The Maverick: The art of selling is the American dream

When I was 19 I spent a summer working the phones in a "pen room" in Beverly Hills, California. I worked as a commission-only salesman, cold-calling firms listed in the Yellow Pages all across America, trying to persuade them to buy personalised ball-point pens. We read from a script, and if my patter was faltering, the boss grabbed the receiver and closed the sale.

So said Luke Johnson, Chairman of Channel 4 and Risk Capital partners . The article proposes that the sales embarassment that European organisations feel is not felt in the USA. It is this sales dynamism which has led to the strength of the USA's econoomy and it's ideolgical belief in free markets. Sales is the American Dream.

Further to this, I would argue that we have sales forces who can't conjour compelling reasons to buy. Why is this? They have Major weaknesses: Self limiting record collection, non-supportive buy cycle's, need for approval, emtionally tied into a deal, and not money motivated (high basics leading to complacency)

How do you overcome this? Answers on a postcard.

Is Good enough, good enough ? Do PSLs or RPO for recruitment attract the Best of the Best, or are they a de facto pathway to mediocrity ? by blocking the best talent

Is Good enough, good enough ? Do PSLs or RPO for recruitment attract the Best of the Best, or are they a de facto pathway to mediocrity ? by blocking the best talent.
The best senior people are passive job seekers, the smart ones use recruiters to find their next career move for them, just as really succesful people use house hunters and personal shoppers. They are cash rich, time poor.
So what do PSLs achieve, apart from making the lives of internal recruiters easier ?

The Lex Overpaid CEO Award

Published: July 15 2008 09:10 | Last updated: July 15 2008 16:35

Mervyn King’s rejection of a £100,000 pay rise merits applause. Towers Perrin, a consultancy, had recommended the Bank of England governor receive a salary of £375,000-£400,000, up from about £290,000. Yet how it reached this number is unclear. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who both have greater responsibilities, make considerably less, at €345,252 and $191,300, respectively. With Tuesday’s UK inflation numbers showing prices rising at 3.8 per cent year-on-year in June, the highest rate in 11 years, a monster pay rise would have sent the wrong signal to wage setters across the UK. The governor cannot be held responsible for inflation imported through rising food and oil prices, or even for the collapse of Northern Rock, given that the Bank was stripped of its financial oversight powers. But the last year has hardly been a triumph. Mr King’s caution is sensible and highlights how rarely chief executives demonstrate such tasteful self-denial.

Rewards for failure remain the single greatest weakness of corporate governance regimes in developed economies. Pay is all too often ludicrously out of step with performance, extravagantly inflated and layered with complexity by self-serving boards. Pliable outside advisers (“Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo”, as Warren Buffett dubs them) are often called in to provide little more than spurious validation for greed that can verge on kleptocracy. Make no mistake, Lex admires wealth creation. To become rich is glorious, as Deng Xiaoping said. But executive remuneration must be better monitored. When value is being flagrantly destroyed, lavish compensation packages demand explanation. To do its bit to rein in egregious excesses, Lex will name and shame the chief executives who offer the worst value for money, the least bang per buck.
















I found this to very amusing, in the way that only Lex can be. I would like to see who comes up with alternates and perhaps we can discuss executive compensation.

Young persons game

I took a call at about ten O' clock last night. A good friend of mine and an excellent recruiter told me he had handed in his notice at the giant he works for. He's in his 30's, has a wife and a young son.

I knew he'd been having a tough time with process. Process is important, especially in a large organisation. If you adhere to it and don't perform then at least you are doing the right thing and can be helped. Mavericks like me never fit in well to that environment so my expectations of keeping my job if my numbers dropped off were never great. Anyway, I digress.

Post code territories, splits, top drawing candidates and clients and youthful idiocy of the management were his tipping point (just finished Malcom Gladwell's book). The story he told was that the director of one of the companies elite brands (the brand in which my friend worked) had called a sales conference. He divided the teams into the regions and called them things like the "London louts", "Northern Monkeys" etc..........

My former colleague said that he couldn't go home to his wife with any degree of pride. That's when it hit me. Recruitment in the traditional sense is a young man's game. How many seasoned recruiters are left in any of the factories. I commend those that are. The stamina and energy to work in that environment for that length of time equals super human to me so kudos!!!!

Grown up's though are less likely to make the mistakes that ruin recruitment for users. They are reliable, honest(more so) and more likely to fulfill a scope of requirement with the care and attention that a client deserves. I was a young pup and definitely appreciate what I learnt as I do the opposite now!!!!

Profiling to help your brand

I am currently reading Heidrick & Struggles GTI (Global Talent Index) collection of essays. It raises some questions that are pertinent to anyone who cares about talent acquisition.

One of the most interesting facts in my opinion is that my generation, generation Y (1977-2005) will have (on average) had 14 jobs by the time they are 38. Contrast this with my parents generation who will typically have had 4 or 5 in a lifetime, possibly within the same company. What are the drivers behind this?

It is an increase in sophistication. Our current pool of bright, young things are enamoured by employee brand, corporate responsibility and have an understanding of opportunity. This means that you need to acquire them and manage them with the sophistication they expect.

Ultimately the paradigm has shifted in the favour of the candidate and you have to win them. FACT! How do you do this? By offering a work environment that is compelling, diverse and challenging and supplementing your employee brand with a comitment to them.

Testing and profiling enables this buy in from a candidate and shows them how much you care about you capturing the best (for YOUR business).

One of my candidates expressed this to me the other day. He said "Gerry, I see the value in this. When I hire I have had to take things at face value and have been burnt consistently." I think his statement leads to another interesting facet.

Staff turnover can be limited comprehensively by testing for core values and capabilities at the levels that a standard interview process just can't qualify.

I was reflecting this morning on a number of incidents over the lat couple of days. It all came about when I took a Dave Kurlan (tm) assessment of myself as a sales person. I loved the results, particularly as there were 2 areas for improvement that I could act on immediately ( I always knew deep down they were there but needed a jolt) and that's propelled me into doing something about starting this business with Gerry.

We have spoken, formally and informally to number of people about what we have decided to do - which is use the Dave Kurlan(tm) systems to help senior management point their salesforce in the best direction and fire silver bullets, not lead pellets.

Dave talks about uncovering the hidden barriers to sales. And we will be developing that.

Anyway back to reflection. We are doing something substantially different, with measurable outcomes which, anecdotally at least, is needed; but, everytime we do something someone tries to put up a barrier. Most along the lines of "it won't work here".

Except for the SD I have just phoned who has almost bitten my arm off.

ROI

I don't get the feeling that HR understand real ROI. Nigel Dunn said in his blog recently that a Manchester Partner study indicated that senior hires were inaccurate 40% of the time.

I have to agree with him and state too that this is a frightening figure based on a fast and ignorantly enginereed process that hides behind a Preferred supplier list. The recruiters who made these guarentees of delivery will have been full of cliched promises from the vendors. I know because I used to make them. An example please, I hear you ask?

"We have a database of 20,000 candidates"; "we like to work in partnership to assure a match"; "candidates come to us because of our standing in the market"; " we've been doing this for (insert number of years here) so our track record speaks for itself"

That's fine and they are valid sales concepts but they aren't USP's. The one common factor is that these companies will flex to the rate dictated to them by the company who has the requirement. They will deliver candidates at a margin which is just viable on the promise of volume. However, 40% of those candidates will fail meaning that the rate has to be paid for the cost of hiring in the first instance, the cost of missed opportunity for a more credible but inaccessable candidate and the cost of re-hiring the failed hire. Needless to say there are huge implications about the failed impact on delivery within the employees remit so the cost of one poor decision drives higher (not hire) and higher.

So who works this out as the most cost effective way to bring senior personalities into a business? Answers on a postcard please?