Poker Craps And More

Affiliate marketing is akin to an auction. Merchandise is pushed on your site for this, each purchase brings in a percentage. There is less time and effort needed, very few overheads, it works 24/7, and it is easy to pick up. To begin with, you have to make a decision as to precisely which area most suits your business style. To get this out of the way, identify what solutions to a problem a unique market segment is expecting, and which solutions are on offer to assist them. One of the better means to determine this easily is finding groups of narrow keywords; there are less searchers for these in general, but they will convert far more.

These profitable keywords can be found by using Micro Niche Finder. The information collected by this software or similar applications and services produces a list of associated terminology giving valuable targets to have top listing on internet searches.

Further information is supplied from Micro Niche Finder, such as search frequency, precisely how many different websites who exploit them, and details on your competitors too. Last but not least, Micro Niche Finder information can help you find the right domain, aid you in putting together your internet site, and find desirable merchandise to market. Next you need to build a website; however there are still fundamental things to do. Search engine optimization is absolutely fundamental. Products like SEO Elite can make this less problematic. Competing internet sites are examined by SEO Elite information which then offers suggestions to improve search results.

With software like SEO Elite, information supplied by the application advises you where to get links, the most lucrative keywords, and even an extensive listing of article submission internet sites to use. Briefly, the results generated are the same sort of advice you might receive when you consult an experienced SEO professional.

Once you settle on your niche, design your product ads, and your site is ready to go, then you are ready to get your internet site up in the search results. Your profits will roll in without very much effort and you will wonder why you always worried about making money!

In essence affliliate marketing is similar to an auction. You promote the various items goods and services on your website in return, you’ll receive a commission from every lead. There’s less work, fewer operating costs, it works 24 hours a day, and even better, it is comparatively easy to learn.

The first step you must take is to determine just which niche market you want to work in. A good way to do this is, you need to find out what specific solutions to a given problem a particular market segment is experiencing, and discover how you can help them. One of the best ways to find this easily is to find specific highly targeted longtail keywords and phrases; in general people search for these less often, but they will convert far more into sales.

These lucrative keywords can be rooted out by using Micro Niche Finder. Info compiled by Micro Niche Finder or analogous programs or services results in related terminology in a comprehensive list format which you should target in order to get a high listing in the search engines and bring in traffic.

Further information is also accessible from the application, for instance how many searches each word or phrase gets, the number of other sites using the particular keyword or phrase, and details on the competition too. Ultimately, Micro Niche Finder data should help you locate the right domain, assist you in putting together your internet site, and even discover the greatest sales opportunities. Putting together a internet site is next on the list; yet you’ll obviously need to do more than just that. Search engine optimization is absolutely essential. Here SEO Elite information comes in. Competing websites are analyzed by the software package which then provides advice on improving search engine rankings.

With applications like SEO Elite, data supplied by the computer software advises you on links, the most profitable keywords, and even details on where to submit articles. In summary, Seo Elite information is much like to the information you might receive when you consult an experienced SEO professional.

Once you settle on your target market sector, plan your product advertisements, and your website has been designed, it is time to get your web site up in the search results. Your profits will roll in regularly and you will question why you didn’t think of this earlier!

Many recruiting ads and job descriptions include “knockout factors” that can actually screen out qualified sales candidates. One example is a requirement that candidates have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or a degree in a specialized field of study such as Engineering. Another example is a requirement that candidates have a minimum number of years of sales experience.

When my customers’ recruiting ads and job descriptions include these types of knockout factors, I like to have a little fun with them. I say something like:

“(Name), imagine that I have two candidates for your sales job opening. One of them has both the college degree and the five years of sales experience that are listed as minimum requirements in your recruiting ad. The other candidate doesn’t have a college degree, and she only has two years of sales experience. But, she has relationships with dozens of C-level executives that are good prospects for your company’s products and services. She could easily book fifteen appointments during her first week on the job. Which candidate would you prefer?”

As you might expect, my customers always choose the candidate with the relationships. That is when I have to deliver the bad news:

“(Name), unfortunately you will never see this candidate, because she is being screened out by your knockout factors!”

If you want to improve the overall quality of your sales candidate pool, shift your focus away from education and experience and toward performance-based measures. How will you measure your new salespeople’s performance during their first thirty, sixty, ninety, and 180 days? What activities will you expect them to perform? What results will you expect these activities to produce, and in what time frame?

Here is an outline for a recruiting process that focuses on performance-based factors:

1. Write a Performance-Based Recruiting Ad: As you construct your ad, consider the following questions:
• What kinds of companies or organizations are good prospects for your company’s products and services? Your ad should state a preference for job candidates that have existing relationships with these kinds of companies and organizations.
• Who are the most productive people (job titles) for your salespeople to call on? Your ad should state a preference for candidates that have existing relationships with people that have these titles, and/or a proven ability to prospect successfully to people at similar levels.
• What specific sales production (such as pipeline dollar volume, sales dollar volume, etc.) do you expect your new salespeople to produce during their first 90 days? Make this expectation crystal clear in your recruiting ad!
2. Scrutinize Resumes for Accomplishments: Smart salespeople know that results sell. When these salespeople prospect, they talk to potential prospects about the results their companies have produced for customers. When they write resumes, they write about the results they have produced and their other accomplishments (awards, recognition, etc.).
3. Conduct Telephone Screening Calls: For candidates that have interesting resumes, schedule a 20-30 minute telephone screening call. This will give you an opportunity to ask performance-based questions related to two critical performance factors: the candidate’s relationships and their prospecting activities. Here are sample screening call questions:

• Who do you know that might be a prospect for our company’s products and services?
• What relationships do you have that could be leveraged for appointments during your first few weeks on the job?
• What activities do you typically include in your prospecting plan?
• What percentage of your time do you spend on each activity?
• What results have these activities produced for you in the past?
• How long did it take before you started making quota consistently in your current job?
4. Assess Qualified Candidates: For candidates that pass the telephone screen, gather objective information about their talents via specialized sales assessment tests. The most effective sales assessment tests go beyond personality and behavioral traits and examine attributes such as Learning Rate and Reasoning Ability.
5. Conduct In-Person Interviews: Now you are prepared to conduct thorough, performance-based interviews. Why? Look at the information you have collected! For each candidate that you are going to interview, you should have in your hands:
• A resume that lists key accomplishments
• Performance-based information collected during a telephone screening call
• Objective information about talents critical to sales success

If you ask performance-based questions and clearly outline your expectations for new hire sales performance, you will attract fewer poor candidates, as some will de-select themselves. You will also attract more strong candidates, as they will no longer be screened out by invalid “knockout factors”. The end result will be a steady improvement in the overall quality of your sales organization.

Copyright 2005 — Alan Rigg

Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don’t Perform and What to Do About It. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers DOUBLE sales by implementing The Right Formula for building top-performing sales teams. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.

Effective real estate marketing technique is the foundation of a good real estate marketing system. And the real estate marketing system contains a list of specific actions required to successfully implement a specific real estate marketing technique.

Here’s an example of a real estate marketing technique that every agent and his and her uncle uses: “Offer a No Cost Obligation Competitive Marketing Analysis (CMA) to attract consumers.

Once you’ve established a relationship with the prospect you can then segue into your pitch to sell additional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the consumer’s interaction with the low-cost product or service.”

Specifically, you are angling for a “listing agreement”, and if you get it you can then add on “seller” giveaways to make the listing more appealing to buyers and therefore easier to sell (seller agrees to pay discount points, offer home warranty plans, agree to sell-lease backs, etc.)

No, I’m not talking about under pricing it to sell it quickly, or anything else unethical. Instead, I am talking about having open and honest dialogue with your seller to determine what kinds of concessions he or she is willing to make to get their properties sold. It could be a new paint job, a new roof, the installation of new carpet and anything else imaginable.

It’s important to realize that a real estate marketing technique is different than a tactic. While it is possible to have a tactical real estate marketing system without a sound, well-considered real estate marketing technique, it is rare to be able to develop one that withstands the test of time.

Some real estate marketing techniques are based on market dominance. In this scheme, agents are ranked based on their market share or dominance within their communities.

Still, other real estate marketing techniques are outright aggressive. They beg the questions whether you should grow your business or not, and if so, how fast.

Finally, other real estate marketing techniques are warfare based strategies. Ever hear of Guerilla Marketing? Well, that’s where the term comes from.

Using technique that you are comfortable with, that is more in keeping with your personality is recommended, because when the going gets tough you are so likely to abandon it. I’m starting to use the term more frequently these days, but only because it’s true; slow and steady wins a lot of races, and when you implement your real estate marketing techniques and strategies know that although the going may be slow initially, while you’ll eventually reap the benefits of your efforts.

Summarily, effective real estate marketing technique is the foundation of a good real estate marketing system, which is key to your short, intermediate and long term success.

May your real estate career be long and rewarding.

Lanard Perry is the author of “Farming Expired Listings” – a Real Estate Listing System Ebook that shows Realtors how to average 1 or more listings a week. Visit http://www.farmingexpiredlistings.com and http://www.real-estate-marketing-talk.com to learn and earn more.

Copyright 2006 The Janitorial Store

When starting out in your cleaning business, your first clients may be friends, relatives or clients that you had while working for another cleaning service. To grow your business you need to expand your circle and gain new customers. Where do you look for potential clients? The following are practical ideas to find qualified leads.

– Join a networking or volunteer organization. Your community may have a chamber of commerce, Sertoma, Rotary or other networking organization. Joining and participating is one way to get businesses in the community to know about you and the services you provide.

– Become an authority. Conduct a survey or poll that offers marketing information and then publicize the results through press releases and websites. Another way to become an expert is to teach classes in a local community education program. Both ways will build recognition and hopefully demand for your services.

– Find a partner. Work with businesses that compliment your cleaning service. Think of pairing up with a carpet cleaning service, air duct service or a business that cleans blinds. When your partner cannot supply a service they can refer the client to you and vice versa.

– Create an industry profile. Put together an informative speech or write an article about green cleaning, taking care of carpets or another area you’re experienced in. Then put together a few promotional pieces to mail out to the local media.

– Buy banner ads in electronic media. Look for a website that targets your potential customers, such as your local chamber. This can deliver your information right to the businesses that need your services.

– Read your local newspaper. Your local paper will keep you informed about new businesses, expansions and remodelings. These can all be prospective clients.

– Have a booth at a Business Expo. Most communities have some type of commerce and industry trade shows. Setting up a booth and having a sign up for door prizes is one way for people in the community to learn about the services you provide.

– Check your records. Have you lost clients? Were there potential customers who contacted you that you did not sign up for cleaning services? Circumstances may have changed and they might now need your services.

– Buy leads. You can buy prospect lists and mailing lists from various sources including local chambers, trade groups, professional organizations and mailing list services. Some lists can be very specific and break down the leads to specific groups, while others (such as from a chamber) may include all the group members.

Growing your cleaning business and getting more clients will take some time, creativity and perseverance. Devoting time into developing contacts and using the above ideas as guidelines you can grow your cleaning business and put your profits into the bank!

Steve Hanson is co-founder of TheJanitorialStore.com, an online community for owners of cleaning companies. Sign up for Trash Talk:Tip of the Week at www.TheJanitorialStore.com . Read success stories at www.cleaning-success.com .

One of the chief complaints from customers about the way business is conducted these days centers on customer service. Either the service aspect is completely lacking or what has been promised to the customer hasn’t been kept. Dealing with the latter category, it is easy to see why customers are disappointed: sales people routinely over promise and then fail to deliver.

A disappointed customer is not only unhappy with your services, but they won’t recommend you to their friends. Even worse, an unsatisfied customer may tell their friends to simply not do business with you! Read on for some tips on how you can deliver right on time, every time and leave your customers satisfied and recommending you to their friends.

Successful sales people thrive by getting referrals from satisfied customers. You not only have a satisfied customer, but the opportunity for receiving highly recommended future prospects increases as well.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind when working with any client:

Keep your promises. If you tell your customer that you will provide x, y, z then you must deliver on x, y, z. Delivering anything less than what you promise makes you look like every other guy out there: a liar…at least in your customers’ eyes!

Do not over promise. Likely, your intentions are to come through to your customers as planned. However, are you tempted to give them the shortest possible turn around time just to close a sale? Don’t do that! Instead, build in some buffer time to allow for problems to arise, to be addressed, and to be moved out of the way.

Be a Hero, not a Zero. Smart salespeople have a very good idea when a job should be completed, but add in the buffer time anyway. Let’s say a job takes 10 days to do. Tell your customer that you will have it completed in 15 days. When you deliver earlier than planned, you’ll come out looking like a hero. Deliver late and you’ll look bad – And you will have to come up with some sort of costly “extra” to soothe their wounds!

So, what do you do with those customers who have a, “I want it done yesterday” mentality? Emphasize quality! That’s right, instead of falsely promising that you can get the job done within their ridiculously short timeframe, give them a realistic timeframe and mention that this is the time needed to “get the job done right the first time.” You’ll help move them away from an untenable deadline to one that is based on reality. Emphasize quality over everything else and you will have their attention.

Remember: a satisfied customer is a happy customer and they will cost you less in the long run. Meet or beat your deadline each and every time and you’ll have a customer who is very satisfied with your services and they will recommend you to their friends. You will save money, time, and aggravation – and you will profit immensely over the long run.

For more sales training tips and strategies, visit the article directory at:
http://Mortgage-Training.Mortgage-Leads-Generator.com

Please feel free to reprint this article as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

Hartley Pinn has recently created the Mortgage Leads Generator Training Course to teach people how to make over $50,000 a month working part-time (10 to 15 hrs per week) as a mortgage loan officer.

Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by salespeople is the problem of chasing prospects. In this article I’ll explain exactly why that happens, and how you can avoid it entirely and make prospects chase you instead.

I once heard Donald Trump say, “In selling, you must never appear desperate. As
soon as you look desperate, it’s over.”

A friend and I were talking about the dynamics of a cold call the other day. When
we make that call, we usually hope and expect that the prospect will be receptive to
hearing what we have to say. However, salespeople face increasing resistance to
cold calling, as well as increasing flakiness on the part of prospects who do meet
with them. Instead of thinking, “Ok, this may be interesting,” here’s what most
prospects actually think when they receive a cold call: “Great. You don’t know me
and I don’t know you. You have no idea what my goals are. You don’t even know if
we need what you’re selling, and in spite of all that, you’ve decided to waste my time
anyway with this call.”

What is increasingly becoming the norm is to be rejected by the good, solid
prospects everyone wants, and to get appointments with flakey time-wasters who
will never buy. Flakiness, in particular, is a growing problem thanks to the fact that
prospects are increasingly bombarded with endless advertising as well as endless
salespeople. When you consider the fact that few prospects actually have the
courage to say “no” and instead choose to blow us off and make excuses, it
becomes even more frustrating.

One of the main themes I try to teach salespeople is two-fold: 1) You must be
supremely confident. 2) You must get into the habit of qualifying prospects OUT
instead of merely qualifying them. It is the appropriate response to ever-increasing
flakiness and evasiveness on the part of prospects. It’s our way of communicating to
them, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen” in a non-verbal way. The
idea of taking the lead and qualifying prospects out is scary at first, and as a result
most salespeople aren’t willing to do it, but it will save you lots of otherwise wasted
time with prospects who aren’t really serious, and will free that time up to be spent
with prospects who are going to buy.

It’s important to start all sales relationships from a position of power, and you do
this in two ways: 1) Through your outward presentation. This is easily accomplished
by acting very professional and dressing better than your prospects, rather than
taking the wrong advice of “dressing like your prospects.” It’s easy to say “no” to
someone with whom you’re comfortable, but much more difficult to say “no” to
someone who intimidates you. 2) Through your actions. A great example is
someone who is squirrely about agreeing to an appointment with you. In many
cases, these are the people who finally agree to meet with you but eventually blow
you off without buying. When I found myself in this situation,
I discovered a great way to overcome it. It goes back to the idea of confidence
bordering on mild arrogance, and puts you in the position of power. When you’re
getting the runaround, something like “Well, we’ll let you know when we have time
to pencil you in,” say something like, “Great, let me know. I’m very busy so I need to
know either way – NOW.” This will get rid of time-wasters, and with serious
prospects, will clearly communicate that you’re a serious businessperson, should be
taken seriously, and will not tolerate having your time wasted and otherwise being
disrespected. It will also set you apart from the competition and greatly increase
your chances of getting the sale.

As time goes on and I work with more salespeople, I’m realizing that this idea of
being powerful really overrides everything else, and once you can pull it off, it
overshadows everything. You can do a poor job of presenting and selling and yet
this can carry you all by itself. For anyone who is doubtful about this idea of
presenting yourself as overconfident and even a little bit arrogant, I’ll go back to
Donald Trump since he’s famous for his giant ego. I saw him on Larry King, and as
they were taking live calls, one of the callers openly confronted him about his
massive ego and Larry King jumped on and questioned him about it as well. Donald
Trump simply replied, “Have you EVER met a successful person who didn’t have a
big ego?” After some hemming and hawing from King, Trump repeated the
question to him, and King finally said, “No.”

Moving on from the idea of avoiding an appearance of desperation and creating an
appearance of power, there’s another very good reason as to why prospects who are
uncovered via cold calling are flakey. This one has nothing to do with us and
everything to do with a particular prospect’s mindset and level of sales vulnerability
to begin with.

Most of us have noticed, at some time or another, that prospects who absolutely
refuse to take cold calls and have giant “No Soliciting” signs plastered on their front
doors tend to be the easiest to sell to once you manage to get in front of them.
There are a few popular theories as to why this is so, the most common one being
the idea that since so few salespeople get through to begin with, there is little
competition and therefore a better chance of getting the sale. However, I know the
real reason behind this.

The reason those people are so defensive against sales pitches and have all those
“No Soliciting” signs is quite simple. They are AFRAID of salespeople. They know
very well that they have a very difficult time saying “no,” and as such they are highly
vulnerable to sales presentations and know very well that if a salesperson gets to
them, they’ll probably buy whether they need to or not.

(I never figured this out until I spoke with an expert on social dynamics who has
studied the subject of human social interaction in depth. He explained that the
people who act the coldest and most unapproachable in social settings do so
because they’re overly vulnerable to being seduced and falling in love and therefore
are afraid of what someone’s advances may lead to.)

Now that we’ve explained why those people are the easiest to sell to, let’s look at
the opposite type of prospect: those who willingly take your call and willingly agree
to set an appointment.

If those who are easily sold won’t take your call and won’t agree to meet with you,
why would someone be so agreeable to taking your call and meeting with you?
Exactly. It’s because they have no fear of salespeople. They know right from the
start that there’s little chance of them being sold. Their openness and receptiveness
to your call puts us off-guard. We think we have a great shot at a sale, but in reality
we’re meeting with someone who is 99% certain not to buy.

Since the people who willingly take cold calls usually don’t buy, and the people who
usually buy don’t take cold calls, what’s the solution? Since those who are easily
sold almost always meet with salespeople only when they’ve called the salesperson
first and not the other way around, you must get your message across to these
people in creative and effective ways other than cold calling.

To those highly desirable prospects who are easily sold, all salespeople seem the
same. The only way to win with them is to separate yourself from the rest of the
crowd.

The first way to accomplish this is to be that powerful businessperson who needs
nothing and deserves respect. I think most of us were taught and have gotten into
the habit of treating prospects as superiors and as a result we tend to do whatever
is convenient for prospects and otherwise kiss up to them. We are used to
rearranging our schedules just to meet with that one prospect. Stop this, and start
expecting your prospects to treat YOU with the respect and consideration you
deserve as someone who is not only a business equal, but who has the knowledge
and wisdom to help them and improve their businesses and their lives.

The second way to stand out is to stop cold calling. Nothing will stereotype you as
a typical salesperson faster than a cold call. The way to win with prime prospects is
to get your message across to them in ways that don’t use cold calling. You’ll get in
front of the easy sales, and you won’t have any competition once you get there.

Frank Rumbauskas is the author of Cold Calling Is a Waste of Time: Sales Success in
the Information Age. He is the founder of FJR Advisors LLC, which publishes training
materials on generating business without cold calling. For more information, please
visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com

A hard working salesman left his last call of the day, a large rural merchandise distributor, without making a sale. He started to drive back to the state highway on the narrow country road that the prospect’s business was located on. After driving for about 10 minutes, he hit a ragged rock and got a flat tire.

When he opened his trunk he discovered that his jack was missing. “What am I going to do now?”, he thought. He hadn’t noticed any traffic since he turned on to that road. and it was about 30 miles to the next town.

Luckily, that prospect’s place was only about 10 or 12 miles back down the road. As he walked, it began to get dark and cold – fast. He assured himself that the owner of that business would be glad to help out by lending him a jack. He’d probably even drive him back to his car.

After walking some more, the salesman mused on the situation a bit further: “While the propect didn’t buy anything, in fact he hardly gave me any time, he’s probably a considerate guy. On the other hand, small town business people often don’t like salesmen, especially salesmen from the city. In fact, they are usually pretty hostile.” However, in this case, he was pretty certain this guy would take pity on him.

As the salesman walked, his thoughts darkened. But… what if he isn’t such a nice guy? What if another salesman ruined it for him by ripping off this business owner and selling him some bad merchandise? Or, what if the man is just a mean bastard, and refuses for no reason at all?

What if he looks me in eye and says, “I have a very good jack, but I won’t lend it to a salesman, even if you beg. Now, get the hell away from my building.”

The now agitated salesman finally arrived back at the prospect’s building, which appeared to have closed. There was still one car in the parking lot, and a light in a back window. He knocked forcefully on the front door. Then he waited a few minutes, but no one came to the door. So, he banged continuously on that door – harder and harder. The startled business owner finally opened the door.

The salesman looked him square in the eye, and shouted, “YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DAMN JACK. A REAL SALESMAN NEVER BEGS.”

Our troubled salesman learned his lesson well – Good Salespeople Never Beg – even though his application of this maxim was a bit inappropriate in that particular situation!

Most salespeople are guilty of begging at one time or another, especially when starting out and feeling a bit desperate.

In High Probability Sales Training, we teach you to get off your knees, stand up straight, and insist upon honest, respectful relationships with your prospects and customers. Successful salespeople sell with dignity. Learn how:

©Jacques Werth, High Probability® Selling – All rights reserved.

Jacques Werth, author of “High Probability Selling,” is an internationally respected Sales Trainer and Sales Consultant. HPS graduates are excelling as Top Producers in over 70 industries. Visit http://www.highprobsell.com to read more articles, preview the book, and learn more about High Probability Selling.

Let’s talk about how to recruit top sales & marketing talent. There are lots of people who get into sales and marketing for the wrong reasons. So there are a lot of people out there who actually don’t have what it takes in order to be successful at sales and marketing.

Some of the most important things when it comes to finding good sales and marketing talent are, first of all, having a good system and process for recruiting. Second of all, knowing what to look for in good sales and marketing talent. Third, knowing how to get the word out to broadcast and promote your company to people who have the talent that you need. And fourth, how to actually make them a part of your team.

So we’re going to talk a little bit about the recruiting process first. Recruiting sales and marketing talent is both a combination of art and science. It requires a lot of commitment to process in order to get the right people. There are a lot of companies that hire the first person that comes through the door thinking that they’re going to be a good sales person for their company when in fact the only thing they’re good at is selling their way through the interview process. Now a person who comes in and sells you through an interview process doesn’t necessarily have what it takes to be able to sell for your company so part of your challenge is weeding out the right people through the interviewing process to make sure that the person has more than an ability to convince you that they are the right candidate but actually can use their persuasion skills in order to be a good sales person for you company. So what you’re really looking for is somebody who has the ability and the willingness to sell. And that doesn’t come easy.

Being a good sales person is a lot more than just the power of persuasion. There are a number of key skills and traits that are required in order to be a good sales person. When I speak of skills, we’re talking about learned abilities, something that can be trained or taught. When we talk about traits, we’re talking about innate characteristics of the person’s personality or behavior. It is possible through a rigorous process to uncover a person’s traits and skills through the interviewing process and by going through a rigorous set of homework assignments, aptitude testing, sales performance history recording and also behavioral interviewing.

If you’re going to hire good sales and marketing people you have to have a rigorous process and that means defining all of the steps that are necessary in order to understand whether or not a person’s skills and talents are actually a fit with what your company is trying to accomplish and whether or not that person can actually become part of your team, integrate themselves and be successful.

So there are a number of different steps that are required in order to recruit good sales and marketing talent. That includes starting by doing a good job of defining the job description, developing an attractive job posting to promote the position. Actually getting the word out by using career databases, the internet, as well as sending job postings out to your friends and network colleagues so that you can get referrals. Most of the best sales people come through referrals and not through mass advertising.

Additional process steps that are extremely important are having a multistage interviewing process that uncover a person’s skills and talents through a series of interviews, using a team-based process to be able to have different perspectives from different members of your team and uncover those talents by using those different perspectives and also uncovering the weaknesses of an individual candidates.

In addition to the actual multi-team process, it’s really important to develop a good behavioral interviewing questionnaire that allows you to get to the heart of whether or not a person has actually demonstrated their skills. Behavioral interviewing is based upon the concept of having a person telling you stories about their past successes, their past challenges and helping you to uncover the keys to whether or not a person has been able to perform in previous jobs. Past experience and past achievement history is an extremely important indicator of whether or not a person actually is going to be able to perform for your company.

Another aspect of a solid process is establishing strong hiring criteria up front and that means defining exactly through your job description what it is that you’re looking for in a candidate and setting out that criteria so that you can build in an interviewing process to uncover how well individual candidates meet with that criteria. We typically don’t hire a good sales person without going through at least four interviews and that requires time, energy and a commitment to the process.
Many companies that we do work for try to short cut this because they really want to believe that a strong sales person, when they come in to sell, is actually going to be able to sell for their company and so they tend to cut corners and in sales almost 53% of all hires are mishires for this reason.

Another reason why people make mistakes in hiring sales people is, particularly if they don’t have the same skills set themselves, they can misjudge what a persons true aptitudes and abilities are in this area. So, one of the things to do is to be careful if you’re a finance operations or engineering executive and you’re put in the position of hiring sales people, is to know your limitations with respect to your ability to judge, make those judgments and make the right hires. Hiring good sales people is a difficult and challenging process but if it’s done right, it can be very successful for your company.

About Cube Management

Cube Management (http://www.cubemanagement.com) provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Read the Cube Sales Blog