This document discusses effective sales management and the sales force selection process. It begins with an overview of topics to be covered, including profiling and recruiting the sales force, selecting applicants, hiring and training new salespeople. It then provides background on why sales forces are important when times are poor. The document discusses various methods for recruiting, selecting and hiring salespeople, including job analysis, descriptions and qualifications, application forms, interviews, testing, and making a final hiring decision. It also identifies common mistakes in the hiring process.

1. 1
Effective Sales Management
Obaid Saad Alabdali
DBA, MBA, PhD
Umm Al-Qura University
TIHAMA

2. 2
Topics To Be Covered
♦ Background
♦ Profiling and recruiting sales force
♦ Selecting applicant
♦ Hiring and socializing new sales people
♦ Developing and conducting a sales training
program

3. 3
???
♦ It cost Millions and years to build a name,
but 5 minutes to destroy it.

4. 4
Background
♦ When times and the economy are good, the
market drives our companies.
♦ When times and the economy are poor, we
must drive our companies

5. 5
Background (con..)
♦ People buy from
– People they know,
– people they like,
– People they trust!

6. 6
The Sales Wizard Says….
♦ There are three types of sales managers:
– Those who make things happen
– Those who watch things happen
– And those who wonder what’s happening

7. 7
Death of salespeople
♦ Our product is steel. Our strength is people
♦ Our sales people are no important than any
of others
♦ They are part of a team and you want to
help make the whole team as strong and as
productive as possible.

8. 8
World Class Examples
♦ IBM, is the world’s leading provider of
information technology solutions.
♦ IBM sales were $75.9 billions (1996)
♦ Total workforce is 241,000 employees
♦ IBM employs 40,000 salespeople (10,000 in
USA)

9. 9
IBM
♦ IBM received the World Class Sales
Benchmark Award based on customer
satisfaction

10. 10
Five Success Factors That Explain IBM’s Success
♦ Strong product and application knowledge
♦ Attention to customer needs and problems
♦ Quality product and services
♦ Customer advocacy
♦ Excellent technical support

11. 11
Leave me my salespeople
♦ You can take a way my money and take
a way my factories, but leave me my sales
people and I will be back where I was, in
two years.

12. 12
Myths About Selling
♦ Sales people are born-not made
♦ Sales people must be good talkers
♦ Selling is a matter of knowing the right
techniques or tricks
♦ A good sales person can sell anything
♦ A good sales person can sell ice to an
Eskimo
♦ People do not want to buy

13. 13
What You Think of Sales People?
Cigar-smoking
back-slapping
joke-telling

14. 14
Types Of Sales People
♦ Order taker
♦ Order getter
♦ Support sales people
– missionary
– technical

15. 15
Sales people Selection and
Strategic Planning
♦ Sales group directly bring money
♦ It is directly involve with carrying out the
company’s strategic marketing plan
♦ Marketing strategy implementation
– ( considerable services)

16. 16
Recruiting

17. 17
Profiling and Recruiting Sales
People
♦ Select the sales people
♦ Right people is the key to successes

18. 18
Important of a Good Selection
Program
– It addresses the problem of getting good people
– It improves sales force performance
– It promotes cost saving
– It eases other managerial tasks
– Sales managers are no better than their sales
force

19. 19
Plan for recruiting and selection
– Establish responsibility for recruiting and
selection ( top sales executive, field sales
manger, human resource department, or
combination)
– Determine the number and type of sales people
– This involve the analysis of market and job
( write job description)
– Establish the qualification for that job.

20. 20
Recruit Applicants
♦ Identify sources of recruits
♦ Select the source to be used
♦ Contact the recruits

21. 21
Select applicants
♦ Design a system for measuring applicants
♦ Measure applicants against hiring
qualifications
♦ Make decisions

22. 22
Establish Responsibility for Recruiting,
Selection, and Assimilation
♦ Management must decide who will be
responsible for recruiting and selection
decisions and who must be responsible for
assimilating the new hires into the
organization.
♦ That will depends on size of the company
and nature of the job

23. 23
Determine the Number of People
Wanted
– Right number
– Good faith in their selection system.
– Good forecasting
– Study your marketing plan (expansion)
– Factors affecting size of sales force
• promotion
• retirements
• termination, and resignation

24. 24
Determine the Type of People
Wanted
♦ Three tasks associated with determining the
type of people
– Job analysis
– Job description
– Job qualifications

25. 25
Job Analysis
♦ Is the actual task of determining what
constitute a given job
– study every aspect of the position (by any
member of the sales force, human resource or
by an outsider)
– requires observation and interviewing with
sales rep, customers, other sales reps

26. 26
Job Description
♦ Once job is analyzed, the resultant
description should be put in writing
♦ must be done in great details
♦ It is not enough to say that a sales person is
supposed to sell the product, call on
customers, or build goodwill toward the
company

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Scope of Job Description (1)
– Title of job
– Organizational relationship (to whom do the
sales person report)
– Types of products and services sold
– Types of customers called on
– Duties and responsibilities related
– Job demand (mental and physical i.e.. Travel)

28. 28
Scope of Job Description (2)
♦ Use of job description
– Job analysis and job description must be used
as strategic guidelines for interview, application
blanks, psychological test and others selection
tools
– It can be a foundation for sales force training
program
– used foe compensation structure
– Establish Work load

29. 29
Determine Hiring Qualifications
♦ The most difficult part of the entire
selection process.
– Demographic characteristics, education and
experience, do little to explain person
performance
– Personal history may be better indicator for
performance

30. 30
Desirable Characteristics for
Sales People
– Mental capacities (planning and problem
solving)
– Physical (appearance and age)
– Experience (sales and other business
experience)
– Education (no. of years, degree, major)
– Personality
– Skills communication

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Buyers’ Top Ten Sales Persons
Traits
– Knowledgeable
– Organization
– Follow-through
– Punctuality
– Energy
– Promptness
– Problem solver
– Willing to work hard and Honesty

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Methods of Determining
Qualifications
♦ There is no satisfactory methods to use
♦ Some methods can be used
– study of job description (technical, supervision)
– Analysis of personal history

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Recruiting and Its Important
♦ It include all activities involved in securing
individuals who will apply for the job.
♦ Recruiting should not be done haphazardly
(overlooking good sources/ cost)
♦ Get enough qualified applicants to
maximize the chance of getting good one

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Find and Maintain Good
Recruiting Sources
♦ Many sources
♦ Determine the best sources
♦ Find out from where the best sales people
came from
♦ Maintain good relationships with good
source

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Sources of Sales Representatives
– Within the company
– Other companies (competitors,customers, non-
competitors)
– Educational institutions
– Advertisement
– Job centers
– Voluntary applicants
– Part-timer workers

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Advertisements
♦ Attract attention and have credibility
♦ Company name
♦ Product
♦ Territory
♦ Hiring qualification
♦ Compensation etc..
♦ How to contact the employer

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Evaluation of Recruiting
Program
♦ A company should continually evaluate the
effectiveness of its recruiting program

38. 38
Picking Winners is Hard?
♦ In the selection, the number and type of
sales people are determined and applicant
have been recruited.
♦ Now management should be ready for
developing a system for matching the
applicants with the predetermined
requirements and the actual use of this
system to select the sales people.

39. 39
Selecting Applicants and
Strategic Planning
♦ If it handled effectively, it can help ensure
successful sales performance
♦ A poor job in processing applicants can
hinder implementation
♦ Matching company needs and applicants
potential is very important

40. 40
Legal Considerations
♦ Do not ask: (job relevant)
– age
– How many children (age, many, who cares)
– Applicant height or weight
– Citizenship
– Was arrested
– Marital status
– Name and address of any relatives

41. 41

42. 42
Application Blanks
♦ personal-history record (application blank)
♦ Company uses two blanks, a short one and a
longer one, more details
♦ Short one used as an initial screening
device.
♦ Company asks only for information it
intends to use now or later

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Personal Interviews (1)
♦ No sales person is ever hired without
personal interview
♦ Knowing the applicant personally
♦ Personal fitness for a job
♦ Conversational ability
♦ Speaking voice, social intelligence
♦ Appearance

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Personal Interviews (2)
♦ Interpret and get further information about
facts stated on the application blank.
♦ Fundamentally, all the questions asked
during an interview aimed at learning the:
– Is the person qualified for the job
– How badly does he want the job
– Will the job help him to achieve his goals
– Will this applicant work to his fullest ability

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Reliability of Personal Interview
♦ Situation/behavioral type of interview for
sale position is good.
♦ It heavily dependent on the behavior of the
interviewer.
♦ Gut reaction
♦ Interviewers talk too much listen to little
♦ They ask the wrong questions

46. 46
Improving the Validity of
Interviews
♦ Review the applicant’s resume or
application before proceeding further.
♦ Have more than one interview with each
candidate
♦ Use standardized rating form that they fill
♦ Review these information to make ranking
♦ Train interviewers

47. 47
Interview Structure and Focus
♦ Interviews can be differ (extent of Qs)
♦ Totally structure
– all interviewers use the same guide sheet
containing a series of questions
– Ask these questions in order listed
– Inflexible
♦ Informal-ask few question to get applicant
talking, interview does little talking

48. 48
Stress Interview
♦ Is a type of unstructured interview in which
the interviewer intentionally places the
applicant under stress.
– Rude, silent, or aggressive in questions
– give you a pen and ask you to sell it.

49. 49
On the Job Interview
♦ Asking the applicant to spend a day
observing one of the company current sales
rep
♦ Ask the applicant to make a presentation to
customer

50. 50
Behaviorally Based Interviews
♦ New type of interview which focused on the
applicant’s behavior, past or intended.

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Timing Of The Interview
♦ Executive valuable time
♦ Initial stages (15-20 minutes)
♦ Later stage, the more time talking with the
applicant the better

52. 52
Psychological Testing
♦ A company uses a battery of these tests
rather than one single test.
♦ It is complex and controversy

53. 53
Types of Tests
♦ Mental intelligence test
– intended to measures native intelligence
♦ Aptitude tests
– tests a person aptitude for selling
♦ Interest tests
♦ Personality tests

54. 54
Problem in Testing
♦ Testing may eliminate truly creative person,
who might not fall in the average or normal
rang in testing

55. 55
References and Other Outside
Sources
♦ The applicant furnishes the leads; a
reference
♦ Company get information on its own
initiative, credit, insurance report, school
record, and motor vehicle.
♦ Reference check made by letter, telephone,
or personal visit (advantage, disadvantage
of each methods)

56. 56
Assessment Centers
♦ Assessment center technique is a
centralized, comprehensive evaluation
procedures involve testing, interviews, and
simulation exercises such as business game,
discussion group, and individual testing
♦ Very expensive
♦ Takes one to three days to evaluate
applicants and their performance

57. 57
Reaching A decision about an
Applicant
♦ A company must decide whether to make a
job offer based on the information they get.
♦ Do not leave any applicant dangling
♦ If you decide not to hire him, tell him
gently, but clearly
♦ If you decide to hire him, make a formal
offer and persuade him to accept it.

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59. 59

60. 60
Hiring; The Key to Your Success
♦ If you do not master the skills needed for
effective hiring and firing, your business
will run like a car with nearly flat tires, it
will go, but never as efficiently as if it were
operating in peak condition.

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Do you really need another
employee?
♦ Full time employees (Pro and cons)
♦ Overtime
♦ Redistribute work (workflow)
♦ Outsourcing
♦ Automation
♦ Co-Op students

62. 62
♦ Hiring an employee is expensive
♦ Time and money wasted by poor hiring
decisions
♦ Once a person is hired, it is not easy to
reverse the choice if it proves to be a
mistake
♦ More emotionally troubling is firing

63. 63
If you hire an employee who does not work out, what you
will do?
♦ Fire him and hire another one?
♦ Replacement availability!
♦ Cost
– Salary
– Overhead
– Social security
– Time spent

64. 64
Calculating Cost Per Hire Model
♦ Internal cost ( salaries, benefit, etc)
♦ External cost (travel, fees for outside
recruiters)
♦ Company visit expenses (candidate travel, ,
interview expenses )
♦ Direct fees ( advertising, job fair)
♦ Time

65. 65
Think about a person you fire
♦ Most stressful responsibilities anyone has in
business
♦ The person you fire will feel angry toward
you
♦ His college may turn against you
♦ His career and life will suffer

66. 66
ACDelco’s Experience
♦ Get the best you can get
♦ They put the candidates through an aptitude
testing process
♦ After they pass the test, they create a focus
group where about 9 different managers
interview the candidates

67. 67
Exxon experience
♦ They look for individual who have a broad and
deep background within their organization
♦ The initial sales training during the first three
years on the job provides solid sales fundamentals.
Covers basic selling skills, negation skills, how to
analyze a customer’s business.
♦ After the first three years, advance training is
giving such as understanding new market and
helping clients reach their goals.

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Is Good Relationship enough!!!
♦ The old days of visiting a client and going
for lunch together and getting sale based on
the relationship are no longer a reality.
♦ Relationship Marketing works

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (1)
♦ Relying on an interview to evaluate a
Candidate
– The typical interview increase the likelihood
of choosing the best candidate by less than
2%
– Why?
• Candidate prepare very well
• Managers did not prepared for it
• Personal chemistry not potential success

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (2)
♦ Using Successful people as a model
– Duplicate success ?
– The critical information is how top performers
are different from poor performers

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (3)
♦ Setting Too Many Criteria
– No more than 6-8 factors
– narrow down your criteria to factors that
distinguish winners from failures

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (4)
♦ Evaluating Personality instead of Job Skills
– There is very little correlation between any
personality factors and any specific job
– Example: is nice to know that a sales candidate
has self-confidence and high energy, it is far
more likely it is critical to know whether he can
retain and pent rate existing customer or
develop new ones.

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (5)
♦ Using Yourself as an Example

74. 74
The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes(6)
♦ Not researching the reasons people have
failed in a job
– Example:
• In most competitive sales situations, the average
potential customer buys from a new salesperson
only after six contact. The average failed
salesperson gives up after three contact.

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (7)
♦ Relying on General Good Guy Criteria

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The Most Common Hiring
Mistakes (8)
♦ Not Doing A Careful Background
Reference Check
– False information
– 15 to 20% of applicants hide some dark
chapters of their lives
– Who will twist the facts to get a job will
probably twist the rules on the job.

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Others Common Hiring Mistakes
♦ Not knowing what you need
♦ Not knowing what to look for in the
resumes you received
♦ Talking too much in the interview
– You should not speak more than 25%

78. 78
Consequences of poor hiring
decisions
♦ Waste of time and money
♦ Poor performance
♦ Firing people

79. 79
Benefit of effective hiring
practices
♦ Your company becomes more competitive
♦ Efficiency improves
♦ Employees turnover decline
♦ Cost decrease
♦ Employees morals rises
♦ Training time and expenses are cut

80. 80
A good match: a suitable person
for the job
♦ What does it mean to say, “ Ahmed is really
suitable for that job” and Obaid is not cut
out for that job”
– Is Ahmed a better person than Obaid? Of
course not
– When we measure people against jobs we are
comparing the demand of the job with a person
capabilities.

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To be affective at hiring you must think about
♦ The demands and requirements of the job
♦ The person’s abilities

82. 82
Hiring and the Law
♦ Employment tests
– Tests should be relevant to the job
♦ Discrimination (color, age, race)
♦ Careful background checks
– Company can be held liable if one of its employees
goes on crime
♦ Sexual harassment
♦ Ethnic harassment
♦ Saudization

83. 83
Pre-offer Planning
♦ Thought should be given to the offer
process before actual recruit contact begin.
♦ To do this we need to:
– The acceptable recruits should be ranked
– How the offer (s) will be extended

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Ranking the Recruits
♦ Two lists should be developed
– a list of the recruits in the order of the firm’s
preference of them
– The second list can be developed by the firm’s
interviewers, based on how interested the
recruits seemed in joining the firm.
♦ What about when the person the firm wants
most is not interested? (shall we spend time)

85. 85
What will be included in the
Offer
♦ Compensation (type and amount)
♦ Employment package
– insurance,
– retirement
– vacation pay
– educational benefit
– Profit sharing
– Company car
– Relocation expenses

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How Will the Offer be Extended
♦ Who will make the offer (top manager,
Human resource, sale manger)
♦ Most of job offers are initially made over
the telephone
– how much time will be allowed for acceptance
and what concessions will be made if the recruit
want to negotiate some of the term of the deal.
♦ A formal letter follows if offer is accepted
(this letter needs carefully wording/
contract)

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Extending the Offer
♦ Many small, but important, details must be
anticipated in making the offer.
– Review the job
– ask for questions
– determine interest (trail close) do you want the
job. If we made an offer will you accept it.
– If he reject it accept it with grace
– Keep good relations, it help

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89. 89
Socialization
♦ Is the process through which the new
recruits take on the values and attitudes of
the people who are already working for the
firm.
– Pre-employment socialization (publication,
visit)
– Assimilation- when he accept the offer
• familiar with the environment and their job tasks

90. 90
Orientation Information
♦ Booklet about company’s history, the
executives, product line, health, recreational.
♦ The paycheck
♦ The expense account
♦ Office practices
♦ Dining facilities
♦ What is going to happen next?

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Orientation Experience
♦ Be part of the team
♦ Know the supporting staff
♦ Introduction to business
♦ Familiarization with firm’s operation
♦ Spend time in each of the firm’s functional
unit.
♦ Need for effective communication

92. 92
Meeting Social and
Psychological Needs
♦ People are social animals
♦ He should be socially integrated into new
environment
♦ Social need may be overrule their economic
need
♦ Leaving home, family, friend, strange in
new city, etc?
♦ Cultural diversity

93. 93
Mentoring New Employees
♦ A mentor is someone with knowledge,
experience, position, or power who
provides personal counseling and career
guidance for younger employee
♦ Three types of mentoring programs
– a senior manager is a assigned for each sales
rep
– co-worker to be new reps’ adviser
– informal process, a senior executive select a
younger sales rep and help him climb the ladder

94. 94
Employee Retention and Problem Solving (reduce
employee turnover)
♦ Know your employee
– Emotional needs, career needs)
♦ Recognize and reward (reward failure)

95. 95
Ways to hold on to employees
♦ Good pay (Industry standard)
♦ Communication
♦ Employee review ( people want to know
how they are doing)
♦ Training
♦ Employee assistant
♦ Improved working condition
♦ Career path

96. 96
Common employee behavior
problems
♦ Attitude
♦ Attendance problem
♦ Anger

97. 97

98. 98

99. 99
The Value of Sales Training
♦ The training program is a link in the process
of converting the recruit into a productive
sales rep
♦ Training was ranked as second important
factor in sale person success

100. 100
Important Factors for Ensuring a
Sales Person’s Success
♦ Good/positive attitude
♦ Proper training
♦ Good work habits/hard work
♦ Motivation/self-motivation
♦ Knowledge (customer,market, competition,
product)

101. 101
Successful Training Programs
Consist of Three Phases
♦ Training Assessment
♦ Program Design
♦ Evaluation
– in each of these phases sales executive mustin each of these phases sales executive must
make a number of decisionsmake a number of decisions

102. 102
Training Assessment
♦ In this phase, sale executive must determine:
– What are our training need?
– What are the objectives of the training?
– Who should be trained?
– How much training is needed?

103. 103
Training Need
♦ Start with sophisticated need analysis that
include interviewing customers about their
needs
♦ Find weaknesses in selling skills and design
a training program to eliminate them.
♦ Sources to gather these information are
many such as management and training
department judgment

104. 104
Training Objectives
♦ Increasing sales productivity
♦ Lower turnover (good people less to fail)
♦ Better moral
♦ Control
♦ Improved customer relations
♦ Lower selling cost
♦ Better use of time

105. 105
Who Should be Trained?
♦ Newly hired sales reps
♦ Existing sales reps
– who struggling to achieve their objectives
– when new products introduced, market shifts,
buyer change
♦ Train people who are not the company’s
employees: distribution, middleman
representative, etc.

106. 106
How Much Training Is Needed?
♦ Depends on the training objectives
– half a day training may be enough introducing
sales rep to promotional program
– 2-3 days for introducing him to new feature in
the product
– Customer relations may needs 3-4 days
– Teaching basic selling skills to inexperienced
recruits needs 3- 6 months

107. 107
Program Design
♦ In the program design phase, the following
question must be answered:
– Who should do the training?
– When should the training take place?
– Where it should be done?
– What should the content of the training be?
– What teaching methods should be used?

108. 108
Who should do the training?
♦ Three basic sources of trainers are:
– regular line executive (senior sales
representative, field supervisor, territorial
manager or sales managers).
– Staff trainers-can be hired to conduct training
– Outside training specialist
♦ Each one has advantages and disadvantages

109. 109
When Training Should Take
Place
♦ Two basic attitude
– no one should be placed in the field who is not
fully trained
– other attitude is the recruit should sell before
investing in training in that person. This
philosophy has merits that it is much easier to
train people who have some field experience
than those who have none.

110. 110
Where Training Should Take
Place
♦ Decentralized Training
– Field sales office instruction
– use of senior sales people
– on-the-job tutoring
– local sales schools
– local sales seminar
♦ Centralized Training
– at central location/ it is very expensive

111. 111
Content Of Training
– Attitude toward selling
– Knowledge about the company
– Product knowledge and application
– Knowledge of competitive products
– Knowledge of customers
– Time management skills
– Legal constraints on selling
– Selling skills

112. 112
Training Techniques
– Lectures- ineffective for teaching sales
– Discussion
– Demonstration
– Role playing
– Audio cassettes-when sales rep drive
– Video-enhanced training
– Computer-assisted training
– Business TV- broadcast live via satellite
– On-the-job training

113. 113
Training Evaluation
♦ We must assess the effectiveness of our
training programs, we must decide on:
– what outcomes will be evaluated?
– How will these outcomes be measured?

114. 114
Outcomes and Measures
♦ Reactions-subjective manner
♦ Learning-how much information they get-
test before and after
♦ Behavior- whether the trainee’s behavior
has changed in substantial ways.
♦ Result-increased sales and productivity

115. 115