I have written many articles on the importance of and how to use a consultative approach to differentiate you and your company from your competitors and their companies so that the decision is not based on price.

I was listening to a Boston Sports Radio Station, the same one I wrote about here. Today’s guests were Christian Fauria, former tight end of the New England Patriots, and Matt Chatham, former linebacker of the same New England Patriots. They were discussing the very recent resignations of 3 coaches from this year’s Patriots team and the co-hosts asked, “Would you like to coach?”

More and more firms that aren’t traditionally sales-driven are finding it necessary to finally build more of a sales culture. They know they need to do a better job at selling in order to deal with increasing competition, fewer call-ins, commoditization of their products and services, aging rainmakers looking at retirement, etc. Management seems to understand that they need to be more proactive bringing in business, cross-selling and up-selling. They’re saying the right words. They’re asking the right questions. But can they pull it off?

That was the question posed to me yesterday while speaking at the Crystal Palace in Livingston NJ.

To effectively answer that question one must ask another question, that being, what is the largest number of salespeople a sales manager can manage?

When a company is ready to hire someone for its first sales role, they often face a big dilemma:

Should it be a salesperson?
Should it be a selling sales manager?
Should it be a selling Sales VP?

Yesterday I spoke to the Distributors for Billington Wines in Washington DC. One attendee asked about my comprehensive guidelines for on boarding new salespeople during the first 90 Days. I believe that most companies set their new salespeople up for failure. I believe you should prepare your new salespeople for success. While I have probably posted about this subject on various occasions, I’ll try to get it all in here.

Executives in small to medium sized businesses have a tendency to become ecstatic when they have the opportunity to hire someone who was with a Fortune 1000 company. They immediately think, “Joe worked at Xorex” or “Suzie used to be at MBI” or “Phil was with Tfosorcim”. And they think, “If they bring some of that big company magic to YSTI-YSTIB, we’ll do great!”

I was forwarded an email that originated with from a colleague’s client that read, “…Many candidates are advised to not take on line sales assessments before at least a phone conversation.”

Hiring salespeople is scalable until you get to a dilution point – very similar to the expansion that took place in baseball. When I was growing up in the 1960’s, there were 16 teams and expansion made it 20. Today, there are 30 teams and despite integrating more African American players, then Latin players and now Asian players, there isn’t enough pitching or depth on most teams. Pitchers with ERA’s above 5.00, who never would have made it to a major league team 40 years ago, make 40-50 appearances a year. And hitters that can’t run, throw or catch, but hit home runs from the cleanup spot as designated hitters, would never have risen beyond the minor leagues back then.

The following email was recently forwarded to me. As you read it, look at the descriptors which the client references in the personality assessments. They’re not sales descriptors, so in essence, we have another example of an assessment which claims to be measuring one thing, but actually is measuring another: