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HR Knowledge Inc. Shares 7 Key Points for Building A Strong Sales Team

Jeff Garr, CEO
Compensating your sales people correctly can be a great challenge to the average business manager or owner. If you don’t compensate correctly or adequately, sales production may suffer, which will directly affect business growth and profit. If you do incentivize sales staff correctly but pay them too much, it could create future problems related to growth and or profitability of your business.

HR Knowledge, Inc., a leading human resources Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) serving emerging to mid-sized companies throughout the East Coast with offices in Mansfield and Waltham, shares their “7 Key Points for Building a Strong Sales Team”:

1. Consider a Compensation Model prior to targeting and hiring sales people. It helps to have a good understanding of what makes some people “tick”, yet not others. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs states that there are a number of aspects that generate needs for any person, some of which may be of more interest to one person and less interest to another. Once you understand which aspect(s) motivate people, you can create a better environment to help create greater success.
2. Hire the right team of sales people. Before hiring, understand the type of sales person you need and then target them. Are you looking for an “order taker”? This is a person who can call on existing accounts and build great relationship with the client. Are you looking for a sales person who can “make it rain”? This person has the ability to create and generate business. If they are able to “find” business then they are the “hunter”. Understand what type of sales person you need and then target them in recruiting.
3. Adhere to the “Three A’s” when hiring. Once you understand the type of sales person you are looking for, remember the “Three A’s” when hiring for a sales position in your company. The first and most important “A” is Attitude. The right attitude is everything when hiring people. If they have the right attitude they will go through the wall for you to close business and follow the direction of the company. The second “A” is Aptitude. Ask yourself if s/he has the aptitude for the position of the company. Webster Dictionary defines aptitude as “capability; ability; innate or acquired capacity for something; talent”. The final “A” is Altitude, meaning, how high can they go? How high do you need them to go? Will they plateau at a certain point and coast?
4. Beware of complacency. The next concern when hiring sales people and thus managing them is complacency. Most sales people will reach a point of complacency and then coast in the job. Less work and more play becomes their mantra. The key challenge for management is to do all you can do to prevent complacency by your sales people. Most people become satisfied (and have obtained fulfillment of Maslow’s higher level emotional needs) once they attain job satisfaction or reach a particular level of income or status. With sales people, the challenge is to prevent this from happening.
5. Utilize your Compensation Model. It is vital to keep sales people motivated and “in the game”. From a managerial standpoint, it is far easier to compensate sales people and steer them in the direction the company wants them to go than it is to create compensation models to drive operations people, where you have to rely on coaching and management techniques. Sales people are experts in understanding compensation models and how they can maximize their income in the quickest time frame. They are usually very highly motivated and understand how the game works. This being the case, it is imperative to find a compensation model to drive the sales team to do what you want them to do.
6. Understand what your company’s objectives are and then create the compensation model to attain those objectives. For example, if your interest is to expand and grow your client base, then the compensation model needs to reward your sales team for new business and retention. You can create additional incentives to ensure that a large portion of their pay will be derived from new business acquisition. If it is imperative that your sales team be involved in the retention of clients, then you need to find a compensation model which will reward them for retaining and maintaining great relationships with clients. If they lose clientele, you must ensure that this will affect their compensation. This is a delicate area because if your operations team is not equally committed to retaining clients and the service or product you are delivering is not up to standard, then the sales team has no chance to retain the business no matter how great their relationship is with that client.
7. Do all that you can to ensure that the product or service you deliver is “remarkable!” Make sure that your company is setting the tone and the barometer in the marketplace for what you do. This will allow your sales people to confidently and comfortably sell your product or service. Without this, no sales person of any quality can survive and thrive in today’s business environment. Make sure that your operations team are as committed and passionate about clients as your sales team.
For more information about compensation, HR and or benefits contact Jeff Garr, CEO at HR Knowledge or 508-339-1300.
About HR Knowledge, Inc.
HR Knowledge, Inc. is a leading Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) serving emerging to mid-sized companies throughout the East Coast. HR Knowledge has the experience and technology to efficiently provide best-in-class integrated HR services at an affordable cost to clients.

HR Knowledge’s leaders have more than 100 years of combined experience and provide expert guidance in Human Resource management, Group Benefits Brokerage, Payroll Processing & Managed Services, Financial Services and Recruiting and Hiring Process Management (HPM).
Through their comprehensive Human Resource Services, HR Knowledge helps organizations minimize operational risks, reduce administrative costs and better serve their people.

HR Knowledge has been recognized as a Gold Level Broker by Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare. The company is headquartered at 905B South Main Street, Suite 203 in Mansfield and their second office is located at 890 Winter Street, Suite 208 in Waltham, MA. For more information, contact (508) 339-1300 or visit their website at www.hrknowledge.com

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Turano Joins Sales Management Consulting Firm — Next Level, Inc.

Dave Turano, a Stoughton, Mass. resident and native, has joined Next Level, Inc., as Managing Director of Corporate Development. Next Level, Inc. is a Franklin, MA-based sales management consulting firm and authorized licensee of Sandler Training.

Turano has 14 years of successful sales & sales management experience and has worked for some of the most prominent IT companies in America, including Data Arts & Sciences, Cotelligent and COMSYS. Dave was consistently among the top 5% of sales performers in the company and was invited to Chairman’s Club four times during his tenure at COMSYS.  In 2004 he became the Director of Recruiting for the Northeast and later that year was named the Director of Sales for New England.

In 2005 Turano was promoted to Managing Director of the New England market.  He also took a lead role in the development of a formalized sales process for COMSYS and was the first Managing Director to attend and participate in a new hire sales training session at corporate headquarters.  He was recognized by peers and senior management alike as an up and coming leader with a passion for sales, coaching and people development. He also has had a passion for the Sandler Selling System since he adopted it in 1998.

Turano graduated from Stonehill College with a degree Communication and minor in Business Administration. He is a member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, MIT Enterprise Forum and Stonehill Alumni Association. On a personal level Turano is married with three children, coaches youth baseball and is a parishioner of St. John’s, Stoughton.

“Dave understands selling from the frontlines of customer interaction to the conference rooms of strategic planning,” noted Jim Ayraud, CEO of Next Level, Inc. “Dave has firsthand experience of selling and the skills to convey the art and science of selling to others. We are enthusiastic about having Dave join our team.”

ABOUT NEXT LEVEL, INC.

Through continued support and follow-up sessions, Next Level, Inc. helps sales executives, professional service providers and top management fulfill personal and organizational goals, from initial hiring decisions to performance evaluations, to building and executing strategic sales plans to motivating people to achieve them, to understanding information technologies to tailoring these powerful tools to support clients’ specific opportunities.

Improving the skills and work of an organization’s managers is one of our top priorities. Next Level understands that the role of the sales manager is often the toughest in the organization. Sales managers must blend skills in coaching, mentoring, supervising, and training and it certainly helps to master psychiatry as well. Sales managers are tested at every turn and it’s the firm’s passion to ready them for battle every day.

Next Level, Inc. is located at 1000 Franklin Village Drive, Suite 205, Franklin, Mass. For more information about Next Level, Inc., visit their website at www.NextLevelInc.com.

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