ARTICLES

Below you will find a sampling of world-class articles written by Andrew and many of these articles have been published in national sales/service magazines or featured in association newsletters around the country. These articles incorporate tips, tools and techniques on how to improve upon your own performance as well as the performance of your company.

How to Hire Sales Superstars

With the economy making a slight comeback in the first quarter of 2002, most of my recent coaching work with my sales clients has been concentrated on improving upon and/or adding to their current hiring efforts. During our calls, we have been discussing the challenges they are facing during their hiring and interviewing process for sales professionals. A re-occurring theme was their lack of formal training in their interviewing/hiring skills. Let's face it...if you don't interview for a living, like a recruiter does, then it's easy to become "atrophied" in this process. In addition, if you don't have time to practice your interviewing skills, then you will continue to make hiring mistakes. Let me pose a question to you...can you afford to continue to make hiring mistakes? Have you calculated what it costs to hire a replacement, especially in this job market?

Here are some of the common mistakes that are made by sales/service interviewers:

1. The expression, "First rate people hire first rate people and second rate people hire third rate people" should say it all. The insecurities or confidence of the interviewer will show in their hiring process, especially if the position is within their own department.
2. Not having a formal job description. The only way you can "expect what you inspect" is to set the expectations with a written job description. This allows each person to know what is expected of him or her and creates personal accountability.
3. An inadequate screening process. Utilize a telephone screening process before bringing a candidate in for an in-person interview. Your time is valuable. By using a formalized telephone questionnaire, this will give you a "snapshot" of the foundation of each candidate.
4. Brush up on your in-person interviewing skills and the types of questions you will want to ask. Do you have a written list of questions to ask each sales/service candidate?
5. Not utilizing a second opinion. If you feel you have a strong candidate, ask one of your managers or a top sales/service professional to meet with the candidate for a "mini" interview. This gives you a second set of eyes and eliminates the "halo" effect. The "halo" effect is when you are "blinded" during the interview process when the person reminds you of yourself.
6. Not checking references thoroughly. When I ask my sales/service coaching clients, "who does their reference checks," some of them have said their assistants do the reference checks. OUCH! If you are being held accountable for your hiring decisions, then you need to be the one who does your own reference checks. Your assistant may miss some crucial information that could save you a big headache down the road.

By implementing these six key areas in your hiring and interviewing process you will eliminate the chances of making a bad hire. Remember.... hire the "right" sales professional the "first" time.

TPP Tip: Before you conduct a telephone interview, know what you're looking for in each sales/service position that you're hiring for. If the candidate sounds strong on the telephone, immediately set up an in-person interview. Don't let them get away. In addition, do your homework before the candidate comes in, by reviewing their resume and making notes about the questions you may want to ask, aside from your prepared list of formal questions. Most importantly, take the interviewing process very seriously, because the success of your sales company and your career depends on it!

Tis The Season Of Budgets

As a sales/service professional, it will soon be the time of year when you begin to gear up for one of the most important fiduciary responsibilities you have. preparing your new budget. Since most sales companies begin their budget process during the third quarter, I thought the timing for this article would be perfect.

Over the years, when developing my own company budgets and while working with my current sales/service coaching clients on developing theirs, time is always an obstacle. What I mean is that we often do not have enough upfront budget prep time because of daily work-load, and this means we end up "rushing" through the budget process which increases the possibility of error, which never ends being in your favor. Your budget is like the "play book" of a professional football team, where lack of preparation shows on the playing field.

So.let's do a budget check-up to make sure you'll have a head start and an effective budget to help you reach and exceed your occupancy and revenue goals:

1. Have your teams pull their budget file and notes from last year's budget folders. Now, review this information to get a "feel" of what and how you and your team were thinking when preparing last year's budget. Will you think differently for this year's budget versus last?
   
2. Pull a current year-to-date financial statement with all expense/revenue lines broken down separately and take the temperature of your current financial situation. What shape are you in going into the next year? What trends could affect you?
   
3. Calculate your staffing and sales/marketing needs, your revenue/renewal targets and your projected expense items. Remember, your budget needs and wants are two different things.
   
4. I recommended you have your budget worksheets on an excel spreadsheet to make for easy calculating. Also make sure those working with you on the budgeting process make copious notes about their budget calculations so justifying each budgeted line items will be easier. In addition, base this year's numbers from the ground up and not from last year's numbers.
   
5. Compare last year's budget to this year's new proposed budget looking for big variances or "red flags" and discuss those with your multi-housing team.
   
6. Lastly, after your budgets have been approved, place the final budgets into a three-ring binder so your team will have a working budget to operate with throughout the year which builds accountability into your budget forecasting. This means, reviewing their budgets monthly helps them keep on top of their budget performance.

The key to building a successful budget is to get an early start so your time and great thinking/planning can go into this process.

TPPTip: Pull together a budget meeting over a working lunch and get your action plan put together with timelines in place for each task/responsibility for getting the budget completed. Assign specific duties for people and get busy. Have a quick weekly meeting to see the progress everyone is making. To reduce the stress, maybe award a prize for the first team who get their budgets completed on time and correctly. Good luck till next month.

Leading By Example

I recently finished a seminar for a sales/service company on "Leading With Vision In A Challenging Market". This well attended seminar consisted of owners, executive managers, plus regional and local sales managers. During this seminar, we asked the group to identify their challenges as leaders and their responses included how to create new ways to motivate their people, hiring and keeping SuperStars, to developing effective and accountable budgets and creating profitable marketing strategies.

As a group, we discussed, in depth, what are the top qualities of an effective leader, especially with the challenges they and other sales/service leaders around the country face today. One of the qualities we identified was "leading by example". This is such a critical quality because for you to motivate and inspire your team, you need to lead your team by the results of your actions, not just your words. Let's face it, if you don't "walk the talk", then no respect is created between you and your team. And without respect, you can not inspire your team.you can only make demands of your team.

So, what is it you need to motivate and inspire your teams to accomplish? To start with, how about exceeding their aggressive budgets with enthusiasm, having them carry out your company vision with pride or providing "world-class" service to your customers with a smile, just to name a few. These areas, as you know, are critical in the proper execution of your sales/service company's success. Therefore, it is important you realize the impact that your leadership has, with respect to the examples that you demonstrate to your teams.

Think about it. Every action you take is being observed by your team. Whether it's an employee discipline issue or handling a customer problem, your team watches how you act and react to every situation. I like to call it "being on video". Your team constantly has a mental video on you and fortunately or unfortunately, they will play that video back at their convenience. What will your leadership video look like? What will it say about you and the examples you set? Remember, "The speed of the leader, is speed of the team".

TPPTip: Start right now by putting together your leadership action plan, schedule visits to your other locations or just drop down to the sales floor. But don't just make them a quick "walk-thru". Visit and sit with your sales/service professionals. Ask them how you can help them be more successful. What tools do they need to exceed their budget for the next twelve months? And while you're there, why not meet with a few customers or maybe even give a sales presentation to a prospect. Now that's a powerful way to build trust and confidence with your team while leading by example. Good luck till next month.

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