In a BLR webinar entitled "Sales Compensation Strategies: How to Motivate and Re-Energize Your Sales Staff in a Challenging Economy," Dan Kleinman, principal of Dan Kleinman Consulting, a compensation and human resource consulting firm, described the importance of hiring and retaining the right people:
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- For the right reasons
- For the right selling
The approach to consider is this:
- Relationship sellers don't work well in a transactional setting.
- Pure commission sales staff don't work well in team settings.
- Ticket takers aren't sales staff.
Along those lines, consider and address why someone chooses to put a significant portion of their pay at risk. Typical characteristics of a good salesperson are:
- Talent
- Confidence
- Values
- A sense of achievement against self, goals, and others
These same people are looking for situational factors that will serve them well:
- Management that knows what it is doing
- Management that knows how to manage sales staff
- Product quality
- Operational quality
- Company with a good reputation
- Challenging but achievable goals
Dan Kleinman is the principal of Dan Kleinman Consulting, a California-based compensation and human resource consulting firm. For the past 18 years, he has served as an independent consultant for a broad spectrum of regional, national, and international companies, providing compensation, performance, organizational planning, and reward-system design services. He may be reached at info@dankleinmanconsulting.com