Most people would not choose to build a house on a weak foundation. Why then do leaders risk the company’s future on an untested, inexperienced employee?

To keep them motivated?

To ensure they stay with the company?

But at what cost—to the employee, the employees who work for them and the company.

Yes, if you want to retain your top employees, you must…

• Give them a reason to stay
• Find a way to motivate them
• Reward them.

But, if you reward too much, too fast—it can be dangerous for your entire organization.

In order for companies to retain top talent and stay competitive in today’s market they are engaging in moving selected employees quickly to or through managerial levels in an organization.

5 Reasons Why This is a Dangerous Strategy for Increasing Employee Retention

1. Skills can often be learned; but experience takes time. In order to be an effective leader, your managers need to gain experience in:

• Correctly identifying and solving problems
• Framing and making good decisions
• Dealing with the myriad of people-related issues that confront every manager in every organization
• Organization course correction
• Role-based leadership

2. Many times, when your organization engages in Rapid promotions, a new manager will set a new initiative in motion and then leave the position before the impact of the initiative is realized. They are missing the day-to-day experience of interpersonal behaviors and interactions that come with any transition—the intangible. It’s these subtleties that are often missed. And it’s these subtleties and the way you handle them that hones a good leader.

3. Each managerial level brings new challenges and requires different skills and behaviors. Moving too quickly through an organization runs the risk of missing critical experiential learning. Experience is accretive and it is difficult to learn vicariously. What you learn today you use as a framework for how you behave and react tomorrow. Short changing this learning cycle can result in a leader derailing later.

4. When leaders derail because a company engaged in Rapid promotions in order to retain top talent, it creates a disastrous domino effect for the organization as a whole. We all know that the number one reason people leave a company is because of their immediate supervisor. We also know that poor decisions and poor problem solving skills can result in service and profitability deterioration for a company.

5. Rapid promotions create a winner / loser environment within the company. Unless you want to build a highly-competitive, stressful environment and internal culture that makes your employees hate Mondays because it is the start of a work week, creating winners and losers is not a good long term strategy.

Why Companies Engage in Rapid Promotions Even Though it’s Dangerous to the Health of their Organization

Companies need to grow talent internally and ensure smooth management transitions. And the reality is that some industries are disproportionally affected by talent shortages (such as healthcare) and may have no other choice than to promote an employee who is truly not ready to handle the position.

(This is a common practice for technical and clinical staff promoted to management).

So what should you do?

7 Tips for Retaining Top Talent without Hurting Your New Manager, Employees and the Company

1. Develop a succession plan for your company. This means get committed to a process or structure of internal management and talent development.

2. Identify individuals within the organization who have the potential to move into leadership positions. You should be identifying multiple candidates for each position. Don’t be afraid to take some risks in candidate identification. Not all high potential candidates initially present an outgoing and aggressive demeanor (and remember these qualities do not necessarily ensure a good manager.)

3. Provide the identified individuals with opportunities to take on additional projects to demonstrate their skills as well as their ability to learn and grow. The projects should create the opportunity for the candidates to “live” with the consequences and take responsibility for their actions and decisions.

4. Provide new managers with an internal mentor and an external coach to insure support during the transition process. This support should be for at least six months to one year. This process is referred to as: transition integration.”

5. Give all new managers a personality and job performance assessment. This is a valuable tool in identifying emerging leader attributes and potential risk areas. Now you will be able to enable early intervention and prevention and give the most effective support to the new manager. This is better than the “sink or swim” approach to learning that new managers are often thrown into.

6. Provide all candidates with self-assessment tools and learning opportunities. Do this both within the organization in the form of added responsibilities and through outside learning opportunities such as conferences and executive education programs, professional memberships.

7. Monitor your new manager’s progress (through the supervisor and mentoring and coaching support) and review your succession plan each year. Evaluate the success of the current program and the individuals in the program. Improve where necessary and identify and support new leadership candidates.

Be aware that some candidates simply may not be interested in this more protracted and performance based approach. They may feel threatened or choose to leave. That’s OK too. The risk of promoting too quickly and the derailment that could occur is not worth the harm an unprepared manager can bring to the organization.

Talent is to be developed, not anointed.

Hiring top sales people is tough. It is not easy to find top performing salespeople. The odds of hiring “A” salespeople are less than 25%. Many organizations have many more marginal, “C” salespeople.  “C” salespeople do not have the right stuff and cannot win the customers your organization really wants. If your organization keeps its poor performing “C” salespeople, they are most certainly going to cost you millions in lost sales, profits and lots of frustration.

Failure to consistently hire top sales people that are a fit for your organization results in another problem, high turnover in your salespeople. In an article in the Wall Street Journal said that turnover costs are $150,000 per sales person on average.

Good news for your organization: you can remedy these problems when you establish a proven process for hiring top salespeople. 

Here is a proven 7-step process for hiring top salespeople:

1. Determine Your Ideal Salesperson Criteria. What skills, habits, strengths, and motivations do you need? What do top salespeople who sell to your ideal customers actually do?
2. Attract Top Salespeople. The major online job sites are a good place to start. Write an ad that describes the top salesperson, their experiences and their accomplishments; you want top salespeople to say “that’s me”. For example, “You must have successfully sold services like ____… to people like____. You have earned at least _____. You are good at ___, ____, and _____. You’re looking for a company that ___, ___, and ___.”
3. Assess All Candidates. Consider letting a well validated and predictive assessment perform your first screen. Don’t look at the resumes of candidates. Many potential top performing salespeople are screened out in this manner. A good assessment not only saves time, but also delivers more qualified candidates!  A validated and predictive assessment is critical to getting more of your sales hires to be in your “A” category.

4. Qualify and Challenge.  First, by phone if possible, conduct a tough, brief interview to further qualify your sales rep candidates.
5. Interview.  This longer, if possible and recommended, in-person interview needs to challenge each candidate to confirm that they are truly qualified and a fit for your company. Have at least two people participate in this step to minimize your personal bias, and make sure they have the necessary skills to interview effectively.
6. Persuade. Here is where you go from being purposely tough on the candidate to being a top salesperson. This is now your opportunity to sell your candidate on their very important role, their potential rewards, on the organization, and on the organizations’ leadership.

Onboarding. Prepare a comprehensive plan for your new salesperson’s first 90 days. Reach beyond product training and organizational orientation and develop a Quick Start plan that includes goal setting, sales training, coaching, accountability and other actions. A well prepared and executed 90-day training plan can improve your success rate with your new “top” salespeople from over 90% to near 100%.

Assess Before the Interview
If you look at the proven seven-step process closely, you will note that the assessment takes place before the interview. You may be thinking this process can be too expensive or not result in your getting enough candidates. The truth is assessing before interviewing is actually less expensive. You will most times get up to 50% more qualified candidates, and you are EEOC compliant.

Criteria for Selecting Your Assessment

This proven process of hiring “A” salespeople solves the problems of the typical hiring process, and it relies on a well validated and predictive assessment to screen your candidates. Here are some criteria for selecting an assessment:

• Accurate: The assessment’s validity needs to be verifiable or you will lose good candidates, waste time and possibly hire a bad candidate.
• Pursue / Do Not Pursue: The assessment must provide this, so that you only interview those high potential sales candidates.
• Prepares an interview: The assessment prepares an interview based on how the candidate scored. This gives you the ability to get beyond the “pat” interview answers the candidate has taken from how to interview books and multimedia to discover potential issues.
• Identifies the candidate’s strengths/weaknesses: So you will know the candidate’s specific training needs and the likely issues to expect if you hire them.

If you do not have a consistent sales hiring process your “C” salespeople will consistently lose to better salespeople. You and they will have to discount your products or services to win. You will consistently have trouble getting the bigger, better, and more profitable customers. Your business will not be growing like you know it should.

How do I know? I’ve been there. I’ve hired “C” salespeople and been through the frustration that making the wrong hire can cause. My organization lost business I know we should have won.

The good news is this: you do not have to wonder whether a sales candidate will sell for us. You can know if a sales candidate WILL SELL! You can attract, hire and retain more “A” salespeople and you can help them be successful quickly. You can survive a tough economy; in fact, with top salespeople, you can gain market share and thrive.

Imagine your organization with top sales people: You now win the bigger, better, more profitable customers. You are not only surviving, you are prospering. If you like this picture for your business, find out how you can implement a proven sales hiring process in your business.

Think twice Before You Hire Your Competitor’s Salespeople

By

Bill Schult

Hiring salespeople from your competition may seem like a great idea, but there are many drawbacks if this is your organization’s hiring strategy.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could plant a few seeds in the ground, fertilize them, water them and a great salesperson would grow right before our very eyes.. This is truly a flight of the imagination, but it is a plan often followed by business owners and sales management in their pursuit to find great sales talent. Instead of growing their own, they try to steal from their competitors. Why not? they often think that their competitor is much better at growing a sales organization than they are. They will grab some sales talent from their competitor’s sales team and enjoy great sales success.

When do you think your competition begin building a better sales organization than your’s?

 Before you try to pick what you think are top performing salespeople from your competitors, consider these five caveats when attempting to hire your competitor’s salespeople.

Caveat #1. “Hiring your competitor’s salesperson will have him/her hitting the ground running with no training.” Some of the attraction of hiring from your competitors’ sales team is utter indolence. The thinking is, hire a salesperson from the competitor and generate instant revenue. You won’t have to train them; they already know everything. To say the least, this is flawed thinking. It is important to remember that salespeople will always need training and development regardless of who they sold for previously.

Every once in a while, you will get lucky and hire a rainmaker. More times than not, this approach is a formula for a making a bad hiring decision. Here’s something to think about. What level of salesperson do you actually think are available from your competitors? Seldom is it their top performers. Most times it’s the bottom 20% that your competitor is probably very happy to see leave.

Caveat #2. “Our industry is so involved that we have to hire salespeople from within it.” How true can this be? No salesperson was born mastering your industry, not even you. You were taught it and learned it like everyone else. If you honestly feel that industry experience is the uppermost requirement, be prepared for another major challenge. There are only so many people in your industry and very few that you will consider hiring. At some point, your talent pool will dry up.

Salespeople need to have a particular level of knowledge to successfully sell in a given industry. Your goal is to determine what they need to know to be effective and develop training tools to get them up to speed promptly. Identify resources within your organization that will help them with their questions. Test their knowledge retention along the way to make sure they are getting it.

Caveat #3. “They’re going to bring a big book of business to our organization.” Before you buy into this fantasy, consider these arguments. First, despite what they tell you, it is very difficult to  actually move clients. The hassle of change is not one that is easily addressed with clients. It is uncommon to find a salesperson who is so influential that he/she can overcome this dilemma.

It is important to note that the salesperson doesn’t own the clients; their employer does. While most non-competes don’t hold up in court, client list protection does. And, you can put your organization at risk in this tricky situation. Do you actually want to have that sticky situation?

Don’t think for a minute that the salesperson you hire today will retire with your organization. They will leave you some day, just like they left their former employer. Think about your salesperson attempting to take your clients with them when they go. It doesn’t feel very ethical, does it? And, it’s the wrong reasoning to use when hiring a salesperson.

Caveat #4. “We’re a smaller firm and we could surely use a salesperson who comes from a large competitor.” This argument can be true if your organization and your large competitor are identical twins. A match between your company and the candidate is necessary to put together a long-lasting sales marriage.

The problem with the above caveat is that it assumes there is a complete sales culture match. Every sales organization is different, even within the same industry. Your large competitor may have lots of sales support for prospecting and presentations, while your company places the entire responsibility on the salesperson. The salesperson at your competitor may have great name recognition in the marketplace while you do not. Accordingly, a different skill set will be needed to get in the door with prospects. The list goes on and on.

The key is to develop a profile of your ideal sales candidate with the required and desired attributes; then recruit, interview and use validated assessments to ensure you are hiring the best qualified candidates.

Caveat #5. “Since they have been in our industry, they are enthusiastic about it, and enthusiasm sells.” Without a doubt enthusiasm sells, but it’s a wrong assumption that these salespeople come to your organization with enthusiasm. Salespeople who bounce from organization to organization in an industry become “run of the mill salespeople.”

Years ago, I had a salesperson on my team who had sold for severalof our competitors before we liberated him. I made sales call with him, and the calls were interesting to say the least. He could have had any of his former employer’s business cards in his hand, or ours for that matter, and everything he said would have been accurate. The problem, with him was that there was no enthusiam for anything in his presentations. It was all generic information that failed to trigger any excitement in the prospect.

The key is develop a profile of your ideal sales candidate with the required and desired attributes; then recruit, interview and use validated assessments to ensure you are hiring the best qualified candidates.

These steps will help you find the right sales talent for your team regardless if they worked for your competition or not.

To learn how you can hire more top performing salespeople please call us at: 800-416-9570/651-452-8256 or email us at: info@maximumpotential.com we’ll be pleased to talk with you.

Negotiating with the Four DISC Styles

By

Bill Schult CBA, CBMA

Here are some tips on how each of the DISC styles approach the business of negotiations.

When we work with others we are often called upon to negotiate with them. Projects get done faster when we understand the keys to successful negotiation with the different DISC based styles.

How do we negotiate successfully with each of the DISC styles?

You will find some helpful hints on this topic in the next four paragraphs. You have my permission to use this information in your coaching and workshops.

DISC Styles and Negotiation

Understanding a person's Primary or basic style can be quite helpful in the negotiating process. Each behavioral style has a preferred method when it comes to negotiating. By developing a better understanding of each behavior's negotiating style more sales can be made, problems resolved and relationships can be maintained at a higher level.

Dominants

The High Dominant style is a tough negotiator. This style wants to be in control and project his or her authority. Dominants will want to take charge of the negotiating process and control it from beginning to end. When in negotiations with this behavioral style it is important to remember that any outward attempt to challenge or control the High Dominant will most often result in failed negotiations. This style will respond best when they are given suggestions, rather than the here is what we are going to do, take it or leave it approach. The High Dominant will most times tell you they are leaving it. Options work much better than opinions with the High Dominant. Let the High Dominant know you are open to an alternative approach. This can often result in their being more receptive to your offer, as they don't feel cornered or boxed in.

Influencers

One of the most important things you can do when in negotiations with the High Influencer is make an extra effort to build a positive relationship with them. They look for and want positive relationships in their business and personal lives. The High Influencer will be more open to look at new or unique negotiating solutions if they feel they have a personal connection with the person doing the negotiating. Attempting to negotiate with this behavioral style using confrontation will almost always be received negatively. Winning in negotiations with the High Influencer can be accomplished by sharing how your recommendations or proposals have provided positive results for other customers and clients.

Steadiness

The High Steadiness behavioral style tends to be more willing to agree and compromise than each of the other three styles. This style will make every effort to avoid confrontation or conflict in the negotiating process, as they do in other parts of their lives. The High Steadiness's main focus is the relationship. They will often consider any offer and even accept a negotiated compromise that would be unacceptable to the other styles to maintain a relationship. This style does not respond well to pressure and will not make a commitment quickly, rather they will need time to consider your negotiating offer before making a decision. Do not leave a negotiating session with the High Steadiness without an appointment or time set for your follow-up meeting. Their way of not accepting an offer is to be too busy to see you when you call for a follow-up meeting.

Compliants

Negotiating with the High Compliant can be frustrating and intimidating. This style negotiates based on facts, data, information and proof. They want to know that they have all the specific details involved in the negotiations, so they can make an informed decision. The High Compliant will advance the negotiations into areas the other three styles haven't thought about or even considered. You will be wise to say what you mean and mean what you say in your negotiations with them. Plan to invest a fair amount of time answering their questions. This style will ask many questions, perhaps more than you think you can answer. Be patient, they want to be certain they are making the best negotiating decision possible and not unlike the High Steadiness will need time to reach a firm decision.

Failure is an Expensive Option

By

Bill Schult CBA, CBMA

Hiring A Players for your organization can result in a financial gain of 10 to 100 times their annual compensation.

To determine the tremendous financial impact of moving employees from your bottom half into your top half, consider creating three categories – Your Best, Your Second Best and finally the Not So Good. By conducting this exercise you will have created three categories of the same size.

Your Best, which comprise the top third, are those employees who are the bedrock of your organization. These people are the hard workers, who go beyond what is expected, who produce high quality results every time. These are the employees who need little direction, are team players, getting along well with everyone. It is these same employees who are often on a fast track for promotions. It is difficult to hire these high quality, top performing employees if your hiring process is flawed.

Your Second Best, are those employees who can get the work done with some direction, work well, for the most part, with others, are technically strong, work to get the job done in a crisis and often get promoted if there is no one else who is better qualified. Most times they will not be the first person considered for the promotion.

The Not So Good are those employees who just never seem to be a fit with the organization. It could be that they are in the wrong job, or they need additional coaching and mentoring to produce average results. These employees seem to be a magnet for conflict with other team members. These Not So Good employees are most times hired because they have interviewed well, come across as friendly and enthusiastic and look to have the necessary experience. For many organizations this group represents, at a minimum, one third of their entire employee count and this becomes a huge problem.

Hiring managers and HR personnel said that when the Second Best and Not So Good employees were hired, they appeared to have all the requisite qualifications. Yes, they had the right degree, the right skills and experience. However, something seemed to go wrong after the hire that led to their underperformance on the job and ultimate termination. Most times the inability to perform the job at a high level was the result of the employee not having the right behaviors and/or competencies necessary for successful long term job success. This translates into under performance on the job, little or no interest in the job, strained relationships with their manager, few team skills, poor work habits and a cultural misfit for the organization.

The expense of hiring Not So Good employees is huge. A method to calculate this expense is to look at what is termed the Average Profit Per Employee. For demonstration purposes, let's assume that the average profit per employee is $100,000. Remember that this example does not take into account the differences in jobs and salaries, but we can still make a good point.

Now consider that your Best performing employees produce at an average of 20% more than your Second Best or middle category, resulting in average profit per employee of $120,000.

Next, assume your Not So Good employees are 20% less productive than your Second Best, this means they will produce an average per employee profit of $80,000. This is $40,000 less than the average per employee profit your Best employee category delivered.

This means that for each Not So Good employee you replace with a Best employee, your organization would make an additional profit of $40,000. If this were your organization, you would realize an additional profit of $400,000 for 10 employees and $4 million by replacing 100 Not So Good employees.

Looking at the results of our demonstration, it is quite easy to endorse the implementation of hiring only candidates who fit the top third category. Making this happen will not or is not an easy strategy to execute. There is no rabbit's hat to pull the Best performers from, no magic bullet that will make it easy to begin hiring more top performers.

You need to know that the Best category of employees looks for jobs in a different manner than the other two categories. This category of employee will often learn about new job openings from a referral from a friend, neighbor or networking with other top performers. So, if your organization has made a decision to hire more Best performing employees, it would be a good business decision to concentrate your recruiting and hiring efforts in the above areas and rely less on job boards for your job candidates.

Should you want to continue using job sites to get additional job candidates it would make great sense to write a number of ads you think will appeal to the Best category of job candidates. Include such areas as potential for career advancement, opportunity to meet new challenges and to have an immediate impact on the organization's success. See which ad consistently attracts the candidates who become your Best performers.

The Best category of employees is typically looking to build a career and this may well be the main reason for their delivering top performance on a consistent basis. These candidates are in search of more information and the need to ask more questions in the hiring process in their quest to find a career. Their needs are in stark contrast to the Not So Good candidates who are simply looking for a job with a paycheck.

So, your organization needs to be mindful not to rush into job postings that are quite frankly, boring. Hiring the Best category of employees is more than just job postings, the interview or interviews. Take some time; build a solid hiring system that gives the Best category candidates a process that will allow them to prove they are a Best candidate.

Most hiring mistakes occur when we use only interviews to make our hiring decision. Yes, I know that structured, behavioral based interviews are all the rage in HR circles, but no one is talking about how candidates prepare for these interviews. You may not want to believe me, but the candidates often go the book stores for books like, "The 100 Best Answers to the 100 Toughest Interview Questions in their attempt to win you over and get the job.

What are you to do? Use an assessment like 51% of the successful, top performing organizations are doing during their hiring process. Compare your candidates to a validated and predictive success profile or use a well-developed competency model to help you determine if the candidate has the potential to be in the Best category of employee for your organization.

A well designed, validated assessment provides the most objective look you will get for every job candidate during your hiring process. Everything else is subjective and when you are investing tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands in salaries and benefits for each employee in your organization, it is important to bring some objectivity to your hiring process.

You and your organization should make hiring into your Best category a goal for every department. You must do this if you desire to increase the talent within your organization, while increasing your Return on Investment per employee.