It’s getting close to the start of 2014, the economy shows signs of life, and businesses are cautiously beginning to release the pent-up demand for products and services. This is great news for salespeople, as companies will now begin trying to attract and employ good sales teams, ending a long dry stretch of hiring freezes.
For a while, any good sales job was hotly contended, but the landscape has changed. Top salespeople are now in demand, and it is worth a little research to take advantage of the “boom times” and land a job at a “world-class sales organization.” Here are five indicators of a world-class sales organization that can be used to evaluate the next job offer.
1. Integration of the sales and marketing departments. Especially in a technical sales environment, the relationship between sales and marketing can be critical to meeting sales quotas. Marketing helps get brand awareness, provides leads, educates sales teams on new products and services, and helps sales understand how the customer is buying today. Look for signs of good communication such as hands-on product training, professionally produced success stories/case studies and effective demand-generation programs.
2. Sales tool technology that enables sales, not hinders them. Every sales company seems eager to install CRM tools, but if the tool is designed just for reporting to management, it will only get in your way. Look for key indicators the tool was designed for sales, such as the sales process is embedded into the CRM, there is close to 100 percent adoption of the CRM (indicating it works for salespeople), needed reports are built into the tool (not exported out into Excel and manually updated) and the quote/proposal process works seamlessly inside the CRM.
3. Effective strategic planning. There needs to be a realistic, documented, communicated plan for managers and salespeople to be able to achieve compensation targets. Look for signs that goals are disconnected to reality such as quotas or compensation plans that often change up or down during a year, plans that are vague without specific activities, or if more than 40 percent of sales staff failed to meet original quotas set for the last quarter. The plan should be easily accessible by all sales staff, not locked in a drawer somewhere only senior managers can see it.
4. Continuous, career-long learning paths. World-class sales organizations provide for sales training throughout the career of salespeople, allowing them to stay current with sales thought leadership and to adapt to the changing marketplace conditions. Look for signs of a commitment to learning, such as accredited sales instructors (not product marketing people) offering broad-based, instructor-led learning to all tenure of salespeople. A portfolio of generic e-learning packages (probably created in the 1990s) you take on your own time is not a career learning path. Ask about corporate membership in training professional organizations like the Professional Society of Sales and Marketing Training and ASTD.
5.Hiring/on-boarding process built on sales requirements. It is imperative that salespeople be brought into the organization and made productive as quickly as possible. The sales on-boarding program is responsible for that and should be a fine-tuned, well-oiled factory of sales success. Look for signs of a half-hearted, throw-all-new-hires-to-the-wall-and-see-who-sticks approach and steer clear if you see it. Signs include an on-boarding program that relies on canned e-learning, virtual classes or webinars to communicate key information. Also, programs that insist that sales managers take responsibility for new hire training are to be avoided; sales managers don’t have time to spend on new hires. A good on-boarding program will focus on the company’s unique value proposition and sales process instead administrative paperwork or product knowledge. What you want to see are accredited sales trainers using proven methods like interactive role-plays and hands-on solutions training, and taking time to ride with new people as they make their first calls. A key indicator of poor on-boarding is high turnover of new hires in the first year (high meaning greater than 20 percent, or 1 in 5, fail in the first year).
By looking for these key characteristics of a world-class sales organization, top salespeople can help improve their chances of a long-term successful career. Sales leaders, on the other hand, who want to attract, hire and retain top salespeople need to look at these five characteristics and see what they need to do to improve their chances of appealing to top salespeople.
