A strong post-sale engagement process is essential for companies looking to grow existing account revenue. In today’s world, the process extends beyond ensuring your customer is happy with the delivered project. It offers businesses a way to demonstrate their differentiation, reinforce their value, expand relationships, and grow profitable revenue.
Your Sales Model Dictates Responsibility
The positions within your company that are responsible for executing the post-sale process will depend on your sales model. But the consistent execution of an effective post-sale process can be critical for growing your business today and into the future.
In 2019 Deloitte Digital published a report called Experience Selling: The Future of B2B Sales, Five Steps to Transform and Deliver the Right B2B Experience describing the importance of aligning the B2B sales process with the customer’s buying journey. As defined by Deloitte, the B2B Buyer’s journey (see below) illustrates the need for B2B sellers to move beyond the transactional sale and into a role as a trusted advisor who helps solve business problems and works with customers to create continuous improvement. Many years ago, Wally Stettinius, the then-CEO of Cadmus Corporation, put it another way: “All sales reps can get you what you ask for, but only the best can sell you what you need.” Companies with direct sales reps who cannot shift to helping customers get what they need and not just what they ask for will be forced to compete primarily on their ability to make it easier for customers to buy from them transactionally.Strategies for facilitating transactions include branded web portals, eCommerce solutions, or in-house teams who can provide customers with fast pricing and streamlined ordering. You won’t need a direct sales team if this is your strategy.
When sales reps use a strong sales process, they develop a deeper understanding of the customer’s problems, the impact of those problems, and the value of fixing them for the customer. With this understanding, reps can make more valuable solution recommendations and justify them with a projected ROI. With knowledge of the customer’s current and desired state, reps can execute a post-sale engagement process focused on continuously improving both results and the processes used to generate those results. They fulfill their promise of a partnership by making the customer successful.
Evolve Sales Group Selling Process
Today, too many reps believe their value is in facilitating a project for their customer. They aren’t focused on the results the customer needs to achieve their goals. Their post-sales engagement process, if there is one, is focused on whether the customer is happy with the product or service they received. This focus doesn’t do much to differentiate them from any competitor capable of producing a similar product or delivering the same service. Reps who believe their customers perceive value in only their product knowledge and responsiveness leave themselves vulnerable to competitive reps who do those things and focus on improving customer results. Great reps position themselves as trusted advisors, a critical differentiator with B2B buyers. The Global Sales Report published by LinkedIn in 2020 found that 88% of B2B buyers only buy from sales reps they consider trusted advisors.
The Objectives of a Solid Post-Sale Engagement Process
The post-sale engagement process accomplishes the following:
Confirms the customer’s satisfaction with the product/service sold or identifies issues so they can be researched and resolved quickly.
Discusses opportunities to streamline the process for both the customer and the seller. This is critical today because of the labor shortage and a world where fewer people are expected to do more work.
Confirms the results of the project and makes recommendations to improve future outcomes.
Confirms that the buyer and her organization have realized value from the seller’s expertise and focus on improving results, and they want to continue the relationship.
Introduces insight to help the customer tackle another pressing challenge.
Determines the next steps for the customer and rep to address the next challenge, starting a new buying and selling cycle.
Confirms the customer’s satisfaction with the product/service sold or identifies issues so they can be researched and resolved quickly. Discusses opportunities to streamline the process for both the customer and the seller. This is critical today because of the labor shortage and a world where fewer people are expected to do more work. Confirms the results of the project and makes recommendations to improve future outcomes. Confirms that the buyer and her organization have realized value from the seller’s expertise and focus on improving results, and they want to continue the relationship. Introduces insight to help the customer tackle another pressing challenge. Determines the next steps for the customer and rep to address the next challenge, starting a new buying and selling cycle.
A Post-Sales Engagement Process Maintains Momentum
In today’s world, reps may have to work just as hard to get the attention of an existing customer as they do a prospect. B2B decision-makers don’t have the time for reps to “check-in” or “meet to get an update on how things are going.” A robust post-sale engagement process maintains the momentum from one project to the next. Avoiding a hard stop at the end of a project means the rep won’t have to chase the customer for the next conversation. Instead, the next sales cycle is initiated by introducing new insight during the post-sale process of the previous sale. More opportunities are uncovered early, allowing the rep to set a buying vision for their customers. A Forrester Research study of executive buyers found that 74% of their purchase decisions went to the seller who initially helped establish the customer’s buying vision.
A study by Lee Research in 2016 found that only 8% of B2B buyers claimed they were strongly satisfied with their customer experience. However, B2B companies believed 80% of their customers were very satisfied. This gap occurs when both sides need clarification about what they want from the relationship. This vast difference is likely tied to a difference in perception. Research from the Rockefeller Group found that 68% of customers leave their vendors because they don’t think they care about them. The customer defines care as “help me solve my business problems and stay with me and make me successful.” Too often, the seller’s description of care is defined as responding “quickly (getting) the customer what they asked for.” Research from Gartner suggests that getting customers what they want isn’t all that easy either. 77% of B2B buyers found their latest purchase “difficult” or “very complex.” It turns out B2B customers aren’t happy with the number of emails it takes to conduct business and get answers they would have preferred to look up online. Using a post-sale engagement process demonstrates both a commitment to improving the process of working together and the fact that the seller cares about the customer’s need for tangible results and is working hard to help them accomplish their goals.
Selling the Value of Your Process
Things are changing rapidly in the business world. Decision makers are dispersed and difficult to reach. Most organizations have open positions they can’t fill, further taxing their staff. All businesses are looking for ways to get more done with fewer people. Solutions that automate processes from manufacturing to sales are being considered by companies big and small. Your customers seek ways to eliminate manual tasks in their internal processes and with their vendor partners. Helping customers figure out what they need quickly and giving them a path to continuous improvement of both results and the processes they use to get there will resonate with decision-makers today. It will differentiate you from competitors who may still think their job is to “get what the customer asks for, fast.”. None of that matters if it doesn’t work. Your customer will not buy again if what they purchased before didn’t accomplish its objective.
Absolute satisfaction with vendors comes from the results the products/services generate for them and the ease of working together. Reps who share the post-sale process early in the sales cycle can confirm their differentiation and gain the customer’s commitment to participate fully in the post-sale engagement process. Sharing your process differentiates you from competitors who don’t have one and improves the chances of winning future business. Executing the post-sale process with every sale builds loyal customers who want to buy again.
Who is Responsible for Post-Sale Engagement?
Depending on your sales model and the services your sell, the person responsible for executing your process may vary. Typically, sales reps own the process for the customers assigned to them. For your best customers who buy high-value solutions like marketing strategy, direct mail programs, omnichannel campaigns, large environmental graphics projects, and branded portal solutions, the post-sale engagement process should include pre-arranged virtual or in-person meetings with all key stakeholders. Customer service reps may handle the post-sale process via phone for smaller accounts with less complex needs. For very large accounts buying both complex solutions and smaller projects, owners may join with sales to handle the post-sale engagement meetings with senior stakeholders, while customer service or account managers execute the process for smaller or less complex purchases.
The Future
According to Harvard Business Review, 73% of the stakeholders involved in B2B research and decision-making are millennials aged 25-39, with one-third being the sole decision maker. As baby boomers retire, this percentage will grow rapidly. Millennials are tech-savvy and have high expectations regarding technology, customer service, and the overall buying experience. They expect convenience, customization, and personalized experiences that provide them with value. Millennials have grown up in a digital world, and they seek out Amazon-like experiences in their B2B purchases. They aren’t tied to their email like their Boomer counterparts and prefer texting. They see processes that require multiple emails to research, buy and track a print project through a sales rep as tedious. In fact, according to Forrester, 44% of Millennial decision-makers want a “seller-free” experience mainly because they don’t see where the sales rep is adding any value.
As the share of Millennial decision-makers grows, companies will face many more customers who want a “seller-free” experience because they seek to streamline buying. B2B eCommerce has already eclipsed B2C digital commerce, according to Gartner. And they forecast that by 2025, 80 percent of B2B sales transactions between buyers and suppliers will occur via digital channels. These statistics mean buyers seek better ways to get what they need. They want simple transactions to be easy and direct. And when they do interact with a salesperson, they want a trusted advisor. They want someone who will help them solve problems and improve results over the long haul, not just make a sale.
Post-sale engagement is essential for businesses looking to build lasting customer relationships. The need for a dedicated post-sale engagement process will increase as more tech-savvy Millennials with high expectations for convenience, customer service, and overall buying experience enter the decision-making ranks. Businesses that invest in their overall sales process, especially their post-sale engagement process, will be rewarded with customer loyalty, increased sales, and higher margins. Aren’t those things you’d like to see now?
For help defining your post-sale engagement process or your overall sales process, reach out to [email protected] or use the contact form below.
1) How will ai tools like ChatGPT and Jasper.ai impact selling?
This is a great question. Let’s start with what these tools are, and I will let the tool give you the answer. I used Jasper.ai to generate the following content by telling it that I wanted a description of AI tools, their uses, and their benefits in a professional voice. Here’s what Jasper handed me in less than 7 seconds.
AI Tools are software programs that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate various digital tasks. They can understand, learn, and make decisions from information using data-driven algorithms. Automating mundane or complex processes can help organizations improve workplace efficiency, productivity, and accuracy. AI Tools can be used in various industries, from finance and healthcare to retail, manufacturing, and transportation. Benefits of using AI Tools include cost savings, reduced human effort, improved accuracy, faster decision-making abilities, and increased customer satisfaction.
Additionally, they can enable businesses to stay competitive by providing more insights into customer behavior and trends. With the help of AI Tools, companies can make more informed decisions and increase their competitive advantage.
AI Tools are increasingly becoming the future of business. These tools can help you create content for your website, social media, lead magnates, and prospecting emails. There are templates for everything from an Amazon product post to a blog post to a company BIO. They can help you develop strong email subject lines, business or product names, Facebook Ad headlines, Google My Business Ads, etc. One of my customers used ChatGPT to write a piece of code to help him integrate a client application into one of his. He’s an intelligent owner but doesn’t write code, so he would have had to use an inside or outside resource to help, which would have taken much longer than seconds to resolve.
The most significant impact on sales productivity from these tools will be generating prospecting emails and LinkedIn posts. Most of the reps I coach struggle with writing. Some have trouble thinking about what they want to say; some can’t write coherent sentences using correct grammar; some type in all caps – it’s a myriad of problems. AI tools will make it easier for reps to write, and that will help them prospect using email and LinkedIn.
For example, I just asked Jasper.ai to write me a cold prospecting email for direct mail. Here are my inputs:
Tell Us About the Product: Direct Mail to generate leads for small businesses.
Your Company Name/Product Name: Kate’s Printing Company
Context to Include in Email: Small businesses need ways to generate leads cost-effectively
Voice: Witty
Here is what I got back in less than 5 seconds:
Could this copy be better? Sure. But if the choice is this or nothing, this wins all day. You won’t find new customers if they don’t know you are out there.
These tools will not replace robust marketing strategies, campaign tactics, and creativity, but they can help fill in some gaps that tend to bog companies down and keep them from getting things done and growing their companies.
From the sales side, AI tools can eliminate one big excuse I hear 100 times daily from reps: “I didn’t have time to prospect or proactively reach out to my existing customers this week.”
They had the time to hit the send button. They didn’t have time to think about what they wanted to say – or so they believe – tools like this can help reps develop something to say in 7 seconds or less.
2) What’s the best compensation plan to use with a new rep?
This is a great question, but it has no simple answer. Compensation plans are as varied as the companies who use them and the reps they are supposed to motivate.
In the print industry, most companies opt for a plan that is easy to calculate because of internal systems used to track sales and the time limitations of owners. Easy doesn’t mean better, and the printing industry has suffered the implications of its choice to make it easy for years.
Alignment between the company’s growth strategy and the sales organization is critical for the success of any plan. Successful plans help reps maximize their incomes by selling the things that help the company achieve its goals.
The most common plan used is a commission rate applied to sales generated by the rep. These are often adapted to reduce commission percentages for outside purchases or discounted deals. Plans like these can be 100% commission, where the rep is only paid for what they sell, or 100% commission with a draw used to help the rep maintain their cash flow as sales ebb and flow. The draw is subtracted from any commissions earned.
The last most common plan is a salary plus a commission on sales. The salary plus commission plans often include a threshold that the rep must meet in sales before earning additional commission, which is a way of offsetting the salary paid to the rep. Some companies pay commission from dollar one sold to help motivate the rep, but the percentage is lower until the rep reaches a sales threshold that offsets their salary.
None of these plans take into consideration the goals of the company. They are just simple to implement. Because of that, the industry deals with reps who won’t prospect, accounts that lose value, and declining sales productivity.
When you design your plan, start by thinking about what you need. Do you need more clients? Do you need to grow the revenue from your existing clients? Do you need to sell higher-value services? Do you need a combination of these?
Consider your sales talent too. The best compensation plan in the world does not motivate an unmotivated rep. It will not make a rep who is missing a critical skill magically have that skill. This is most evident when companies put a new business focus on reps who are skilled account managers rather than prospectors. Even with all kinds of compensation upside for new business, an account manager is an account manager who will not prioritize landing new accounts.
The reverse can happen with a good prospector. They will go after the new business but may need more skills to onboard that client successfully and get them into a position for consistent growth. They can be less detailed oriented, and even though they are successfully landing new accounts, there is lots of chaos around those accounts which monopolizes resources, hurts profitability, and often means the new accounts don’t grow as they should.
Taking these two situations into consideration, you may need two plans. For account managers, compensation plans should be focused on account growth. Companies typically establish the baseline revenue from the year before and then pay the rep for growth either throughout the year or in a bonus at the end of the year. If paying throughout the year, I recommend paying quarterly because it makes the reconciliation process more manageable. Reconciliation is needed because reps may have grown in one quarter and have declining revenue in other quarters. An annual bonus plan based on growth is the easiest to administer for owners but may not work for reps who need to maintain consistent cash flows. If you are offering a bonus plan for this first time, an annual bonus gives the rep an upside, reduces administrative costs, and minimizes the risk of overpaying. To keep focus throughout the year, good reporting that shows the rep where they stand, where they are projected to finish, and how much money they will earn is necessary.
For Reps expected to land new accounts, I prefer a plan that pays them for new accounts for 12 months only. This way, they cannot rest on their laurels and must continue to look for new business. This is a critical skill that only some reps have; the last thing you want to do is dull the skill by removing the need to use it. Unintended consequences are common in plans like these, so clearly define what constitutes an ideal customer so you aren’t churning accounts. I like to set a threshold in sales that the account must reach to be considered a new account. Suppose your Ideal Customer does at least $10K with you annually. In that case, the rep earns a lower commission on the account until it reaches $10K and then retroactively gets the higher new account commission once the threshold is achieved. It’s a little more administration but prevents reps from being paid a higher rate on new accounts that won’t grow.
If you have a combo rep who is supposed to manage accounts and find new ones, you can adjust the commission on a declining scale. The rep may earn a 10% commission on sales from a new account for the first 12 months, and then the rate drops to 5%, for instance. As the rep’s customer list grows, you can easily find yourself in a position where the income from the base business is satisfactory, and the rep begins to lose focus on finding new accounts. Strong management practices can help with this, but once the need to find new business is gone, skills decline, and it is almost impossible to get them back.
If you have a combo rep, the plan should include a commission for bringing in new business that includes the higher commission for the first 12 months and “grow over,” which is the amount each account grows year over year. A rep can earn higher commissions for the new accounts in the first 12 months and continue to earn higher rates for account growth. The commission on the base business is reduced. This is more difficult to administer, but the commission plan is aligned with the company’s goals of growing account revenue and finding new customers.
One final plan that is getting some traction is activity-based. These are best used with inside sales and prospecting reps, typically called Sales Development Reps. For inside sales reps handling people at the counter, working with existing customers, and fielding inbound leads, adding a commission component based on outbound activity and lead follow-up can help keep the focus on proactive activities and mitigate the risk that they wait for the phone to ring.
Sales Development Reps are workhorses. They are typically responsible for anywhere from 60 touches per day to upwards of 150. An activity-based plan keeps SDRs focused on the sales activities that lead to sales. Points are earned for outbound contacts via phone, email, and LinkedIn, the number of qualified leads generated and handed off to sales, and leads closed by direct reps. The commission is based on the points the rep earns either monthly or quarterly. This requires a CRM solution like Hubspot or Salesforce, where these activities can be accurately tracked.
These are a few options, and more creative plans are being developed daily. If you want to discuss your current plan, contact [email protected] for a brainstorming session.
Question 1: I get many messages from sales reps on LinkedIn. I usually delete them. Is using LinkedIn necessary for salespeople today?
Using LinkedIn correctly is necessary. Using it incorrectly, like those reps reaching out to you, is not.
According to LinkedIn Research, 82% of B2B buyers review a rep’s LinkedIn profile before replying to outreach efforts. If your reps are calling on senior B2B buyers, those buyers are looking at their profiles. They will not waste their time if they don’t see a reason to engage.
An IDC Study, Social Buying Meets Social Selling: How Trusted Networks Improve the Purchase, notes that 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives use social media when making purchase decisions. We Are Social’s Digital 2020 October Global Statshot report found that 30.7% of B2B decision-makers saw social media as “very influential” when researching products and services.
Engage Potential Buyers Early in Their Buying Journey
Key B2B stakeholders seek ideas that can help improve their organizations. They need perspective to help them identify those ideas. When professional sellers post on relevant topics and make their audience think about new ways to tackle tough objectives, they plant seeds that grow into leads and qualified opportunities.
When B2B stakeholders determine what they want to buy, advertising helps them locate potential suppliers, and price plays an important role in decision-making. If that’s your model, I recommend considering an inside sales rep or team to handle inbound leads and investing in more marketing and advertising to drive inquiries.
If you have a direct rep or team and expect them to find new business and grow existing accounts, they will need to engage stakeholders before they know what they want, help them define their problems, and advise them on ways your products and services can help them improve their organization. Besides phone and email, LinkedIn offers reps another channel for outreach, but its most crucial role is positioning your company and reps as trusted advisors.
Demonstrate Expertise and Insight
Rep profiles must demonstrate expertise and insight to draw the attention of B2B Buyers early in their buying journey. Too many reps in the printing industry don’t give decision-makers and influencers a reason to want to talk to them. I’ve seen profiles with no information beyond the rep who has worked at the company for 20 years. No insight or passion for solving business problems is evident. Half of the profiles I see don’t even explain what the company does beyond print. Titles and contact information are incorrect; I’ve even seen a few where the company name wasn’t correct. Would you want to entrust your business problem to someone with so little attention to detail that they can’t get their company name right?
Reps should post content that demonstrates they have insight that can help organizations accomplish their strategic objectives, whether that is creating awareness (signs, vehicle wraps), generating leads (direct mail and omnichannel campaigns), keeping employees engaged, motivated, and safe (environmental graphics, safety signage), helping them sell (brochures, promotional products, POS, event graphics, pocket folders) and delivering a great customer experience (signage, graphics, marketing collateral, direct mail, wayfinding signage and more). Everything posted on LinkedIn is searchable, meaning more prospects can find your company.
Demonstrating insight is more than sharing an article or posting a picture of a recent job. It helps people understand why others thought investing in that application was essential and its impact on that organization. I like to ask myself – will this post make someone think? Will it help someone fix a chronic problem or see an opportunity or risk they didn’t know existed?
Improve Sales Productivity
I was working with a rep yesterday, and he mentioned he had been trying to break into an account for six years. While I applaud his persistence, sales costs increase with each contact, and his owner still hasn’t realized any revenue.
Direct salespeople are costly. Prospecting is a critical part of the job but is inherently unproductive. Getting a prospect to talk to you takes between 5 and 21 touches. That’s a lot of emails, phone calls, and stop-ins. Reps aren’t particularly good at follow-up, with long gaps between touches. Maintaining mindshare as the customer’s needs evolve is critical. LinkedIn is a great way to remind prospects of the power of print to solve business challenges. 1000s can see one great post if the rep has built their network. Two or three weekly posts are more efficient than using 1000s of direct touches by phone or email to maintain awareness of what your company does and how it can help.
Question 2: What activity expectations should I set with my new rep?
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I like to build a little incentive plan based on activities to give the rep a way to earn commission before they are fully ramped up. I also like to include sales activities in the early weeks of onboarding. Most companies have the rep spend most of her early days learning about print, what your equipment does, and how your company functions. After a couple of weeks of spending time with customer service reps, working on the production floor, and going on sales calls with the owner or another rep, the company pronounces them trained, and they are left to figure the rest out.
During the Onboarding Process
I like to include sales activities along with production and process training. The first week is a good week for researching target markets. The second week is a great time to build prospect lists of target accounts and research their assigned accounts. By the third week, they should be working on questions to ask customers when they engage, and by the fourth week, they should create phone and email talking points. The owner or sales manager should work with the rep to validate their understanding and to role-play the rep’s messaging.
If the rep will have existing accounts, another great activity during the initial weeks of onboarding is creating a white space analysis of accounts, which captures what they currently and could be buying.
The next consideration when coming up with activity targets is the role characteristics. If the rep writes up their orders, performs customer service duties, and makes deliveries, they will have less time for prospecting. They will need to incorporate prospecting activities into these tasks to be productive. Reps need to learn how to extract critical information that can help them sell additional products and services while they are in conversations where they and the customer are focused on a current project.
Lastly, before finalizing your new rep’s activity targets, take the time to understand the results of your current lead generation tactics. Know how many web leads, referrals, and marketing campaign responses will be given to the new rep.
Activity Categories
The activity categories change depending on the characteristics of the role. Here are my favorites:
· Prospect initiations – a first touch to new prospects: These can come from networking, referrals, inbound leads, or self-generated prospecting activities. This number is usually between 3 and 15, depending on the rep’s other responsibilities. I tell reps the faucet can be turned down based on workload but never turned off.
· Proactive Outreach to Clients – a first-time touch to an existing client designed to initiate a new sales cycle. These can be to existing contacts, referred new contacts, or self-generated to expand sales to the account.
· Conversations – the number of times the rep talked to or received an answer to an email. If the customer is talking, the door has been cracked open, even if the prospect is not ready now. This will be low in the first weeks as the rep works out the kinks in their messaging. It should start with a goal of 5 and can increase as the rep improves their messaging and confidence to as high as 12 – 15, especially if the rep is using networking events as a tactic.
· LinkedIn Connections – if the rep is talking to customers and prospects, they should be adding LinkedIn connections. This number is closely tied to the conversations and will decrease over time as the rep connects to his customers and target prospects.
· Weekly LinkedIn Posts – LinkedIn is a great way to maintain mindshare with prospects needing more time to be ready when first contacted. This should be a minimum of two and can be as high as 4 or 5. Once the rep is confident using LinkedIn, I like measuring LinkedIn engagements because it tells you the rep is making relevant posts. Still, as the rep builds their network, engagements will be low in the beginning.
· First-Time Meetings with prospects or clients – A meeting is a pre-scheduled virtual or in-person meeting with a calendar invite to sell something. If the rep is focused on new business, this number can initially be as low as two and should grow to 5 to 7.
· New Qualified Opportunities Identified – the customer need must be defined. The customer must want to pursue a resolution and have acknowledged that the rep and the company have the expertise to help them. I don’t count every request for a quote. Still, I count new opportunities identified with prospects and significant opportunities for direct mail or omnichannel programs, portal solutions, or large one-time projects like graphics or sign projects. The number and value of opportunities vary widely depending on your business and whether the rep handles existing accounts. Count the number first and then set a goal for the revenue after you have a history.
· Prospecting Cadence Completions – after eight weeks, start tracking prospecting cadence completions. Because it takes an average of 8 touches to engage a prospect, reps must use multiple channels and contact prospects over a compressed period to drive engagement. I use an eight-week cadence which works for most reps whether or not they have a CRM system to help them keep track. The number will align with the number of first-time touches and tell you if the rep is conducting the cadence as planned. It may not be one-to-one alignment because some prospects will engage and not be ready, others will be disqualified, and some will turn into opportunities before reaching the 8thtouch. The combination of those three should total the number of prospect initiations.
· Sales – once the rep is through your onboarding process, which varies by the role characteristics but can be anywhere from 12 weeks to a year, depending on what they are selling and to whom. Reps should have sales goals that are tracked. Sales goals include overall sales, account growth, or new business sales. If you give reps a goal early in the process, it should be low and ramp up through the first year.
Companies need a good hiring process to help them thoroughly assess sales talent and find the best fit for your position and your company.
Here are a few tips to help you hire great sales talent:
1. Define your ideal candidate. Before you start the hiring process, take some time to think about the type of person you want to hire. What skills and knowledge do they need to be successful today, and what traits must they have to adapt to their buyers’ needs in the future? What personality will they need to be a good fit for your company?
Here’s a list of the capabilities and traits I think reps should possess. Use this list to start your own.
Traits: Curious, Willing to learn, Self-motivated, Resilient, Adaptable, Success-driven, Organized, and Coachable.
Capabilities: Uses a defined sales process, has marketing and or printing knowledge, ability to write, speak, and present, is active on LinkedIn, comfortable using technology, and has a basic understanding of data.
2. After you know what you are looking for, write a great job posting. First, keep in mind that you will be competing with all the other companies trying to hire sales talent both in and outside the printing industry. Your post must get the attention of the type of rep you want. To attract great talent, job postings need to tell the candidate about the opportunity from their point of view. Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and think about what your position will offer to them. Does your role offer them flexibility? Does it offer an opportunity to build a larger sales organization? Will they have the autonomy to make decisions about where to focus? Will they have input into new product offerings? Do you want them to execute an existing strategy or build their own? Today good reps want to know how your company will support their efforts. If you conduct ongoing lead generation tactics, include that information in your posting. Share the developmental opportunities you offer, like attending conferences, association memberships, online training programs, and tuition reimbursement options. Be clear about salary and overall target earnings expected for the role in both year one and once the rep ramps up. Be sure to include information about your company culture and the characteristics the candidate should possess to be a great fit for your organization.
3. Put all of your oars in the water. Today you can’t rely on just one or two methods to promote your position. You have to get the word out across all of your channels. Make sure you post the position on job boards like Indeed and your website. Use social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to promote your position. Make sure current employees know you are trying to hire a rep so they can promote your company to their friends and in their networks. Customers who love your company can also refer candidates, so let them know you are growing and hiring. Your supplier and professional networks can also steer candidates your way, so encourage them to spread the word.
4. Build an interview plan. Hiring is difficult, and it’s easy to make a mistake, so build a plan where multiple people can help you make the best decision. Will HR vet incoming applications to look for promising candidates? Who will conduct phone interviews to weed out candidates that aren’t a match? Which managers will interview candidates and when? Will you offer them the option to shadow an existing rep as part of their evaluation process? Will you use an outside assessment service to validate your thinking? Will you ask the candidate to create a plan for their first 90 days or make a presentation to your management team as part of the process? Who will check references when you have narrowed the field of candidates? How long should the process take? Today, great candidates are receiving multiple offers, so it’s important to set good expectations about both the steps in your process and how long it will take to complete them.
5. Meet in person. After conducting phone interviews and online interviews, your will want to meet with promising candidates in person. This is an opportunity for them to meet with different team members and get a feel for your company culture. Both online and in-person interviews give you a chance to assess the candidate’s preparation, their ability to think on their feet, and their energy levels. Still, in-person interviews help you and the candidate get to know each other better. The candidate will see your culture in action to help them decide if your position is a good fit and vice versa. Remember you will compete for this candidate, so meeting in person is an opportunity for you to show them how important they will be to your organization. Walk the path your candidate will take once they’re inside your shop. Will they stand in the lobby waiting ten minutes before anyone acknowledges them? Will they walk past trash bins piled high as they make their way to your office? If they use the restroom, will it be in working order? All these things say something about your company and how you feel about your employees, so put your best foot forward. Use signage to welcome candidates and be prepared with refreshments. When you show the candidate around your company, introduce your employees, and demonstrate that you know your employees and care about them as people.
The hiring process for sales reps can be tough, but it’s important to take the time to find the right candidate. The average cost to replace a sales rep today can be as much as $115,000 depending on the company. This includes hard costs for recruiters, online job posting services, interviewer time, testing, training, and losing potential customers and revenue. At the same time, a position is open during the ramp-up period. By following these tips, you’ll be on your way to finding someone who is knowledgeable, passionate, and a good fit for your company culture—someone who will help take your business to the next level!
If you need help assessing your current talent, hiring sales talent or training and coaching them, Evolve may be able to help. Fill out the contact form below and let’s have a conversation.
I’m a big baseball fan, and my favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals. Hopefully, by the time you read this, they will still be playing and on their way to the World Series. But if not, it was a terrific season filled with memories. Part of the fun centered around the probable final seasons for three great Cardinals, Adam Wainright, Yadier Molina, and Albert Pujols.
I have followed Albert Pujols since he first joined the Cards in 2001 when he was a unanimous choice for the Rookie of the Year Award. Despite having plenty of other things to pray for, I’m pretty sure I sent up a few that the Cards would figure out how to resign him in 2011. Alas, they didn’t, and he headed to the Los Angeles Angels where he played until 2021. Much to the chagrin of Angels fans, he was never quite the player he was in St. Louis. In 2021, after being unceremoniously fired by the Angels, he finished the year with the Dodgers. Instantly, there were glimmers of his former greatness and he helped the Dodgers in a pretty good season which ended with a loss to the Braves in the league Championship Series.
Pujols showed that he still had a little baseball life in him with the Dodgers and the Cards signed him to a one-year contract for the 2022 season. Albert batted .270 after a low of .198 in his last year with the Angels. He hit 24 home runs, making his lifetime total 703 as I write this, fourth on the all-time home run list just behind Babe Ruth. Pujols has been instrumental in getting the Cards to the playoffs at the ripe old age of 42. Why the big change? I think it’s because he’s happy playing with his old friends Yadi and Wainright, happy he can meaningfully contribute to the team, and happy to be winning.
Here’s where the baseball story intersects with business. In my conversations with business owners, I’ve started to notice a trend. Many of them, especially in the last twelve months, have shared that they have noticed their employees being less than nice to customers and to each other. Owners describe these instances as if the employees are annoyed by customers or fellow employees to the extent that they want to end the interaction and just get back to their “to-do” lists.
Employee engagement is at an all-time low with Gartner reporting that only 21% of all employees worldwide classify themselves as engaged in their work. Unengaged employees create all kinds of problems for a business but owners often misread the signs. According to PerkBox, a global benefits, and rewards company, here’s what happens when employees aren’t engaged in their work:
· Productivity and the quality of work decline
· Employees withdraw from the team
· Employees take more frequent breaks and more time off
· Employees have no appetite for challenge or responsibility
· Employees are less likely to show up on time and they often head for the door earlier
· Employees call in sick more often
· Employees exhibit negative attitudes
· Timely response to requests and deadlines declines
· Learning and improving are no longer a focus
Some owners mistakenly think that a vacation or raise can impact an engagement problem. Time off and raises can help in the short term, but they don’t fix the problem in the long run.
Once workers become disengaged, it permeates the culture of the company and can take years to rectify. Unfortunately, if owners fail to recognize how deeply rooted their engagement issues are, it can lead to low profitability and closure.
When I hear stories that indicate an engagement problem, the owner is often burying his/her head in the sand. They think the symptoms of disengagement will abate as business picks up or as open positions are filled. More work pushed into a business that isn’t working productively makes the problem worse. New employees brought into a workforce struggling with engagement will either become disengaged themselves or leave quickly.
Happy employees aren’t necessarily engaged employees but engaged employees are likely to be happy. Research conducted by British Telecom firm BT, found that workers are 13% more productive when happy. More research from Harvard Business Review found that organizations with happy and engaged employees are 22% more productive than organizations with lower employee engagement and satisfaction rates.
Just like negativity, happiness is contagious. I was recently in a candy store in Louisville, Kentucky, and ran across a clerk who was practically holding court. He was so excited about the product, that he happily shared his thoughts on the ingredients, the production process, and the owner’s philosophy. People were drawn into the store from the street because of his enthusiasm. He happened to be training a new person who was on the other side of the store engaging with customers in much the same way as the training employee was. His happiness was contagious and that store was definitely selling more candy than had the clerks been scrolling through their cell phones or chatting with each other.
For business owners, I think it’s important to think about your teams in this new light. One of my clients recently shared how one department within his business just seems to be “on it”. He sees them as always pushing themselves to learn new things and work smarter and faster. As I probed, he began to conclude that the success in the one department had evolved over time and was linked to one employee who joined a few years back who was happy. He thinks the other employees gravitated to her and away from the leader of the department who tended to be negative. Within the year, the negative leader moved but the team didn’t suffer from the disruption, they flourished. My client felt, after thinking about it, that the team had been a catalyst for the whole organization to become happier and more engaged. This department decorates the office for holidays, runs contests frequently to get other departments involved in the fun, and seemed to have spearheaded an employee culture renaissance. This company has grown by over 25% annually since 2020.
A core group of employees can change everything and even one employee can be the catalyst. As we head toward 2023, it’s a good time to take stock of your employees. Who are the happiest and the catalysts that make others better? Also consider employees who may once have been engaged and productive but have slowly declined in productivity. Is it because they have lost a spark that used to make them happy? Can you surround them with people who could once again bring out the best in them?
Lastly, consider your happiness. Has the disruption since the pandemic started in 2020 caused you to lose a spark? Are you finding it more difficult to take on the serious challenges in your business and easier to just keep on doing the same old things? Are you engaged in developing your own business and its culture or are you just focused on getting to the end of another day?
If you are happy, you will attract happy people and that will lead to engagement and productivity. Are you Albert Pujols who just needed to be happy again to be productive? Focus on the things that make you happy and carry those things in your heart when you go to work every day.
If you are looking for a spark to reignite your love of business ownership, sales management or sales, executive or sales coaching or the Evolve Peer Group could be the answer. Use the contact form below to let me know and we’ll schedule a phone call.
