 1 is examine your hiring criteria and make a list of qualities you cannot live without in a new sales recruit. In The Sales Management Mastery Academy, we have a list of five and we call them the “Fabulous Five”.

You need to come up with your sales management “Fabulous Five”…before we reveal our five…and here’s how you do it:

1. Sit quietly with a yellow legal pad and pen for about 15 minutes or so and think about what characteristics you absolutely need to have in a sales candidate in order to achieve the results you want. Think about all your top performers, or maybe top performers that are in other sales groups. What core characteristics do they have in common?

2. Write down five absolutely essential character traits that those sales reps have, (there could be more but don’t get too complicated)

With all the work you have to do…you need to get some help sifting through the bad resumes so you can focus on the good ones.

To save you TONS of time, a sales recruiter will do this work for you – so you can stay focused on other things.

We’ll give you more insights on excellent sales recruiters in our next post.

To learn more about sales management, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Do you have your own hiring criteria? Please leave a comment after this post.

There are alot of nice things you could say…

“He’s a real nice guy”
“She’s very kind”
“He’s really funny”

The list goes on and on.

But when you speak of the people who are closest to you, maybe your best friend you’ve known for 20 years, the most important one is:

“I trust him”

Now let me ask you this: what if all your sales reps were asked the same question of you and they answered the same?

How powerful would that be?

How much more powerful of a leader and motivator would you be?

Because once you establish or re-establish that trust, then and only then can you start to optimally lead and motivate them…but not a second earlier.

Without that foundation of trust, your job as a sales leader is twenty times as hard.

At every turn, every possible moment, you need to look for ways to strengthen your sales reps trust in you.

Far too many average sales managers try to lead first, but never bother to establish trust with their reps at any level.

Although unfortunate for their sales reps, this is very good for you. Because if ALL sales managers led their troops this way, it would be far more difficult for you to surpass them.

To optimally lead your sales reps and unleash those explosive sales results you crave, you need to be on the same page as your sales reps. You need to speak their language, and the only way they will listen is if they implicitly trust you.

What you need to do is make regular deposits in “The Trust Account”. This is our foundational concept for sales managers who read this blog, as well as for those who are members of the Sales Management Mastery Academy.

To learn more about sales management, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Post a comment and tell me how do you get your sales reps to trust you?

We call em, you guessed it…”Masterful Reprimands”.

Although they are basically concept, just on opposite ends of the spectrum, there are big differences in the approach.

For your “veteran” salespeople, this tactic is particularly effective in changing ingrained bad habits and behaviors. How many of these guys have you got?

My guess is quite a few. Old dog, new tricks, seen it all before…you know the kind.

For your newer or new salespeople, this should be used sparingly due to the fact that most mistakes made by new salespeople are made due to lack of experience, knowledge or familiarity of policies and procedures…or just plain naiveté.

If the salesperson has been doing their job for some time and they know how to do it well and they make a mistake, be quick to respond. As fast as you are with Masterful Praising, be just as fast for Masterful Reprimands.

1. As soon as you learn of the mistake, call or visit the salesperson personally
2. Confirm the facts – ask the salesperson about the situation and listen to them tell the entire story. Ask questions to create understanding
3. Look them right in the eye and tell them what they did wrong.
4. Tell them how you feel about it: “This makes me extremely upset because…”
5. Let what you say to them sink in – pause for effect. Let it hurt. The longer you pause, the better.
6. Look them clearly in the eye and tell them how competent they are. Tell the salesperson the only reason you’re so upset with them is because you have so much respect for them. Tell them: “this is so unlike you”

Do it right after the mistake. This tells the salesperson that you are on top of things and that they will not get away with sloppiness.

Unlike masterful-praisings, NEVER miss a reprimand. This sets the tone; you are not going to miss a thing. By missing a masterful-reprimand, you lose respect and control – it undermines your ability to lead because it says to them that mistakes WILL be tolerated. This sends the wrong message and creates more work for you down the line. Do it now. Yes its hard – it really stinks to do it – but don’t delay. And don’t miss any masterful-reprimands.

To learn more about sales management training, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Post a comment and tell me how do you tell your reprimand in your sales people.

Its especially useful when you are trying to get new or struggling salespeople to do the right things, even when despite their best efforts, they continue to screw stuff up.

The corollary is: praise them even when they DON”T  get it exactly right.

What the average sales manger does is if a salesperson shows progress on a task but can’t fully complete it due to lack of knowledge or skill, the average sales manager withholds praise and approval entirely. They simply wait until the salesperson gets it exactly right. And even then, when they get it done exactly the way its supposed to be done, the average sales manager probably never praises them at that point either.

The key difference is that the truly great sales manager praises every correct step along the way. Then he praises even more when it is done to exact completion!

If you truly want to get your salespeople to perform at peak levels, this is the key.

The reason is that the number one motivator of people is feedback on results – and as long as you maintain a continuous stream of feedback, whether positive or constructive directed towards your salespeople, you will be well on your way to sales management success.

To learn even more about how to motivate your sales reps, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

What do you think about all this Masterful Praising stuff? Feel free to post a comment below.

First you have to identify a “praise-worthy” moment, then after that, it’s pretty simple:

1. Look them in the eye, (or if on the phone stop make sure you emphasize your words clearly and distinctly), then tell them exactly what they did correctly in very specific terms.

2. Pause for effect.

Pretty easy, right?

Here’s a few other tips for you:

1. Praise intermittently…not always…and not on every little thing

Keep it a bit of a mystery as to when you’ll praise. In doing this the salesperson will never know exactly when the praise will come, so they always will be wondering when the next praise will come. This then becomes a powerful psychological motivator because salespeople will work twice as hard to get even MORE praisings once they get a few initial ones under their belt.

2. Be very specific

Don’t just say “nice job” or “good work”. In fact, if you do it that way…don’t even bother! Instead, say “Hey Brian, that was great work being so persistent to finally secure the appointment for us to propose to the Simpson account. I know it took a lot of effort on your part. That was really awesome work”.

3. Use the laws of human nature

Salespeople repeat activities that they reinforced by, so reinforce the ones you want repeated, they’ll be clamoring for you to deliver them more praise.

Start trying out the “Masterful Praising” today!

Next post we’ll clue you in on the most important corollary to the Masterful Praising…

To learn even more about motivating your sales team, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

What do you think? Post a comment below and tell me on how you use praise to motivate your salespeople.

The great sales manager is always looking for ways to boost up the confidence of their salespeople. That same sales manager is also always on the lookout to create situations, especially in the beginning of a new assignment, where they can deliver a masterful praising.

What’s a “Masterful Praising” you say?

A “Masterful Praising” is any opportunity for a sales manager to praise a salesperson. They are best delivered when a sales rep performs any of the steps of an initial assignment or sales call not exactly right, but close to being right – that’s when the top sales manager delivers the “Masterful Praising” right on the spot!

Let me give you an example:

Say there is a new account on their business plan that plays a large part in the salesperson accomplishing their quota or goal for the quarter. You know that getting an appointment at this difficult-to-access office is extremely challenging.

You know the salesperson has gone on multiple calls to secure the appointment, but to no avail. You have been monitoring the progress of this process during your weekly calls. You insist them to press on despite the roadblocks, because you know it will be worth it. In your talks with them you “motivate them by the comp plan” to tell them that if they landed this account it would be worth X dollars for them, as well as enable them to hit and maybe even blow out their masterful goal.

Finally, after two months of trying, the salesperson makes the right connection, builds rapport with the right people and secures the appointment.

NOW is your time to swoop in!

Even though the account has not been sold yet, this is a perfect opportunity for you to deliver a masterful praising.

This is the foremost key to becoming a top-performing sales manager. As soon as you intercept them doing something correct, immediately praise them.

It doesn’t matter if it’s exactly correct or nearly correct. If it is a step towards making the sale, then it is praise-worthy.

Ill clue you in to exactly how you deliver the praising next.

To learn even more about motivating your salespeople, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

What do you think? Post a comment below and tell me on how and when you deliver your masterful praisings to your salespeople.

Although I suppose I shouldn’t be, I’m even more surprised to the degree that this ignorance pervades the highest level of the sales management food chain. Let me explain…

Not long ago, I was in yet another long, desperately un-productive, complete waste-of-time sales management meeting with “the top sales brass” at the company, sitting around a conference room table brainstorming how we could all collectively get the sales force “more motivated”, while at the same time, increasing morale. At this point in our company, sales force morale among many of the salespeople was extremely low due to a number of factors I won’t get into here. But suffice to say, the sales reps in one particular division (not mine, thankfully) were leaving at a rapid pace due to our operational incompetence.

Seeing this disturbing trend, the Senior Vice President of Sales called this meeting to come up with ideas. She was desperately trying to come up with an idea of how we could motivate this bedraggled sales force in one fell swoop, with one grand sweeping initiative. Although I give her a lot of credit for trying, if you have been a reader of this blog, you know that “motivating” your sales force can never happen in “one fell swoop”…but I digress.

She was looking for ideas, then said emphatically, “let’s just start recognizing everyone with emails and voicemails of their big achievements – better yet, lets fill out a form every time one of your salespeople does something praiseworthy and submit it to me so I can then send a group voicemail – after all, every sales person loves to be praised publicly…”

The other sales mangers in the room all agreed – praising the VP, stating they thought it this was a “great idea” and ”that will really work”, all getting behind this “new motivational initiative“.

I just sat slumping in my chair, not saying a word…

Noticing my silence, the VP asked me why I was not “as enthusiastic as the others” about the initiative.

Not wanting to be only dissident, slowly I started talking. I simply explained to her and to the rest of the sales management team, that out of the sales reps that I had reporting to me, only half of them actually enjoy or are motivated by public praise. I added that for most of my reps, private one-on-one praise is what motivates them the most – a few even told me outright that they hated public praising, saying it was downright embarrassing…

She sat in stunned silence as I relayed to her why and how I knew this.

Bottom line: I just simply asked them.

This brings up our point on motivation: if your sales reps are the lifeblood of your career, you rely upon them to pay your commissions and their effectiveness is what sustains as well as advances your career…then why on earth wouldn’t you know exactly what motivates them and exactly how to motivate them?

If you don’t know what motivates them, how do you expect to prompt them in the right direction? How can you possibly expect to be a good sales manager to them?

Without knowing what motivates your sales team, you’re traversing the Arctic without a compass in a blizzard with white-out conditions….meaning, you’re totally blind.

You must find out what motivates them…you need get out of your own little world that is your cubicle, walk up to their desk, and simply ask him or her. 

If you want to get all 10 Questions you need to ask them and exactly how to motivate your sales team and then exactly how to implement it, then you’ll want to get our video and audio on this subject. You can also get it on the sidebar of this blog.

In the meantime, what do you think? Can you motivate your sales reps by just winging it? Or do you have another method to motivate your sales team? Post a comment below and tell me what you do.