Bill Porter is likely the most intriguing sales person you’ve never heard of. Bill Porter started with the Watkins Company in 1955 selling their products door to door. For those of you that haven’t heard of Watkins, they have been selling natural home and health care products since the late 1800′s. Their roots are as [...]
My current team is generating excellent prospecting activity. They are willing to hit the street every day and meet with business owners to uncover opportunities.
The biggest challenge my team is having is managing follow up; more accurately ensuring that follow up is taking place in a timely fashion
2 Right 2 Left Prospecting If you are doing business in an area of town, an office building or an industrial complex, you should always take 10 minutes and visit each 2 companies to the left and right of the company you are there to see. If you keep some information packages in your car, [...]
I am in the process of hiring 4 more sales people for a new market we are entering in Western Canada. Our organization is in growth mode (good) and we do not have the resources to have HR pre-screen candidates (bad). This puts me in a position where I am responsible for the full hiring process – from reviewing incoming applications right through to the eventual offer. I currently manage 12 sales people so I have to make sure that the time I dedicate to recruiting is efficient. Each resume I look at gets a 60 second run through. If it catches my attention I’ll spend a few minutes with it and if the candidate looks promising I’ll fire off an email to book a telephone interview. Below are some sales resume tips for sales people that are looking to make a career change: Make it personal. Your cover letter should show that you have put at least a little effort into applying for this position. Spend some time with the job description and write a brief cover letter that... more
I’m watching my Habs play right now, and although they’re winning tonight, the team has terrible chemistry. They play for themselves and don’t back each other up. Watching the Habs play got me thinking about team chemistry and the impact it has on a sales group. A team with great chemistry is a lot of fun to manage. The reps support, motivate and coach each other. Discussions on your team calls are dynamic and there are emails going out daily from the team with success stories and... more
I like to keep my sales interviews with potential candidate loose. A sales interview is not much different from a sales call. Like a sales call I want the conversation to flow and to transition from one topic to the next. I hate canned interviews with a set question list. I’ve been on the other side of them, for some pretty decent opportunities, and I couldn’t get my head around what the manager was trying to accomplish with a rigid set of questions. The interviews end up being choppy... more
My current team is generating excellent prospecting activity. They are willing to hit the street every day and meet with business owners to uncover opportunities. The biggest challenge my team is having is managing follow up; more accurately ensuring that follow up is taking place in a timely fashion. I was scouring the web the other day and found a video from a Vanouver sales trainer named Shane Gibson. Shane highlights a great eample of persistant, creative follow up, that ultimately led to a... more
I recently accepted a position as a Sales Manager for a large Canadian payment processing company. I’ve created a new category at SaleHO.com to reflect my thoughts on where the industry is headed, and this is the first post under that new category. I’ll try to stay unbiased and talk about the industry as a whole rather than specific providers Knowledge is Power – Sir Francis Bacon When it comes to payment processing, nothing could be more accurate. The industry has changed drastically... more
Don\'t worry, I shave the beard for meetings!
