Making A Difference Podcast

How Do We Recruit And Onboard "A" Players? A Discussion With Al Drucker

The cost of a bad hire in sales can be millions of dollars.   We can't forget the hiring and salary costs are the smallest part of our investment in sales people.  The biggest part is the opportunity costs----lost business and opportunities--- if we make the wrong choice.

Too many managers are pretty cavalier about the process, the interview someone, see if there is "chemistry," then make a hire.  Too often, they settle for what they get, not invest the time in finding the right high performers.

Al Drucker has a completely different approach.  He has a rigorous screening process---first he's very clear about what he's looking for, he builds a "competency model," against which he evaluates candidates.  He leveraged behavioral tests and assessments.  Finally, he has a rigorous interview process, invoving everyone from his assistant, presales support, other managers and sales people.  He expects people to prepare for and go through role play and presentation scenarios.  Through this rigorous process, he does everything possible to make sure he is recrutigint "A" players.

But the job doesn't stop there.  Al recognizes that even the best people will fail unless they are onboarded correctly.

Join Al Drucker and me in a fascinating discussion about what it takes to recruit and onboard "A" players.

Thanks Al for a great discussion!

Transforming The Sales Organization

Any kind of organizational transformation is hard.  But imagine tranforming your entire approach to the market.  Think of the challenges of moving fromp primarily a direct field sales structure to a hybrid structure, with heavy reliance on channel partners.

Why would you do this?

What are the challenges in making this happen?

How do you learn in the process and continually improve?

I cover this and more in my discussion with Colin McLean, Senior Vice President of North American Sales and Service Providers for Unify.

It' a fascinating discussion of transformation at a very large scale.

Dave Brock Discusses Sales Metrics On Sales Manager Playbook Podcast

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss good and bad sales metrics with the folks at Leadfuze's Sales Manager Podcast.  Most of this conversation was based on chapters on performance management and metrics in the Sales Manager Survival Guide.

The podcast originally was published here:   https://www.leadfuze.com/podcast/006-dave-brock-sales-manager-survival-guide/

This copy is provided with their permission.

Can Sales People Create Value, A Conversation With Leanne Hoagland Smith

Can sales people create value?  Leading up to this conversation, Leanne and I had been somewhat in disagreement about this topic.  As we discussed it, I think we found ourselves more in agreement than not.

Join us to hear us discuss the following:

• What is value?
• Can sales people create value?
• How do we discover what the customer values?
• How do we communicate and articulate value to the customer?
• How do we deliver value?
• How do we assess the value that customers realize?

I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.

Would You Train Your Sales People For 45 Minutes Every Day? Listen To Tory Hornsby

Would you invest 45 minutes every day in training your sales people?  That's at least 10% of their time every day!  Listen to Tory Hornsby, COO of Power Sports Marketing discuss how he invests this time every day in developing the skills of the team.

The payoff?  Over 25% growth year over year, and huge increases in sales productivity.

This is one of the most fun interviews I've done.  Tory shares his formula for success in driving the highest levels of performance from his sales teams.  It's not only the time they invest, but it's the structure of how they conduct the training meetings, the value of repetition in cementing skills, and how they get ownership within the team for the training and new skills development.

Listen to this interview, outright copy Tory's approach--but commit to the investment in developing your people for the long term.  I'm certain you'll see your results skyrocket!

 

As a separate podcast note, I'm pleased to introduce you to Chris Frascella.  Chris is our podcast manager.  He's really going to up the quality of each podcast and help me up the volume of materials we make available for podcasts.