Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

When you become too old to work in Inside Sales… or is it just ageism?

One of the inherent beauties of selling or qualifying over the phone is that since no one can see us, hiring practices have been egalitarian, for the most part. In my telesales training courses diverse workforces have been the norm, and the resulting cross-pollination of ideas and experiences has resulted in smarter workforces. But in the past six months, I've been made aware of several outstanding inside sales candidates that were told they weren't hired because they "didn't fit in." And that was the sole reason given that they weren't hired. It had nothing to do with lack of professionalism or poor work stats. But these individuals were all over 40 years old, and the postings ran the gamut from Rep to Director.

In every case, the individual was interviewed at a company with a predominantly younger inside sales force, and came away with the feeling that management at these companies was more concerned that the new hire could party and socialize at the same level with younger workers than with what it takes to get the job done and over-perform in quota-oriented activities.

We're getting a good reputation in this blog for dealing with issues no one wants to discuss, and age discrimination is an uncomfortable topic for many. Human Resources departments are well aware of discrimination laws, but companies work around them with the "not fitting in" clause, which is not falsifiable. I'm going to give you two stories that underscore my point, but before I do, let's set up the argument.

Here are some reasons not to practice age discrimination in hiring:

1) If you're a younger manager or exec enforcing age discrimination at your company, it will eventually affect you as well. You may get succeeded by a younger person, or laid off because of your age. And you won't be able to prove it, because your company has a process in place for successfully removing older people without overtly violating discrimination laws.

2) We're not talking about the palliative crowd here. People over 35 have generally acquired great work habits, are intelligent conversationalists, and are focused on making themselves (and the company) money. They tend to be less "entitled" and accept authority more readily than many younger people.

3) Your younger inside sales reps can learn a lot from them. If they have a sales concern, they may readily go to a more experienced rep for advice than a manager, as they may feel they want to fix the problem before management becomes aware of it. This additional level of expertise provides for quicker inculcation of Best Practices, and can open up intelligent dialogue throughout the entire inside sales team.

Here's one story about an experienced inside sales rep I'd like to share with you. I trained an inside sales team in Florida that had one rep who was noticeably older than her colleagues. I would guess she was in her sixties. I always ask my participants what their passion in life is. When it was this woman's turn, she said it was flying Stearman aerobatic aircraft. She was a stunt pilot who still was doing air shows, and was probably the most focused rep in the room. In coaching sessions, she was far and away the best of the group. In follow-up discussions with management, we had serious discussions about how to find more people like her, and I would have recommended her to any of my client companies in a second.

The second story is perhaps a bit more poignant, but goes to the heart of the issue. In the early 1980s, I was putting myself through college driving a taxi in Boston. We had a number of black drivers in our company (probably half of whom were African).  There were also a number of steady customers calling for cabs that specified they didn't want a black driver. So the argument went one way that the company should send white drivers in those situations, because if they didn't, the customers would refuse to ride with the black driver, call the competition, and we'd lose the business forever. The contrary argument ran that by refusing to send black drivers, we were perpetuating discrimination, and it would never end if we didn't draw the line somewhere and say "no more." The second argument won. None of us wanted to live in a discriminatory world.

This post is primarily directed to sales managers and executives than can change the policy of age discrimination by recognizing that having experienced reps on the team makes the whole team better, then  showing leadership by taking the position that neither you nor the company with stand for it.  Discrimination in any form is odious, and pre-selecting out great reps because they may not join in on the Friday afternoon paintball tournament is just plain silly. Building a great inside sales team is all about talent and ability, and not about homogeneity. So please strongly consider adding real personnel diversity to your Best Management Playbook. You'll have a more effective and powerful company if you do.

Use KPIs during your telesales job interview to put yourself above competitive candidates.

We don't just create and deliver world-class telesales training courses here. We also help great telesales reps who've excelled in our classes and at work to find jobs. We know reps that have never been under quota that were laid off this year. The other day, veteran inside sales executive Alicia Assefa interviewed a candidate we sent her, and she gave the candidate some outstanding advice on how to make a presentation in the interview that would be compelling to any sales executive. It's all about describing how you use KPI (key performance indicators) to increase your numbers and overshoot quota. I asked Alicia to share her perspective with my blog, and she did. I'll let her put it in her own worlds. Here's what Alicia says:

Everyone knows how difficult it is to find work.  It's tough out there.  Although job opportunities are more prevalent than they were say, six months ago, it is still a very competitive market.   A few months ago, you could expect hundreds of applicants for one open position.  Now, the number may be in the tens of applicants.  In any case, the odds are still against job seekers.  In order to get noticed, your resume must stand out.   To get to the next level of the interview process, you must stand out, during each interview.

If you are looking for a sales position, there is a sure fire way to stand out from the crowd and position yourself as the "right "person for the job.  Know your numbers. 

Your numbers are metrics that Sales Managers call Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.   A manager's performance rating is, in most cases, tied to KPIs such as pipeline growth and quota achievement. 

What are the KPIs for an Inside Sales Professional?   KPIs will vary, based on whether you do Teleprospecting or have a sales quota. 

KPIs for Teleprospecting Reps: If you are a Teleprospecting Representative and your primary focus is on generating leads for a Field or Inside Sales team, your KPIs might include the following:

• Average Daily Dials: You should know, on average, the number of dials you make, each day. If the product is a high ticket complex solution that requires that you speak to a Senior IT professional, you may make 40-50 dials per day, as you must get past gate keepers, etc., to reach the required high-level IT professional. If, however, your product is a lower-priced commoditized solution, you may be able to make 60-100 dials per day.
• Raw Lead (RL) to Qualified Lead (QL) Conversion: Raw leads are the leads that marketing provides you, each day. Depending on the type of solution and contact level you need to reach, your RL to QL conversion should be in the range of 15%-20%. If you have a position, currently, check out the RL-to-QL conversion statistics for your team, for a 2 week period. See what the average is and where you rank. If you are looking for work and don't know this particular KPI, try to remember the total number of leads you received and how many of those turned to a qualified lead.
• Cold Call Ratio: Cold calls are calls that you make to contacts that you uncover without the aid of marketing support. Sales Managers are, typically, very interested in Sales Representatives who are not afraid to make cold calls. In general 20% of your dials should be cold calls into your accounts or territory. Managers will want to know where you got the contact names and how you pitched your Company's value proposition.
• Contact Ratios: Dials and lead conversion are interesting to Sales Managers because Sales is a numbers game. The more dials you make and the more leads you qualify, the greater your chances are of successfully meeting sales targets. A very important KPI is the contact ratio number. For example, if your daily dial average is 50, you should expect to connect with a minimum of 5 important contacts, or 10% of your dials. Ten to fifteen percent of your dials should be with important contacts that can help you move your sales activity to the next levels.
• Pipeline Growth: Pipeline is not just for quota bearing reps. Teleprospecting Reps, who generate leads for a Sales team, will have a pipeline of Qualified Leads (QL). Know the Average Sales Price (ASP) of your solution. Know your team's quota. Once you have this information, you can start to build your qualified leads pipeline. Typically 33 percent of deals will roll off the sales forecast, 33 percent will close and 33 percent will stall. If you are supporting a Sales Team, in general, you will need a qualified leads pipeline of 3X your teams' quota targets.
• Emails: Emails are another touch point that connects you to prospects. Although the phone is the primary way to connect with prospects, it is often necessary to stay in touch through an email. Know how many emails you send out, daily. Emails, when added to your average daily dials, increases the total number of prospect touches you have, each day. On average you should send out 15-20 emails to key contacts, daily.

KPIs for TeleSales Reps: If you are a quota bearing Sales Professional, your KPIs will include most of the items above, including:

• Average Daily Dials
• Cold Call Ratio
• Contact Ratios
• Average Sales Price
• Emails

In addition, as a quota bearing representative, you have a quota (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, etc.).  In order to achieve your quota, it is important to build your pipeline to ensure that you will meet sales targets. 

• Pipeline Growth: Depending on the type of solution you are selling (complex, high-priced or commoditized, low-priced) you will need to build a pipeline of 3X to 6X your revenue objective. If you are currently working in a sales position, ask your manager how large your pipeline should be to meet sales targets. Start building to that level, to ensure your success.
• Quota Achievement: Every Sales Manager is going ask you if you made your sales targets. If you did, you should know how (pipeline growth of X times of Sales Targets, X Cold Calls made per day, 50-60 Daily Dials, etc.). If you didn't, you should know why. If you didn't, make your numbers, were you within 85+ % (an acceptable range). If you didn't, how did you rank against your peers?

After you've derived your numbers: Now that you know your numbers, the next step is to ensure that your résumé lists your numbers (KPIs).  List your achievements, by company.  For example you might list:

• At ABC Company I achieved 92% of my quarterly objectives for 6 consecutive quarters. I was ranked number 2 amongst my peer group. I achieved my numbers based on:
• 1) Average Daily Dials: 65
• 2) Cold Call Ratio: 20% of all dials
• 3) Pipeline: 2.5X quarterly sales objective
• 4) Contact Ratio: 20% of my daily contacts were with senior level IT Executives

Once your resume is completed and lists your KPIs, your next and final step is to complete a one-page overview of your accomplishments.  This overview should list your major accomplishments, with the most important accomplishment listed at the top. 

Your overview should list the following:

Sales Highlights and Accomplishments

Company XYZ:

• 2009 Presidents Club
• Achieved 120% of Quota
• Pipeline 5X revenue objective
• ASP: $50,000
• Contact Ratio: 20%
• Cold Call Ratio: 15%

When you have an onsite interview, make sure that you give your Sales Highlights and Accomplishments document to the hiring manager.  Keep a copy in front of you, for the entire interview.  You have a lot of numbers to discuss and you don't want to forget your most important KPIs.

Knowing your numbers and communicating your numbers, during the interview process, will put you way ahead of the competition.  When you know your numbers, Sales Managers will feel very comfortable that they won't be hiring a junior person.  Rather, they will see you as a seasoned and serious Sales Professional who is goal oriented and highly motivated.  Start building your list of KPIs.  Know your numbers and communicate them in your resume, Sales Highlights and Accomplishments overview and during the interview process.

It's Geoff here again. So there's some important advice from an inside sales executive whose job entails determining who to hire and who to discard. One day while I was a juror, a judge told me after the case was finished that he was frustrated because he'd told the prosecutor exactly how he wanted the case presented, and the prosecutor went and did it his own way anyway. And lost the case. Here, we have an inside sales exec who's telling you how to get hired. Add Alicia Assefa's advice on presenting your KPIs to your Best Practices Playbook.

7 Ways to make an Underperforming Territory profitable, fast

It's fairly common for superior sales performers to be rewarded by being transferred to an underperforming territory. Rarely is the sales rep happy about it, and it's probably happened to a large percentage of you reading this. If it hasn't happened to you yet, get ready, for it may. In my telesales training courses, I always tell people that our world is a lot about constant change, and how well we handle it. Today's post is about how a really great rep got a lemon and made lemonade out of it. I worked with Gordon at a software development tools company, and saw him take control of what had been a terrible territory, work it, and make it one if he best territories in the company within a very few months. Even though the product line we're talking about was technical, his story can apply to anyone selling anything in a territory that has traditionally been a poor earner. Here's what he did:

First of all, he wanted to know which companies weren't buying our tools, and why, so he made a list of the biggest companies in all of the states in his new territory. In his first week in the territory, he made a telephone call blitz, and found that there were two types of non-buying prospects: those in which upper management (e.g. VPs of Engineering) made the decisions against us, and those where upper management didn't care, but instead had empowered Project Managers and Developers to make their own decisions and select their own tools.

Not surprisingly, he found that many of his prospects had never been called, or hadn't been called in months. Gordon started making extensive charts of the types of software development projects that these companies were working on, and became an expert in project knowledge. Gordon was a great salesperson, but he was non-technical. All he wanted to know was what they were building, who would buy the finished product, and what types of tools the engineers used. So he ended up with two charts (today, you'd call them spreadsheets): "Nonbuyer Reasons and Personnel," and "Project Classifications." Then he really went to work.

He had inherited several decent customers, called high, and found that there were many projects starting at those companies for which development tools had not been selected. He leveraged his VP contact, and sold a lot of new product to those companies (within 6 months, he'd doubled the previous year's sales on current customers alone). He also uncovered many opportunities at companies that hadn't been called in awhile. They were now in his sales pipeline, after less than one month in the new territory.

But there were still some companies that wouldn't buy, because they didn't like our company. He was able to determine that the VP of Engineering at a huge prospect company had a sister, and she was married to the Director of Sales at one of our competitors. That company had standardized on our competition, and Gordon knew he'd never get a sale there as long as upper management stayed the same. At other companies, Gordon found that individual engineers and project managers had prejudices against our development tools (too bad, because our tools were superior), and would work to ensure our tools were never placed.

In his new territory, many development teams were in a state of flux. Some companies were downsizing their departments, and engineers were getting laid off, and having a challenging time finding work. By this time, he knew about different engineers levels of expertise, and he also knew how they felt about our products. So here's what he did: since he was calling all over the territory anyway, he started asking if they were hiring engineers. If they were, Gordon would check his list. If an engineer looking for work loved our products, Gordon found him or her work at companies were he wanted to get more business. He got advocates at new companies that way. And if engineers didn't like our products, he found them positions at that big company with the VP whose sister was married to his competition. Gordon figured if he had engineers in his territory that didn't like our solutions, it was best having them all work in one place, in a company that for political reasons would never buy our development tools anyway. In essence, Gordon played his territory like a chessboard, shifting the pieces from one square to another. He was able to do this because he probably called more people in the territory than anyone had before, asked great questions, took good notes, and plotted things on charts. He turned two of the states in this underperforming territory into two of the most profitable in our company in under a year.

So what can be learned from Gordon?

1) An underperforming territory can be an opportunity waiting to flourish.
2) Call high, and ask great questions to determine why people aren't buying.
3) Ensure that you're providing as many solutions as possible to companies that are already your customers.
4) Know your prospect's business, so you can figure out how your product can help your prospect to make money faster, or stop losing money.
5) Make enough calls that you can be considered a territory expert.
6) Develop your own analyses tools and charts to understand what's happening (or happened) over time, not just what happened today.
7) Think out of the box. In Gordon's case, he improved the lives of his advocates, and they remembered the favor he did for them.

As Gordon would tell you, you have to work hard, but you also have to work smart. Add Gordon's techniques to your Best Practices Playbook for selling successfully to an underperforming territory.

How to turn the executive interview from Hell into your advantage

Today's post is for sales executives and managers and those who wish to become them. A sales executive I know just went through one of the worst interviewing experiences of his life, and asked what he could have done to change the outcome. In today's hiring market, every one of you reading this post could run into the same thing. My solution touches on a closing technique I use in my telesales training courses, too. So let me tell you the story, and what you can do to turn a similar situation that you might face into your advantage.

Robert interviewed for a sales exec position at a medium-sized company that had a sales situation that needed to be turned around. As part of his interview, they asked him to present a sales plan for the upcoming year, based on what he knew about the company. He spent quite a few hours designing it and writing it out. He told me about it, and it was a brilliant plan. The interview took three hours, in front of the company's executive board, and he outlined it all out. They told him they liked the plan, would discuss it, and call back. They did, and invited him for another interview to discuss the plan, as they had questions. He did, addressed all the issues, and they told him they'd call him back. They did, and said they were moving in another direction. He didn't get the job.

All in all, Robert spent many hours designing and interviewing for a job he was probably never going to get. They just needed some free consulting. So I suggested that since this was becoming an all-too-common experience these days, he turn it around to his advantage the next time this happens by following the following steps:

1) When a prospective interviewer asks for a business plan, walk in with an outline, not a whitepaper.
2) Answer any questions, but keep the interview to two hours or fewer.
3) If the interviewer wants a more detailed plan for the next interview, tell the company that the detailed plan is what you'd be implementing at the company. Suggest that the company hire you to build a sales plan for a consulting fee. When you present the plan, the company will have four options:

            a) hiring you (the candidate) to implement the plan
            b) hiring someone else to implement the plan
            c) doing the plan in-house with current personnel 
            d) not doing anything at all

This is an approach I've used successfully when a prospect company wants me to do a lot of front-end work with no guarantee of a contract. About 50% of the time, I get a consulting contract, and eventually get their follow-on business, too.
Prospect companies aren't always disingenuous when they ask for a lot up front. Many times they are disorganized, have political issues, or internal disagreements about candidates and processes. But taking my approach does force them to come to the table with something in return for the time you (the candidate) spend on diagnosing their sales process. My friend and colleague Barry Mainz would refer to this approach as quid pro quo, and it's a closing technique that works just as well with prospective employers as it does for closing sales prospects on business.

It's an employer's market these days, but you'll gain a lot of respect by taking this approach, and you may get paid for your time, too. And it's is a good start to getting hired by that company. If they don't agree that you have a point, you may have what we call a "walk-away." You won't have lost anything, and will have gained some professional respect. Add this technique to your Best Management Practices playbook.

Don’t miss low-hanging fruit… Prioritize calling the best leads that money can’t buy NOW, before your competition does

At this time of year, salespeople are typically focused on two things: closing prospects that are already in the pipeline, and managing new leads that are coming in through trade shows, downloads, you-name-it. But you've already got a better lead source than those new leads, and they're sitting in your CRM sales database. Let me explain, because if you ignore what's in your CRM, you're missing some hidden but active sales opportunities, and working hard, not smart.

Two weeks ago, I made a printout of every month of activity on last year's calendar, including all calls to my telesales training prospects. Loads of those calls I made last year never resulted in conversations. In just about every one of those cases, I finally left a voicemail as a last resort. Like most voicemails, they didn't get returned. So I decided to set up a call blitz after the first of the year, and call every one of those prospects from last year. I made loads of calls every day. And guess what? Lots of them were interested, and I loaded up my pipeline for the new year!

It turns out that they never returned my calls last year because they had no money and didn't think it had any value to tell me. Most of them remembered my name. Some of them didn't. But the fact was that if they were good enough to call last year, I had already determined that they were viable prospects. They still are, but they're "warmer" now, because they heard my name a few times last year. Many of them are from very large companies. And now my pipeline is jam-packed with these formerly "dead" prospects.

So what can you learn from this? You most probably will have a higher "hit" ratio from people who already know who you are or have heard of your company. Many prospects that had a need for your solution but didn't have budget last year, DO have budget this year. You've already put a bit of time in calling these prospects, and you don't want your competition to get the business now because all of a sudden budget arrived, and you didn't call! So here's a formula that will accelerate your sales cycle. It takes a little extra work, but will put more money in your pocket this year, and faster:

1) Get a prospect printout of last year's calls, by month. Sort by company name, and be sure to put the name and title of the prospect in the readout, too. If you can't set the print parameters on your own, ask your in-house CRM guru to do it for you. That's why you have the CRM in the first place.

2) Take the printout home and carve out a couple of weekend hours to highlight every company you'll want to call again. Focus on large companies as well as prospects that had a need, but no budget.

3) When you get back to work on Monday, begin by calling every prospect from last year that is working at a company that is a customer of your company's, anywhere in the world. There may be exceptional opportunities to cross sell, upsell, and reference sell with these people. Next, call companies that had a need, but no money. Finally, call all those really big companies that you want to have as customers.

4) Allocate at least three hours every day for outbound calling to this list, and "hard schedule" it so you'll really do it, without interruptions. It's better qualified than any new list you'll get, because it focuses on established needs, leveraging current customer relationships, and making something happen at big prospect companies.

Don't let your competition grab the business you spent so much time cultivating. This process I've described is working for me right now and it can work for you, too. Add it to your Best Practices Playbook.

 

Top 5 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2009

Last week I provided 5 great tips for closing year-end business, from a list of my own favorite blog posts. But you voted on yours, too, and that's what today's post is about.

When I launched this blog in 2008, I did it with two objectives in mind. For one, I wanted to convey valuable elements of my telesales training curriculum to my subscribers, a good number of whom work for companies that would love to hire us to train their inside sales teams, but can't find the budget to do it in these tough times. My other objective was to help to elevate ethics and best practices within the high tech inside sales business, posts that are pertinent to sales management as well as sales reps. Particularly in the latter category, I've ruffled a few feathers, but that gets dialogue going and brings issues up that frankly need to be addressed in order for our industry to continue evolving. The blog's successful. It's been picked up on a bunch of other websites, and loads of people are using the material (even my competitors!)

Reflecting on 2009, I thought it would be of value to tell you what your colleagues were prioritizing when they read the posts that were written in 2009. Here are the top five, in order of page views. If you haven't read them in awhile, why not pick out the ones you feel might help you get a great start to the new year? Numbers 3 and 5 deal specifically with  Management issues, while #s 1, 2, and 4 reflect techniques that can increase sales, starting this week:

1. 20 Characteristics of a Superior Inside Salesperson
2. 5 Most Common Price Negotiation Mistakes
3. Increase sales through improved Daily Call Metrics
4. 4 Common weak phrases that erode telesales success
5. Increase sales by conducting an effective Telesales Employee Performance Appraisal

I'll keep blogging on techniques and issues I feel are critical as the new year unfolds. These are wonderful, exciting times to be in Inside Sales, and each new leap in the technologies we use presents new opportunities and challenges. Believe me, I'll write about them. I hope you'll add the techniques in the posts above to your Best Practices Playbook... and let's get started having a great year!

5 Top Sales Techniques for Closing Year-End Business

OK, we've got only 3 1/2 days this week to close business for the year end. In our telesales training courses we cover a number of sales techniques to remember when we need to close business. The following techniques appeared in my blog articles this year, and all of them can be put to great use this week. Here they are in synopsis form, along with the blog article that explains each of them in greater detail:

1) Negotiate intelligently and portray price drops --- if you use them --- wisely. There's a reason my post on price negotiation techniques is the best-read on my blog. Too many reps don't use intelligent price negotiation strategies and leave money on the table, or don't get the order at all: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/7413/5-Most-Common-Price-Negotiation-Mistakes

2) Close on the first call, budget money may get re-allocated this week.  Many prospects have year-end money to spend, but they won't necessarily tell you that unless you ask. When I was a purchasing agent years ago, I always had year-end money that had been re-allocated from another budget source. Be sure to call back folks that didn'y buy earlier in the year. They may have additional budget this week: http://www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/9840/One-call-close-on-the-first-call-if-you-don-t-the-prospect-may-not-return-your-second-call

3) Drill down to uncover the financial reasons it makes sense for your prospect to buy now. You can use a quick financial model to prove that delaying the order will cost your prospect in financial terms: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/10732/How-do-I-get-my-PO-in-faster

4) Ask for additional needs through upselling. Don't shortchange yourself just because you're happy to get a small order. Tell your prospects about "the next best thing and they may increase the size of your order: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/9101/Upselling-Don-t-forget-to-ask-for-The-Next-Best-Thing

5) Be careful that you're not being "shopped" by savvy buyers, and remember to "call high." OK, I know you don't view your unique high-tech solution as a commodity, but probably your buyer does, and has more than one solution in mind. On inbound calls, be wary that a decision may have already been made to go with a competitor. But that doesn't mean you can't unlock it and get the business: www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/5564/RFP-Hazards-Are-you-being-shopped-by-Purchasing-Agents-Here-s-how-to-fix-it 

Today's post is short because you've got to be out there selling, but these are 5 powerful tools that you can --- and should --- use this week. Add them to your Best Practices Playbook and have a great year-end.

Want to kill a great sales candidate? Give him or her a personality test!

Today's post may alarm you, but hang in there, as what I'm discussing today could one day --- if it goes far enough --- affect everyone reading this post, individual sale reps as well as sales managers. The story I'm going to tell is right out of Monty Python, but it happened just last week to a great candidate that wants to be in inside sales, and has all the tools to be making six figures within a very short time. Here's a little background. Read along and see if you're as concerned for hiring practices our industry as I am:

Two weeks ago, I recommended a great candidate for an inside sales lead development position to a company whose inside sales manager I know and like. This candidate had sterling references from execs in the hospitality industry, and a history for getting repeat business out of customers that could be difficult. He's great on the phone, and he'll be a successful inside sales rep making six figures pretty soon. As an inside sales trainer for 20 years, I've got a good track record for finding talented people out of our industry and bringing them in to be successful sales reps, so this was going to be another winner (and I've had a bunch).

So I called my friend, an inside sales manager who is trying to  hire a rep for a company he's just started working with, told him about the candidate, and he was enthused. He said the candidate had to talk to HR first, and the HR specialist loved my candidate after talking with him. Then the HR specialist told the candidate that he'd have to take an online personality test (they called it a "sales aptitude test." And he "failed." The test claimed he couldn't deal with challenging people (I've known the candidate for some time, and this is 180 degrees wrong.)

My pal the Telesales manager wasn't allowed to talk to the candidate, as he'd been vetted out. So the manager's opinion on the candidate was worthless, as was the HR specialist's. The opinions of all personnel in the company responsible for hiring were overridden by a testing company, obviously hired by upper-level management. Incidentally, the position was for high tech inside sales in the Silicon Valley. The testing company was located thousands of miles away, and their website indicates they specialize in testing people for a number of industries, none of them high tech.

I believe this process is potentially dangerous to our high tech telesales industry, for the following reasons:

1) If personality tests had any merit at all, we'd be giving them to elementary school kids as predictors of who's going to end up being a career criminal. Then we'd provide remedial education. Then we'd have no more violent criminals. But we know such tests aren't adequate predictors, probably to the chagrin of the multimillion dollar test industry, who wishes they could prove them effective.

2) The Inside Sales manager asked for the test to be re-evaluated, so The World's Greatest Psychologists reinterpreted his answers. Politically as well as professionally, they can't change a result, can they? If they did, it would indicate the test wasn't valid to begin with.

3) A question that most be the most disconcerting: what kind of database is storing the "failed" questionnaire of the candidate? Who has access to it? Will it be used whenever another client of the testing company has the same candidate targeting a sales position within the new company? If so, the candidate will be discarded because there will already be a personality test on record. This "test" will probably be alive in a database in perpetuity.  I'm sure the testing company would deny it keeps old tests. Is that really believable?

4) If a company adopts this "personality testing" concept, why not just do away with my HR department altogether?  Why would a company need HR, when their judgment is valued so little that they can't override a personnel decision made by an outsourced company using computerized test made my supposed psychological sales "experts"? Why not just vet the candidate using a personality test, then let the Legal department handle pre and post-hiring issues?

Bottom line, the candidate loses, the company loses a good candidate, and because their opinions are worthless, the Inside Sales Manager and the HR specialist lose, too.

So I'm recommending that none of you reading this post EVER take a personality test. You might "lose," so you won't get the job, and your failed test will sit in a testing company's database, ticking away like a time bomb where it can be accessed by another potential company that may be thinking of hiring you. And you may never even know this occurred, because it will be hidden from you.

You can't test adults for what it takes to be successful inside sales reps. There are simply too many important variables, and they all change radically depending on the sales situation (one example: price negotiation techniques). Desire and intrinsic motivation can't be tested for. But a good inside sales manager can figure them out pretty quickly and have a real discussion with a candidate, using his or her expertise and experience within the industry, and candidate references (read my post 20 Characteristics of a Superior Inside Salesperson if you'd like to know what I'd look for in the interview process).

So if you're a sales exec or inside sales manager, challenge anyone in your company that tries to convince you that personality tests are meaningful predictors of sales success, because you'll be acing yourself out of being able to bring in good candidates that you know will be successful, based on your expertise and telesales savvy. And if you're a rep, avoid companies that insist you take a test as part of the hiring process: you don't want your name sitting in a database somewhere, describing your "personality." And add skepticism of the "personality testing" industry to your Best Practices playbook.

6 Tips for using LinkedIn to increase sales now

I'd imagine most readers of my blog have at least developed a profile on the business networking website LinkedIn. But if you're not using it as an important part of your daily sales process, you could be losing sales. If you work a territory, you'd be surprised at how many of your prospects will know customers of yours. In the past we all found this out by accident, guesswork, and careful questioning. Today, the LinkedIn tool does a lot of it for us.

In my telesales training classes, I cover several of the free online Sales 2.0 tools that are becoming increasingly more important, and I'm coming to think LinkedIn (LI) is the best. Let me give you one real world example of how it can be used "out of the box," then discuss what you can do to ensure that you're working at optimum with LI.

Case Study: A network solutions provider

One of my sales training customers had been trying for months to get into a large prospect, to no avail. In a coaching session, we determined that he'd call a CIO at the company, someone that wasn't in the lead database. We found that person's name on Hoover's. Before he called that exec, he checked out his LinkedIn profile. Guess what! He knew one of our company's regional managers while that manager was employed in a previous company, working another territory. My rep made a quick call to the out-of-territory Regional Manager, and found out that he'd had a great relationship with that CIO. My rep was then able to make the call, and had a conversation. Without LinkedIn, the CIO might never have taken the call.

So let's investigate how to get LinkedIn working at optimum for you. Here are 6 great ways to get going for you right now:

1) Make sure your profile is as good as you can get it, detailing your professional background and successful accomplishments. These is essentially your résumé, and believe me, your prospects will occasionally look at it to get an idea of who you are before they trust you enough to buy from you. Additionally, if you're ever looking for another inside sales position, your potential new company will look at your LI profile before they bother with your actual résumé. Don't gloss over this important step.

2) Send a LinkedIn invitation to professional people colleagues you know well, or with whom you've had a business relationship, so you can link together. These would include your fellow Inside and Field salespeople, and all sales management within your company.

3) Call your customers that you have a working relationship with, have a conversation, then tell them you'd like to LinkIn to them. The best time to do this is right after the conversation. Caution! If you don't call first, they may perceive you as being too pushy, and won't accept the invitation. Besides, by calling them, you may also find other opportunities within his or her company that you didn't know about. If so, you've increased your sales.

4) When your invitation has been accepted, take a look at your invitee's connections. They may include people working at a company that you're trying to work with. If so, consider whether it might be worth calling your contact and asking how well he or she knows that person. If that's the case, you may get a reference!

5) When making a first time call to a prospect, especially to an exec or manager, take 30 seconds up from to check out his or her LI profile. You may discover you have mutual business associates or interests. Those can prove to be the best ice-breakers you'll ever have (see Case Study above).

6) This one's just a quick cautionary tip. Invitations from unknowns don't often result in links, and can be perceived as LinkedIn spam. Only invite people you really know. I get invitations from people I've never talked to, and I won't LinkIn to them. Most others won't either. There are other social networking sites that are great for popularity contests, but LinkedIn isn't: it's a business tool. If there's someone you'd like to know and LinkIn to, please call and say hello first.

I always check out someone's LI profile now before I call him or her. It takes hardly any time at all, and it's a great ice-breaker to spend thirty seconds or so at the beginning the call to talk about mutual acquaintances or interests.  So if you're not doing all of this right now, start today. It's a great way to communicate better with your prospects, and you'll increase sales, too. And add using LinkedIn effectively and efficiently to your Best Practices Playbook.

Want to get hired? Then drop the fishy handshake!

Success can be measured in a number of different ways. This year we can another great year in the telesales training business, but I measured our success in another way this year, too. We helped a whole bunch of people get hired.

Inside Sales Execs and Reps that have taken my courses know I'll always help them when they're looking. We even helped place several people that weren't involved in my classes, because they had stellar referrals from people that did. The secret is we're not a recruitment firm, and don't charge anything for placement calls, so companies will always talk to me.

We went beyond just making calls, reviewing and occasionally fine-tuning résumés, getting them to have more robust profiles on LinkedIn, you name it, we did it. The high tech telesales world is skewed when great people aren't working. Reps who have never been under quota were laid off this year. Sales execs with proven track records went months without a position. The last couple of months have been pretty successful for us, in terms of getting great people placed.

I told you that story so I can tell this one. All of the above I did by telephone. But several weeks ago I attended a conference, and met a young man, an associate of a friend of mine. When I shook hands with him, it was like shaking an eel, it was that limp and fishy. It gave me a cold shudder, and for the life of me, I can't remember anything he said. But I do remember that handshake!

It wasn't my place to do any on-the-spot mentoring. But I figured that fellow will close a lot of doors before they have a chance to get opened, and until he fixes it, he'll be aced out in the job market. Handshakes aren't trivial in Western countries. People tend to form snap judgments on introductory handshakes. Firm handshakes are the gold standard of introductions. They don't need to be bone-crushers, but they have to have substance. With all the terrific books on interpersonal skills out there, it still surprises me that some people just don't have the handshake bit down yet. While we're for the most part telesales people, we still meet occasional customers and prospects. And we shake hands with our fellow employees all the time.

So here's the bottom line. I'll bet all the readers of my blog have handshaking down to an art. But you probably have friends and colleagues that don't. In this volatile business climate, people need all the help they can get. It's tough enough to get hired if one has all the tools and great recommendations, and a poor handshake could scotch everything. So do a favor for your weak-handshaked friends. You're a friend, so you can tell them. Or you're a manager, and you can do some mentoring. Or even easier yet, point them to this blog post.