Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

More on Age Bias and Texting

One of my blog correspondents has been raving enthusiastically about the diversity of employees at her new inside sales job, where the manager of the department has loaded the team with people of a myriad of ages and ethnicities. These differences of backgrounds and cultures has created a very strong team that seems to be energizing everyone, and she says it’s elevating the concepts of Best Practices and team communication to a high level, as the inside reps bring their diverse experiences into the dialogue as to how best present and sell the solutions the company offers. Some of the most effective and efficient teams that have gone through our inside sales training courses have had this type of diversity, too. 

A while back, I blogged about concerns over age bias in inside sales teams, and this past week, the San Jose Mercury had a front page article describing a lawsuit that’s now moving forward against a major Silicon Valley company because of an alleged age-bias issue. The worker is claiming, among other things, that he was told he was not a good “cultural fit,” a term I’ve heard used several times in the past year as an excuse for not hiring an experienced inside sales rep. In each case, the rep was an exceptional one, was very successful in previous inside sales roles, and would have been a formidable contributor to the success of the company. This will be an interesting case to watch, as the concept affects, or will potentially effect, virtually everyone reading this post. 

So what’s texting got to do with this? Texting has become a standard method of communicating, especially among younger inside sales reps, and recently I blogged about using mobile phones in creative ways to engage prospects and customers. If you’re a texter, be careful about assuming that your prospects are actually receiving your texts, if you choose to communicate that way. Recently, someone texted my landline, so assumed I got the message. I didn’t because it was on a landline. My colleague Trish Bertuzzi is fond of saying the inside sales business is not the “pen pals” business, and there’s still no better way of communicating information over distances, where KPIs (key performance indicators) dictate large numbers of qualified prospects and sales. So if you do like to text your prospects, ensure that they like communicating that way, and that they’re using mobile devices and will be amenable to receiving them and responding to you.

A brutal sales territory: as challenging as yours is, this one’s probably worse

Today I'm flying over the Kamchatka Peninsula. It's completely covered in snow, with huge Mt. Fuji-shaped volcanic peaks thrusting out of the landscape. Relatively few extol the beauty of Kamchatka because it's not exactly a tourist destination, remote and uncompromising. It looks cold down there, and it reminds me that no matter how bad a grim sales day can be, there are many jobs that are worse than sales. Just ask those miners working 30,000 feet below me.

But then again there are a few really bad sales jobs, too. The story I'm going to tell you is one I sometimes tell in my telesales training classes, to illustrate how good the people I'm training really have it. They say every bad sales territory is salvageable. I'm not sure about this one. You tell me:

My dad's great with people, a natural story teller, and a real nice guy. Despite the fact that he had no college, he was hired as a sales rep for a significant building supplies company. He soon blew out the numbers in his territory, and the president rewarded him by giving him the largest territory in the company, one that had been underperforming for years. With the same success he'd achieved in the smaller territory, he was bound to be successful, right?

That territory was indeed huge, running from Monterey to Santa Barbara, at a time when California's Central Coast was on an unbelievable building boom. Highway 101 was, at that time, 2 lanes wide, one running in each direction. Dad was in the right place at the right time. But guess what? Nobody bought anything. Nobody wanted to talk to him either. He sometimes visited 6 hardware stores per day. No sales. Then he discovered the reason. Before my dad's sales predecessor in the territory had been fired, he'd been stealing significant amounts of supplies from the company warehouse, loading them into his car, taking to the road, then undercutting all competitors by selling his goods for pennies on the dollar. Not only could my honest dad not match the prices, but the buyers knew they'd been receiving stolen goods, so they didn't even want to see him walk in the door. His territory was, in the old military parlance, FUBAR (look it up, families read this blog). He gave it 3 more months, but finally quit the sales business entirely and went into the food business, which he felt was a lot cleaner. Dad was never told, going into the territory, that his customers had been sold stolen goods at barebottom prices, and once the previous rep had been fired, they were probably afraid of crime investigations as well. He had to find out on his own after his "promotion."

So what can we learn and take away from this crazy story of a territory gone bad?

When we're having a bad day, it's sometimes really motivating to get a sense of good things really are. Sure your CRM is slow. Sure marketing could get you more leads. And yes, you may feel your KPIs are unfair. That's when you want to brace up and get back to work, knowing that as bad as things seem, they're probably not bad to the magnitude that my dad's situation was. You're also not a miner in Kamchatka. We all have different ways of motivating ourselves, but reflecting for a moment on people that have things worse than we do is a damn good motivator if you're searching for one. Whatever your situation, you'll have an occasional bad day. So use that bad day to find new ways of thinking out of the box to find new opportunities, make more effective presentations, and do a better job of doing your own marketing to get you some better leads. Creativity is born out of frustration, so use those occasional frustrating days as springboards to thinking of new ways to make your territory more successful. The best salespeople always do.

Speed interviewing: is this dodgy hiring technique based on speed-dating?

This blog was begun as a way to share some of the best practices in inside sales techniques that we discuss in my telesales training courses, but has evolved to encompass inside sales management techniques and practices as well. Last week's post on the concept of yearly commission checks prompted both blog responses and a number of telephone calls. One of the most interesting communications I've received about the whole process of interviewing came from Barbara, who emailed the following story about an uncomfortable interview experience she went through with a well-known high technology company. I'm reprinting it here because many inside sales executives and managers are readers of this blog, and I'm sure they'll want to avoid having interview candidates feel as badly about their companies as this candidate feels about the company she just interviewed with. Multiply that number by 20, as that is the number of people that were "mass-interviewed" that day. At the end of Barbara's story, I'll have some specific recommendations for things to avoid when interviewing someone.

About the candidate: Barbara has 10 years successful experience as both an inside and field-based sales rep selling hardware solutions. The company she interviewed with sells both hardware and software, and Barbara was interested in an inside sales position. Here's her story:

"I, along with at least 10 other candidates, was brought in at 8:15 am on the morning of the interview. The in-house recruiter finally came down stairs about 8:35 to bring all of us up to a conference room on another floor. We were all in business suits. I was told there would be  another session starting at 11:15 am, more candidates, with the same format.

"We all sat around for another 15 or so minutes, tension building, until the director of the sales group for which, if hired, we'd be working, came in and gave a 10 minute summary of what was happening and introduced the "interview team" of probably 7 other people. One by one our names were called (not quite like the Registry of Motor vehicles, but close) and we were escorted into individual conference rooms for the first of our 30 minute interviews. I was last.

"The in-house recruiter made small talk until the person I was supposed to interview with arrived about 10 minutes later. It started off badly, because the first person I interviewed with had no clue about the industry I came from or how we go to market. He proceeded to grill me asking what CIO, CEO and every other high level IT executives I knew. I told him I dealt with hardware people and he became angrier. Then we started role playing. He told me I had no inside sales experience and wondered why I was there. I told him I did, and that I was already interviewing for senior management, director VP roles. I totally threw him off. We started to role play. I had to set up a call, and close him He just didn't get it, or me, or my background, or how to interview candidates. We ended our "hostile" chat with him saying, because of my hardware background, "If you are willing to give me 200% then we will ‘take a chance' and bring you on." He asked for references, my reply was to check my LinkedIn profile (my references are there) and he was very put off by that as well.

"The second guy I interviewed with was so desperate for someone who knew even a little about hardware and how a system worked, that about five minutes into the conversation he said "we need you" and "I'm going to put my recommendation in to hire you." He asked me zero interview questions. He briefly scanned my resume, made a comment about how good it was that I was well familiar with a certain microprocessor, then repeated himself on how I had such a great background, and how he would strongly recommend me for a role with the company. He told me he was asked to interview candidates early yesterday morning and that all the people interviewing were given questions to ask the candidates.

"The 3rd person I interviewed with was the inside sales manager. She asked me a few questions, then we started a role play where I set up a cold call. She asked me how I felt about making 50-100 calls a day and I said it was no problem, but felt quality of quantity is what really mattered. She ended the interview.

"At the end of the 3rd interview I walked back into the conference room and the in-house recruiter was standing there, more small chat. I felt I performed well and was still quite dumbfounded about the whole process. We made small talk, and she told me to "call me next week." At that point I knew I did not get the job. I was also not escorted down to the lobby. Not one of the people I interviewed with handed me a business card or any company collateral. The only common thread was that they all asked me why I wanted to work for the company. The following week, I got a two liner email declining me as a candidate and a thank you."

So there's Barbara's story. My guess is that with the exception of the inside sales manager, none of the people doing the interviewing knew prior to one day earlier that they would be interviewing inside sales candidates. If they received questions to ask during the interviews, they certainly didn't follow them.

Putting a bunch of candidates in a room and "speed interviewing" them may not make the eventual "winner" feel very good about wanting to accrue any longevity with the company. Professionalism starts at the top, and issuing a "cattle call," not giving out business cards, and not even bothering to walk the candidate to the door sends loads of messages about how the company operates, not only to candidates, but to everyone who works at the company. I imagine this company's attrition rate is significant.

Putting together a list of Best Practices often consists of listing poor practices and resolving not to do things that way. If you're a hiring manager, insist on treating every candidate that walks through your doors the same way you'd like to be treated when you yourself are engaged in interviewing with a company with whom you'd like to work. If you do, you'll have great candidates wanting to work for you, and your attrition rate will be lower, too.

Those of us who work in a high tech environment do so for a number of reasons, which generally include a high level of professionalism, easy access to management, and a philosophy of focusing on solutions rather than problems. Taking the "high road" in interviewing practices gives a company the best shot at hiring effective individuals that will reciprocate with the same degree of professionalism they were shown in the initial interview. And I'm trusting that Barbara's interview process was an industry anomaly, rather than an emerging trend.

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 that 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 will 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.

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.

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.

Job interview ripoff: Here’s how you can get free consulting by making your candidates work for nothing!

Got your attention? If you're a telesales rep or manager, and you're looking for work, I want to expose a couple of scams that have the end result of putting you to work making a profit for the company that's interviewing you, while you get paid nothing. Today's blog post is the result of an email I got from Alan, a very good rep that took one of my telesales courses a while back.

Alan wrote:
I have a question for you. I received an e-mail from an old colleague who is looking for a job and got an odd request from a company he is applying to. In summary, here is the e-mail, "The interview process is such: meet with [Hiring] Manager and then VP of Sales. The final stage is for me to go into their corporate office and make an hour's worth of customer sales calls (via telephone). I am supposed to be supplied a call script and other information prior to making these initial calls. I find it weird making calls without being an employee and not yet having any internal sales training." (Geoff,) Do you think this is a legitimate request or a red flag?

It's a red flag to me. A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about an innovative interviewing done by Marc Cook, who mocks up a sales situation, then has a potential hiree call him. I liked the idea, so do read my post on it.

By contrast, what I don't like about the situation Alan's friend finds himself in is that in making calls to real prospects, he's essentially giving the company interviewing him an hour's worth of free consulting. He might do a great job, move the sales process to the next step, then not get the job. He also won't know enough about the product or service to answer meaningful prospect questions, so the calls could be real duds, too.

Don't think I'm being too far-fetched on thinking this is a ripoff, either. Several years ago, a friend of mine who was a terrific inside sales manager began interviewing for a management position with a new company. Twice she was called in for interviews. They asked her to white-board a telesales operation from head to foot in the first interview, then asked her about comp plans in the second. When they called her back for a third interview, she asked if they were going to hire her, or just wanted another hour's worth of free consulting (yay, Barinda!) It turns out that the CEO of this particular company had a reputation for getting free consulting by picking the brains of candidates he was never intending to hire in the first place.

So folks, free work during an interview is a scam. As far as the hiring process goes in general, I don't like personality tests (meaningless), W2 forms (no one has a right to see your private income data) or drug tests (your body and medical situation are not owned by your employer, only your time is). Slave labor went out of vogue in this country some time ago. If you're treated unfairly during the interview process, think of how you'll be treated on the job. In the case of Alan's friend, the interviewer doesn't know enough about what makes a superior inside sales rep to be able to hire one. How the heck is that person going to manage the "successful" candidate that gets hired?

In Asia, a popular saying is "cash is king." The Asians have it right. There are lots of hiring scams, unfair interviewing processes, and crappy interviewing techniques out there. If you've ever been scammed or insulted during an interview process, tell us about it. Once I get a decent response, I'll publish a warning list on this site. Should make for some interesting reading.

Taking the Ethical High Road: Sometimes it means “taking one for the team”

You know that I like to occasionally pontificate on ethical issues, like treating people the way you'd like to be treated, or doing the best thing to make our clients' lives better. But sometimes, in doing so, it takes money out of our pockets. I call that "taking one for the team." And that's what today's post is all about.
Sometimes it costs us to do the right thing. I was fortunate enough to work for some really ethical companies. One of them, Atron, a company that sold hardware-based testing tools, allowed me as a salesperson to authorize the return of any equipment I'd sold that didn't make my customers 100% happy. In having that policy, we sold a lot of product and got a reputation for being honest. And that loyalty brought us tons of business.

But it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes you do the right thing, but the stars don't line up, and you're the bad guy or gal.  And you just have to take the "high road" and just have the philosophy that sometimes the best intentions fail. But if you fail for all the right reasons, is it still failure? Maybe not.
Here are two stories from my own world. Do either of these situations resonate with you?

1) One of my telesales training clients was one of the best-known names in the computer industry. They asked me to train 50 or so of their lead development reps, which were managed at an outsource bureau hundreds of miles away from the home office. So these reps were not actual employees of my client; they worked at a subcontracting firm. I traveled to meet the outsource management team and some of the reps. The reps told me confidentially how bad the working conditions were. And I confirmed it: the reps were being annoyed by management to the point of abuse, and no training in the world was going to improve their confidence level. To a person, the reps wanted to leave, and were all actively searching for other opportunities with other companies. It was truly the outsource bureau from hell, and I'd never experienced a worse work situation in our industry. So I returned and told the client what I'd found, and that I wasn't going to take the training contract. With working conditions as bad as they were, I told my client that he'd be wasting his money on training until either the management conditions were fixed there, or he found another bureau. My client wanted me to reconsider, but I felt that no amount of money was worth taking the job in the present condition. And I didn't want my client to waste his money, either.

2) In another situation with an equally well-known company, I was asked by my client, a middle manager there, to begin interviewing potential inside sales reps that would shortly be hired to sell a software solution that would soon be coming out of engineering. This consulting project called for an overview and recommendations for setting up a telesales department, but not specifically to interview candidates. In this consulting project, because my client was going on vacation, he asked that I not divulge what we were doing, if asked, to his Director, because this was going "under the radar." Naturally, two days after my client left for vacation, the Director called me in for an ad hoc meeting and warned me not to interview people. So what did I do? I went home and quit the project. Later, my client called me, upset that I'd quit. One problem was that I couldn't tell him I'd quit because I didn't trust him. But that was the reason.

In both of these situations, I walked away from significant projects because they were ethically screwed up. Also in both cases, much to my chagrin, the client ended up disliking me because I left. These still eat at me a bit because I always figure there might have been a way to salvage the relationship with these managers. But I don't regret for one minute pulling out of those projects.

I'm writing about this because we're in tough economic times today (hey, if you've got enough bills to pay, times are always tough economically). We all need to make money, and the companies we work for need to see their bottom lines improve, too. But there's occasionally something lurking around the corner that's going to pay us money, but just doesn't feel right. I'm not going to provide examples, because I'm sure you can come up with one or two on your own. When you make ethical decisions that cost you money, you take a short term loss. But you'll feel good that you made a tough decision for the right reasons, and you'll have a reputation that can't be bought with money. So go out and have a great Quarter, and add making tough ethical decisions to your Best Practices Playbook.

Can women really succeed as sales execs? Time for a little honest dialogue.

Some of the most talented female inside sales directors and managers I've met have gone on to starting their own companies or becoming independent consultants, rather than remaining in high tech sales for a corporate entity. With very few exceptions, none of these women have held the title of VP of Sales, in which they ran both inside and field sales. This is not the case for many of the men who've moved up the ranks from individual telesales contributors to becoming sales executives. Fact is, in my 20-odd years in the business, I just haven't seen talented women move up the sales exec ladder the way men have.
Today's post is a starting point to open up some dialogue within our industry about why so few of our female telesales managers and directors move into executive sales management roles. Here are three possible reasons, but I'm open to more: 1) They're not talented enough, that's why they're in inside (vs. field) sales; 2) They lack field sales experience, which means they won't gain the respect of the field sales force; 3) The "glass ceiling" is in full force, and the men in charge don't want to muddy the male waters with women sales execs, no matter how talented they may be. Let's discuss each of these three for a moment. And because this blog gets quite a bit of traction around the internet these days, in the interest of full disclosure, the writer of this blog is a guy. So let's fire away and look at each question...

Women don't often evolve from the role of inside sales director or manager to that of a high level sales executive because: 

1) They're not talented enough, that's why they're in inside (vs. field) sales. The prejudice that many field-based sales people have against inside sales people is a fact that has been around as long as insides sales people began taking revenue away from them. A common fallacy still quite popular is that if inside sales people were any good, they'd have been field reps. Yet, from the "inside-out" view, many of the best inside reps like the idea of not having to travel, and have superior qualification skills. In many cases, they close faster, and with high-ticket items, too. As one sales exec told me once, "remember, Boeing sells planes over the phone." The "lack of sales talent" argument here just doesn't wash.

2) They lack field sales experience, which means they won't gain the respect of the field sales force. Field experience by itself doesn't gain anyone any respect.  If a rep doesn't produce with real numbers, regardless of whether he or she is in inside or field sales, then professional credibility just isn't there. I've personally known many inside sales reps that successfully "carried a bag" prior to becoming an inside rep, both men and women. Also, does this argument can work the other way around? Do inside sales people disrespect upper-level sales execs solely on the basis of the fact that they haven't sold inside? Not in my experience. In addition, thousands of inside reps have forged mutually-respectful relationships with field reps, where they partner together as equals to close deals (and are equally-commissioned, too).

3) The "glass ceiling" is in full force, and the men in charge don't want to muddy the male waters with women sales execs, no matter how talented they may be.  Over the past 20 years, thousands on businesswomen have learned to excel at golf. Many (but certainly not all) of them took up the sport as a way to open up a better dialogue with upper-level male executives that traditionally ran most companies. Men tend to be "clubby," and many women saw --- and still see  --- joining in on traditionally male-oriented social venues as a way to break through the invisible corporate walls that prevented them from succeeding on talent and ability alone. Does the "glass ceiling" still exist for women attempting to move up the sales ladder?

I suppose it can be argued that in a traditional male-female relationship, when a couple has a baby, it's most often that the man that returns to work, rather than the woman (but careful! The concept of "family" is changing in today's diverse workforce). Often, though, women do return to the working environment after having a child. And not all women elect to have a child, either.

Let me throw a statistic in here that's food for thought. I actually keep records of individual inside sales reps that take my telesales training courses. At last analysis, roughly 133 of them have evolved from starting as telesales reps to becoming sales or marketing managers or directors. 29 of them (22% of the total) were women. But looking at executive-level position (VP or higher) of the 20 that graduated to that level, only 1 (5% of that total) was a woman. That's a pretty big discrepancy. My numbers certainly aren't a large sampling, but they do lead to a few questions that need to be asked.

1) Does the glass ceiling exist for women within the sales executive dynamic?

2) If it does, is it:

a) because women are traditionally linked to inside sales?

b) because they're perceived to be less talented?

c), because they have not socially integrated with men at the executive level?

d) because many men refuse to hire a woman to work as a sales exec, for any reason?

3) If the glass ceiling exists, are we experiencing a "brain-drain" within the sales business, as many of our best and brightest leave enterprise companies due to lack of opportunity?

Sometimes I think that we Americans complain too much, particularly about issues in the workplace. When I hear a lot of these complaints, I just want to tell the complainers to be quiet and go back to work. But when I look at my own statistics, then see how they apparently track throughout our industry, I'm wondering if there isn't a valid complaint right here.

For our country to remain successful and innovative businesswise, we absolutely must hire and promote on the basis of creativity, business-savvy, and superior communication skills. We can't afford to ignore our best and brightest as we promote.

Have we got a problem here? Maybe we do. And if we do, how badly is our business suffering because of it?

What do you think?

6 steps to becoming a better inside sales coach

Last week's post described why I feel side-by-side, at-desk coaching is a far more effective management technique than call monitoring, which is done remotely. The prime reason coaching works better than monitoring is the immediacy of behavior change. 

In monitoring, discussing the call even one hour later isn't very good, because the rep has gone onto other calls, and may not remember what thought processes triggered his or her actions on the call. And "gotcha" moments aren't very much fun for the reps, either.  By contrast, coaching is done at the rep's desk, in real time. It provides an opportunity for immediate success and enhances team communication, initially between the rep and the manager, and later, through sharing of best practices, throughout the entire inside team as well. As I mentioned last week, coaching is way more permissible, legally, than monitoring, according to some guidelines cobbled together by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

As a manager, it's critically important for you to allow the rep to gain a "win" immediately after feedback, and the best way to do it is to coach your reps while they're in the process of making actual calls. That doesn't mean handing them scraps of paper telling them what to say during a call, either. During the call, a good coach sits back, listens, and takes good notes. After the call, you can debrief. And if the rep missed something vital on the call, he or she can call the prospect right back, while you're sitting there, and fix it. After that second call, the rep will have demonstrably shown improvement, and both of you walk away with a win. Not only that, the rep will, in all probability, welcome your presence and opinions at future coaching dates.

Here are six great steps to becoming a superior inside sales coach:

1) Your rep may be a little nervous with you sitting in the cube. Be sure to begin your session by asking if there's anything in particular the rep would like you to listen for.

2) Ask the rep to describe the prospect and sales situation into which he or she will be calling.

3) After the rep begins the call, say nothing until the call has finished. Do not prompt the rep in any fashion or give him or her written pointers during the call. Even if you're jumping out of your shoes, ready with a great suggestion, let the rep finish the call on his or her own.

4) After the call, begin by telling the rep what you liked about the call. Be sincere, and describe, from your notes, what you liked about the call.

5) If there are areas for improvement, discuss them, and ask if the rep agrees with you. If he or she doesn't, have a discussion about it, and describe why those areas are critical.

6) Ask the rep to call the prospect right back, right while you're sitting there, and address the areas for improvement you just discussed. The prospect won't be offended by the return call. In fact, he or she will be pleased that the rep thought enough about the conversation to call back.

We teach these coaching techniques in our coaching classes for managers, but you can begin employing them right now. Improving rep performance is an educative process, and giving your reps instant wins is critical to behavioral change. If you're currently monitoring instead of coaching, please reconsider coaching as a faster and more effective way to improve the performance of your inside sales and lead qualification reps. And add coaching to your Best Practices playbook.