Sales Training: An Independent Perspective. Dave Stein's Blog.

A friend pointed me to an interview with Guy Kawasaki that was published in the New York Times this morning.  Kawasaki makes some terrific points about hiring.  Here’s one: Q. How do you hire? A. The most important thing is that you hire people who complement you and are better than you in specific areas. [...]

Filed under: Hiring | 5 Comments »

My blog and website stats during 2009 showed that interviews with sales thought leaders and experts were especially popular in both blog post and podcast formats. I’ve learned a lot from these interviews while providing an opportunity for the interviewees to get broader exposure. In the past, I’ve generally limited my interviews to CEOs and [...]

Filed under: Hiring, Interview, Sales Training Companies | 5 Comments »

Back in October I delivered the keynote at SMT‘s conference.  I shared with the audience ESR’s list of 12 obstacles that must be overcome for sales training to begin to have the degree of impact that a few the leading sales training companies are having with every client. Sales training is most often reactive. We [...]

Filed under: Hiring, Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Sales 2.0, Sales 2.0, sales process, Sales Training Companies | 5 Comments »

I’ve been down with Swine Flu.  First I thought it would just kind of breeze by… an  H¾ N¾  kind-of-thing.  But I did get the full rendition—H1N1 all the way. I’ve been in bed, taking care of minor things here and there, but can’t really focus my brain on a few challenging projects on my [...]

Filed under: Book Recommendation, Hiring, Sales Strategy | 4 Comments »

Mis-hiring isn’t the root of all sales ills, but it sure continues to run like hell for first place.  We’re amazed here at how many companies we speak with have no formalized hiring process. No profiles. No pre-determined, structured interview questions. No training for interviewers.  No simulations.  No assessment tools.  No reference checks.  No background [...]

Filed under: Hiring | 6 Comments »

For those of you who read Part 1 of this series and asked for more, thanks for your feedback, and here it is. Sales trainers and sales training firms have a big challenge over the next year:  many customer training budgets have shrunk or been eliminated entirely; the trainers’ own revenues are significantly down—there has [...]

Filed under: Buyers, coaching, Economy, Hiring, Measurement, Methodology, sales process, Sales Training Companies, Technology | 9 Comments »

I was on a phone call this morning with the CEO of a client company who was describing how he had just rejected a candidate for a critical sales leadership position, which would based in a remote location. Although this company doesn’t employ as formal a hiring process as ESR recommends, they are on the [...]

Filed under: Hiring | 7 Comments »

You may remember I wrote a post a while back about a terrific eBook Tom Searcy had published about RFPs.  We’ve been recommending the book to clients. Last week Tom wrote a post on his blog about interview questions for sales people. Tom has the right idea here.  His questions are on target.  So are [...]

Filed under: Hiring, sales process | No Comments »

When the subject of hiring salespeople comes up, the Rolodex, virtual or otherwise, isn’t far behind. A salesperson’s business networks are only of some value.  Certainly not as much value as many candidates would like their interviewers to believe. In my experience, a candidate’s business network is only one component of their overall Personal Capital.  [...]

Filed under: Hiring, Sales Strategy | 7 Comments »

I’ve been on a rant about too many CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and boards of directors not really understanding what sales leadership is all about and therefore continuing to hire (and promote) people that can’t get the job done.  That’s why sales is last on line in many companies with respect to quality, discipline, process, measurement, [...]

Filed under: Hiring | 14 Comments »