Tag Archives: Exceed

How Do You Accelerate the Progress of a New Sales Person? Four Pieces of Advice

Situation: A CEO recently hired a new sales person. To date, this individual has signed some good customers, but is struggling to generated sales. How patient should the CEO be with this person? How much time should be allowed to demonstrate performance? What metrics do others use to assess and incentivize sales performance?
Advice from the CEOs:
• Set 90 day targets that you expect for the individual to reach: X new accounts, Y in sales revenue, other measures as appropriate to your business. Set these targets WITH the individual, not FOR them so that the individual has ownership of the targets. Monitor the individual’s progress frequently. If the trend is below the target, ask what the individual plans to do to meet or exceed the target. Targets are best set at the time of hiring. If the individual cannot approach these numbers then it’s better to cut sooner rather than later.
• How do you differentiate the sales person from the sales talker? Set firm targets and expect to see results quickly.
• The traits that correlate with success are not traits that that salespeople develop after they are hired. They have to demonstrate these from the beginning. The hiring process must select for these traits.
• There are a number of companies that offering tool that will help identify whether candidates for a sales position possess the traits that your company deems most important. Among these is TTI – Target Training International – www.ttisi.com and Sandler Sales – www.sandler.com.

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How Do You Build an Effective Compensation Plan? Six Suggestions

Situation: A company hires and trains engineers from outside of their field. Their pay scale is typically below market for engineers in this field. Once the company trains them, these engineers are candidates for recruitment by other firms in the field that are considered premium employers. The CEO wants to address this situation. How do you build an effective compensation plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • In addition to compensation, a high-quality workplace and work experience are equally important.
  • Give the lead engineer or team compensation tied either to engineering charges or gross profit on successful projects. This can be a small percentage – but offers them a compensation upside that they are unlikely to find at another company.
  • Create a peer-recognition award like another company’s RAVE Award (Recognition, Achievement, Value, and Enthusiasm). On a regular basis – perhaps quarterly – the engineering team has the opportunity to select one of their members for this award. Components of the award may include a plaque, a free dinner or massage, or something that team members value. Ask them what they would like to see as rewards within the program.
  • A similar technique is a peer recognition box. Engineers nominate peers for recognition based on performance in a team project. At regular intervals, draw a name from the peer recognition box, with the winner receiving, for example, a gift certificate. The dollars are less important to the recipient than the recognition.
  • Focus on making the company “the place for talented engineers to work.” This can be as much a cultural situation as a place to make a great salary. The more that the company creates a fun and personally rewarding culture, the more it builds “stickiness” into the job. Ask the team for their input to shape the team and work environment.
  • Provide performance incentives for meeting quality objectives while exceeding time objectives. This beats existing cost estimates, so share some of the savings with the team working on the project.
  • Make special company celebrations a regular part of the company culture – for example, evenings out at premium restaurants and including spouses or significant others. By treating significant others well, the company creates a disincentive for the employee to leave.

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