The Ideal Candidate
Section 1: Certification/Assessment CriteriaSection 2: Session Content
Session OverviewThe Three Levels of Performance
Top Performers – Do It!
What Do They Need?
What Do They Need? – Do It!
The Importance of the Ideal Candidate
Who is an Ideal Candidate?
The Ideal Candidate Worksheet – Do It!
Fine Tuning Your Ideal Candidate Profile – Do It!
Analyze Your Current Sales Team – Do It!
The Middle 60% Analysis – Do It!
Top 20% Analysis – Do It!
Put It All Together – Do It!
In Summary
Section 3: Facilitation Meeting Application Questions
Section 1: Certification/Assessment Criteria
/ The Certification is the focal point of your learning experience. At the Certification, you will be expected to demonstrate proficiency using the knowledge gained from your completion of the Assignments and Activities in the Guide.
Each Session begins with the Session Assessment questions. The Session Assessment questions focus on the key learning points or objectives for that Session. Taken together, the Session Assessment questions form the Certification.
Certification/Assessment Criteria
1. Ideal Candidate
At the Certification, the learner must be able to:
1. Discuss the three levels of performance and the traits associated with each level.2. Discuss the managerial support that each level needs and the appropriate allocation of resources.
3. Explain the traits you look for in an ideal candidate for your agency. Why do you choose these traits?
4. Discuss a personal example in which a mis-hire has cost the agency time, money or resources.
Section 2: Session Content
The Key to Success
Any successful coach will tell you that the key to success is great players.
Whether you like them or not, the New York Yankees have been able to put together a culture of success.
Do they win every year? No! But over the long haul they have done very well.
And so it is with any business; if you want to be a successful sales manager, it would be a good idea to find your self some great players.
As a sales person, the key to success is prospecting, in sales management, it is recruiting.
In your agency, there are many performance levels among your employees. Some employees are self-directed and entrepreneurial while others are unproductive and inefficient.
In this session, we will discuss the traits of all performance levels as well as the support needed from staff and management to develop strengths and weaknesses.
We will also discuss the negative ramifications of hiring people who are not suited for our profession or for your agency.
Conversely, what are the traits of the ideal candidate for your agency? What characteristics should you be looking for when you decide on a new hire?
These decisions and selections will have a powerful effect on the long-term growth of your agency and your business.
Session Overview /
Learning Objectives
When you complete this session, you will be able to:
Ø Define the characteristics of a top performing salesperson
Ø Describe your ideal candidate for your agency
Ø Analyze your current sales team and compare them to you Ideal Candidate Profile.
Supplemental Reading
Top Grading by Bradford Smart http://www.smarttopgrading.com/topgradingonline/
After studying literally thousands of successful and failed careers, and over one hundred successful and failed companies, one overriding factor emerges – talent. Human capital. The single most important driver of organizations performance and individual managerial success is talent. The ability to actually do what every company and every manager professes to do – hire the best – is what distinguishes premier companies from mediocre firms, successful versus ordinary careers. The vast majority of organizations and managers simply can’t figure out how to overcome the many obstacles to packing their team with “A” players. Topgrading shows how companies and individuals gain and hold that talent edge.
The Three Levels of Performance /The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 Rule (The Pareto Principle) applies to almost everything. It is particularly true with a sales organization.
Twenty percent of your sales team will produce eighty percent of your business. Theoretically, if you can identify the characteristics of the top 20%, you should be able to create your ideal recruit.
Sound simple, but the reality is that very few sales organizations have all “A” players.
Finding them is difficult, attracting them is even harder and keeping them may be the most difficult of all.
So here is our challenge – to find, attract and retain the best people in the business.
We have to start at the beginning by asking this question: “What does the ideal sales person look like?” Let’s explore a few possibilities.
Initiative, Preparation and Control Define a Top Performer
We are told that top performers consist of 20% of the sales force.In the sales context they share important commonalities.
Top performers have many of the same characteristics of successful small business owners – both of whom operate as if they were straight commissioned salespeople.
The Three Levels of Performance /
They attain consistently high levels of activity from day one.
Activity includes number of calls made, appointments made and kept, and number of proposals generated. This high level of activity persists from year to year.
As they mature in their jobs, they fine tune their skills and knowledge, move into better, more sophisticated markets, get direct referrals to decision makers, and build up their clientele without changing their level of activity that was high from day one.
Top performers are fundamentalists.
They learn the basic skills, constantly refine these skills, and are always prepared to perform.
That does not mean they are inauthentic or phony. It means they are skilled and prepared, which gives them ample room to be authentic because the skills are “in their bones.”
Because of their skills, they are better equipped to listen, assess the needs of their prospects/clients and respond with solutions so that the prospects/clients will take action.
Top performers exhibit initiative, preparation, and control and represent about 20% of the productive sales force.
Top performers exhibit initiative, preparation, and control.
During training, they use initiative to be in control, to succeed regardless of environment, to succeed regardless of the context of the program, or other people.
Top performers do not wait to be shown what to do; they aggressively seek out best practices and processes. Their initiative enables them to “control the controllables.”
Preparation means drilling and rehearsing until they are prepared. They don’t wait for prompting from the director.
Just Think About It!
If all your people had the above characteristics:
· How much time would you need to spend with them?· How long would their learning curve be?
· How high could their production go?
· How motivating would it be for you to go to work everyday?
Characteristics of the Middle 60%
It would be very easy to just stop here and say ok lets’ just focus on these top performers, but the reality is that you have, and will continue to have, sales people around you who do not have all of the characteristics of the Top 20%, or at least have not developed to that point – yet.Let’s look at a few issues that make working with the middle group a little more arduous than the top group.
Time Commitment
They take up more of your time.“The stars win the ballgame, the subs take all your time.”
This middle group has greater inconsistency in initiative, preparation and control; some start slowly, some start quickly and subside, some have spurts of activity.
· They are more dependent on the “end of the year sale” to qualify for various honors.· They have wider swings in year-to-year production results as compared to top performers.
· They are more diverse than the top performers regarding the range of development needs. Some need more sales skills training, some need to improve their technical knowledge, and some need to work on their business-owner mentality. They need to perform as if they were running their own business.
· They require more supervision and management time to get prepared to present to their prospects and succeed in their careers.
Just Think About It!
You get the picture. But let’s think it through anyway and answer the same questions we asked above about the Top 20% and see how much different your answers are about the 60%...· How much time would you need to spend with them?
· How long would their learning curve be?
· How high could their production go?
· How motivating would it be for you to go to work everyday?
As Columbo, the television character, would say … “”one more thing”…
What would the profitability of this group be as compared to the Top 20%... after covering their expenses – office space, telephone costs, fringe benefits, secretarial support and your time as well as the support of others?
The Three Levels of Performance /
Characteristics of the Bottom 20%
Now let’s take a look at the bottom group. Somebody has to be at the bottom of the list. But wouldn’t it be nice if the bottom person on your depth chart was hitting .300?Here is how the bottom group behaves:
The Bottom 20% complain a lot and produce below minimum standards, meaning their results do not cover their expenses.
· They generate marginal to poor activity from the beginning.
· They tend to say the new product is uncompetitive, the new marketing program will fail and the economy is a disaster. They complain and ask for a better compensation program or better marketing support.
· Very often, they are retained because managers fear losing their production, albeit unprofitable.
In comparison to the top 20%, who took initiative, were prepared and in control, the bottom 20% said, “I knew my lines, but the prospect didn’t know his.”
Just Think About It!
Think about this bottom 20%.· How much time would you need to spend with them?
· How long would their learning curve be?
· How high could their production go?
· How motivating would it be for you to go to work everyday?
And finally…
What would the profitability of this group be as compared to the Top 20%... after covering their expenses – office space, telephone costs, fringe benefits, secretarial support and your time as well as the support of others?
Top Performers - Do It!
List five common traits of current team members considered to be top performers.
1.2.
3.
4.
5.
What Do They Need? /
What Each Group Needs From Management to Improve Performance
Because of the differences just described, each group needs different training and development to take its performance to a higher level of excellence.
The Top 20% Need to Be Handled Like Successful Business Units
The Pygmalion Theory says that people rise to the level of expectations established for them. The higher the standards, the harder people will work to meet them.Typically, top performers rise to the level they have established for themselves. They don’t wait for others to set their performance standards.
Top performers need the kind of support that successful business owners need to grow their businesses and live more balanced lives.
They need business planning, the creation of a plan to fill the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. This is a unique developmental “gap” as identified by the salesperson and her manager, because top performers are by nature always refining and improving.
If the company does not address the developmental gap, it risks losing a top performer to another company that will fill the gap.
What Do They Need? /
Because of Their Diversity, the Middle 60% Need Customized Development
Since this group is diverse in its response to the required tasks, one size training and management does not fit all.
While one salesperson may need more supervision, another may need more product knowledge, another better prospecting skills.
The sales manager must determine what these needs are and how to address them.
The sales managers, to their surprise, may find that training is not the answer for some of the salespeople in the office.Key Concept
Training doesn’t solve all your problems. Training is only effective for knowledge and skill issues. Anything else requires a different solution.
What Do They Need? /The Bottom 20% Needs to be Awakened!
The Bottom 20% of your performers need the motivation to recommit at a higher level and express the willingness to be accountable for results. Without this recommitment, they will not be successful in this profession.The bottom 20% need a wake up call and sometimes, so does the manager.
Motivation may come in many forms – skills training, joint work, mentoring as well as other developmental opportunities. However, be mindful of the resources you commit and watch for a return on your investment.
The bottom 20% must either recommit at a higher level, leave excuses behind, and express willingness to be accountable for results, or be excused from their responsibilities.
Think About It!
Which of these groups do you want on your team? If you like a challenge, wouldn’t you like all your challenges to come from the top 20%
What Do They Need? /Time, Money and Profitability
If the three characteristics of top performers are: initiative, preparation and control, how does that translate into the time you must spend, the money that you have to invest, and the profitability that will be generated by each of these three groups?Initiative:
They are proactive in taking on the challenges that have to be met in order for them to succeed.
Preparation:
They will never go out on a call without being prepared to perform. They are fundamentalist. Basic skills is generally not their problem.
Control:
They want to be in control of their destiny and will take advantage of whatever support is provided that enables them to be in control