Here’s why recruitment agencies need to be able to position their business effectively, and why that should be important to clients looking to hire top sales professionals.

Top sales performers are hard to find and even more difficult to attract and recruit.  So it’s fairly critical to a successful assignment that your recruitment partner is able to position your role in an effective and compelling way with these in-demand professionals.  Sound logical?

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For young and more established businesses alike one of the most important things that you need to do is develop your value proposition. The value proposition is an essential component in defining and directing your sales and marketing strategy and tactics, and some time should be devoted to getting this right.

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One of the biggest challenges businesses face in driving sales growth is their ability to win new business. The problem is that most salespeople just don’t like prospecting. They are comfortable looking after existing accounts and dealing with inbound enquiries, but when it comes to proactively getting after virgin new business the excuses start to flow. They procrastinate, they complain about not having signed up for this, they spin their wheels planning to get round to it at some point. There is always something else to do rather than prospect!

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The following is quite a long post, and I ask that you stick with it as I feel there are some valid points here and I’m eager to solicit your views.  

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Having worked with clients in the Oil and Gas sector over the past 20 years I know the current ‘cycle’ is different to those we’ve experienced previously.  Businesses working across the supply chain are under considerable pressure and indeed many have had to implement cost cutting measures to ensure business continuity.  Even if your business is not directly servicing the oil and gas market, it’s possible you are still subject to the effects of the current market conditions.

With these conditions in mind, conversations with our clients and broader network over the past few months have centered around the need to compete more effectively to win business and grow market share.  This has highlighted that there is little doubt we are now in a new reality where anything but sales excellence simply is not going to cut it.  This typically raises a few questions: Continue Reading

John is under pressure; he is well behind target – despite the fact that his target has already been revised downward in light of market conditions. The Sales Director is also under pressure from the Board and….well we all know that shit runs downhill. John needs to make a dent in his target to keep the Sales Director off his back. Redundancy is something he worries about. There’s been no indication of this so far but he knows many people in the industry that have been made redundant.

However, he believes that he has a great opportunity in the pipeline, he gets after it… and get’s shot down – by three different contacts in the client – because they have a freeze on capex spend in the face of the current downturn. What John does next is more a reflexion of John, his core attributes and his sales experience than whether there really is another viable strategy. Continue Reading

I met with a client this week who are looking for ways in which to improve sales effectiveness.  One of the areas which came up in discussion was ‘how to motivate the sales team’. I always wonder about this one – it’s not the first time I’ve been asked about it and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The thing is I’m not an organisational psychologist so it’s not really my bag. There are other professionals who specialise in this area that are eminently more qualified to help.

However, I do have a view on this and it is based on one thing that I do know about – and that’s salespeople. To my mind great salespeople don’t need to be given motivation. In my experience they are very highly self-motivated and have much higher standards for themselves than you could ever hope of them. Continue Reading

In my blog posts and articles I talk frequently about the disconnect between what businesses want to hire to drive sales growth – the ‘A’ players (the top 10 – 15% of sales professionals within their market / compensation level) and what they all too often hire – the ‘B’ and ‘C’ players.

It’s true that the ‘A’ players tend to be highly successful wherever they go, and also that they don’t tend to move jobs very often. However, rarely does someone have a perfect career track record in sales – even the very best. Continue Reading

So we have launched our new website today.  Cue much fanfare, buzz all over the internet and the phones ringing off the hook.  Well.. perhaps not …  we actually suspect that, for the most part, people really don’t give a s**t.  But that’s fine – no honestly it is!

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With shareholder value directly linked to growth the pressures on businesses to deliver sales growth is a constant. Enabling this growth is therefore one of the key priorities for all senior managers – or at least it should be. It’s not just the responsibility of the Sales Director or VP to deliver the numbers – every function has a part to play in this. Continue Reading