by Mike Brunel | Oct 19, 2021 | Leadership, Sales, Strategy
If you’ve read my last few posts. you’ll see that I’ve been discussing the mistakes business owners make ( I have made every one of them- no kidding!) when it comes to getting the right salesperson on your team.
I want to give you as much value as I can, so here are three important hoops (as I call them) that you might want to think about when it comes to employing new salespeople.
Structure Not Gut
Hoop 1- Company Culture Fit
Company Culture– While we believe that fitting in with the company culture is important, as demonstrated in the graph on our FREE report, it makes up only 10%.
Don’t get too caught up in making sure this is a major part of the recruiting process.
Create a good job description.
This is a critical factor in hiring good salespeople. When you advertise for a salesperson what do you ask?
How do you define the role? What are you looking for? What is the remuneration?
*Chet Holmes, one of my early mentors, always did this exercise when advertising for super salespeople.
Write down three initiatives that you would love to hire someone to do in your business.
Three only. Next to each one, do this:
What would it mean to your business?
How would it change your business?
Now list what you could afford to pay such people if they really performed.
Do the exercise. This forms the foundation of good a job description.
Hoop 2- Structuring an interview – History of Success.
Once you get the CV’s for the position, look for a history of success. Somewhere that you can see a challenge; a life experience that they overcame.
Structuring an interview- A structured interview process makes up 30% or a third of the process (FREE report). That’s a lot. In your structured interview, you should have some questions to ask, after reading the CV. Here are a few to start with.
How do you function as a team?
How do you feel about operating in a team environment?
Do you like working on your own outside of that team?
Can you tell me about a time when you were asked to do a project on your own? What was it?
These questions might just get the process moving.
Challenge the candidate– You are hiring salespeople to do a specific job. Human beings inherently will do anything to avoid pain. However, in the business of selling, rejection is part of what selling really is, and it can be painful.
If everyone got 100% of the business every time they presented a product, the salesperson would be out of business.
If you are hiring a salesperson to sell your product and prospecting is part of that, would you not at least ask them “What happens when you get a ‘ No!’ – How do you react?”
Ask them this, and see what happens: “ You know what, I’m not convinced that you are the right person for this job.” Observe their reaction. Do they just sit there? Or do they do something that indicates to you they might do the same with a client?
Hoop 3- Assessment Tools
This also makes up 30% of the job evaluation- We personally take a lot of guidance from these types of assessments and we go into more detail here: Download my FREE report We used to call these the B.S. detector.
We carried these assessments out in my company specifically for the roles we were looking for, in salary and performance-based positions.
Our salespeople had to work alone. We had salespeople sprinkled all over the world; usually unmanaged, working in an unstructured environment.
We had to be really clear on what we were looking for. That’s where traits/ behaviours come into play. We knew we had to hire for the task, not just the attitude.
In my next post, I explain what I look for in a salesperson, and how I came to that.
Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
by Mike Brunel | Aug 31, 2021 | Leadership, Sales
Start a Conversation with Yourself
A successful sales relationship hinges on the ongoing conversation you have with your customer. The dialogue starts, strangely enough, with the conversation you have with yourself.
You can listen to others more effectively when you know how to listen to yourself. I first learned this years ago at that first media company job.
They sent me to a conference in Houston, Texas. I had just come out of a long-term relationship and to be totally honest, I felt a little bit lost.
I remember sitting in a hotel room and coming across an infomercial featuring a very youthful Tony Robbins promoting something he called “Personal Power.”
I was intrigued enough to buy what Robbins was selling. When I got back to New Zealand, there was a box waiting for me with Tony’s signature on it.
Love of Knowledge.
I devoured the material; it re-ignited my love of knowledge and showed me how to improve my outlook and my self-talk.
I did all the exercises and kept a journal. One skill I learned was how to ask quality questions of myself. It started with questions recorded in a journal and culminated in a completely new focus that brought better results. The disparity in the quality of people’s lives often comes down to the difference in the questions they consistently ask.
You prime your mental computer to look for a particular type of answer. If you’re asking, “What’s wrong with me,” your mind will come up with an answer—you are stupid or you don’t deserve to do well.
On the flip side, if you ask questions like “How can I take this experience and use it to contribute to others’ lives,” your brain will come up with much more constructive answers.
You will be able to see the path forward, rather than feeling like you have reached a dead end.
Conversation Questions to help your Self Talk
Here are some examples from my long-ago journal:
• What am I happy about in my life right now?
• What about that makes me happy and how does it
make me feel?
• What am I most excited about in my life right now?
• What makes me excited?
• What am I grateful for in my life?
• What am I committed to in my life right now?
Conversations Matter.
Asking these questions helped me see clearly how positive questions lead to a growth mindset, which leads to better results down the road. When you think in terms of constructive, positive questions, your brain goes off and works on
them even when you’re not thinking about the answers consciously.
For example, consider the difference between “Why does this always happen to me?” and “How can I learn from
this experience?” They are simply worlds apart in terms of choosing your next step.
Develop a pattern of questions that empower you. If you seek a shift in your life, make this part of your daily routine.
Over time, asking these types of questions changes how you question your clients.
Have fun selling your stuff.
Mike Brunel started Mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $250 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME OUT!
by Mike Brunel | Aug 9, 2021 | Leadership
This week I want to share a story about a father and son and the importance of having an open mind.*
The Newspaper story
A man is busy working at home when his young 5-year-old child comes into his study and with the enthusiasm that children have in abundance, he asks his Dad if they can go to the park.
The Dad in the middle of his work tries to resist his son’s requests but the child persists, and with frustration, the Dad looks around him and lifts up a newspaper and opens it up to double page picture of a map of the world.
A Map with a secret
He then pulls out the map, and tears it up into handfuls of small pieces and gives them to his son.
He then says “after you put together this map of the world, then we will go to the park.” his son took the pieces of the newspaper in both hands and scurried eagerly over to the other side of the room and set to without delay. The Dad knew that his son had no idea what a map of the world looked like, and thinking it would take him ages he got back to his work.
Five minutes later his son ran across to his Dad, “I finished he said, can we go to the park now”
It was Easy
The Dad thought his son was making it up, but on the floor was the finished makeshift jigsaw of the map of the world.
“How did you finish this so quickly?” he asked his son
“It was easy, Daddy.” said the boy as he turned over the pieces of the jigsaw one at a time, and on the other side of the world map was a photograph of a man.
“You see, when you put the man back together the whole world falls into place.”
*The moral of the story is it is how you look at things.
You see what you want to see, sometimes you have to open up (Growth Mindset).
I have to challenge myself every day to start thinking a little differently about this profession called sales.
Have a great time selling your stuff.
*Chicken Soup for the Soul- Jack Canfield- Mark Victor Hansen
Mike
PS. Why not open your mind and take the 7 Day challenge.
by Mike Brunel | Jul 11, 2021 | Leadership, Sales
What makes great sales people great? The common misconceptions about salespeople can be tough to get over because they are so ingrained in our culture. It helps to see what successful salespeople actually look like. Most of the great salespeople aren’t all that slick on the surface, but they are great at discovering and solving problems. What makes them different?
I think there are 11 traits that make a successful salesperson here a 7 from my book.
Beliefs, Traits, and Habits of the Best Salespeople:
Desire. The desire to be successful is the number one feature of excellent salespeople. Folks with a strong drive to succeed usually have built upon a history of success.
They may have been good at sports, or bringing up a family.
They know what it means to care deeply about the goal and really go for it.
Desire leads them to find out everything they can about their product and their competitor’s product. In fact, their knowledge is one of their strongest assets.
Motivated salespeople will compete against themselves, not others. They strive to beat their own last target, cultivate additional clients, and achieve business.
2. Self Belief. Effective business people have a very strong self-belief. When they experience rejection, they understand that it is situational. A single loss does little or damage to their core self-esteem.
Instead of getting down on themselves, people with high self-esteem draw on all their knowledge and past mistakes to correct their course and move on.
Anyone in sales can achieve strong self-belief by developing a passion about their product or service. If you can turn your passion for your business into a core belief, you can sell your product to anyone. That is a sales mindset guarantee.
3. Persistence. Persistent folks do not give up easily, if ever. They see problems not as dead ends, but surmountable obstacles. How many rejections can you weather?
Numbers coming out of the Dartnell Corp. in the United States show that a sale in today’s market often goes through only after the tenth “No.” You read that right. The tenth “No.” We are up against a tough economic environment, and unless we are persistent and believe in what we sell, we will give up after about the third time someone tells us “No.”
Learn when to back off and not overplay the persistence card, but do not ever roll over and give up. In this brave new world where the power is increasingly in the hands of the buyer, we have to create marketing and sales strategies to overcome our reluctance to try one more time.
4. Purpose. Many great salespeople find greater purpose in their work than simply completing the job at hand. They might want to help their clients, fellow workers, and teammates build a great business environment to work in, or they may find value in training others by passing on their knowledge to employees.
Motivations can be as basic as feeding the family, affording that extra vacation, or getting the kids through college.
To folks invested in these kinds of outcomes, money and success are by-products of the efforts they make.
This is an important distinction, for finding meaning in your work will keep you balanced in your business. Work cannot be your sole purpose.
We hear too many stories about business people burning out by dedicating themselves solely to their businesses, day in and day out. In the long run, this approach provides diminishing returns. Remember why you are working so hard.
5. Goal Orientation. The best salespeople are people who set real, attainable goals, weekly, monthly, and annually. They measure everything they do, and believe strongly in revisiting and setting new goals all the time, not just once a year
A goal might be as simple as beating the business turnover from last year, or building some training and sales goals in the company for the next six months. Many people I work with struggle with goal setting. I advocate aligning your goals with the problems you are trying to solve.
6. Accountability. Great salespeople do not participate in what we call “the chicken run.” The “chicken run” happens when the salesperson disappears from the buyer’s sight as soon as the deal is sealed.
Successful salespeople never seal the deal and then fail to follow up with service.
If the product does not work, they are not too “chicken” to go back and make it right. If things do not work out well for the client, they know they need to jump back in there and help the client realize his or her expectations.
These folks always work it out and fix the problems that come up.
7. Willingness to Learn. Strong salespeople seek help and guidance from people they admire and trust.
They may work with a coach, confide in a colleague, or consult a manager. They need someone they can feel comfortable with so they can talk through their fears and doubts.
Take The Sales Mindset Challenge here and discover how you rate with your sales mindset you might be surprised. Its a simple list of questions that rate your beliefs and traits. Have fun.
Good Selling.
P. S. Are You Utilizing The Most Profitable, Up-To-Date AND Proven Sales Lessons To Grow Your Business Right Now, In Today’s Market?
Changing your Sales Mindset coming soon.
by Mike Brunel | Apr 27, 2021 | Leadership, Sales
What makes great sales people great? The common misconceptions about salespeople can be tough to get over because they are so ingrained in our culture. It helps to see what successful salespeople actually look like. Most of the great salespeople aren’t all that slick on the surface, but they are great at discovering and solving problems. What makes them different?
I think there are 11 traits that make a successful salesperson here a 7 from my book.
Beliefs, Traits, and Habits of the Best Salespeople:
Desire. The desire to be successful is the number one feature of excellent salespeople. Folks with a strong drive to succeed usually have built upon a history of success.
They may have been good at sports, or bringing up a family.
They know what it means to care deeply about the goal and really go for it.
Desire leads them to find out everything they can about their product and their competitor’s product. In fact, their knowledge is one of their strongest assets.
Motivated salespeople will compete against themselves, not others. They strive to beat their own last target, cultivate additional clients, and achieve business.
2. Self Belief. Effective business people have a very strong self-belief. When they experience rejection, they understand that it is situational. A single loss does little or damage to their core self-esteem.
Instead of getting down on themselves, people with high self-esteem draw on all their knowledge and past mistakes to correct their course and move on.
Anyone in sales can achieve strong self-belief by developing a passion about their product or service. If you can turn your passion for your business into a core belief, you can sell your product to anyone. That is a sales mindset guarantee.
3. Persistence. Persistent folks do not give up easily, if ever. They see problems not as dead ends, but surmountable obstacles. How many rejections can you weather?
Numbers coming out of the Dartnell Corp. in the United States show that a sale in today’s market often goes through only after the tenth “No.” You read that right. The tenth “No.” We are up against a tough economic environment, and unless we are persistent and believe in what we sell, we will give up after about the third time someone tells us “No.”
Learn when to back off and not overplay the persistence card, but do not ever roll over and give up. In this brave new world where the power is increasingly in the hands of the buyer, we have to create marketing and sales strategies to overcome our reluctance to try one more time.
4. Purpose. Many great salespeople find greater purpose in their work than simply completing the job at hand. They might want to help their clients, fellow workers, and teammates build a great business environment to work in, or they may find value in training others by passing on their knowledge to employees.
Motivations can be as basic as feeding the family, affording that extra vacation, or getting the kids through college.
To folks invested in these kinds of outcomes, money and success are by-products of the efforts they make.
This is an important distinction, for finding meaning in your work will keep you balanced in your business. Work cannot be your sole purpose.
We hear too many stories about business people burning out by dedicating themselves solely to their businesses, day in and day out. In the long run, this approach provides diminishing returns. Remember why you are working so hard.
5. Goal Orientation. The best salespeople are people who set real, attainable goals, weekly, monthly, and annually. They measure everything they do, and believe strongly in revisiting and setting new goals all the time, not just once a year
A goal might be as simple as beating the business turnover from last year, or building some training and sales goals in the company for the next six months. Many people I work with struggle with goal setting. I advocate aligning your goals with the problems you are trying to solve.
6. Accountability. Great salespeople do not participate in what we call “the chicken run.” The “chicken run” happens when the salesperson disappears from the buyer’s sight as soon as the deal is sealed.
Successful salespeople never seal the deal and then fail to follow up with service.
If the product does not work, they are not too “chicken” to go back and make it right. If things do not work out well for the client, they know they need to jump back in there and help the client realize his or her expectations.
These folks always work it out and fix the problems that come up.
7. Willingness to Learn. Strong salespeople seek help and guidance from people they admire and trust.
They may work with a coach, confide in a colleague, or consult a manager. They need someone they can feel comfortable with so they can talk through their fears and doubts.
Take The Sales Mindset Challenge here and discover how you rate with your sales mindset you might be surprised. Its a simple list of questions that rate your beliefs and traits. Have fun.
Good Selling.
P. S. Are You Utilizing The Most Profitable, Up-To-Date AND Proven Sales Lessons To Grow Your Business Right Now, In Today’s Market?
Changing your Sales Mindset coming soon.
by Mike Brunel | Mar 20, 2019 | Leadership, Sales
In the early 1900s, Reverend Russell Conwell earned 5 million dollars by giving the same speech, titled “Acres of Diamonds,” more than 6,000 times to audiences across the country.
His speech told the story of a farmer who sold his farm so he could travel overseas searching for diamonds. After a lifetime of searching, he returned home penniless, having never found treasure.
In the meantime, the man who purchased the farm noticed a sparkle in the stream running through the property. He waded into the water and found – a diamond!
The farm was sitting on one of the world’s largest diamond mines, making the new owner rich beyond his wildest dreams.
The point of Conwell’s speech: You can find a fortune literally in your own backyard if you take the time to look for it.
The reverend concluded his talk by telling listeners: “Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or yonder seas. They are in your own backyard if you but dig for them.”
Isn’t this so true of salespeople and business owners? We pursue new clients, day after day, when the real ones are right before us.
Lapsed clients, clients who have been neglected, those forgotten by businesses who only work with a few of their clients, leaving millions of dollars sitting there waiting. If only we were to approach them.
This lesson was taught in the early 1900s and is still true today.
So go and check out your diamonds. This story illustrates that every client you’ve ever had needs to hear from you and be part of your tribe, your business family.
I know a pizza company that believes you must dominate everything within 1 km or mile of your franchise. I mean, dominate it!
Every mailbox, sign, or business within a 1 km radius of the store must know about them. They do this through mail promotions, in-store activity, events, promotions, and anything to get that top-of-mind awareness and move them into the 94% as quickly as possible.
With the advent of email and online marketing to your clients, it has never been easier in the history of marketing.
There is a great quote that I found about customer service, which I think is very true.“Customer service is the new marketing.”
As quoted earlier, keeping clients is much easier once you get them. It drives me mad when I work with clients through my consultancy service, and I discover that they have a database of several thousand, and they ignore them. It’s with an attitude of “They won’t buy from us.”
One sports organisation that we worked with had 7,000 lapsed clients. That’s 7,000 members they had not talked to in any fashion for years, yet they were still on the database, ready to be sold to.
Just ignored, that organisation came to us with a desperate request to build a membership program for their following year’s membership.
We suggested starting with all those lapsed clients on the database. The answer? Oh, they tried us and never came back. No kidding! Really!
Our theory was that you had to at least ask them and find out why they were not buying or what their problems were. Then you could provide a new solution so they might consider a proposal.
We ended up dropping the client. Sometimes, folk do not want to be helped. We also learned that this particular category was not ready for our type of selling. That happens, and in every sale and business experience, you have to accept that.
It’s worth remembering that often buying experiences, are based on how the customer feels they are being treated, spoken with, assisted, and helped.
Learn about the importance of looking inside your company for opportunities that might be staring you in the face.
Mike
PLUS, whenever you are ready…here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business.
1. Grab a Free copy of my book
It’s the sales roadmap to attracting prospects, building, and making more sales in your business without coming across as salesy- Click Here.
2. Join the Sales Mindset Inner Circle and connect with salespeople like you.
It’s our new Facebook community where salespeople learn to get more income, enhance their ability, and get access to exclusive content- Click Here
3. Join –“Sales Mindset Blueprint: (INVITATION ONLY) Elevating perspectives, boosting confidence, driving results and not coming across as salesy. Reply to SALESY, and I will get you the details.
