Salesforce Search

The use of social media websites has increased to staggering levels and the trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have become intertwined with the daily lives of millions of people around the globe. And for those searching for a new job, the use of social media can certainly have a major impact. However, the impact can be either negative or positive.

The Good

Social media can be a powerful tool to increase the scope of your professional network. Connecting with potential employers on a site like LinkedIn can increase your chances of being considered for new opportunities as they become available. Corporate recruiters and recruitment agencies also utilize social media to find and contact candidates regarding job openings. At SalesForce Search we regularly use social media sites to source candidates rather than the traditional job boards. Social media sites allow you to post your information including work history, education, skills, and major achievements. This information can be viewed by significantly more people than would be able to if you simply submitted your resume to a standard resume database.

The Bad

There are also some negatives to using social media sites when it comes to your job search. By increasing the number of people who can access your profile, you increase the chance of being solicited for jobs that are not suitable or relevant to your background. It may also compromise the confidentiality of your job search – imagine your boss noticing that you have recently connected to a number of recruiters or competitors. From a privacy perspective, there may be concerns for some due to the sheer number of people who can view the details of their background including where they have worked, where they went to school, and what social organizations they belong to.

The Ugly

As a worst case scenario, the use of social media sites can jeopardize your job search and exclude you for consideration from a potential job opportunity entirely. Many companies have started using social media sites as part of their due diligence when conducting reference checks. Cases have been documented where candidates, about to be hired, have been turned down because the company has found compromising (i.e., embarrassing) information or pictures of the candidate. A good rule of thumb: if there’s something you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see, don’t post it.

Used properly, social media can be an invaluable tool during your job search. Just make sure that you connect to the right people and use discretion when deciding what information about yourself you should post and what you should keep private.

A well designed sales compensation plan will accomplish many things: motivate your sales team to increase sales, reward them for strong results, and retain your top performers. However, there is one important aspect of sales compensation design that is often overlooked: sales compensation plans should clearly communicate the focus of each sales job. Once a member of the sales team develops an understanding of the sales compensation plan, they should have full understanding of what activities they should be focusing on. In fact, if done well, a sales compensation plan should replace the traditional job description for sales jobs.

This type of communication can be achieved by the company weighing their sales compensation plan to payout higher rewards for the most desired activities. For example, if an organization wants to focus its sales team on developing new business, the sales compensation plan should be designed to pay out more commission for acquiring new accounts than for renewals. Sales people are driven by money, so when compensation is attached to certain activities and results it adds weight and gets their attention.

It’s also important to customize the sales compensation plan for each job. By doing so the company can clearly communicate the key activities and deliverables for each sales job. The commission for an account executive role focusing on “hunting” should be more heavily weighted on closing new business. And in comparison, the commission for an account management role should be more heavily weighted on customer retention and renewal measures.

Sales people will naturally spend more time and energy on the activities that will earn them more money – so it’s important that companies clearly define what their business objectives are make sure their sales compensation communicates those objectives to their sales team.

SalesForce Search specializes in sales recruiting and sales compensation design. To discuss our sales recruitment or sales compensation services, please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

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In this series of articles, SalesForce Search will outline the basic principles and design considerations for developing your sales compensation plan. 

Determing the level of pay for your sales team

A critical element when developing your sales compensation plan is determining ‘how much’ to pay your sales reps, managers and executives. When determining the appropriate level of pay, there are three key factors to consider:

·        Your organization’s pay philosophy. Does your company strive to be a pay leader or follower? Some companies aim to pay their sales team above market compensation in hopes of attracting and retaining the top sales talent available. Others look to pay base salaries at the 50^th percentile (the market median), with high upside potential. And, surprisingly, many companies do not give this any thought at all and design their sales compensation plan without first defining what their pay philosophy is. However, it’s very important that your company’s leaders define the pay strategy prior to developing your sales compensation program.

·       External market comparisons. When you define how you want to pay your sales team relative to other companies, you need to look at the market data. Several consulting firms publish compensation reports that show average salaries and commission levels for a wide range of sales jobs across various industries. Using this data you data, and based on your desired position compared to other companies, you can determine how much to pay your sales team. By utilizing market compensation data, you can ensure your sales compensation plan is competitive with the market and will attract the right level of sales professionals.

·       Internal equity. Once you’ve defined your pay philosophy, and consulted the available external market data, you need to consider what other jobs within your organization are being paid. You need to make sure levels of pay are fair and align with the skills and experience required and levels of contribution each job makes to the company. Ask yourself this: is it okay if a sales representative earns more than a manager or Vice President in your company? Some companies would say no, but others would say that sales people who generate high levels of revenue should be the highest paid employees in the company. Whatever your decision is, when designing your sales compensation plan it’s important to look at the compensation of each job together, rather than in isolation.

SalesForce Search specializes in sales recruiting and sales compensation design. To discuss our sales recruitment or sales compensation services, please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

www.SalesForceSearch.ca

Follow us on Twitter:

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In this series of articles, SalesForce Search will outline the basic principles and design considerations for developing your sales compensation plan.

 Determing the right pay mix for your sales compensation plan 

 When designing your sales compensation plan, you will need to consider how your sales team will be paid. Most companies pay their sales reps through sales commission, base salary, or a combination of both. There are many things to consider when determining the right pay mix for your sales organization.

First, what type of sales professional are you trying to attract and retain? When you have open sales jobs to fill, you need to make sure you’re attracting the best talent available. With that in mind, a 100% sales commission plan is a risky option. In many cases these types of sales compensation plans will attract people who hop from sales job to sales job, or in the worst case, people who are desperate and willing take anything. Also, with a 100% sales commission plan there is no commitment for a long-term relationship from either the company or the individual – this is a recipe for low performance and high turnover.

In most cases, then, a base salary is required to attract experienced and high performing sales professionals. But, a base salary only plan is not the answer. Such a plan will not drive and motivate performance – remember, top sales people are driven by money, and the potential to continuously earn more. Therefore, a well designed sales compensation plan will incorporate a base salary plus a sales commission component based on performance.

But what is the right base to commission ratio? While there is no steadfast rule, a general guideline is to provide your sales representatives with the opportunity to earn a total compensation, at target, of at least two times their base salary. For example, if you are paying a sales rep a base of $50,000 they should be able to earn an additional $50,000 for hitting their sales targets (for a total compensation of $100,000). Many companies will provide additional compensation, up to three or four times base salary, for sales reps who exceed their targets.

Overall, sales compensation plans should pay a solid base salary to attract and retain top performing sales professionals, and provide an aggressive commission structure to drive and reward performance.

SalesForce Search specializes in sales recruiting and sales compensation design. To discuss our sales recruitment or sales compensation services, please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

 Follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/salesjobsearch

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www.SalesForceSearch.ca

In this series of articles, SalesForce Search will outline the basic principles and design considerations for developing your sales compensation plan.

 Align your sales compensation plan with your company’s business objectives

 Before starting the design of your sales compensation plan, you need to first define your company’s overall financial and business goals. In many cases a company’s goals are determined by what phase of development they are currently in. A start-up company may focus on revenue generation; a growth company may focus on increasing market share; and a mature company may focus solely on profitability.

 Whatever the case may be for your organization, it’s critical for your sales compensation plan to align with your company’s objectives. For example, if your organization’s top goal is to increase market share, your sales reps need to focus on acquiring new clients. To that end, your sales compensation plan should provide more aggressive rewards (i.e., higher commission) for closing new accounts as opposed to renewals or penetrating existing accounts.

 Sales compensation plans also need to align with your company’s business processes. If your company’s business is highly transactional with a short sales cycle, the sales compensation plan should reflect that and pay out sales commission on a more frequent basis. If on the other hand your business involves more consultative or solutions selling and has a longer sales cycle, the frequency of sales commission should reflect that. 

Overall your sales compensation plan needs to be customized to meet the specific needs of your organization. And as your company grows and evolves, your sales compensation plan needs to change with it. There is no generic sales compensation plan to fall back on – your company needs to create its own ‘best practices’ and design a sales compensation plan that is right for you.

 SalesForce Search specializes in sales recruiting and sales compensation design. To discuss our sales recruitment or sales compensation services, please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

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At SalesForce Search we see a lot of resumes. Some are very good and some are very bad. Regardless of what category your resume falls into, there’s always room for improvement. With that in mind we offer the following tips to help you improve your resume, and, hopefully, help you land that next great sales job.

• Use numbers as often as possible: Especially for sales jobs, you need to show your results – and be specific. What was the value of your average sale? What was your quota? What percent of your quota did you hit? Make it very clear what you have achieved in your sales career.
  
  
• Make sure you use a proper and well organized resume format. List the companies you’ve worked for in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent sales job at the top. Don’t bunch things together – leave lots of white space on the page. And check your spelling and grammar – it’s a good idea to have someone proofread your resume.
  
  
• For each company you list, write a short description of the company. While the company is very familiar to you, many people may not have heard of it. For example, try something like “ABC Inc. is a technology company specializing in the development of sales tracking software. ABC has 150 employees and annual revenues of $10 million.” Also, include the company’s website.
  
  
• Always include the names of your major accounts and products you’ve sold. Recruiters and hiring managers want to see if you have experience selling similar products and selling into the same accounts they already have, or accounts they want to get. Also, when searching their resume database, having these types of key words included will ensure your resume gets noticed.
  
  
• List any awards you’ve won and what rank you achieved on your sales team. Recruiting and hiring managers trying to fill sales jobs want to see how successful you’ve been at your previous employers. If you’ve made Presidents Club, or you rank #1 in sales on your team, make sure you include that information.
  
  
• Leave out the personal stuff. While it’s interesting that you enjoy mountain biking and tap dancing, it’s not relevant to the job. And in many cases it becomes distraction. Personal interests are more appropriate to be discussed during the interview phase when you start getting to know the people from the company.
  
  
• Make sure you include a phone number and email address on your resume. If you don’t have an email address that you check on a regular basis, get one. Recruiters often make initial contact through email and if they’re not able to reach you, they may move on to the next candidate.
  
  
• Leave out the ‘sensationalistic’ statements. Candidates often write grandiose things on their resumes that come across as silly and nonsensical. So avoid statements like “I’m a visionary leader with unparalleled business acumen, destined to achieve extraordinary accomplishments in a complex and competitive environment”.
  
  
• Balance the number of bullet points for each job. Don’t have ten bullets for one job, and two for another. Be consistent – four or five bullet points for each job is a good guideline to follow.
  
  
• Leave out the self evaluating statements. It’s your opinion that you have “excellent communication skills” or “superior negotiating abilities”. Your resume should focus on what you have achieved, not what you think of yourself.
  
  
• NEVER include education from the past you only partially completed. Some candidates make the mistake of noting they “completed one year of college”. Even if there are legitimate reasons, it sends the wrong message – that you don’t finish what you start or you’re not intelligent enough to make it through an entire program. If you are currently attending school, make sure you include your expected graduation date.
  
  
• Customize, customize, customize! This is the most important thing you can do to improve your resume. You should spend at least 30 to 45 minutes customizing your resume each time you apply to a sales job. Include as many key words and phrases from the job posting in your resume as you can. If the job posting calls for someone who has experience selling into “big box retailers”, and you’ve referred to them as “large retail outlets” on your resume, make the change – use their lingo as much as possible.

SalesForce Search is a sales recruiting company which specializes exclusively in the recruitment and placement of sales professionals. To contact us please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

SalesForce Search recently surveyed over 300 employers in our first ‘Employer Sales Force Survey’. Those surveyed included companies both small and large in all industries including Financial Services, Pharmaceutical, Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, Telecommunications, and Technology.

The response rate to the survey was great - thank-you to everyone who took the time to complete the survey. The results provided us with valuable information regarding trends in sales force management, specifically in the areas of attraction & retention, resources, and sales compensation. We hope you will find the following survey results both informative and useful.

Attraction & Retention of Sales Teams

• The majority of survey respondents indicated turnover in their sales team has increased slightly since the start of the economic downturn. However, a significant number of respondents indicated the recession has not changed their sales teams’ turnover rates.
• When asked about their plans for hiring sales people over the next 12 months, the overwhelming majority of respondents indicated they were going to replace poor performing sales reps with better sales talent. This shows that while much of the attention during the recession has focused on downsizing, a significant number of of company’s do not plan to reduce headcount. Instead, companies are focusing on improving their sales recruiting efforts to replace under-performing sales reps with high potential sales professionals.
• Surprisingly, while some companies have invested in sales training and sales performance technology, the majority of survey respondents have not implemented any specific initiatives to retain their top sales people.

Sales Force Resources

• The majority of survey respondents believe the economic downturn will have no impact on the level or frequency of sales training provided to their sales team.
• When asked about the focus of their company’s sales training, the responses were evenly split between product training and selling skills. Interestingly, almost a quarter of companies surveyed do not provide any sales training to their sales team.
• While a large number of companies plan to upgrade their existing sales support and tracking technology, the majority of respondents are not planning any changes to their sales technology over the next year.

Sales Compensation

• The economy has certainly had an impact on sales targets - the majority of respondents indicated their sales targets have decreased by more than 10% over the past year.
• An overwhelming number of companies surveyed said the majority of their sales force did not meet sales quotas and received below target commission.
• Despite these results, most companies do not have any plans to change their sales compensation plans in the next 12 months.

Over the last month or so SalesForce Search has seen a dramatic increase in the number of companies looking to hire sales professionals. We have met with candidates who have had several job interviews in the past week after going months without any. Clearly companies are waking up to the fact that they need to have the best people in place to drive their business forward.

 Poll results:

Business development 17.3%
Sales 15.0%
Engineering 10.4%
Operations management (incl. supply chain, logistics, quality) 8.7%
Marketing 8.7%
Consulting 8.2%
Finance 7.9%
Research and development 7.7%

Source: ExecuNet

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Here’s our stern warning to employers: don’t become complacent when it comes to hiring. With the recession lingering and unemployment levels making headlines, many employers feel they can take their time when it comes to hiring decisions. But even with the economy in a downturn, companies need to act fast when they find a great candidate. Consider the following:

• Top sales talent moves quickly. At SalesForce Search we’ve encountered many situations lately where companies have lost a great candidate to another organization who made an offer more quickly. When you find the right person don’t delay - make a decision and make an offer.

• Taking too long after an interview sends the wrong message to the candidate. Once you’ve interviewed a top person, delays in moving forward may cause the candidate to question the process and the company - are they really interested in me? Does the company have trouble making decisions? Are they just disorganized? Companies need to act quickly or the candidate will move on. 

• Not every candidate out there is dying to work for your company. Despite what some companies think, there are not armies of people who are willing to put their lives on hold while they wait for a decision. Organizations need to sell themselves to candidates and act quickly - if they don’t the best candidates will take another opportunity.

• When the economy starts to rebound - and there are signs it is already - things will heat up. Competition for top talent will ramp up, and companies that have delayed hiring decisions will be left scrambling.

The bottom line: complacencey will hurt your recruiting efforts. Once you find the right person, and they are interested in the role, you need to act fast.

SalesForce Search is a sales recruiting company which specializes exclusively in the recruitment and placement of sales professionals. To contact us please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

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What makes a successful hire? Most employers will tell you that success is finding a candidate who matches the requirements of the position and is a good fit with the company’s culture. However, it’s much more than finding a qualified candidate - the critical part of the process is what the employer does once the new employee starts.

There are several key factors the employer must consider to ensure the success of their new employee:

1. On-Boarding process- As an employer, what are you doing to ensure your new employee’s successful transition into their new role? A well organized and well thought out on-boarding plan will get the employee up-to-speed quickly and will increase their chances of future success. The plan should ensure new employees feel welcome, are introduced to the key players within the organization and externally, and are put through a meaningful and engaging orientation program. A favourable intial impression of the company will go along way toward the new employee’s buy-in of the company’s culture, values and mission.

2. Training - Companies often focus their training efforts on product  training. While it’s important for new employees to learn about the company’s products and services, it’s even more important for companies to focus on skills-based training. Especially in sales roles, employees should be provided with selling skills training at the outset of their employment and on a frequent basis going forward. Employees will view this training as an investment by the company into their future success…which is a key component to retaining top talent.

3. Resources - Organizations need to provide new employees the right resources to increase the chances of their success. This means providing the right technology to allow the employee to focus on the core activities of the role and perform activities efficiently and effectively.

4. Feedback - Initial feedback and coaching should be provided to new employees as soon as possible. Waiting until the scheduled performance management cycle, or until something goes wrong, is too late. Providing feedback early in the employment relationship will help get things off on the right track and enhance employee engagement.

No matter what companies do some new employees will simply not work out and will either leave the organization or be let go. However, organizations need to take responsibility for their new hires’ success…even more than the hires themselves. In most cases it is the actions of the employers, not the employees, that determine whether or not a new hire will be successful. Focusing on the factors described above will increase the chances of new hires turning into long-term contributors to the company.

SalesForce Search is a sales recruiting company which specializes exclusively in the recruitment and placement of sales professionals. To contact us please call 1-800-461-SELL (7355) or email us at info@salesforcesearch.ca

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