Author: hiredna

Secrets To Sell Your Company To Prospective Employees

Posted on by hiredna

As the labor market tightens, companies are in search of new recruitment tactics that can attract top sales talent to come work for them. It’s easy to get caught up in what candidates have to offer, but the key to successful hiring lies in making the right offer. That’s because top tier candidates want to hear what makes your company the best place to work. In this post, we’ll teach you key strategies to sell your company to prospective employees so you can attract the best talent to your organization.

At HireDNA, our recruiting experts can help you attract, hire, and retain the perfect candidates for your company. Learn More.

Start By Setting Clear Expectations

Securing jobs is no longer as important for candidates your company is likely looking to hire. Unlike their older counterparts, millennials tend to look at their jobs as a form of advancement in their careers—just another stepping stone. According to a Gallup Report, 87% of Millennials said career growth was an essential factor in their job search. The bottom line? Prospective candidates want to know how they benefit from working for you.

To attract top talent, employers should outline the recruits’ learning journey at the company at the outset of the hiring process. Have an honest conversation on what resources your organization will provide for their learning and development. Talk to them about the nature of their work and the room for growth in the near future.   

Be Transparent

Be transparent about your hiring process. 83% of candidates say their experience would improve if employers gave a timeline of their employee acquisition processes. In a time where companies are competing to secure skilled candidates, being transparent can help retain candidate interest in your offering.

Distinguish Your Company Culture

Your work culture is a reflection of your company’s vision and values. Luckily, it’s also a marketable facet of your business as a workplace. Your company culture should attract candidates that would be an excellent fit for your work environment and repel those who seem unlikely to flourish.

It’s important to establish your culture through channels such as your company website and social platforms. Use social media to give future employees an inside look into what your company represents and create more transparency into how it functions.  

Remember, you’re selling a vision of where your company is and where you’re going. Help candidates see how your company culture will help them thrive. Aligning your company’s goals with your candidate’s goals will attract better talent.  

Revamp Your Employment Brand

Did you know that a poor company reputation can cost you approximately 10% more per hire? Your employee brand tells fresh hires precisely what they’re getting into and could help to strengthen the idea that your company as the ideal workplace for them.

Employment branding isn’t just renewing your company logo or boosting your advertising. Your employment brand needs to be just as strong as your consumer brand, and you won’t find better ambassadors for your company than your employees! Empower your employees to become brand ambassadors, engage them in your business, and inspire a commitment to your company mission.

Manage your employment brand, so it increases the value recruits see in working for you. Address poor reviews on employment sites like Glassdoor, touch up your LinkedIn profiles, and always put your best face forward as an employer.

Personalize Your Hiring Process

Accepting your job offer is an extremely important decision for job candidates. They have much to consider:

  • Will they have to relocate to come work for you?
  • How does your job affect their family?
  • Does it mean they spend less time at home?
  • What if they’re leaving a job? Will your company match any benefits they are giving up?

Candidates may consider refusing your offer because a job with you might render them unable to fulfill personal commitments. Recruiting teams must realize that their candidates have other options. You need to know what you’re up against, and how to make counteroffers that recruits simply can’t ignore. Ask the right questions regarding compensation needs and work closely with candidates to outline a competitive offer that they can’t refuse.

Build A Winning Sales Team

At HireDNA, we offer a range of solutions for businesses looking to hire and retain top talent. Our expert sales recruiters can help you find top talent, assess candidates, evaluate your current talent pool, and more.

Why Choose Us?                

  • Our predictive candidate assessments eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes
  • Businesses hire 50% faster when they work with us
  • We have an 80% success rate for placements across organizations

Ready to hire the best salespeople for your company?

Contact Us

Strategies To Scale A Sales Organization In 2020

Posted on by hiredna

It’s imperative to think about expanding your sales organization to meet the demands of the future. The good news is that as long as you put in the resources and implement the right strategies, your business can continue to flourish and keep pace with the market.

With expert sales recruiting, training, and evaluation services, HireDNA can help you build and grow a winning sales team. Contact us.

Strategies To Scale A Sales Organization

Researchers predict that in 2020 customers will be able to handle 85% of all business contact without ever interacting with a human! Digitization, connectivity, and technological advancements have accelerated the pace of life and increased the frequency of changes in prevalent trends, making hi-tech features an integral part of the business ecosystem.

Here are a few ways to increase your digital presence and make use of new technologies to better scale your sales organization in 2020:

Make a Digital Plan

It’s quite common for sales organization to want to go digital, sell online and make use of technology to reach the masses. However, many businesses fail to plan their activities, set targets and research digital markets—and that’s why they fail to have any impact on the digital front. Clearly defined goals, niches, and the potential of each team member must also be taken into account while scaling. Otherwise, taking shots in the dark can backfire.

Research each digital channel, create a plan of attack detailing how you will find and attract your audience, and ensure coordination between teams to keep the tone consistent across all platforms. The best online sales channels nowadays are email (30%), LinkedIn (12%) and Facebook (7%), according to the HubSpot State Of Inbound.

Build An Efficient Sales System

Digital marketing is not the only area where technology comes in handy. Internal structuring and business activities also need leverage to cope with evolving market trends.

It is in the best interest of a sales organization to be well equipped with up to date tools and techniques to stay ahead of the competition. CRMs, cloud infrastructure, and automated systems can reduce your expenses and decrease human error while increasing your efficiency at a larger scale. Moreover, these tools can help record, sort and track data for key sales insights, like an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

HireDNA offers HubSpot CRM consulting so you can get the most out of your CRM. Learn more.

Train Your Employees

Efficient and productive employees are indispensable for sales teams that want to scale. Training and professional education can enhance the expertise of your sales staff and make them more cohesive as a team.

Using technology for sales training and development can result in 57% more effectiveness. Additionally, companies that train staff have seen 9% faster growth in revenues and this can be further enhanced by reinvesting the profits to scale and expand further. If all of that wasn’t convincing enough, a whitepaper on The Evolution Of Sales Readiness reveals that investing in employee training offers 353% returns on investment.

HireDNA offers an innovative sales training program featuring modern strategies and cutting-edge tools. Learn how we can reduce your training time by 50%. Learn more.

Hire the Right Salespeople

No sales organization scaling strategy would be complete without the mention of recruiting and hiring. Landing top sales talent is critical for any organization’s future success, and competition for this talent is fiercer than ever.

An end-to-end predictive hiring process is essential to attract, assess, select, and retain the right sales talent for your unique sales environment. HireDNA offers predictive candidate assessments with a successful placement rate of 80% along with access to exclusive talent pools to help you make the perfect hires for your growing team. Learn more.

Build A Successful Sales Organization

At HireDNA, we offer a range of solutions and services for businesses looking to scale their sales organizations. Our expert sales recruiters and trainers can help you propel your business to success and accelerate your growth.

CONTACT US

8 Qualities Of The Best Sales Representatives

Posted on by hiredna

Generating sales is not easy, yet the best sales reps understand the challenges of their job and are always at the top of their game. So, what qualities does a successful sales representative have that makes them a cut above the rest? Let’s take a look at the traits that help distinguish a seasoned salesperson from an average one.

At HireDNA, our rigorous sales recruiting processes can help you locate top talent so you can hire the best salesperson for your needs. Talk to an expert today.

What Are The Traits Of An Effective Salesperson?

Some personality traits have a direct impact on a person’s selling style and ultimately their ability to succeed. Here are eight key qualities of the best sales representatives:

Extensive Product Knowledge

To sell a product, an exceptional salesperson must have in-depth knowledge of it, down to the smallest detail. Closing a deal requires extensive research, confidence, and perfect execution of the sales pitch. Without deep product knowledge, that will be difficult to achieve.

A highly successful salesperson is always prepared with the right information and resources to make a profitable sale. They are aware of any potential criticism their product might receive and know how to pitch its advantages to a possible buyer to make it seem like an excellent purchase.

Accountability

More than 70% of salespeople are not prepared for meetings. The best sales representatives, however, are dedicated to their job, clients and work schedule. They are always ready to meet or give a demo to a client.  

The best salespeople recognize their mistakes and do not blame others for any shortcomings or failures. Instead, they remedy the flaws and minimize the risk of failure in future sale pitches. Furthermore, they possess a sense of responsibility to follow up with the client and remain vigilant for resulting queries.

Listening Skills

Successful sales reps know that the secret to a successful sale lies in the loyalty of a customer. Therefore, they will strike a connection with the client by addressing their concerns and issues before offering the product. That’s why the best salespeople seldom talk—instead, they are always listening. This helps ensure that they understand a client’s needs and can respond accordingly.

Clients usually have a positive reaction to the empathetic attitude of a salesperson, and they are more open to listening to a sales pitch from them.  

Polite Persistence

It takes 18 calls on average to even connect with a buyer. Anyone who gives up after the first few phone calls can’t possibly be successful in this field.

The best sales reps are persistent in their efforts to get through to a prospective buyer. They are tenacious yet polite and never give up an opportunity to convert a lead into a buyer—or to at least get them into the sales funnel. At the same time, they respect the boundaries of their clients and instead of showing extreme doggedness, they strive to develop a relationship with the potential customers through frequent personalized follow-ups.

HireDNA’s streamlined hiring process can help you get in touch with the best sales representatives that satisfy the talent needs of your organization. Learn more.

Ambition & Will to Sell

Goals motivate the majority of sales representatives, but the most successful among them take it to the next level by creating a plan for their career. The targets they set for themselves may be even more challenging than any professional goals set for them. This determination helps salespeople grow as individuals and as professionals. Achieving personal goals requires patience, resilience, long-term planning and can encourage better sales habits.

Candidates who are committed and possess the will to sell are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve greater sales success. Today, selling is more difficult than ever. Avoid hiring sales people who are unwilling to commit and push beyond their comfort zone to get results.

Coachable & Curious To Learn

An essential quality of a successful salesperson is their curiosity to learn. They educate themselves by reading industry blogs, watching video tutorials, and attending training sessions.

The best reps work on their presentation skills, time management, and other relevant abilities that make a significant impact on their performance. Studies have shown that sales personnel produce 50% higher net sales when they work at companies that offer training activities.

Hiring sales people who are coachable and willing to learn is essential. The best candidates agree that there is always room for improvement. Look for reps who are open to constructive criticism and are always ready to learn.

Whether you would like to train an existing team or need help onboarding as part of the hiring process, HireDNA offers sales training services to help turn your sales team into a high-performance machine. Learn more.

Tech-Savvy

Technology is a crucial part of sales, as the latest developments such as AI, CRMs and automation tools have changed the way sales activities are executed.

Today’s world requires salespeople who can keep up with tech and its contributions to the sector of sales. The best reps know how to use up-and-coming tools to enhance their prospecting and pitch processes.

The Right Sales DNA

Sales DNA is a term used to describe a candidate’s mix of natural and learned skills. Finding candidates with the right sales DNA for your team is crucial. At HireDNA, we offer a predictive sales candidate assessment that goes beyond personality traits to assess 21 core selling competencies possessed by top sales performers. Predictive hiring accounts for much more than credentials or standard interview answers. We go further with comprehensive assessments and analysis to find the right candidate for your organization’s needs.

Learn more about our Predictive Hiring Assessments.

Hire Outstanding Sale Representatives

Highly competent and persuasive sales reps can enhance the effectiveness of any sales and marketing team manifold. They possess unique attributes that set them apart from an average salesperson.

At HireDNA, we bring over 10 years of experience recruiting, hiring, and training the most successful salespeople. Get in touch to learn how we can help you build a winning sales team.

Why Choose Us?              

  • 80% of our searches for sales talent end in a successful hire
  • 92% of our hired candidates reach top half of sales force in 12 months
  • 50% faster onboarding for new hires

Ready to hire the best sales representatives for your company?

CONTACT US

7 Tips to Improve Sales Coaching in Your Organization

Posted on by hiredna

Your organization could have the best sales strategy in the game. But without adequate training, no amount of planning, creativity or strategy will set you up for success. Make sure your sales reps have the coaching, resources, and support needed for success in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In this post, we’ll share some of the best ways to improve sales coaching in your organization.

HireDNA offers leading sales recruiting, evaluation, and training services to help you build a winning sales team. Contact us for more information.

What Is Sales Coaching?

Sales coaching is a process that sales managers follow to support and prepare every salesperson on their team for success in the field. The goal of coaching is to maximize the potential and effectiveness of every rep. It is personalized guidance meant to improve or reinforce skills and should occur on a weekly or even daily basis. While it does not need to be a formal process, managers should be regularly looking for ways to identify individual strengths and weaknesses and work closely with their team to improve.

Prioritize Your Focus

Rather than focus on improving the top- or bottom-performing reps, channel your coaching energy into the middle-of-the-road salespeople for the biggest return on investment (ROI). Chances are, the worst reps won’t improve enough, and the best reps don’t need as much coaching. The “middle 60%” will benefit the most from training. Focusing on this group helps equitably leverage time and training resources.

Motivation Matters

Sales coaching is all about finding ways to improve your sales team’s performance. Motivating them to do their best is essential. And believe it or not, motivation doesn’t always mean money. In fact, employee engagement firm TINYpulse found that money ranked seventh on the list of factors that motivate employees to go above and beyond. Only 7% of the 200,000 workers surveyed listed it as a motivating factor.

According to their study, the strongest motivators included:

  • Camaraderie and peer motivation (20%)
  • Intrinsic desire to do a good job (17%)
  • Feeling encouraged and recognized (13%)
  • Having a real impact (10%)
  • Growing professionally (8%)
  • Meeting client and customer needs (8%)

With this in mind, consider intrinsic incentives like friendly peer competition, awards, recognition or extra vacation time.

Be Flexible With Your Coaching Style

Just as sales requires a variety of skills, so too does sales coaching. It’s important to understand your coaching style and even more important to understand when it’s time to switch up your strategy. Consider the following styles:

  • Strategic coaching and big-picture guidance are best for broad topics like navigating a complex buying process or selling into a specific market.
  • Tactical coaching is ideal for more individualized interactions like building a relationship or navigating conflicts.
  • Skills coaching helps salespeople improve in specific job function areas like communication, writing, rapport-building, etc.

Empower Your Reps

Sales managers should encourage their teams to be part of the learning and evaluation process. Get their input so you can help to work on key areas that are important to them. Start by asking some basic questions. What are they doing well? What skills do they need to work on to improve in the future? The more that sales managers can make their teams part of the coaching process, the more relevant and impactful coaching can be.

Create an Equitable Environment

Cultivating an environment where every sales member feels valued and heard helps to boost overall performance. Make equitable team decisions, such as rotating monthly meeting leaders, providing recognition for a job well done, and actively soliciting feedback on professional development topics.

Define The Gold Standard

Using standardized metrics to track sales helps determine what kinds of trainings were successful and informs sales strategy moving forward. But tracking is only helpful if all team members are being held to the same standard. It’s up to the sales manager to set objective, measurable goals and metrics to track against them.

Read our blog post on How to Set Measurable Sales Goals & Objectives to give your team a roadmap for success.

Turn Coaching into Culture

Embed coaching into team culture by providing ongoing opportunities and continuously evaluating performance. When training and learning are fundamental aspects of a sales team, members feel more invested in and engaged with the process, and they’re more motivated to succeed. Encourage your sales managers to hold monthly training round up that cover various topics be sure to benchmark success regularly.

Set Your Sales Managers Up For Success

There’s no magic bullet to sales coaching. Sales managers should be equipped with a variety of ideas, incentives and options for engaging their teams in conversations about improvement and learning. The more you can make training part of your organizational culture, the more seamless and successful it will be.

Get in touch to learn more about HireDNA sales recruiting, evaluation, and training services. Let us help you build an exceptional sales team!

CONTACT US

Use Sales Assessment Tests to Improve Hire Quality

Posted on by hiredna

Hiring is an art and a science. While first impressions are key, when it comes to hiring effective sales people, you need more than a gut instinct. You need a proven track record of success, a host of positive personality traits, the right selling skills, a fierce drive to succeed, and an organizational fit. You need qualities you might not even be thinking of. Learn how sales assessment tests can improve your hire quality.

HireDNA® offers leading sales recruiting services to help you build a winning sales team. Contact us for more information.

Why Do You Need a Sales Assessment?

Hiring managers can quickly fall into biases that impact hiring decisions. Objective assessments take the guesswork out of the hiring process. They provide a uniform set of standards and help hiring managers see the full picture of prospective sales candidates. Learn about how they work and how HireDNA can help you use them to build your strongest sales team yet!

Common Sales Hiring Pitfalls

It’s easy to fall into a hiring bias trap. After all, interviews are an inherently personal process. Candidates strive to make a good impression, and those responsible for hiring are looking for people they want to work with. With this kind of soft criteria, it can be hard to benchmark the ideal candidate and objectively decide who may be the best fit for the role.

Those making sales hiring decisions can fall into one of many biases, like:

  • “Similar to me” effect: If a candidate has a similar personality, similar interests, or a similar mindset to the interviewer, the interviewer is more likely to think positively about the candidate.
  • The contrast effect: Interviewing a stronger candidate after a weaker candidate can cause the interviewer to perceive the stronger candidate as the right fit for the job—when in reality, it’s just relative.
  • Halo and Horn effects: The interviewer allows one statement, fact, or gesture to overshadow their entire perception of the candidate. This could be positive (halo effect) or negative (horn effect).
  • Stereotyping: This may be the most common and most implicit bias that interviewers impose on candidates. Stereotyping involves making snap decisions and judgments about a candidate based on characteristics like race, gender, age, religion, etc.

The Cost of A Bad Hire

Most people interviewing for sales roles are already personable, competitive, and convincing. Knowing what biases to watch out for, you need to cut through the surface level, go deeper than the resume and degree, and really understand performance potential. With 50 percent of sales reps today consistently falling below their targets, the cost of a bad hire really adds up.

According to a study by PeopleKeep, a bad sales hire can cost between 50-75% of their annual salary. So, a sales person who make $60,000 per year could cost $30,000-$45,000 to replace.

A bad hire doesn’t just take a financial toll. A bad hire costs staff time, training resources, and general morale. It can cause top sales reps to feel disengaged and undervalued. It can also increase burnout and turnover, as other employees work harder to pick up the slack. One bad hire can make or break a team.

What will a bad hire cost you? Find out with this interactive hiring mistake calculator from Objective Management Group.

How Does a Sales Assessment Work?

So how do you make the right decision from the start? That’s where a sales assessment test comes in. HireDNA uses the Objective Management Group (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment to screen sales candidates. OMG is one of the world’s most accurate and predictive assessments, with a success rate of 92 percent of recommended and hired candidates performing at or above expectations.

The OMG assessment defines exact hiring criteria for sales candidates, holds all candidates to the same standard, and gives your sales organization competitive hiring edge. Plus, it can be customized to your unique hiring criteria and sale environment.

The result is a tailored recommendation that shows how the candidate stacks up against industry standards, your own organization, and among candidates for the role itself.

Secure Your Hiring Success

Build your strongest team yet! HireDNA’s predictive sales candidate assessments give you a leg up on your hiring process. Our objective, proven tool goes beyond personality traits, first impressions, and gut feelings to assess 21 core selling competencies possessed by top sales performers in your industry.

Get in touch to learn more about our sales recruiting, evaluation, and training services. Let us help you build an exceptional sales team!

CONTACT US

Top Team Building Activities For Sales Reps

Posted on by hiredna

In today’s work environment, every employee seems to be looking for the next best thing. The sales industry in particular sees a turnover rate of nearly 12 percent! With competition for promotions, raises, deals, and more, it can be easy to forget about the glue that holds the workplace together: teamwork.

Creating a positive, team-oriented workplace helps to improve employee retention, morale, collaboration and sense of self-worth. But how can you cultivate that environment in a market dominated by constant innovation, fast-paced growth and the sustained demand for more, better, and faster?

The answer is that you make team building a top priority and get all of your salespeople involved. Here are some of the top team building activities for sales reps.

HireDNA® offers leading sales evaluation and recruiting services to help you build a winning sales team. Contact us for more information.

Great Team-Building Activities

Some well-thought-out and intentional team building activities can break the ice and unlock positive conversations and momentum for your sales team. Here, we’ve broken down the team building process to identify key skills and strategies along with some activities to help you improve each area. Try out some of these ideas to get the ball rolling.

To Improve Communication…

Clear communication is crucial for a positive team environment. It helps everyone feel on the same page, ensures all members are working toward a common goal, and helps prevent confusion and stress.

Activity: Telephone

A good, old-fashioned game of telephone doesn’t just lighten the mood and bring you back to summer camp days. It can also help to drive home the importance of clear communication and the consequences of misconstruing messages.

To get started, line your teams up, give the first person in line a phrase to say, and have them whisper it in the next person’s ear. Participants should continue whispering the message down the line, all the way until the last person repeats the phrase aloud.

Often times, the original phrase morphs as the message gets passed along the chain. This sort of process and outcome provides a great opportunity to talk about how directions, feedback, and information get distorted when people don’t communicate clearly.

To Improve Listening…

Active listening is not only a major part of communication and teamwork, it’s essential to an effective consultative sales process. Especially during contentious encounters, people tend to talk past one another, so wrapped up in thinking about what they want to say that they don’t even listen to the other person’s point of view. Employing active listening skills helps team members become more empathetic and generate collaborative, innovative ideas with full input.

Activity: Pair Up & Practice

Partner up different team members for a conversation, and every five minutes rotate partners. Think of this activity as speed-dating, but for active listening. When in pairs, advise participants to employ the following active listening rules: 1) Pay attention, 2) Show you’re listening, 3) Paraphrase and repeat back what you hear, 4) Provide feedback, and 5) Defer judgment.

To test listening skills, have the listener repeat back to the room the key points of the speaker. After the activity is over, gather the group back together to reflect on how it went, how each active listening rule was used in conversation, and how the use of these rules changed the conversation for both participants.

To Improve Presentations…

Presentation skills factor heavily into team dynamics. The ability to distill ideas and craft a compelling argument is an essential skill for salespeople. Encouraging presentation practice helps to improve this skill and boost overall team morale.

Activity: Create a Pitch Challenge

Create teams of 3-4 people and challenge each member to create a sales pitch for an office supply on their desk—in five minutes. This is a quick game that challenges creativity and requires everyone to think on their feet, deliver with confidence, and hone their sales skills.

Performing these rapid-fire pitches can help to get everyone comfortable with presenting while providing opportunity for feedback and improvement.

To Improve Teamwork…

Underlining all of these skills is a fundamental sense of team camaraderie. Respect, understanding, and appreciation of teammates helps everyone work toward common goals. In a sales team, reps will have individual quotas, but they also need to be aware of overall team goals. Building teamwork can help to foster a sense of accountability while providing opportunities for higher performing reps to train others.

Working together on a project for a good cause is a great way to remind team members that they are part of something bigger than themselves, driving home the necessity of everyone’s individual contribution.

Activity: Get Involved in your Community

To build general teamwork and goodwill, consider scheduling quarterly team volunteer outings. These can involve anything from building a home to working in a community garden or volunteering at a homeless shelter. These sorts of experiences highlight what’s possible when a whole team comes together, and they can be a great way to build friendship and respect outside of the work setting.

The Short of It?

In the end, the activities that improve team morale can also improve the skills needed for successful sales. If your employees can master these fundamentals, that success will translate to your bottom line. Improving your teamwork can result in wins for your salespeople, your clients, your workplace culture, and your organization at large.

Train Your Sales Reps for Success

Is your sales team falling behind performance expectations? HireDNA offer sales performance evaluations to uncover skills gaps in your team, and we deliver advanced training through a customizable cloud-based learning platform to improve performance.

Get in touch to learn more about our sales recruiting, evaluation, and training services. Let us help you build an exceptional sales team!

Contact Us

6 Characteristics of a High Performing Sales Team

Posted on by hiredna

The hallmark of a high performing sales team is their ability to push through obstacles and continue to provide a constant revenue stream for the business. But what do high performers have that others don’t? Let’s take a look at some of the top characteristics of high performing sales teams.

HireDNA sales recruiting, evaluation, and training services can help you build a winning sales team. Contact us today.

1. Invested in Better Customer Research

With the dramatic rise of social media and other public communication platforms, the modern consumer is well-aware and has access to various sources of information. In many cases, by the time consumers get in touch with a sales team, they are already midway through their buying journey.

Top salespeople recognize the need to invest time into understanding their consumers better, instead of relying on conventional selling pitches and tactics. In fact, research shows that high performing sales teams are 2.8X more focused on personalizing customer interactions.

Highly successful sales teams invest resources in researching for their target audience. This includes developing call objectives before you even pick the phone, asking highly targeted questions, and tailoring your solution to fit the prospect’s requirements.

2. Ruthless with Qualification

A top tier sales team knows how to make the most of every single minute of their time. This means identifying high-value targets and dedicating more time to cultivating high-quality leads.

The best salespeople are decisive when it comes to wasting time on prospects. Some consumers do not convert, regardless of the effort you put in. A distinguished sales team knows every minute spent on an unsuccessful lead is a minute lost that could have been used to close a deal.

By closely analyzing your pipeline and evaluating every opportunity that comes your way, you can make sure to only dedicate your time on the highest value leads.

3. Exceptional Sales Managers

One of the major driving forces behind the success of a sales team is exceptional leadership. Every salesperson is likely to hit a slump at some point in time, but teams with outstanding sales managers tend to do a lot better than teams without one.

Read our blog on Essential Sales Manager Skills for more insight into what makes the best sales managers.

Successful teams rely on the coaching skills of the manager to improve their performance, and the best managers dedicate more than 50% of their time to transferring their skills to their colleagues.

According to a recent study, managers of sales teams that achieved 75% or more of their quota were not only more proficient at training their sales team, but they actually spent more time in training their sales staff compared to low performing sales teams.

HireDNA can help you build out custom sales training programs to improve performance at both the individual and team levels. Learn more.

4. Increased Accountability

Regardless of the fact that they work as a unit, a high-performing sales team holds every individual salesperson accountable for their own performance. Every sales rep has to be accountable for their sales quotas. If there isn’t a clear system to help ensure accountability, your performance can quickly decline..

Some key tips to improve accountability within your sales team include:

  • Set clear, realistic, and actionable goals. Your team can’t be held accountable for goals that are not clear.
  • Establish periodic check-ins. While you don’t want to be overbearing, regular check-ins at both the individual and team level can let your team know that their performance is being monitored. You will also be able to take action if you notice a team member’s performance lagging.
  • Make corrective actions clear and fair. What is your plan to improve performance for a lagging team member? Your reps should know what to expect if they begin to or repeatedly miss goals.
  • Coach and train when needed. Corrective action doesn’t have to be the threat of termination. Remaining positive and providing essential coaching and training to lagging team members can help to establish a culture of improvement and success.
  • Congratulate successes. Incentives and recognition can go a long way to motivate your team and keep them accountable for their quotas.

At HireDNA, we offer thorough sales evaluations to identify and resolve weaknesses and skill gaps limiting your sales results. Learn more.

5. No Space for Poor Performers

As a sales manager, you need to enforce accountability in order for your team members to actually take their quotas seriously. That may include making some tough decisions, such as terminating continuously low performing sales reps.

A high performing sales team is made up of over-achievers who meet their goals consistently. If coaching is not helping to improve an individual’s performance, a sales performance improvement plan (PIP) can be a great way to get them back on track.

However, if they fail to improve beyond a certain period, they don’t deserve a place in your high performing sales team. Terminating a rep may be tough, but it may be necessary to keep the team on track.

6. Continuously Striving for Improvement

A relentless desire to improve and get better is one of the hallmarks of a highly successful sales team. Never be content with previous achievements, and always show a determination to exceed previous goals.

A determination for improvement can be made visible through the metrics your team sets each year, such as a 10% raise on annual quotas every year. While this may seem like an aggressive tactic, it can help to push your sales team to achieve grander goals.

On a more micro level, this translates to every sales rep trying to overcome their weaknesses. Unable to land high-quality leads? Prospect more diligently. Struggling to make it past the demo stage? Research and customize your offering to the consumers’ pain points.

Build an Exceptional Sales Team

A highly efficient and productive sales team is the cornerstone of organizational success. A high performing sales team has several unique characteristics that allow them to scale their performance.

At HireDNA, we bring 10 years of experience to help you recruit, manage, evaluate, and develop an efficient sales team.

Ready to take your sales performance to the next level?

Contact Us

How to Create an Effective Sales Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)

Posted on by hiredna

Your sales team’s performance is crucial to your organization’s bottom-line. Every underperforming salesperson represents missed opportunities and lost revenue that could have contributed toward your business. While the most straightforward fix may appear to let the salesperson go, think again.

Rather than spend time and resources on ramping up a new hire, it may be more cost-effective to work to improve the underperforming rep’s performance. That’s where a sales performance improvement plan (PIP) comes in.

Evaluate performance gaps and develop a highly successful training program to boost your sales team’s output. Contact a HireDNA expert today.

5 Ways To Create An Effective Sales Performance Plan

A sales performance plan, also known as a performance improvement plan (PIP), is a detailed strategy that outlines the steps underperforming sales reps need to take in order to regain their optimal performance levels.  

This plan defines clear goals and growth metrics along with the roadmap to achieve those goals. With a timeline added to the strategy, your salesperson has a fair chance to improve their performance.

So, how do you create an effective sales PIP? Here are some key tips to building the right PIP:

Evaluation Your Team’s Performance

Before building out your PIP, it’s important to evaluate your salespeople and understand why they are underperforming. Once you do that, you’ll have the groundwork you need to understand what it will take to help them improve in those areas and ultimately increase their performance altogether.

Start with an evaluation to understand your reps’ strengths and weaknesses to determine where you should focus your time and attention. An evaluation will also help to determine if your rep is capable of improving their skills and ultimately their results. 

With thorough sales team evaluations, HireDNA can help you identify KPIs, uncover skill gaps, and discover opportunities for future growth. Learn more.

Provide A Precise Overview

Your performance improvement plan should not include vague statements and motives. Instead, it should clearly state what has been lacking in the sales rep’s performance.

For increased clarity, consider restating their job description and provide a comparative overview of what has been missing. For instance, if a sales rep is expected to meet a minimum of 70% of their quarterly quota and they have failed to do so, mention that with their exact figures in your performance plan.

Remember to include specific examples such as missed projects, exceeded deadlines, or incidents where the sales rep did not meet their role’s expectations.

Outline Tangible Goals

To provide further clarity in expectations, sales managers should provide highly targeted breakdowns of goals and objectives. Consider setting specific activity-based goals, like appointing a minimum number of leads per week or imposing minimum demonstrations per quarter. When defining your goals, be sure to prioritize what you want to accomplish first, and outline incentives for meeting smaller objectives.

For more tips here, read our blog post on How to Set Measurable Sales Goals & Objectives.

Make Your PIP Realistic

The entire performance improvement plan should include steps, learning procedures, and relevant metrics that can be achieved in the apportioned timeframe. If a sales rep is struggling to generate leads, they might require additional training and further time to put that into practice. Cramming the entire strategy into a week is unlikely to bear any fruit. Make sure you work closely with the rep and compare with other reps to help ensure the goals you set are realistic.

Establish Timely Follow-Ups

Once you have presented your sales performance plan to the salesperson, it is essential to schedule periodical follow-ups. As a sales manager, you should remain up to date on the progress your underperforming team members are making.

Regular coaching is key for a sales manager to help reps improve performance. Check-ins will allow you to stay at the forefront of any issues or troubles they may be facing with the plan. Be careful not to make these check-ins overly negative. They should be encouraging and include coaching to uncover obstacles and provide advice to help the salesperson meet their objectives. By showing that you are dedicated to helping them improve their performance, you can build loyalty and motivate them to put in more effort.

Effective coaching can also help to prevent the need for a PIP, as a sales manager can work closely with their reps to improve skills and ensure performance is on track with expectations.

Keep It On The Low

The enactment of a sales performance plan does not have to be a team-wide affair. Particularly in the case of veteran salespeople who are struggling to meet their targets, a publicized sales performance improvement plan can have a dampening effect on their morale. It is okay and often-times preferred to have the PIP remain a matter between the sales manager and the underperforming salesperson.

As a sales manager, it’s important to ensure that the entire process remains a positive experience. Outlining the advantages of the plan and providing positive encouragement can go a long way to boost a rep’s morale and performance.

Develop A High Performing Sales Team

Finding and recruiting talented sales reps is one of the toughest tasks for sales managers. An underperforming sales rep can become a highly successful performer if provided with a meticulously designed performance plan.

At HireDNA, we help organizations build high-performance sales machines. With science-backed sales performance evaluations, we can help you uncover skill gaps on both the team and individual level. Then, through customizable training programs, we can target those gaps and help you to ramp up performance in no time. Let us help you build a winning sales team!

CONTACT US

HireDNA Ranked Among Best Corporate Sales Training Programs by Clutch

Posted on by hiredna

At HireDNA, our mission is to provide our clients with the tools and training needed to build a successful company. Our work is focused on core principles that drive our sales and hiring projects. We are proud to acknowledge that based on reviews from our clients, we have been considered by Clutch as one of the top global agencies focusing on Corporate Sales Training Programs in the IT and Business Services category.

What is Clutch?

Clutch is a DC-based reviews site that allows companies to use verified client reviews to pick solutions providers for business needs such as HR services. After evaluating all client reviews and descriptions of projects, Clutch organizes the providers in leader matrices in their respective fields.

Corporate Training Leader

Below, you can see the leader matrix that includes HireDNA as an emerging leader in corporate coaching. We could not have received this recognition without the kind words of our clients, for whom we are grateful to and hope to continue our work with.

“We are thrilled to have been chosen as one of the leading sales recruiting and training companies in Washington, DC by Clutch!” – Anwar Allen, CEO

Top Human Resources Company

HireDNA has also been listed on Clutch’s sister site, The Manifest, as one of the top human resource companies. These lists are supported by data and expertise to help improve the experience for businesses to choose partners. Clutch also supports an additional site, Visual Objects, which is a portfolio-based site that allows businesses to view portfolios of past client projects to make more informed partnership decisions.

Get In Touch

In the long run, investing in proper training and strategies in the human resources department can be extremely beneficial for company operations. We want to see our clients succeed and maximize their potential with a transformative hiring process. If you are interested in learning more about our corporate sales training programs, please contact us!

Offer Stage Recruitment Tips to Win Over Top Candidates

Posted on by hiredna

Sales organizations are always on the lookout for standout reps that can boost their team’s performance. These exceptional individuals bring a proven track record of success, a wealth of experience and a role model presence to your team that positively affects the entire organization.

While recruiting top sales reps is a unique challenge on its own, the offer stage represents the last hurdle before you get them on board. Some recruiters mistake the offer stage as a mere formality, assuming the deal is already closed. Instead, it is arguably the most important stage where the candidate will make their final choice. Here are some offer stage recruitment tips to help you win over top candidates.

Do away with guesswork and hire the best candidates for your organization based on a data-backed predictive hiring system. Get in touch with a HireDNA sales recruiting expert today.

4 Offer Stage Tips For Top Candidates

If a candidate makes it to the offer stage, it means that they have been vetted, interviewed and passed all relevant organizational checks. Now is the time to close the deal effectively, and you should be well prepared. Here are some tips that can help increase your odds of attracting the best sales talent available.

Highlight The Details Behind Your Offer

Many times, sales managers simply parrot the offer details without attempting to extrapolate the value behind it and lend insight as to how your offer can truly benefit the candidate.

Simply repeating what you have been told by your HR manager is less likely to impress a top candidate that may very well have several other offers on their desk. Instead, you should take the time to help them understand the nuances behind the offer. For instance, if equity is involved, it is your duty to help the candidate understand the value of the equity being offered. Beyond the routine discussion involving vesting cycles and benefits, try to highlight how your offer can work toward their benefit down the line.

Of course, it’s important to have a detailed and realistic compensation plan available to walk the candidate through. Top candidates will want to know how existing reps are performing against targets and will want a clear roadmap for achieving success. No candidate wants to sign up for a role with unrealistic expectations.

Partner With Human Resources

Highly talented salespeople know their worth and often have the freedom to choose between several organizations. When seeking a new opportunity, the culture, onboarding process, and career growth opportunities are some of the commonplace concerns top sales reps share.

Partnering with your hiring manager or human resource manager can allow you to have a knowledgeable aid by your side who can answer pertinent questions with ease. They can help to elaborate on the individual growth prospects available at your organization and other key benefits available.

Eliminate hiring mistakes and improve retention rates with our proven hiring tools. Learn More.

Don’t Go Overboard

Asking too many questions, making too many calls or scheduling too many interviews are all signs of an organization going overboard with their recruitment process. Hiring top sales talent is a priority for many companies—and once you get to the offer stage, you are more likely to anticipate the deal as good as done. However, as the candidate is nearing their decision, they may become increasingly observant of their (potential) next employer.

Excessively nagging them to conduct multiple touchpoints will not only convey your organization as desperate but may adversely affect the candidate’s decision to stick with their current employer or go with another opportunity. Furthermore, asking repetitive questions regarding their desired role or salary can also work against you. You may come across as unsure, or unwilling—and when you’re aiming to recruit top sales talent, such ambiguity can work against you.

We recommend no more than three steps to the interview process before extending an offer. Any more is overkill. If you thoroughly screen candidates before the interview and use a sales specific assessment to predict compatibility and success, there’s no reason you need more than three interviews to make a decision. In today’s low unemployment market, you risk losing top talent to an overly complex, long, and unproductive interview process. 

Don’t Start From Your Lowest

The modern business world is highly competitive, and every company can benefit from having a high performing salesperson. Once you’ve found a top candidate and have managed to hold on to them until the offer-stage, don’t risk losing them because your offer couldn’t match their ambition.

Many organizations still deploy the age-old tactic of lowballing. However, there is one major flaw in this strategy—it doesn’t work with modern salespeople. Modern salespeople know their worth. By offering them a low starting offer, you are signaling that you don’t value them as much.

The best strategy is to present what you think is the strongest possible offer and elaborate on why you think it is right. It is important to remember that top sales talent may not be actively pursuing a new opportunity, so your offer needs to have the persuasive element that eases their decision in your favor.

There are online resources like salary.com that will provide insights on competitive comp plans. A good recruiting firm will also have data they can share and will identify each candidate’s desired comp in the screening process to help you determine what a competitive offer looks like. 

Build A Highly Talented Sales Team

Recruiting and retaining top sales talent is one of the greatest challenges sales managers face. HireDNA offers you a modern approach to the hiring process with our data-backed, scientific technology that allows you to discover top candidates, eliminate hiring mistakes, decrease onboarding ramp-up times, and grow your sales potential!

Why Choose Us?

  • 80% placement success
  • 79% candidate retention
  • 50% faster new hire ramp-up

CONTACT US