Your weekly disruption
Your weekly thought-provoking exploration into building disruptive capabilities.
Recruiting In The Sales Game
Over the past two weeks we have looked at getting the right people on the bus & recruiting in the sales game which are the first two stages on getting the right people on the bus. Today we are going to delve into the last stage and that is starting your new recruit.
Hire Slow, Fire Fast. The best leaders have a completely different attitude to recruitment. Instead of seeing it as a chore, they see it as an opportunity to develop and grow their team. Instead of treating recruitment as a one-off activity, they see it as an ongoing process that is central to their competitive advantage. Instead of delegating key components to third parties, they realize that recruitment is too critical to outsource, and develop their own internal capabilities. Instead of taking a short-term tactical view, they take a long-term strategic view.
When we look at the stage of ‘starting your new recruit’ there are three steps: induction, training & review.
Many companies have a sink or swim attitude with new employees and induction is often an afterthought. Companies that take this approach can find that new recruits sink rather than swim, and never really live up to expectations. On the flip side, companies that have developed a proper induction process get their new recruits off on the right foot. New recruits get up to speed quicker, and progress faster.
Training and induction go hand in hand. However training doesn’t finish after the first 90 days is up. For the purposes of the recruitment process, training involves basic training, intermediate training and advanced training.
Basic training is all about teaching the new recruit everything they need to know in order to do the basics of their job. This involves teaching them your sales process, showing them how to use your sales tools, and training them on your product. Intermediate training involves developing the core sales skills of your people. Advanced training will typically happen at a much later date for most salespeople, and is designed to turn your professionals into “Super-Pros” and “World Champs”.
The review process mirrors the induction process. Where the induction process maps out their first week, month and quarter, the review process determines how the new recruit is progressing each week, month, quarter and beyond. The review process outlines where you want the new recruit to be at the end of each time period and measures how they are progressing against expectation.
Of course if you follow this process and the new recruit is falling short of your expectations you may decide not to keep them on after 90 days. One of our biggest mistakes that sales managers and business leaders make is not following an effective review process, resulting in the company-keeping people that they would rather let go. They either have no legal grounds for terminating their employment, or they have no real idea of where the new recruit should be at the end of the 90 days and must give them the benefit of the doubt.
The top down approach treats sales training as a one-off isolated event, akin to getting your first aid certificate. With the top down approach, managers send their sales team off to a sales training course assuming that if they know what to do and learn the theory, they will perform better (i.e. they will improve their skills and perform the right actions). This assumption often leads to disappointment and lacklustre results.
In the Sales Game, training is seen as a process and not an event. It recognizes that training must evolve from the old school lecture style approach to the new school flipped classroom approach.
Traditional forms of training are information-based and rich on theory. Students sit in a lecture style classroom setting and attempt to absorb as much information as possible in the time available. Often, the information is extremely valuable and the student learns some great insights on how to grow their sales. They leave the training with lots of great ideas and good intentions (and a 10-point action plan). From the manager’s point of view, the training has been a success.
If you want your Sales team to Gamify it’s performance please contact us at http://www.superiorsales.com.au/contact-us/
Next week we are going to delve deeper into the elements of Creating The Game.
If you are looking at running a Sales Game workshop either email Mark at mark.truelson@superiorsales.com.au OR dig for more information at http://www.superiorsales.com.au/storytelling/workshops/
At Superior Sales we build programmes leveraging all the core drivers of capability – organisation, people, process and culture, not just skills. Refer to our white paper at http://www.superiorsales.com.au/storytelling/whitepaper/
At Superior Sales our capability experts work extensively with companies to equip sales teams, and indeed the whole organisation, to deliver a better customer experience. Please get in touch at http://www.superiorsales.com.au/contact-us/
Happy Weekend!
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