by Mike Brunel | Sep 25, 2018 | Leadership, Sales, Strategy
If you’ve read my last few posts. you’ll see that I’ve been discussing the mistakes business owners make ( I have made every one of them- no kidding!) when it comes to getting the right salesperson on your team.
I want to give you as much value as I can, so here are three important hoops (as I call them) that you might want to think about when it comes to employing new salespeople.
Structure Not Gut
Hoop 1- Company Culture Fit
Company Culture– While we believe that fitting in with the company culture is important, as demonstrated in the graph on our
FREE report, it makes up only 10%
.
Don’t get too caught up in making sure this is a major part of the recruiting process.
Create a good
job description.
This is a critical factor in hiring good salespeople. When you advertise for a salesperson what do you ask?
How do you define the role? What are you looking for? What is the remuneration?
*Chet Holmes, one of my early mentors, always did this exercise when advertising for super salespeople.
Write down three initiatives that you would love to hire someone to do in your business.
Three only. Next to each one, do this:
What would it mean to your business?
How would it change your business?
Now list what you could afford to pay such people if they really performed.
Do the exercise. This forms the foundation of good a job description.
Hoop 2- Structuring an interview – History of Success.
Once you get the CV’s for the position, look for a history of success. Somewhere that you can see a challenge; a life experience that they overcame.
Structuring an interview- A structured interview process makes up 30% or a third of the process (
FREE report). That’s a lot. In your structured interview, you should have some questions to ask, after reading the CV. Here are a few to start with.
How do you function as a team?
How do you feel about operating in a team environment?
Do you like working on your own outside of that team?
Can you tell me about a time when you were asked to do a project on your own? What was it?
These questions might just get the process moving.
Challenge the candidate– You are hiring salespeople to do a specific job. Human beings inherently will do anything to avoid pain. However, in the business of selling, rejection is part of what selling really is, and it can be painful.
If everyone got 100% of the business every time they presented a product, the salesperson would be out of business.
If you are hiring a salesperson to sell your product and prospecting is part of that, would you not at least ask them
“What happens when you get a ‘ No!’ – How do you react?”
Ask them this, and see what happens:
“ You know what, I’m not convinced that you are the right person for this job.” Observe their reaction. Do they just sit there? Or do they do something that indicates to you they might do the same with a client?
Hoop 3- Assessment Tools
This also makes up 30% of the job evaluation- We personally take a lot of guidance from these types of assessments and we go into more detail here:
Download my FREE report We used to call these the B.S. detector.
We carried these assessments out in my company specifically for the roles we were looking for, in salary and performance-based positions.
Our salespeople had to work alone. We had salespeople sprinkled all over the world; usually unmanaged, working in an unstructured environment.
We had to be really clear on what we were looking for. That’s where traits/ behaviours come into play. We knew we had to hire for the task, not just the attitude.
In my next post, I explain what I look for in a salesperson, and how I came to that.
Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
by Mike Brunel | Aug 8, 2018 | Sales, Strategy
What not to do when Hiring Salespeople.
Hire in your own likeness- A potential salesperson comes in to meet with you, and within a short time you have hit it off, you may have even shared some key rapport-building facts about each other.
Of all the applicants that you have spoken with, this one is the one that you like the most. Your gut feels great, you like him, he reminds you of a younger you. You hire you.
Now you might be the best salesperson in your business, but if you want to grow, you better make sure that you do more than just hire on your gut.
It’s a good feeling to have, but there are other factors that come into play.
Fill a hole, find a salesperson.
This is a big mistake that I see all the time. Hiring under stress. As the saying goes “Hire slowly Fire quickly.” As a business owner, we do feel the pressure of getting a position filled.
Maybe, as a sales manager, you may feel the pressure to fill the quota and get the sales back on track. It’s natural that you push them through quickly. I have been guilty of this myself until I learned that hiring to fill a hole is a recipe for failure. How do you learn? Watching that money flush down the “you know what”!
“No one can sell as well as you do”
This one is a beauty. You are afraid to hire because they might just not be as good as you. I remember taking on a position of Sales Manager in a company, to find that the amazing sales manager I replaced had all the top clients, held onto them, and starved the team of success.
No one could sell like him I was told. Well, guess what? When I gave some of his clients to the other members of the team, the business never looked back.
If your business is going well and you want to grow, this attitude will stop you in your tracks.
Growth only comes in a business if you are prepared to hire more ‘how’ people that can free you up to help you make better decisions around what you are good at.
I can pretty much guarantee my clients a foolproof way to multiply their business tenfold. Hire more people to do the how and you do what you get excited about.
Those are the big three mistakes that business owners make when it comes to hiring salespeople.
Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
by Mike Brunel | Aug 8, 2018 | Sales, Strategy
How to hire a Superstar Salesperson each and every time
Today, I released my free report on How to Hire a Superstar Salesperson each and every time.
To coincide with releasing this free report, I wanted to share some of my thoughts around how I have hired salespeople and some key takeaways I have learned, through good and bad hires.
Who is this for?
It’s for any business owner, Sales Manager, or a startup who needs to hire a salesperson who is rewarded by a salary and performance-based performance-based
If you’ve ever hired any salespeople, like I have, you’ve usually made or have made one of these mistakes.
Just so you know, I’m fully qualified to be writing about this stuff – I’ve hired, fired, coached, or managed hundreds of salespeople, over too many years to remember, in many different countries and languages.
It’s fair to say that I’ve been through the school of hard knocks.
I hired magnificent salespeople beginning with one wonderful amazing woman, a single mum, who through sheer hard work and effort exceeded her targets in her job as a sales manager in a small media company in New Zealand.
With my main business, I was lucky to find two brothers for my U.S. operation who brought in millions of dollars.
These two superstars have certain traits, talents, and habits, that we knew would leverage our sales systems worldwide, if we could duplicate their process…. which we did.
As a result, I noticed traits in these people, secrets that I always look for. I think I know by now, what they are.
Before I go into that, let’s talk about two of the mistakes that we often make, when we go to hire salespeople.
What not to do
What’s the cost of Hiring Badly?
Think about these stats for a moment. According to a Harvard Business review article, the cost of replacing a salesperson that was hired badly ranges from $75,000 to $90,000, while other sales positions can cost a company as much as $300,000.
These figures don’t reflect the lost sales while a replacement is found and trained.
One of my good friends who owns a telecommunication company has told me a bad hire for him costs a least $1 million over time.
That’s horrendous. This may not change as we enter this new world of communication. As a company or small business, you simply cannot afford to hire on gut alone.
Is Fit Important? Maybe.
A culture fit in any business is important, there’s no doubt about that, but what you need to discover firstly is “Does this person have the ability/talent to do the job?”
That is the underlying question that needs to be asked by you as an employer of salespeople.
In the next blog, I am going to cover off some of the common mistakes that we made when we hired a salesperson for our business.
Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
by Mike Brunel | Apr 30, 2018 | Leadership, Strategy
Sometimes we need a little motivation to get us going; here is a great story about seeking your own motivation.
It was a cold winter’s morning in Austin, Texas when I was dragged along to a keynote speech done by Og Manadio, the famous author of the book “The Greatest Salesman in the World.”
I did not know much about Og but going by the packed audience he must have been famous. Over the next hour I was spellbound, every word he uttered felt like he was talking to me directly as if he knew all my secrets, and all around me people were in tears, he just had this great ability to touch everyone in the audience with his words. I was so moved and began, for the first time in my life, to understand the meaning of purpose.
In the library
I was reminded about this great speech Og gave so many years ago because today I am in the library, looking after my daughter and her two friends who have asked me to take them there to do a project, they are everywhere in the library searching for information, articles, and stories to assist them in their project.
Power of Reading
I was taken back in time to what Og had said during that speech all those years ago, he talked about many of his life lessons.
What he had experienced as a young man, becoming a husband, father and successful businessman to then becoming a 30-year-old bum, his successful life now drowned in alcohol.
One day he found himself leaning up against a pawn shop window deciding if that $30 in his pocket could buy that gun in the window, he could take it back to his miserable hotel room, put the gun to his head and pull the TRIGGER!
Well, it turned out that 30-year-old bum did not buy that gun and take his life, he went instead to the library.
You see in all our years of education Og reminded us, for most of us the one thing we learned at school was to read.
There is a famous quote from Charles Tremendous Jones, that goes something like this;
“You are the same person in 5 years except for two things, the people you meet, and the books you read”
Secrets to Success
Another one of Og’s gems was that when we’re growing up there was never any discussions or lessons about how to be successful, how to set goals, how to handle adversity, how to come back after a failure.
He maintained that there was one place where you could find the masters, the secrets to success, and that was the library.
The masters like W. Clement Stone, Napoleon Hill, Maxwell Maltz, and the modern author’s I know like, Anthony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Tom Hopkins and many more.
The great thing about all of these authors is that they are all sitting on the shelf, waiting for you right now, you just have to go and seek them out, and they are FREE, all you need is a library card.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY M
by Mike Brunel | Apr 18, 2018 | Strategy
In 1963 meteorologist Edward Lorenz announced a stunning discovery.
For decades, people had viewed the universe as a large machine in which causes matched effects. “Cause and effect” it is sometimes known as, or “what you reap you sow.”
He discovered The Butterfly Effect; it is the concept of small things having major effects.
My young daughter only asked me last week if I had heard of the butterfly effect, I said it was about cause and effect, she said
“Dad, it’s about a butterfly flapping its wings in Sydney, and creating a hurricane in Atlanta.” Really I said “Yes cause and effect”
Edward Lorenz said that it specifically refers to the idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing in March, then, by August, hurricane patterns in the Atlantic will be completely different. Here is an example of this theory:
If the butterfly in Beijing flapped its wings, it would create tiny wind patterns that would affect a passing breeze, which would, in turn, affect local wind patterns, which in turn might turn a storm slightly off course.
Since the storm’s original direction was two degrees more to the south, the storm will no longer hit a particular mountain range and dissipate. Instead, it continues in a different direction and lasts longer than it otherwise might have, which causes more weather events to happen.
I have always maintained that this very thought of making tiny adjustments, creates huge efforts. If you understand this very simple theory, then every idea you read and implement will cause some kind of effect somewhere.
Have a great week selling your stuff.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME
by Mike Brunel | Mar 20, 2018 | Leadership, Sales, Strategy
Decide your Personal Operating Procedures
In my last post, I talked about the story of Contiki, this excellent travel company born out an idea of John Anderson that provided 18-35-year-olds an avenue to see the world in the company of people their same age.
In his book “Only Two Seats Left” (link) www.onlytwoseatsleft.com John Anderson the founder lists 25 personal and business messages. These are sprinkled through the book.
I have picked out two in this post and a couple in my next post to illustrate the need for something to think about this coming year.
- Do not research an idea to death – often go with your gut feel.
This is one of the common mistakes many startups and people new to business make, they analyse until they are paralysed.
The truth is that they are paralysed with fear, and are afraid to “just do it” as Nike would say.
If there are ideas out there that you have wanted to try then make a promise that you will try.
- Specialise & be the best in the market.
You can’t be all things to everyone. Salespeople in this new economy have to find a new way of doing business you now need a good story; you need a reason to be in your market, with your opposition, that sets you apart from that opposition.
The reality is the economy is getting cleaned out- it was badly needed, and its happening, the worst employees, the worst salespeople and the worst managers are moving on.
Salespeople have to be problems solvers for their client, not their company they represent.
Our clients know and hear a sales pitch, they defend, use tactics to say no.
What they want are ideas, ways to solve their problems, just like John, who had an idea.
Have fun selling your stuff.
Mike
PS Looking for ideas to help your sales improve, contact me for a FREE 45-minute sales session.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME
