Remember that the goal here is to filter out the less than worthy candidates, before you take the time to do live interviews.

How many jobs has your sales applicant had…and for how long?

You can reference age on this one because this one is a biggie. If you see them changing jobs every two years, why would you think this applicant would stay working for you any longer?

They may have a fear of commitment or they may just get easily distracted. Either one is not so attractive to you.

The truth is that they may just wear out their welcome after a certain point in time. This will most likely be the case if they come to work for you. What you are really looking for here is what kind of person are they and time spent at previous employers tells you a lot about them and could mean any of those things previously mentioned.

To be fair, many salespeople get laid off, downsized or outsourced, so don’t necessarily jump to any firm conclusions here, but if you do choose to interview, this point should be addressed when you meet them face to face.

How long have they stayed at each position or company?

This is similar to the point above, but slightly different. The longer the candidate stays at any one given job, gives you an indication that either they were making such great money that they could never leave, they flew beneath the radar and were never found out that they were sleeping under their desk, or they really liked working there. I’d be willing to bet it’s the last one.

Look carefully at the job duties of the job they spent the longest time at. Their job duties and performance gives you a good indication of what they are about. If they were there for eight years and have no accolades in that time, then forget it – dump that resume.

Additionally, if there is a good track record, that longest stretch of employment tells you a lot about what they like and what drives them, whether its good or bad. Regardless, this is something you would need to ask them about by asking them: “you were selling for Crazy Coffins, Inc. for eight years, you must have really liked it there – what did you like so much about it”.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Tell me your ideas on how you screen sales resumes by posting a comment below.

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In this sales training series on screening sales resumes we tell you exactly how to do it…so you can get your sales superstar quickly…while wasting minimal time.

“Power Words”

When describing their achievements or does the sales candidate use powerful “power words” to describe their accomplishments or “passive words”?

Sales is a combination of action and results. You definitely need someone who takes action to be working for you – especially someone who proactively creates action, without you have to “motivate’ them to do so.

Words like “achieved”, “won”, “accomplished”, “catapulted”, “exceeded” and “generated” are action-oriented “power words”. They bespeak confidence and striving, both important traits that all high performing sales representatives possess.

However, “passive words” like “managed”, “responsible for”, “completed” or “promoted” are far more submissive. If you see too many passive type words, it may indicate that you may have a passive candidate.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

How about you? Do you pay attention in this kind of details? Please post a comment.

There are so many sales management gurus who have written tomes and dissertations on exactly how to motivate salespeople, all in search of the “one thing” that does it all with minimal effort.

The real truth is that there is no ONE way to motivate your sales staff.

As a sales manager, motivating your sales force to trigger explosive sales growth is the sum of hundreds, if not thousands of decisions that you make on a daily basis.

Here’s the tricky thing: since motivating salespeople effectively does not amount to any ONE thing, you need to know how to coalesce all these actions into a cohesive, well-oiled sales management machine…and when all these parts are working precisely right, it will result in a motivated sales force who is willing to “go through walls” for both themselves and for you.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

Don’t  follow “the Golden Rule”!

“The Golden Rule” says that you should “treat others as you would like to be treated”.

It says that “being fair” and treating everyone the same is what being a great sales manager all is about. Makes total sense, right?

For example, when you were a salesperson, you were primarily motivated by money. So conventional thinking would dictate that this means that ALL your salespeople are all driven by money too, right?

This is precisely the kind of flawed thinking that the average sales manager falls into. But you are striving to be far from average…Instead, the extraordinary sales manager knows that each person is truly different, and if you treat them all the same, then peak performance is impossible to achieve.

Do you “motivate” your sales team around the very same objectives that YOU felt were important when you were a salesperson? THAT is conventional sales management…and “conventional thinking” is what you as an aspiring top sales manager are trying to avoid.

Remember:

Conventional thinking = Conventional (quota-hitting) results

Unconventional thinking = Unconventional (quota SMASHING) results

Here’s the thing…people are different (this hopefully is not a newsflash for you)…so why “motivate” your salespeople all the same?

Get To Know Your Salespeople’s Sales Motivation

What you really need to do is get to know them and realize how different each one is, then celebrate these differences! Just because you are motivated in a certain way, (and we have to assume that you did it pretty well, because you are the boss now after all), it doesn’t mean that your salespeople are motivated in the exact same ways that you are.

Each salesperson has their own individual triggers for success, things that make them uniquely different. And those motivations are far different for each sales rep.

So as a top sales manager, how do you harness each individual sales rep’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance?

There is not only one way…but I do know that it’s a different motivator or trigger for each one, and you have to find out how to get it from them. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to get.

Also, you really need to be mindful of WHO you are motivating, because that’s as, if not more, important than HOW you are motivating…you see, this “motivating” thing isn’t that easy. It’s actually the hardest thing to do as a sales manager…and it’s even harder to do REALLY well.

Here’s a big clue though…EVERYTHING you do as a sales manager, every email, every phone call, every text message, every memo must align your message with a undercurrent of motivation. In every sales management thing you do, you must be motivating and communicating for a specific reason…and that reason is to unleash superior sales results from your salespeople.

That is your ONLY (and most important) goal.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

How to Motivate Your Sales Team by “Peeling back the Onion”

“Conventional” sales management gospel says that “being fair” is what being a great sales manager all is about….

But does this really make any sense? When you were a salesperson, let’s say you were primarily motivated by money. So according to “conventional” sales management philosophy, then your salespeople are all driven by money, right?

This is precisely what the average sales manager does…and that is the reason why he is AVERAGE! But you didn’t come here today because you wanted to be average…

OK, we can admit that this “conventional” sales management thinking is deeply flawed – whereas the extraordinary sales manager knows that each salesperson is truly different – because if your treat them all the same, then peak sales performance is impossible to achieve.

This has gotta make sense to you.

If you think about it, just because you like something and hold it dear, does that mean others do the same? For your spouse’s birthday, did you present her with a 42” plasma TV because that’s what you wanted? Or did you present him with a set of 2 karat diamond earrings because that is what you wanted?

Of course not.

Just like in our ridiculous analogy above, each salesperson has their own individual desires, wants, motivations and triggers for sales success…triggers and motivations that make them uniquely different…like the differences between you and your spouse’s vision of an ideal gift…

Motivating Your Sales Force is Easy…

So how do you harness each individual’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance? Well, the first thing you need to do is find out what actually motivates them.

How do you do it? Do you hypnotize them? Do you ask roundabout questions on what they were like when they were children? Do you ask them questions about their personal lives (are they getting married soon, are they looking to buy a house, do they want to just stay single)? Do you perform psychoanalysis on them and ask them about their deepest darkest secrets, their father and their mother, uncovering Oedipus complexes and “mommy never loved me” scenarios? Do you call their past bosses and interview them?

No, no no…you don’t need to do any of that.

What you need to do is incredibly simple…you just simply ask your salespeople what motivates them.

I am truly amazed at how many of my sales management co-workers have no idea what motivates their salespeople. In fact, just the other day a colleague of mine was telling me about a problem sales rep of hers and how he “doesn’t do this, he doesn’t do that…”

So I asked her, “What motivates him?”

She stammered and stuttered and clearly made up something on the spot like “money, uh, I think”.

I thought, how can she possibly expect to get this rep to do anything if she has absolutely NO IDEA what makes him tick?

How many of us do this though?

We all do it. We all get so “caught up’ in all the emails and conference calls and signing off on expense reports and monitoring the administrative tasks – all the things that get in the way of actually doing the single most important thing that we need to know about our sales representatives.

The point is this: as a sales manager you need to know “what gets them out of bed in the morning”, what makes them tick, what drives them if you want to have ANY SHOT at the top sales management rankings.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

You Just Need to Know What Questions to Ask!

If you really want to get the best from your salespeople and push them to achieve sales excellence, then you need to know what drives them – so you can then “push those buttons” at will to get them there.

It doesn’t matter how you get your information – you just have to get it. Then as soon as you get their true sales motivations, keep it in their file and refer to it at every chance you can get. Remind yourself constantly of what makes that salesperson tick.

Use that information as a daily guide to steer your conversations and interactions with them. The goal is to give them what they want, not what you think that they should want.

Let your sales people tell you what their motivational triggers are. Then simply gear your interactions to perfectly match those triggers.

The good news is that there are only ten simple questions you need to ask. And we reveal them to you in this video.

So don’t wait…get our free video and audio which reveals to you the exact questions you need to ask your sales force to uncover their sales motivations . Simply click here to get your audio, video and special report on how to uncover the true sales motivations of your salespeople  so that motivating your sales team will be an absolute piece of cake.

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It’s not Bill Gates. No, it isn’t Steve Jobs, or whoever were the CEOs of Intel for the last four decades.

It’s Corky. Yes, Cork Walgreen, the founder of Walgreen Drugstores!

Corky’s formula was simple. He wanted to establish the most convenient drugstore chain in the US with a high profit per customer visit. It’s straightforward, and it served him well. Very well. Walgreen’s Drugstores beat Microsoft and Intel in terms of stock performance for the past four decades!

What Walgreen did for business, you – a sales manager – should do for your career.

The first step in distinguishing yourself from the competition is learning to distinguish first what it is you can do better than others even with both hands tied behind your back. Figure this thing out, and you’re halfway to becoming a competent sales manager. The next step is to teach this talent of yours to the sales team over and over and over again.

Here are some questions that might help you discover your unique edge over the competition.

1. In what ways are my product and service better than the competition?
2. Is there one particular aspect of my product or service that “beats the pants off” my competitors?
3. How much incrementally better is that particular feature of my product or service than the competition?
4. What specific subset of my customers would be most interested in that feature?
5. What kind of benefit does it offer to that subset of customers?
6. Is this benefit simple enough that even my worst sales rep would seem like a pro just talking about it?
7. If I focus all my efforts and my sales team’s efforts on that particular sub-market, is it going to pay off in the long run? Is it going to help me achieve better sales ratings long term?

Find what aspect of sales you excel in and then align your sales people and products and services behind that singular message. If you can do this, if you get all seven differentiators on your side of the fence, then you’re on your way to hitting quota every time and breaking new grounds in your career.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

If you have any tips to share with us, let me know by leaving a comment after this post.