The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

With the recent layoffs and furloughs, social distancing, and working from home, there’s more talent available on the market than ever before. “As a result of the pandemic, it’s become an employer’s job market,” states a recent Forbes article. “Candidates will have to get more assertive and creative in finding ways to help them stand out or get lost in the crowd.” 

While there has always been a need for a strong talent bank, now is the time to really start building one that will set you up for future success. Due to the current economic situation, you have a unique opportunity to find new talent that would have otherwise been unapproachable. 

How do you find top sales talent? Where do you look for sales talent? Who should you add to your talent bank? Keep reading for the answers!

How many open positions are on your team?  Open positions are an opportunity to improve the talent level. You want to make your goals more attainable and hiring top-shelf people is the best way to do that. 

However, building a high-quality sales team isn’t easy. It typically requires a lot of time and money to assemble a team of top performers. What if we told you that there’s a proven system that would help you get a list of great people to interview? Would you be interested?

“People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.”

“I quit.” It’s what a record-breaking 4,478,000 workers told their employers in August 2019. The reasons for quitting varied from compensation to lack of engagement, but one in two employees left their job to get away from their manager.

At one point in our life, we’ve all worked under a superior that could make or break our day. When it comes to sales leadership, there’s a big different between being a boss and a leader. Which one are you?

The top organizations in any marketplace place a high value on their people because they are the foundation on which success is built. They place an even higher value on managers who can develop top performers. Yet, all too often, business leaders hire people they believe in and sit back to see what they can do.

Take this five-question quiz to set the foundation for this blog post—simply answer agree or disagree.

1. I interview sales candidates every week, even if I don’t have openings on my staff.

2. I find my best sales candidates when I’m under the gun and have openings on my staff.

3. I move out underperforming sellers often because I keep a talent bank of qualified prospects.

4. I am a proactive recruiter, always looking for, and evaluating talent.

5. I often tell candidates that I’m interviewing even though I don’t have a position open.

If answered disagree to the majority of these questions; continue reading this post.

The majority of participants that attend a “typical” training program or workshop will forget 70% of what they were taught within two weeks. Our goal for the Talent Focused Management (TFM) workshop is to provide clients with strategies and tactics that they can actually put into practice immediately.

Here are some takeaways from sales managers that will enlighten The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS) clients, as well as others, as to why —and how—not all workshops are created equally.

Of all the decisions and executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization." - Peter Drucker 

The new year is 1/12 complete, and January is old news. How is your organization doing so far? Are you on track to exceed your growth goals for 2020? Are you lagging behind?

Growth of a sales organization will not happen unless the people in the sales organization are growing. Here are four important elements to consider that are directly linked to growth of your people and the decisions you make in coaching and developing them.

At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), we teach a very specific process that is customer-focused and designed to help sellers identify a prospect or client’s needs. We teach concepts like:

• Active listening
• Asking questions
• Digging deeper in order to uncover an assignment or desired business result

We coach sellers to strive to become trusted and valued so they can form true client partnerships. A seller that clients begin to rely on because they can help them grow and improve their business. A manager and seller relationship should be modeled in a similar way, and here’s why.