The Sales Enabler - Jeff Ernst - Sales Enablement Best Practices

Are you a social recruiter? Here's how you can find out

2009-12-10T16:30:18-05:00

There's no single way to incorporate social media into your recruiting efforts, which makes it somewhat arbitrary to determine whether someone should be called a "Social Recruiter". Social Recruiting is about more than spamming social networks with your job openings. It's about building a base of fans (more on that in a future post), and attracting great people into your talent network. Looked at this way, every recruiter is a Social Recruiter.

Nonetheless, I decided to have some fun with this and created the "Are You a Social Recruiter?" self-assessment. By answering 14 questions, you can see how you score, and compare to others.

To take the assessment, go to www.AreYouASocialRecruiter.com. And feel free to post comments here with any feedback on what I missed.

Social Recruiting can't make a bad workplace look good

2009-11-20T11:56:56-05:00

I was able to catch several of the sessions from Monday's #SocialRecruiting Summit via the video stream, and couldn't help but be impressed by some of the great examples of ways companies are using social media for recruiting.

But another thing I noticed is that these companies that are held up as bright, shiny examples for social recruiting have a culture that fosters a great work environment, and makes people want to work there. You can bet that this attitude towards treating employees well starts at the top and permeates through the management ranks.

Social media doesn't make them great companies to work for, social media simply makes it easy for them to make their great culture and environment very visible to the outside world, especially to future employees.

That makes the flip-side true. A few days ago I was working with a sales manager who's looking to hire 4 or 5 inside sales people in the next 30 days, and has been frustrated by how hard it is to find strong candidates. I was coaching him on how to add social recruiting to the mix, to profile some successful sales people, and give prospective candidates a feel for what its like to work there.

He mentioned two things that startled me. First, the company has a ban on the use of social media of any kind at work, and second, that employees really don't like working there. (I suspect the two points are connected) I won't go into why, but suffice it to say that a social recruiting strategy for this company could backfire, and make it more transparent that this is a bad place to work.

Using social media for marketing or recruiting is about being genuine, personal, and transparent. You can't pretend to be something you're not. Social recruiting can't make a bad workplace look good.

#SocialRecruiting Summit - 11/16/09 - recruiting is a blood sport

2009-11-17T10:29:00-05:00

I thought about traveling to NYC to attend the #SocialRecruiting summit yesterday, because I am passionate about applying social media to recruiting, but living on a start-up entrepreneur's budget, I'm too cheap.

So instead I decided to lurk, and watch the proceedings from the comfort of my home office on the live video feed. I didn't get to see every session, or partake in the what sounded like rowdy networking events, but did take away some key observations.

I liked many of the points Fred Wilson made in his keynote, especially how recruiting is a "blood sport" and it's best to have the best weapons. This is especially true for tech companies in the valley. I'm experiencing this with many of my clients, who get bombarded with resumes for any job opening, but have narrowed their requirements so much that there's a small potential pool of qualified candidates.

This ties to another point he made about how valuable the internet is in reaching passive candidates, and gave some great examples of how he's spread the word about openings using his blog and social media sites.

I was a little disappointed that he focused so much on the social media companies in his VC firm's portfolio, and how they can be used to find specific candidates, as I know Fred has so much more insight he can shed on social recruiting.

Luckily, the rest of the day hit on some things I'm very passionate about. I found the panel discussions and some of the practitioner presentations to be the most useful. I especially liked the talk from Jessica Lee from APCO worldwide, who like me, says she's cheap, and has done an impressive job building her company's reputation as a great place to work despite her claim that she's an introvert.

The theme I heard, which I love, is that social recruiting is more than just using social media to recruit candidates for specific openings. Leading HR pros and recruiters like Jessica are expanding the definition of social recruiting to include those things that give people, especially potential future employees, a better view into what its like to work at that company. Profile successful employees and cool projects. Talk about company events that exemplify the culture. In fact, there's so much to be said about transparency and authenticity that I'll save that for my next post.

I'm pushing for a #SocialRecruiting Summit in Boston. I think despite the great ideas shared by leaders at this event, most recruiters are just scratching the surface with how they use social media, and are confused about where to go with it. We've got to get them tapped into events like this.

Use social media to transform recruiting and screening of candidates for sales and marketing jobs

2009-10-21T11:11:08-04:00

Stop Kissing Frogs!!

Pouring through resumes is like kissing frogs. The chances of finding a prince are slim. In my work with hiring managers who are recruiting now in anticipation of economic growth next year, I'm hearing so much frustration. Companies are not getting enough candidates who are a good match, and they're wasting too much time looking at people who don't fit.

Forget the paper resume. You should be using social media and video to build a great talent pool and filter it down to the best candidates to interview. This slidecast from TalentReef.com shows you how. Click the little green button to hear the audio narration.

View more presentations from TalentReef.

Leave a comment to let me know if you can see this working in your company, or if you prefer to sift through paper the old way.

VP of Sales fires his top sales rep.The importance of cultural fit.

2009-09-30T16:09:39-04:00

I'm helping a company hire and ramp up a bunch of new sales reps, and asked the VP of Sales if I could talk to his best rep to gain a better understanding of how he or she works. He told me that he fired his best rep a few weeks ago. I was shocked. "Why the hell d'ya fire your best rep?"

To make a long story short, last year the company launched a couple new products that are now the main focus for the company, and they're quickly retiring their legacy products that are very expensive to service and support. This rep was really good at selling one of the legacy products, and despite changes to the comp plan and strict orders from management, he just kept selling that old product.

The VP, who has only been with the company since February, is making a major shift in the company's sales culture, going from a bunch of cowboys who could do whatever they want as long as they hit their number, to a team of directed, disciplined reps. And as good as this rep was at selling the old product, he wasn't a good fit for the new culture. And there are probably several more reps who won't be able to make the shift.

Needless to say, we need to take this into account in the profile for hiring new salespeople. When I asked the VP for the key requirements for the new hires, he gave me the traditional baseline requirements...someone who's sold this type of product, for a company like A, B, or C, who's got a track record of exceeding quota.

So I pushed him on the importance of finding sales candidates who are a strong fit for the sales culture he's trying to create. But how do you assess cultural fit from a paper resume? You can't. So what are we doing? We're having candidates create short videos of their responses to three key questions, one of which is "What is an ideal sales environment for you to work in, and why?" It's amazing how quickly this allows you to weed out the people who wouldn't last long in your sales organization, and focus your live interviews on the right candidates.

Marketers: Walk in a salesperson's shoes

2009-09-14T21:21:00-04:00

A real conversation with a marketing manager at a well-known tech company:

MARKETER: I'm so frustrated with them. My salespeople don't read my emails and don't even look at the tools I create for them. How can I get through to them?

JEFF: Give me an example.

MARKETER: Back in June, I put together a bunch of case studies...the sales reps are always asking for case studies. So I created them, sent them out, and nobody's using them. Sometimes I wonder why I waste my time.

JEFF: How'd you send them out?

MARKETER: I attached them to an email and sent them to our sales team email alias.

JEFF: In June?

MARKETER: Yeah, middle of June.

JEFF: What were your salespeople concerned about at the time you sent the email?

MARKETER: I dunno, maybe kids getting out of school? Summer vacations?

JEFF: Try again. Middle of June, what are they stressing about?

MARKETER: Uhhh.

JEFF: Have you ever had a quota to hit?

MARKETER: Uhhhh...No..

JEFF: Try to imagine what it's like to be a salesperson at the end of a quarter...

I could continue but you get the drift. Marketers have always been taught to walk in our customer's shoes, understand their pains, speak their language, so our messages will resonate. But if you want any chance of aligning with sales, you need to walk in a salesperson's shoes, and feel their pains.

Recognizing the "end of quarter crunch" that salespeople go through is just one example of putting yourself in their shoes. Don't try to send out stuff for them to digest and figure out how to use in the last week or two of a quarter. Some other points to recognize:

Salespeople have to manage a portfolio of accounts the way an investor has to manage a portfolio of stocks. They have to pay attention to existing customer issues, late stage deals, middle stage deals, as well as the leads you think are the hottest thing since sliced bread. Take that into account when you're negotiating your SLAs for lead follow-up.
Most salespeople don't have as high a base salary as you do, so keep that in mind when you call them "coin-operated".
Time is the most valuable resource for a sales rep, and they have to manage their time very carefully, so its not a good use of time to have them chase poorly qualified leads. They'll get skeptical of a particular batch of leads if the first 1 or 2 are garbage.

Help me out here, what else should marketing people recognize about the life of a salesperson?

5 steps to enable better sales in the next 30 days

2009-09-14T00:01:00-04:00

Jeff Ernst

Twitter use can increase risk of Carpal Tunnel

2009-09-09T12:49:33-04:00

Do you like to scan tweets using the regular Twitter interface, search.twitter.com, or a tool like TweetDeck?

If so, beware of a repetitive motion that can lead to Carpal Tunnel. As you scroll down columns of tweets, you inevitably are holding down the left mouse button and dragging the scroll bar for long periods of time (that's long in internet attention spans), or spinning the mouse wheel.

I've started alternating hands and using arrow keys. Does anyone have any other suggestions for avoiding repetitive motion?

The real benefit of SaaS to customers

2009-08-27T21:48:00-04:00

A lot has been written about the benefits of SaaS to customers, but Jeff Kaplan beautifully describes what I think is the KEY advantage in his Datamation article How SaaS Changes the Vendor-Customer Relationship.

Jeff says:

"SaaS shifts the responsibility of successfully deploying and maintaining software applications from the customer to the vendor. This moves the burden to the vendor to ensure the success of the application."

"...vendors are under more pressure to ensure their solutions satisfy their customers’ requirements or they risk abandonment."

SaaS vendors live or die on their renewals. It's not widely talked about, but since vendors don't collect big upfront license fees, yet still incur costs of customer acquisition, a customer often doesn't become profitable to a vendor until the second or third year. So if the customer doesn't renew after the first year, you got it, the vendor loses money.

With premise-based software, vendors aren't nearly as motivated to get customers up and running, which explains why so much of that software sits on a shelf. But with SaaS, if six months goes by and the customer still hasn't rolled out the application, then worst-case, the customer won't renew, or more likely, will negotiate a lower subscription fee to, in effect get another 6 months for free or pay for fewer users.

I'm seeing a trend building where SaaS customers are starting to push back on annual subscription fees in favor of utility-based pricing models that are more reflective of the actual usage and value the customer is getting from the system. For example, in a hiring application they want to pay by job post.

This means an even smaller, or no upfront subscription fee for the vendor, and revenue only when the system is used. With this model, the vendor is motivated to get it deployed, users trained, and the app ingrained as part of the business process it supports. Otherwise the meter doesn't run.

SaaS vendors should read Jeff Kaplan's article and arm their sales reps to talk about the REAL benefit of SaaS to the customer.

Do you focus more on the top 10%, or the other 90%?

2009-08-19T16:35:36-04:00

It's such a common state that it's become accepted as a fact of life in sales:

20% of sales people bring in over 60% of the revenue

Year after year, surveys have backed this up. CSO Insights, in their 2009 Sales Performance Optimization Report, showed the following:

People just assume this will never change. But they're wrong, it is changing...for the worse. I've talked to several sales leaders in the last 6 weeks who have said that the gap is getting even bigger in the economic downtur, to the point that 10% of sales people are bringing in 80% of the revenue.

It's hard enough for average reps to hit their numbers in good times when companies are investing aggressively. A combination of luck and accidental sales helps some of them hit their quotas. But in a downturn, only flawless execution of the sales cycle will get you a deal.

I always ask them what their best reps are doing differently from the rest of the pack. They usually have no idea, because they don’t have enough visibility into what reps do in the field.

So they chalk it up to intangibles. It’s in their DNA, it's intuition, it's stuff that can’t be taught to the rest of the reps.

The fact is that the best of the best are adapting and figuring out what works. The best reps know how to get aligned with decision makers. They’re doing this by uncovering the real buyer’s pain and issues, and having credible conversations about how working with your company will make those issues go away.

The rest are struggling. You’ve seen it, they always talk about all the great phone calls they had this week, but the phone calls don’t end up going anywhere, and all this activity isn’t translating to enough pipeline opportunities and deals.

What scares me the most about this is the number of Sales VPs who put all their attention on that top 10%, and sink or swim for their quarter on what those 10% can produce.

What you should be focused on is finding out what those 10% are doing, and pull out the nuggets that can be replicated by the mere mortals.

Now expect you’ll get pushback from lots of places. Sales managers will balk, and say that the reps who aren’t selling just need more leads, or they’ll tell you that the best reps won’t reveal their secrets.

The reps themselves will likely tell you that they don’t know what their magic is. But if you push through this resistance, you’ll find gold. I know I find gold every time I do this for a company.

Listen in on sales calls. Listen to the words the buyer is using when they talk about their issues and raise concerns.

Get 20 minutes with one of your best reps. Ask them:

What do the conversations sound like when you’re at that stage with a buyer?
What issues are they struggling with?
What objections are the buyers raising? How are you overcoming those objections?

But don’t stop there. Talk to customers who recently bought from that rep, and ask the customer one question:

When you were going through your decision-making process, what did the sales rep do to earn your trust and help you make a confident decision?

You’re really looking to find out why they bought, and hear in their own words how they describe what you do for them.

I guarantee if you make the effort to find out what's working, you'll find a whole slew of things you can package up and use to arm the other 90% of reps so they can be delivering more value in the conversations they have with buyers.