![\"bait\"](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/bait-300x201.jpg\")
Across our industry there is often an underlying understanding with dealer principals that the salary they provide to attract sales talent is only bait used to catch the next sales rep. It\u2019s an attraction and comes without clear expectations or authority to define any of the daily sales activity requirements for those you hire.<\/p>\n
With each engagement, I see lower expectations and less structure around what is expected of the sales team. I rarely discover anyone being held accountable for anything and that includes the sales leadership.\u00a0 I am amazed at the number of sales reps who are allowed to wander through their month without accountability and if a new hire comes from the industry, there\u2019s often an unspoken defiance just under the surface that says \u201cif you push too hard, I\u2019ll leave\u201d and so, no one pushes.\u00a0 In this case the salary was the hook and the dealer is hoping that the rep brings their renewals and relationships.\u00a0 But remember, giving a salary should have rewards for your side as well.\u00a0 Hooking a sales rep from the industry who may bring their portfolio could have a disastrous effect on other quality sales reps, so be careful about how you use your salary and who it attracts.<\/p>\n
Often this is the situation I\u2019m asked to jump into.\u00a0 Dealers don\u2019t always like my answer when I tell them to get rid of the bad apples, or at least the apples that are going bad so we can build a salary and comp plan that will attract quality and build momentum. So what do you expect for your salary? Make it clear!<\/p>\n
There are a lot of reasons why this situation exists.\u00a0 It\u2019s not uncommon to find that the dealer hasn\u2019t put any definition into his or her job offer, its expectations or included a fair wage for it.\u00a0 A salary and compensation plan shouldn\u2019t be just a document you copied from an industry workshop.\u00a0 It\u2019s a unique set of benefits and requirements custom to your company.\u00a0 It defines your desires and demands as well as the rewards, WITH CLARITY!\u00a0 I\u2019m working with several companies right now who have a mismatch of salaries and no sales rep is paid like another.\u00a0 How do you manage that? I\u2019m told, \u201cWell Bobby didn\u2019t demand as much as Johnny so we just don\u2019t rock the boat.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s great until Bobby finds out he\u2019s been working for years way below other reps and quits! Right!<\/p>\n
Most likely this type of job isn\u2019t really one that is irreplaceable and so mediocrity attracts mediocrity.\u00a0\u00a0 If your job and salary is superior to the competition, few would want to lose it and the cream of the crop out in the marketplace will fight to have it!\u00a0 Manage them well and you\u2019ll have a team that will take direction and will want to perform because they have a lot to lose and MOST IMPORTANTLY they\u2019ll want to stay forever. Isn\u2019t that one of your goals?<\/p>\n
It amazes me that many dealer principals expect high turnover! Continually FUNDING and WASTING dollars when creating a lower salary program is ALWAYS a more expensive way to go.\u00a0 I most recently evaluated a sales program where the dealer had spent $326,000 in a single year on \u201ccome and gone\u201d sales reps and managers.\u00a0 And yet, he continually talked about the guy he would have loved to hire but couldn\u2019t afford!\u00a0 Are you getting the picture?\u00a0 Could he have hired two or three extremely high quality sales professionals for that amount of money? The answer is yes!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying run back to the office and hire three excellent sales reps at $100k each, nor am I saying to overpay your sales team.\u00a0 What I am saying is, if you want quality, loyalty and to create a career for someone vs. just a job, you\u2019ll have to build it.\u00a0 The sales generated by those come and gone reps will always be less than the sales generated by true professionals.\u00a0 When I review their sales results, if there were any sales at all, they were either rolling leases from their previous employer or they were deals that you gave them to help prime their funnel; either way, it could be wasted time, money and effort.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s do some simple math and look at a smaller sales team for my example.\u00a0 If you have six sales reps and two of the six are successful, that leaves four sales reps who are not. I know, I know, you want to nurture those failing reps to success.\u00a0 Most dealers who say that have absolutely no sales improvement plan, skillset or capabilities, so you might as well scream, \u201cI like wasting money,\u201d and then I will understand.<\/p>\n
This 80\/20 problem exists everywhere; it\u2019s not just your company and in order to fix this situation, we have to define the problem clearly.\u00a0 So here it is: you have four reps who are failing, who each make $3,000.00 per month.\u00a0 These four sales reps are nowhere near quota, consistently.\u00a0 So 4 x $3,000.00 equals $12,000.00 per month, and for those salaries you get nothing in return. \u00a0Let\u2019s also mention that those territories are not covered well at all.\u00a0 Am I getting this right?\u00a0 So stop wasting money and fix it!\u00a0 The number one question I\u2019m asked is, \u201cHow in the world do you find great sales talent?\u201d And my number one answer is, \u201cShow me your salary and compensation plan and how many failing sales reps do you have?\u201d<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t it be a smarter use of money to release the failing sales reps, create an excellent job description, salary and compensation plan and take the $12,000.00 per month ($144,000.00 per year) and hire two professionals and an appointment setter?\u00a0 With the salary as the attraction you can demand a higher skilled professional, which gets you out of the nurturing business and provides you on day one someone who can close a sale.\u00a0 Now train them on your value proposition, products and services and hold them accountable for higher levels of sales prospecting activity.\u00a0 The amazing thing is, your company isn\u2019t spending any more money than it was before and you now have reps who can carry the responsibility successfully.<\/p>\n
I have folks all the time tell me, \u201cWe did that and it still didn\u2019t work,\u201d and then I find out that their sales leader (often the dealer principal) did not deliver the necessary sales activity requirements or hold anyone accountable.\u00a0 The sales team has to be managed, daily.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have every answer, but I do know that if I am evaluating and attracting sales talent I want to be reviewing candidates from the top of the pool vs. the bottom-feeders.\u00a0 At times I help a dealer engage a sales recruiter and I\u2019ll get a call from that recruiter telling me, \u201cThe talent the dealer is seeking doesn\u2019t work for 35k per year!\u201d So, you have to live on planet earth!<\/p>\n
Let me chase a rabbit for a second and share this warning.\u00a0 In 2014 I\u2019ve observed two different dealers in different marketplaces hire competitive sales reps who both negotiated an enormous salary by offering their market connections and lease portfolio.\u00a0 Both dealers were on Cloud 9 and proud as punch to secure these reps. You\u2019re wishing you were them right now aren\u2019t you?\u00a0 When I asked them, \u201cWas it the right move?\u201d they looked at me as if I were crazy.\u00a0 When we reviewed the bottom-line and reviewed all of the inbound and outbound dollars associated with these two reps, these companies were significantly in the hole.\u00a0 Too much salary and most of the leases were renewed way too early so they had a lot of buyout and very little profit. Of course the reps wanted commission too!\u00a0 The bad news is, as soon as the lease renewals ran out, so did the reps\u2014they both left.\u00a0 What do you expect for your salary?\u00a0 Your salary is a tool and when it\u2019s a well-defined part of your plan, it ensures that both sides benefit.<\/p>\n
Have you ever had to clear a field and remove the trees?\u00a0 You can go get your shovel and pickaxe and dig for a week on a single tree without success or you can call a company with a bulldozer and in 15 seconds they push the tree over and drag it away.<\/p>\n
Some will continue to dig for six months and tell me that they removed the trees and were successful.\u00a0 If you can only afford a shovel and pickaxe, so be it.\u00a0 But if you can afford a bulldozer and wasted the six months digging with four shovels and a pickaxe, then you blew it.\u00a0 You\u2019ll never get that time back and the chance to build momentum within your company and marketplace is gone. Who knows, maybe you will even lose a customer or two while you\u2019re digging. \u00a0If you need a bulldozer, hire a bulldozer.<\/p>\n
What you expect for your salary has to be crystal clear and presented UPFRONT at the time of hiring. A salary, regardless of the job to be done, has got to match earnings for effort. It has to be fair, but it\u2019s not a gift\u2014it comes with expectations!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Across our industry there is often an underlying understanding with dealer principals that the salary they provide to attract sales talent is only bait used to catch the next sales rep. It\u2019s an attraction and comes without clear expectations or authority to define any of the daily sales activity requirements for those you hire. With each engagement, I see lower expectations and less structure around what is expected of the sales team. I rarely discover anyone being held accountable for anything and that includes the sales leadership.\u00a0 I am amazed at the number of sales reps who are allowed to wander through their month without accountability and if a new hire comes from the industry, there\u2019s often an unspoken defiance just under the surface that says \u201cif you push too hard, I\u2019ll leave\u201d and so, no one pushes.\u00a0 In this case the salary was the hook and the dealer is hoping that the rep brings their renewals and relationships.\u00a0 But remember, giving a salary should have rewards for your side as well.\u00a0 Hooking a sales rep from the industry who may bring their portfolio could have a disastrous effect on other quality sales reps, so be careful about how you use your salary and who it attracts. Often this is the situation I\u2019m asked to jump into.\u00a0 Dealers don\u2019t always like my answer when I tell them to get rid of the bad apples, or at least the apples that are going bad so we can build a salary and comp plan that will attract quality and build momentum. So what do you expect for your salary? Make it clear! There are a lot of reasons why this situation exists.\u00a0 It\u2019s not uncommon to find that the dealer hasn\u2019t put any definition into his or her job offer, its expectations or included a fair wage for it.\u00a0 A salary and compensation plan shouldn\u2019t be just a document you copied from an industry workshop.\u00a0 It\u2019s a unique set of benefits and requirements custom to your company.\u00a0 It defines your desires and demands as well as the rewards, WITH CLARITY!\u00a0 I\u2019m working with several companies right now who have a mismatch of salaries and no sales rep is paid like another.\u00a0 How do you manage that? I\u2019m told, \u201cWell Bobby didn\u2019t demand as much as Johnny so we just don\u2019t rock the boat.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s great until Bobby finds out he\u2019s been working for years way below other reps and quits! Right! Most likely this type of job isn\u2019t really one that is irreplaceable and so mediocrity attracts mediocrity.\u00a0\u00a0 If your job and salary is superior to the competition, few would want to lose it and the cream of the crop out in the marketplace will fight to have it!\u00a0 Manage them well and you\u2019ll have a team that will take direction and will want to perform because they have a lot to lose and MOST IMPORTANTLY they\u2019ll want to stay forever. Isn\u2019t that one of your goals? It amazes me that many dealer principals expect high turnover! Continually FUNDING and WASTING dollars when creating a lower salary program is ALWAYS a more expensive way to go.\u00a0 I most recently evaluated a sales program where the dealer had spent $326,000 in a single year on \u201ccome and gone\u201d sales reps and managers.\u00a0 And yet, he continually talked about the guy he would have loved to hire but couldn\u2019t afford!\u00a0 Are you getting the picture?\u00a0 Could he have hired two or three extremely high quality sales professionals for that amount of money? The answer is yes! I\u2019m not saying run back to the office and hire three excellent sales reps at $100k each, nor am I saying to overpay your sales team.\u00a0 What I am saying is, if you want quality, loyalty and to create a career for someone vs. just a job, you\u2019ll have to build it.\u00a0 The sales generated by those come and gone reps will always be less than the sales generated by true professionals.\u00a0 When I review their sales results, if there were any sales at all, they were either rolling leases from their previous employer or they were deals that you gave them to help prime their funnel; either way, it could be wasted time, money and effort. Let\u2019s do some simple math and look at a smaller sales team for my example.\u00a0 If you have six sales reps and two of the six are successful, that leaves four sales reps who are not. I know, I know, you want to nurture those failing reps to success.\u00a0 Most dealers who say that have absolutely no sales improvement plan, skillset or capabilities, so you might as well scream, \u201cI like wasting money,\u201d and then I will understand. This 80\/20 problem exists everywhere; it\u2019s not just your company and in order to fix this situation, we have to define the problem clearly.\u00a0 So here it is: you have four reps who are failing, who each make $3,000.00 per month.\u00a0 These four sales reps are nowhere near quota, consistently.\u00a0 So 4 x $3,000.00 equals $12,000.00 per month, and for those salaries you get nothing in return. \u00a0Let\u2019s also mention that those territories are not covered well at all.\u00a0 Am I getting this right?\u00a0 So stop wasting money and fix it!\u00a0 The number one question I\u2019m asked is, \u201cHow in the world do you find great sales talent?\u201d And my number one answer is, \u201cShow me your salary and compensation plan and how many failing sales reps do you have?\u201d Wouldn\u2019t it be a smarter use of money to release the failing sales reps, create an excellent job description, salary and compensation plan and take the $12,000.00 per month ($144,000.00 per year) and hire two professionals and an appointment setter?\u00a0 With the salary as the attraction you can demand a higher skilled professional, which gets you out of the nurturing business and provides you on day one someone who can close a sale.\u00a0 Now train them on your value proposition, products and services […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1879],"tags":[1800,2101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13307,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13305\/revisions\/13307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}