Gary Robards, president of Mukwonago-based GRR Enterprises Inc., is searching for insurance agents for the first time since he started his health insurance company six years ago.
Robards is a 38-year veteran of the insurance industry and says he never thought he would have such a hard time finding any applicant, let alone a strong candidate for the job.
“Right now I have an ad posted on MilwaukeeJobs.com,” Robards said. “I had 200 hits, only four applicants and no one has actually followed through to give us information.”
Robards is not interested in getting stacks of resumes automatically e-mailed to him. Instead, he wants applicants to call a toll-free number.
“Just call the number if you are interested. No resume. These are simple instructions,” Robards said. “The applicants could not even follow directions.”
Milwaukee-area companies increasingly are reporting difficulties in recruiting and retaining top-flight salespeople, and as baby boomers retire and are succeeded by the much small Gen-Xers, that problem is likely to intensify.
Robards, who plans to place more classified ads to find some candidates for his company, says he is frustrated, because he needs to hire some agents and thought the job search would be much easier.
If a new insurance agent follows his training program and is a good salesperson, he or she could have income of at least $100,000 by the end of the first year, Robards said.
“I know what it takes, and I know what agents don’t like to do – paperwork,” Robards said. “So I hired account representatives to do that. All you have to do is sell and make some money.”
Tom Duffey, president of Plastic Components Inc., a plastic injection molder based in Germantown, said he is finding the same dearth of sales candidates.
“It is extremely hard to find salespeople, and it is harder now than it has ever been,” Duffey said. “The role of the salesman has evolved from just being a guy going around knocking on doors. Salespeople are not salespeople anymore. They are technical consultants who have to have a much broader range of expertise and experience than ever before.”
Across all industries, the sales profession has drastically changed in the past 10 years, said Jim Dickie, managing partner with Chief Sales Officer (CSO) Insights, a research firm based in Boulder, Colo.
CSO Insights conducts an annual Sales Performance and Optimization report, which surveys more than 1,300 companies in the United States. The report measures aspects of company sales forces including: sales force demographics; sell cycle analysis; detailed sales performance assessment; sales process; customer relationship management (CRM); Internet and sales knowledge management; and sales and marketing alignment.
Out of the 1,300 companies that participated in the survey, 74.7 percent focused on business-to-business sales. However, only 57 percent of the sales representatives in the survey were making their quota, a dip from 59.1 percent in the previous year’s survey.
From his research and industry experience, Dickie has concluded that there is a lack of people coming out of college with backgrounds to be salespeople. At the same time, companies either can’t describe their perfect candidate or fail to offer the product training and knowledge management that salespeople need to be successful, he said.
“(Companies) have not realized that selling has become harder. Therefore, if they don’t change how they are getting new representatives up to speed, they assume the reps are not delivering as effectively as they could be,” Dickie said. “But in reality, they are as effective as they can be in their current environment, not their past environment.”
Hunters or farmers
The 2007 Sales Performance and Optimization results found that 62.8 percent of revenue from participating companies came from existing customers, and only 37.2 percent came from new customers.
That ratio illustrates a common trait that many Milwaukee-area companies are in search of: the elusive “hunters.”
“There is a huge demand for sales hunters, and they are hard to find,” said Paul Chadwick, a managing partner with Organization Analysis and Design North Central in Delafield, a division of Organization Analysis and Design LLC, headquartered in Boston. “Hunters are people that can parachute into virgin territory, they can turn nothing into something, they have a knack for being able to generate business, they bring deals and they close deals.”
Farmers, the other type of salespeople, are more comfortable managing existing accounts, whether they closed them or not. It is clear that Milwaukee companies have plenty of farmers in their offices and in their candidate pools.
The hunters, the natural-born salespeople that have listening skills, self-discipline, negotiating skills, talent and drive, are out there. They just need to be recruited from their current positions, retrained on the new company’s culture and product line and given constant access to knowledge, experts say.
If they are in a candidate pool, they can be spotted through their extroverted personality and their warm, persuasive ways, Chadwick said.
Candidates with the potential to become hunters are in the marketplace, as well, he said. The individuals inclined to be great salespeople by nature are mostly spotted during the interview process through behavioral analysis. It is then up to the company to help that person be successful, said Paul Trout, a managing partner for Chicago-based Akina, a consulting and training firm.
Trout is currently working with Godfrey & Kahn S.C., a Milwaukee-based law firm, to develop the personal and persuasive skills of the lawyers in the firm, who are responsible for their own business development.
The challenges
Trout says the three main disconnects between companies and good salespeople today are:
1. Recruiting and hiring the right person for the company and the position.
2. Training that person to understand the company’s products or services.
3. Finding an effective way to motivate that person to perform.
“Often times, executives and managers make the false assumption that money is the key motivator, where frequently, salespeople narrow down three motivators in their jobs that would be above money,” Trout said. “Recognition, challenge and flexibility.”
Salespeople like to march to their own drummer, Trout said, and giving them a tight structure to work in does not allow the salesperson’s style to emerge. Companies need to offer their sales staff enough flexible structure so they are able to work in their own element and offer authentic value to the market and the customer, because the best salespeople are those who understand what the customer wants, he said.
“It takes a true desire,” Trout said. “When companies are looking at evaluating a workforce, they need to look at whether or not individual salespeople really want to help people. It is a key factor. If they are not interested in helping people, then they probably are not going to be a good salesperson.”
Employers of choice
“Companies are not finding good salespeople because most of the good salespeople are happy in the jobs they are in, because they are successful and they don’t want to move laterally,” said Rick Olson of Victory Seminars in Brookfield. “The reason they are successful is because they have training and understand that sales is a process, and they need to follow and stay with that process to achieve consistent performance and consistent success. The people without that experience or training are the ones who are floundering in the marketplace looking for work, and that is why there is a general lack of talent.”
Employers should see a red flag when a sales applicant is unemployed, because talented salespeople usually have an exit strategy or are recruited out of their current positions, said Crystal Schroeder, president and CEO of Brookfield-based Elite Human Capital Group LLC.
“I have never hired a salesperson I didn’t know of already,” Schroeder said. “I want to know they have had success in the market and have a chance to see their work.”
Keep a bullpen
Schroeder and Tom Krist, president of Milwaukee-based WFA Staffing Group, say they are always recruiting for internal sales executives as much as they are recruiting for clients.
“One of the mistakes people make is they wait until they have an opening to look for a salesperson, and a lot of people don’t recognize they should be continually recruiting and they should have someone in the bullpen,” Krist said. “If a company has 10 salespeople, nine are doing better than one, and two are always looking.”
WFA Staffing places about one third of its candidates without originally having had a job order, Krist said.
“Good salespeople pay for themselves,” Krist said.
Companies need to be talking to people and looking to recruit all of the time so that they get to know individuals on a more personal basis, see them in action, and see them work a room at an event. Companies should be able to meet people that they are not prepared to make an offer to yet, so that when the time comes, the company can really consider the best move for the future.
“Before you get married, you need to get engaged. And before you get engaged, you have to have a first date,” Krist said. “Companies should be dating all of the time.”
John Steindorf, president of Capital Data Inc., an IT consolidator of integrated data solutions in Milwaukee, is always on the lookout for sales candidates with IT experience and sales experience. Selling data solutions is different than selling a tangible computer system and is much more difficult because it requires a different approach, Steindorf said.
“We have a value-added premise that we have to approach customers with,” Steindorf said. “We have a longer selling cycle and we build relationships based upon trust, deliverables and commitment.”
Although Capital Data’s large partners and competitors, including hardware and software manufacturers, distributors and retailers, are having problems recruiting and retaining top salespeople, Capital Data has a very low turnover.
“We are smaller and can provide incentives, an entrepreneurial culture and an environment and compensation benefits they would not be able to gain with larger vendors and partners,” Steindorf said.
The phone test
The advent of the Internet has not made a salesperson’s job any easier. Most consumers already research the features, price and benefits of a product or service on the Web before even approaching a salesperson. New phone systems, combined with mobile workstations, make the decision-makers of a company more difficult to reach.
Although some individuals see these issues as setbacks, others see new opportunity within them. Employers are impressed when candidates demonstrate ingenuity when trying to get on the phone with the decision-maker.
Schroeder recently hired someone at Elite mainly based on the fact that she was so impressed that the candidate worked through the phone system to get her direct line. One of her clients tests sales candidates from the first phone interview – by not answering the phone.
“The candidate would have to call in, and my client will see if the candidate left a voicemail,” Schroeder said. “If so, he determines whether the voicemail sounded professional, clear and if he got the feeling that he wanted to call this person back or erase the message. Some left voicemails and some called back. But the really good ones were the ones that found a way to get around the gatekeeper and had him paged.”
Lou Brazzoni, director of sales for U.S. Cellular Wisconsin, a division of Chicago-based U.S. Cellular, has held various sales and sales management positions since he joined the company in 1989. Since becoming director of sales in 2002, he has been charged with finding and guiding wireless salespeople.
The wireless industry has experienced many changes and taken on new challenges, both technologically and from customers in recent years. It is important that U.S. Cellular always employs salespeople who can focus on the needs of the customers and fulfill those needs, Brazzoni said.
“Technology is ever-changing, and because of this, consumers’ buying patterns are changing with greater frequency,” Brazzoni said. “Customers will not live with poor quality or bad service very long. The overall value of the products and services you provide are critical to your customer’s satisfaction. The bottom line is that you have to pay more attention to understanding your customer, how their business works, and their business goals. The relationship needs to be more of a partnership than just a client-vendor relationship.”
Brazzoni said U.S. Cellular is constantly looking for talented salespeople who can cut through the mixed messages of advertising and simplify U.S. Cellular products for customers so that they can see how the company differentiates itself in the marketplace. Good salespeople are difficult to find, and the competition to hire them is intense, Brazzoni said.
“Recruiting is a continuous process. Even if you are fully staffed, you must continue to recruit and have your candidate funnel full,” Brazzoni said. “If you wait to recruit when a position opens, it is too late, and your competitor has probably already taken your best candidate.”
