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Our Perception on Sales
By Ken Sundheim - President KAS Placement, LLC
Introduction
The only reason our sales recruiters are in business is because good sales people are hard to find and, I will be one of the first people to be honest with our clients and tell them we don’t perform magic. The hard part of this business is not finding and staffing the applicants, it is choosing whom to work with as our sales recruiters get many calls from disgruntled companies who were just ripped off for nearly $30,000. I will never allow my staffing agency to run under these morals, and if the other recruiters do so, it just may take our sales recruiters a few more minutes to gain the client's trust. However, as our sales recruitment firms have seen, this means more repeat business.
There are many different sales styles that have been formulated by sales professionals throughout the years. Nowadays, if you were to Google the keywords “sales styles,” pages of companies who run various sales training courses would come up. When our sales recruiting firms checked, there were well over 100. No matter how you slice it, sales exists in the corporate world for one reason and one reason only – so that companies can leverage people to sell their product or service and make them money. This is no different than the reason a dentist exists is to clean teeth or an accountant exists to keep track of profit and loss.
Our sales recruiting firms are only in business because finding good salespeople is difficult. Some would disagree, but sales can only be taught to a certain extent. If an individual does not want to be in sales, they will not be successful in the field. Sales people have a different mindset. Our sales recruiting firms understand that part of being a successful salesperson is having the mindset of an entrepreneur. Good sales representatives love waking up in the morning and not knowing how much money they can make (or lose).
A true sales representative will love to deal with people . This is something that you cannot fake; people try to, but most people who are buying a product from them will see right through it. I am in recruiting, but I’m mainly in sales. Our sales recruiting firms have dedicated searchers and industry research experts, but I am the one who speaks with and interviews everyone. Part of this is sales, as recruiting is essentially selling. Instead of selling servers, media, software or telecommunications, I sell jobs to people. What makes me good at what I do is the fact that I truly enjoy most people. Since starting our sales recruitment firms when I graduated college in 2004, I’ve seen some sales techniques that I truly like. In this article, both I and our media sales recruiters will break down some of them.
Enjoy,
Ken Sundheim – President KAS Placement.
Good salespeople work hard
Every salesperson wants to make money, however not every salesperson is willing to work hard enough to do it
The sales recruiting firms at KAS Placement works with companies who are paying salaries upwards of a hundred thousand as well as companies who are paying salaries that are far more modest. Over the years, I have noticed a common trait that all sales representatives who get paid top dollar possess; they all have a highly disciplined and ambitious work ethic. Contrary to popular belief, our media sales recruiters will be the first to attest to the fact that the sales business takes a lot of work and a lot of hustle; our sales recruiters like it when we hear from an applicant first thing in the morning it shows interest and ambition. Regardless of what time you wake up, if you don’t go after a certain account with vigor, you can assure yourself that someone else will. From what our sales recruitment firms have observed, effective business development professionals are always up earlier than their competition, stay working later than their competition and will invest the time to figure out what techniques they might be able to use in order to rise above their competition.
Clients automatically recognize when a potential customer’s sales representatives are working harder than the other firms they might be considering doing business with. Every client likes to see that all of their inquiries are answered in a very timely manner and that the sales representative or account managers treat their account, no matter how big or how small, with the utmost importance. Some salespeople like to put in their eight hours a day, go home and forget about dealing with any of their prospects until the next day. This is one of the worst things a sales representative can do. All too often, sales professionals will rest on the laurels of their company. For instance, a software sales representative for a Fortune 500 firm will automatically think that they will get the account simply because of the company’s name. Unfortunately this leads to many missed opportunities.
With one exception, KAS Placement does not employ former recruiters. Thus, a large amount of my time is spent training new employees. We also recognize that we are not as big as some of the other sales recruiting firms in the business. However, this is a choice we have made. We feel that being a smaller firm simply makes us work harder and take a more innovative approach to the recruitment process. Thanks to our hard work and dedication, we often come out on top of other large firms and constantly surpass the status quo.
Good sales professionals are intelligent
The sales professionals who make it to the upper level positions are intelligent, quick on their feet and able to impress corporate decision makers upon their very first meeting with them. Our sales recruiting firms interview business development professionals for a living and have learned that the best representatives speak intelligently, are able to articulately describe their industry and past work experience and are extremely fast learners. If any of these traits are missing, our media sales recruiters,
If a sales professional is in business to business sales and selling products or services with a high price tag, our sales recruiting firms know that this person must be as good or better than the competing firms at describing their product in a clear, concise manner. Since it is the corporate buyers of a company who have the authority to sign-off on a large purchase, it is highly likely that their company holds them in high esteem. A company does not give this buying power to just anyone and the best firms in the country only promote the smartest and most effective employees. Therefore, if one of these buyers gets the sense that the person whom they are purchasing a product of service from is not too sharp, they will not risk making a mistake and putting their company at financial risk. Therefore, our sales recruiting firms always seek out candidates who are intelligent, have an entrepreneurial mindset, good business savvy and have an ability to accurately assess the risk and reward of any business situation.
A good salesperson knows that his or her time is worth money
If you spend time chasing down every lead, you’ll soon learn the definition of “opportunity cost.”
To ensure we are successful, our sales recruiting firms must pick and chose the clients whom we take on. We would rather take on five open senior media sales positions, than ten cold-calling jobs paying $25,000 yearly. If we did otherwise, we would not be where we are today.
Many clients will call our media sales recruiters, but we don’t always see a ROI by working with them. If we feel that if they are trying to find the cheapest firm, cheapest employee or have a bad business plan, they are not worth our time. For instance, if someone is having their secretary call our sales recruiters, something is wrong. We consider ourselves to be an organization that makes other companies better through finding top-notch talent. According to our sales recruiting firms, a good lead is when we directly speak with the sales manager, a marketing manager or a HR representative and the job pays market price.
The situation is really no different in sales. There are certain people or accounts that you will want to chase down and there are accounts which are going to never yield you money and not worth pursuing. When I first got into sales (I sold software throughout college), I thought that every lead we got was a gift from the Gods and these people were definitely in the market for our product. I would get very excited and feel a rush of adrenaline at the prospect of landing a deal. Typically I would ruin the account because the firm would call once and then I would proceed to bombard the company with phone calls and emails over the following months. I remember I had one solid lead with a small investment management company in Atlanta (I believe his name was Joe) and I would harass this poor guy to no end. Finally, he got together with his boss to have a web demo of my software product. I was currently in New York so we did it via Web-ex. I was so excited for this event that I stayed awake all night. All that had to happen in order to land the deal was for Joe and his boss to sign off on the product. During the demo, the product froze. Naturally, I lost the account. I do, however, remember Joe because he was a good lead and presented me with an opportunity.
Our sales recruiting firms observe this over-eagerness in many novice sales representatives. When you are just starting out, its only natural to become over zealous about every lead that comes your way. At least for me, it was extremely exciting to have a lead that may or may not have purchased my product. However, when the novices turn into experts (and not everyone makes it there), the blindfolds come off. This is why our sales staffing professionals in conjunction with our New York media sales recruiters, walk our “more green” applicants through interview process. Our media sales recruiters will additionally follow up with both the job applicant whom we placed as well as their employer to see how the recent college graduate is fairing in his first professional sales job. For young professionals upon entering the real world to be nervous is quite the norm; we all were.
So, how do you get all the information you need to know in order to see if a lead is good or bad? You might as well just ask. Good salespeople effective New York media recruiters want to determine if a lead is good, lukewarm or a waste of time. A lot of mid-tier sales representatives are afraid to ask and, thus end up working hours upon hours for a lead that has already made up their mind about working with another company. Do yourself a big favor and just ask your leads to be honest with you. Giving you a straight answer is in their best interest as well; no one wants to be harassed by a salesperson they are not planning on buying from.
Our sales recruiting firms are of the opinion that good sales professionals are not afraid of rejection and have a need to know whether this prospective client is worth their time . If they feel they are not, they will devote their time and energy to those prospects that might actually lead to revenue.
A good salesperson will never sell by chance
Selling by chance is like driving a car blindfolded
Prior to presenting a sales professional to our clients, the members of our New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Dallas sales recruiting firms and, subsequent media sales recruiters need to see the steps a business development applicant takes to get to the close. A good salesperson should have a well thought out and methodical sales process. Successful sales professionals will do a need-based analysis on each prospect before any face to face meeting. To be prepared for the in-person meetings, a salesman or saleswoman must have an idea of why the prospect wants to meet with them in the first place. A true needs analysis is done by writing down different reasons why you think a prospect would need your product or service. Then, you want to find out the reasons they would want your offering.
For instance, let’s say our New York sales recruiting firms need computers. This is a very basic need and could be fulfilled by a variety of different options. This is why you have to play into what a client wants . A good salesperson would ask what our wants are – do we want something progressive and cutting edge like Apple computers or do we “want,” to make an economical choice and go with Dell? Another way to tap into what a client might want is by asking what kind of products they already use. This might clue you in to the types of products or services they are in the market for. For instance, if a client comes to our sales recruitment firms because they need an executive level employee, off the bat, our media sales recruiters know that money for this company is not an exceedingly large object. Instead, the firm would prfer to hire somebody for cheaper One of the biggest pieces of advice in which our sales recruitment firms
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A good salesperson can figure out how to market a product
Sales without creativity is like a quarterback without an offensive line
The majority of the clients that our sales recruiting firms work with are 3,000 person or less organizations. I prefer to keep it that way. I’ll let my competitors deal with Pfizer. Our sales recruiters have worked with very large well-known companies, but the work had no passion in it. The main reason was that there was no room for creativity. To give you an industry reference, let’s say you are recruiting for Pfizer. What do you tell the candidates? Unless the scientists have happened to cure cancer, help sick children, cure AIDS or something of real substance, we don’t have a damn thing. It puts our sales recruiting firms as well as our media sales recruiters to sleep. It is the same for salespeople.
Our sales recruiting firms see it every day. The best sales representatives crave creativity. Our sales recruiting firms have a lot of clients who are very good salespeople and they all have creative minds that are constantly thinking of new innovate ways to get a leg up on their competition.
Our sales recruitment firms know that a good salesperson can look at a product and, within minutes, know how to sell it. From what our media sales recruiters have seen, this is one of the more fun parts about sales. To some, this is like when they were a child and received a new toy. To a good sales person, a product or service is a puzzle with many answers; some are good some are bad. When an effective business development professional sees a prospective product that he or she may be selling, they actively figure out how to market it and by trial and error will decipher how to properly bring it to the market.
Good sales professionals gain customer trust
A sales career is like a marathon. If you sprint for a single sale, it could ruin your reputation.
Our New York sales recruiting firms will tell you that without a doubt, the highest paid sales professionals are the ones with great contacts and industry experience. There is a big difference between mediocre sales people (we’ve all fallen victim to them one way or another) and sales professionals. Mediocre sales people will sell you up a river for a $1,000. Sales professionals will never try to shortchange you. For the most part, our New York sales recruiting firms work with executive level, vice presidential level, managerial and senior level business development professionals. At each level, the compensation package increases and so do the professional requirements. The first requirement we get from a client upon commencing a search is for the candidate to have experience selling within the industry as well as pertinent contacts.
One could read books and take college courses on ethics, however I believe Lincoln said it best, “When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.” This is the reason why our New York sales recruiting firms no longer work with mid-tier sales representatives. Time after time, when we were dealing with positions like this, our recruiters would ask for references and not get them, we would research the candidates on the web and we would find spotty backgrounds and, overall we would have to inform our client that they should not take our applicant. It was too much work for too little pay and there was a reason why these individuals were constantly bouncing around between jobs and industries.
Good salespeople tend to stay in their industry for three main reasons. First, they understand the industry and product developments. Second, they know the main players and have invested time in maintaining their contacts. Third, they have made a reputable name for themselves in their industry. As a sales recruiter, I have to do my best to be honest with every applicant whom I come across, treat them with respect and ensure that they are helped to the best of our ability. Otherwise, I risk my reputation going down the drain. Terrible ethics, bad attitudes and poor first impressions will get a sales professional chased out of any industry.
Good salespeople know when to talk and when to listen
You wouldn’t be the first one who talked their way out of a sale
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One of the worst problems which our New York sales recruiting firms come across are sales professionals who insist on talking and talking and talking. This is one of the worst things which a business development professional can do. First, when our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms purchase a product internally, we want the sales professional of the potential vendor to get to the point. First, when a sales professional tends to keep on speaking, it bores the daylights out of us. Instead of just spewing out information over information, effective sales representatives will ask questions. Then, they will proceed to answer those questions in a thoughtful, clear and concise manner. For example, let’s say you are buying a tie for a business dinner. Do you want the salesperson to tell you about their sale on slacks? Typically, the answer would be no.
So, how does a sales professional break this habit? Our media sales recruiters know that is not easy and our New York sales recruiting firms understand that it takes practice. The best exercise that a business development professional can do in order break this is to practice with every question he or she is asked. This includes the everyday inquiries you get from friends, family, even people you meet at the grocery store. I tell my applicants to do a little exercise. I take them back to the 5-th grade when their school teacher (forget mine, but sure she was great), asked the children to write their first five paragraph essay. Bare with me, this trick has helped many interviewers who have come to our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms .
Remember that she gave you a formula for the essay? Well, she did. The first paragraph began with a reiteration of the question, the second, third and forth paragraphs gave reasons why you made that argument, and finally the last paragraph gave a summation. This summation, more or less, was a repeat of the initial question. The reason that teachers all gave this same formula was because it worked and made it easy. How does this translate into sales?
During an initial phone screening or while selling to a new prospect, our New York sales recruiting firms tell the applicant to use this basic paragraph structure. Our executive headhunters have seen so many employment candidates miss the interview or sales call because they could not form a cohesive answer to the question either asked by the interviewer or potential buyer. However, our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms have seen that following this basic trick, works like a charm. Talking too much is a terrible habit for a sales professional, and to be a truly successful business development ace, you have to learn the basics. If you feel that you need to go back to this basic formula, practice it for a while and it will eventually become second nature.
Good salespeople know “closing”
Getting the contract inked is a normal flow of events in sales and experts are great at this
At our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms, we speak with and interview sales professionals for a living. Since our sales recruiters mostly work with senior, managerial, vice presidential or executive level sales professionals, we must look closely to see if the job applicant can close, and close well. Some of our sales recruiters interview sales people who don’t go in for the close (in recruiting terms – ask to get to the next step of the interview phase), despite us giving them the green light. This is a problem.
We all know that there is no one proven method to close a deal. If there was, every salesperson would be a billionaire. However, everyone else would be broke because they spent all their money. Our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms look for sales professionals who are aware of where they are in the interview process, properly gauge when our sales recruiters’ degree of receptiveness is high and know when we have a good comfort level with them. Some say this is a skill, to me it is an art. It is a very lucrative art.
Personally, I also like business development professionals who go in for the close by either getting me to commit to the next step when I’m purchasing something or flat out ask me if they can send me the paperwork. Typically, it works. Our sales recruiting firms like applicants who can do this. However, it is not the only method of closing, though as a sales recruiter, I find it to be the most effective. Conversely, if an effective salesperson is not sure about whether the prospect is going to sign-off on your product or service, he or she would want to test the water first. To test the water, a good sales person will ask whether their product or service may be of interest before finishing the pitch. The members of our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms do this all the time when speaking to applicants. It saves us a lot of time and energy that will be better spent with a more suitable candidate.
My main point here is that at some point you are going to have to close, so when the proper time presents itself, take advantage of it.
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Good salespeople know all about assumptions
If you don’t know what you’re talking about, know that you don’t know what you’re talking about
Our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms know that good sales professionals know when to listen and know when to speak. One of the worst things a sales professional can do, in the eyes of our sales recruiters, is to make assumptions about the client’s needs, the client’s business or why the client is looking at the sales representative’s products or services. Our media sales recruiters, will tell you that making a sales assumption (this applies to other professionals as well) without full knowledge is like a boxer not putting his guard up.
To give a personal example , I called Yellowpages.com today to advertise on their site. Well, the woman who was my account manager proceeded to say how many hits their site gets, how many potential hits our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms may receive, how long they’ve been around, etc. I did not care about any of these. As a matter of fact, I know enough about marketing and online advertising to know that I would probably not get one bit of business directly from my listing on their site. However, what I did want, for online media purposes, was a good link back to my site from a very reputable source. I eventually stopped her, and just asked (this is all related to search engine optimization) what the page rank was of the site I was going to be listed on. She was completely caught off guard by this question and could not give me an answer, so I thanked her a politely told her I would be taking my advertising money elsewhere.
When corporate organizations come to our media sales recruiters to hire either a media, marketing or business development professional, I have learned to listen, listen and listen some more . Trying to make assumptions is like playing darts. Sometimes, you will hit a bulls-eye and be the life of the party. Other times, the dart just falls off of the board. Personally, I only make assumptions when I am bored. For instance, about two or three times per year, our Los Angeles sales recruitment firms and our media sales recruiters will get calls from either job prospects or potential clients who seemingly missed the word “brevity,” in the third grade spelling-bee. To talk at someone and not let them answer or ask questions is the worst form of communication there is. In this case, to get down to the actual point, it is necessary to make assumptions.
Good salespeople make sales calls “low pressure”
The minute a prospect thinks they are being sold to is the minute you lose the account
During a sales call, there are two types of pressure which you can put on the prospect – comfortable or uncomfortable pressure. Buyers know the difference and, our New York sales recruiting firms believe that a truly effective sales person can feel this out as well. Now, comfortable and uncomfortable pressure varies on the situation, the people whom you’re selling to, how important the account is as well as many other variables. However, if you are to put too much pressure to sell and consistently use an aggressive sales style throughout the meeting, the time you spent with this person or company is going to turn out to be a complete wash.
From the experience of our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms , the best types of salespeople whom I come across never seem like salespeople. They are smart men and women and are very pleasant to be around. They are the types of people whom I would take money out of our New York sales recruiting firms’ budget to buy something (supposing we needed it) from them. It is my true belief that the best salespeople in the world are also the smartest sales people. Why? The reason why they are such good salespeople is that you don’t know they are salespeople. Now, some sales representatives can’t completely mask that they are sales people. This is primarily due to the fact that their business card reads, “VP of Sales.” However, even they can mask their overall agenda for two reasons which we touched on – they like people and that shines through to the buyer and are not over aggressive.
Nobody has ever hunted a dear by chasing it with a rifle. The best hunters are nearly invisible.
If you’re not a competitive person – don’t go into sales
Everyone loves the money. Only the good sales professionals love the victory just as much.
For me, there is nothing better than beating out other recruiting firms on contingency contracts . The only thing I love more is my wife, my family and my employees (and my cat Tarot, too). Since I have an ambition to become great at what I do, we do beat most firms whom we go against – both large and small, new and well established. If our team goes against them, our passion to win becomes hard to compete with. Great salespeople feel the same way. The best salespeople whom I’ve seen have expressed a feeling that they get when they lose a sale. I know the same feeling. It is hard to describe, but it has the power to entirely take you over.
I describe this feeling as one of confusion, one of defeat, similar to a feeling that you lost something which you truly cared about. You wonder, “How did this person or company beat me?” Well, who knows? On the opposite side, the lack of money does hurt, but for true sales people, the loss of money comes packaged with the pain of losing a deal . I will be the first to admit it. Both our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms and I don’t care too much for our competitors. To be blunt, I want them to be successful – just not at recruiting. Let’s call a spade a spade. The best sales people don’t want to work for a company like GE. That’s not real sales and real salesmen crave competition. You can argue with me for days, but I still stay my course.
As a matter of fact, our sales recruitment firms and our media sales recruiters was interviewing someone for an executive sales position today. His name was Robert. Robert has walked into small companies and, within weeks sold million dollar deals. This was not for name companies either. I looked at his resume and the first question I had for him was, “how did you do it?” I wasn’t asking as the head of NY and Los Angeles sales recruiting firms , I was asking because that was probably the best sales achievement I have come across. Robert barely looked up from his lunch plate as if this was a run-of-the-mill question. In one word, he said, “persistence.” Now, some employees take months to settle into a new job. Our New York sales recruiting firms know that the best sales people want to be scoring the touchdown, not calling plays from the sidelines.
Sales Advice for Recent College Graduates
Rule #1 – No matter what field of sales you are in, you can make money
Sales is a very rewarding, challenging and thought provoking career path. Although our Los Angeles sales recruitment firms and our media sales recruiters do not recruit for recent college graduates, our headhunters have some words of wisdom for the younger professionals who are looking to get into sales. First, our New York sales recruitment firms recommend that this individual write down on a piece of paper what type of sales would fit him best. Essentially, what are his interests?
Our headhunters suggest that the young sales professional sit down, get a list of various industries off the web and weigh them according to industry. What this will do is it will allow the prospective business development candidate to narrow down which jobs she should apply for. For instance, if technology turns you off, try cosmetics. If you don’t like finance, our media sales recruiters http://www.kasplacement.com/social-media-sales-recruiters.php suggest you try social media. What our New York sales recruiting firms try to instill in these individuals is that it is not the industry which is going to make you rich, it is the hard work in which you put in that will do it. Our recruiters have seen successful sales representatives make money in every industry. If you are the best at what you do, no matter what you do, you will make money.
The biggest trap in which our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms see young professionals walk into is the few thousand dollar swindle. This is when an organization tries to bait a younger sales professional with an extra $5,000 in a base salary knowing that their commission structure is too low to make any real money. Our media sales recruiters will tell you again and again, younger sales representatives have to learn that sales is not all about the base salary, it is about the potential upside, the product or service in which you will be selling, you amount you will learn from the job and the people whom you will be working with. The KAS Placement New York media sales recruiters strongly suggest that, for your first position, try your hardest to put salary aside.
Switching from a Large to Small Organization
Can be smooth as silk or as rough as sandpaper
Our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms and our media sales recruiters recruit for sales professionals within both large and small organizations. One of the most interesting pats of our business is that one minute you can find yourself speaking to the CEO of a publicly traded European software company and the next moment, you find yourself on the phone with a small start up organization which requires the services of our sales recruitment firms. Many times, our media sales recruiters see business development professionals who come from large organizations and move to smaller, less known companies experience a large culture shock. There are many reasons why.
First, large companies such as Dell have a clout with corporate decision makers which allow sales professionals to walk right in to companies in which smaller firms would have to fight for. Some could construe that working for a Microsoft, Bloomberg or Dell is more account management rather than new business acquisition. However, our New York sales recruiting firms and media sales recruiters understand that this is not always the case. Although, account representatives who work at these organizations have entire marketing teams behind them, our Los Angeles sales recruiting firms and media sales professionals have seen people who have switched flourish.
Though, this is not in the majority. When our sales recruiters see a resume of someone who sold $150,000,000 at IBM, it is typically not as impressive as someone who sold $5,000,000 at a small startup company. The reason for this logic of our New York sales recruiting firms is that the second sales man who only sold a fraction of that amount, had to hustle for every dollar. This is true sales. We’re not saying that working at IBM is not true sales, however it is a different kind of business acquisition. When you work for a Bloomberg, you are automatically put on the equivalent of the New England Patriots, when you work for a startup, you begin as a Cleveland Brown.