The document discusses using objective data and predictive analytics to make hiring decisions rather than relying on traditional factors like resumes, grades, and degrees. It notes that data from elaborate talent surveys can predict job performance at companies like Google. While qualities like experience, education and past roles seem important, data shows they are poor predictors of success compared to measuring a candidate's true talents in areas like openness, ambition, empathy and resilience. The key is finding a system that uses reliable statistics to predict performance rather than intuition or gut feelings.
7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be PullingInsideSales.com
Featuring Mark Littlefield, Sr Product Manager at InsideSales.com
Friday 9th September 2016 at 2:00pm BST
In today’s data-driven world, you’ve got to know your metrics. It’s what leads to quantitative decision making and launches careers. We’ve selected seven reports, five common mistakes and five KPIs you can use to drive rep performance and grow sales.
In this webinar we will show you Salesforce reports that will help answer:
Which reps are being the most effective
Who to call
How many times to call
When your prospects are most likely to answer your calls
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BASInsideSales.com
Featuring Jon Miller, Founder and CEO of Engagio, and Ken Krogue, Founder and Chief Evangelist of InsideSales.com, with Special Guest Rich Neal, Founder and CEO of mPathDiscovery and author of 'Expanding Sentience'
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the AnswerInsideSales.com
Featuring Bridge Group CEO Trish Bertuzzi, Heinz Marketing President Matt Heinz and Gabe Larsen, Director Sales Acceleration Services at InsideSales.com
Wednesday 24th August 2016 at 11:00am PST
Have you ever wondered why your most important sales targets aren’t closing faster?
The major difference between top-performing organizations and those that lose big deals is a tighter coordination between sales, marketing and technology-based systems that address five key areas of focus and execution.
In this webinar you’ll learn:
The five key areas of success for account-based everything programs that exceed revenue and sales expectations
How sales and marketing can operationalize a more effective collaboration
The important role of technology and which tools are critical to your success
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...InsideSales.com
Featuring Ken Krogue, President and Founder at InsideSales.com, and Koka Sexton, Social Selling Expert at LinkedIn
Ken Krogue made headlines in 2014 when he declared that cold calling was dead. The writing's on the wall: the sales process has fundamentally changed and buyers are harder to reach than ever before. Many traditional sales organizations still mistakenly believe the quickest and most effective way to set up meetings with prospects is dialing alone. Instead, a better strategy is to leverage social selling on LinkedIn to help speed up the process, warm up the introduction and land the account. Join Ken and LinkedIn's Koka Sexton (recognized by Forbes as one of the world's most influential social selling leaders) for an engaging discussion on how to use LinkedIn to create a winning strategy that will result in more conversations -- and ultimately, more closed deals.
In this webinar, you will learn:
-How to use LinkedIn to create your professional brand, find the right prospects and engage customers
-Best practices for closing deals faster with social signals
-Four simple steps you can do tomorrow to help you win
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every LeadInsideSales.com
Featuring Ryan Williams, VP of Sales at LeadGenius, Mike Plante, VP of Demand Generation at InsideSales.com, and Max Altschuler, CEO at Sales Hacker
Acquiring more leads is one way to build a strong pipeline. Maximizing the potential of each lead is another. High-performance sales teams do both.
In this webinar you will learn how to:
-Enrich leads with custom data to decrease your sales cycle
-Prioritize and score leads for better tracking and forecasting
-Identify conversion-increasing data to turn leads into opportunities faster
-Speed up your response time
Register for the webinar here:
http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/view?t=squeeze-the-most-out-of-every-lead&a=vec063
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?InsideSales.com
Featuring Jamie Shanks, CEO of Sales for Life, and Gabe Larsen, Director of Sales Acceleration Services at InsideSales.com
Social selling brings value to every stage of the buyer’s journey, but many companies struggle to see how these tactics are applied throughout the process. From lead generation to prospect nurturing and closing deals, this session will provide tactics that can be applied at every stage of the sales process.
In this webinar you will learn how:
-Modern sales methodologies fit within the current buyer’s journey
-To educate your buyers before your competitors
-Sales professionals and companies spark productive conversations with buyers
Register for the webinar here: http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/view?t=where-does-social-selling-fit-in&a=vec063
Increasing your win rate could make a huge difference in beating your 2016 sales goals. Join Mike Schultz and Dave Boyce as they share key insights and surprising research about what you can do to achieve higher win rates, as well as which sales technologies enable greater sales goal achievement.
In this webinar you will learn:
-What separates top-performing sales organizations from the competition
-Which four questions you must answer to win the sale
-Which sales technologies can help you increase conversion rates and contract value
7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be PullingInsideSales.com
Featuring Mark Littlefield, Sr Product Manager at InsideSales.com
Friday 9th September 2016 at 2:00pm BST
In today’s data-driven world, you’ve got to know your metrics. It’s what leads to quantitative decision making and launches careers. We’ve selected seven reports, five common mistakes and five KPIs you can use to drive rep performance and grow sales.
In this webinar we will show you Salesforce reports that will help answer:
Which reps are being the most effective
Who to call
How many times to call
When your prospects are most likely to answer your calls
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BASInsideSales.com
Featuring Jon Miller, Founder and CEO of Engagio, and Ken Krogue, Founder and Chief Evangelist of InsideSales.com, with Special Guest Rich Neal, Founder and CEO of mPathDiscovery and author of 'Expanding Sentience'
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the AnswerInsideSales.com
Featuring Bridge Group CEO Trish Bertuzzi, Heinz Marketing President Matt Heinz and Gabe Larsen, Director Sales Acceleration Services at InsideSales.com
Wednesday 24th August 2016 at 11:00am PST
Have you ever wondered why your most important sales targets aren’t closing faster?
The major difference between top-performing organizations and those that lose big deals is a tighter coordination between sales, marketing and technology-based systems that address five key areas of focus and execution.
In this webinar you’ll learn:
The five key areas of success for account-based everything programs that exceed revenue and sales expectations
How sales and marketing can operationalize a more effective collaboration
The important role of technology and which tools are critical to your success
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...InsideSales.com
Featuring Ken Krogue, President and Founder at InsideSales.com, and Koka Sexton, Social Selling Expert at LinkedIn
Ken Krogue made headlines in 2014 when he declared that cold calling was dead. The writing's on the wall: the sales process has fundamentally changed and buyers are harder to reach than ever before. Many traditional sales organizations still mistakenly believe the quickest and most effective way to set up meetings with prospects is dialing alone. Instead, a better strategy is to leverage social selling on LinkedIn to help speed up the process, warm up the introduction and land the account. Join Ken and LinkedIn's Koka Sexton (recognized by Forbes as one of the world's most influential social selling leaders) for an engaging discussion on how to use LinkedIn to create a winning strategy that will result in more conversations -- and ultimately, more closed deals.
In this webinar, you will learn:
-How to use LinkedIn to create your professional brand, find the right prospects and engage customers
-Best practices for closing deals faster with social signals
-Four simple steps you can do tomorrow to help you win
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every LeadInsideSales.com
Featuring Ryan Williams, VP of Sales at LeadGenius, Mike Plante, VP of Demand Generation at InsideSales.com, and Max Altschuler, CEO at Sales Hacker
Acquiring more leads is one way to build a strong pipeline. Maximizing the potential of each lead is another. High-performance sales teams do both.
In this webinar you will learn how to:
-Enrich leads with custom data to decrease your sales cycle
-Prioritize and score leads for better tracking and forecasting
-Identify conversion-increasing data to turn leads into opportunities faster
-Speed up your response time
Register for the webinar here:
http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/view?t=squeeze-the-most-out-of-every-lead&a=vec063
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?InsideSales.com
Featuring Jamie Shanks, CEO of Sales for Life, and Gabe Larsen, Director of Sales Acceleration Services at InsideSales.com
Social selling brings value to every stage of the buyer’s journey, but many companies struggle to see how these tactics are applied throughout the process. From lead generation to prospect nurturing and closing deals, this session will provide tactics that can be applied at every stage of the sales process.
In this webinar you will learn how:
-Modern sales methodologies fit within the current buyer’s journey
-To educate your buyers before your competitors
-Sales professionals and companies spark productive conversations with buyers
Register for the webinar here: http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/view?t=where-does-social-selling-fit-in&a=vec063
Increasing your win rate could make a huge difference in beating your 2016 sales goals. Join Mike Schultz and Dave Boyce as they share key insights and surprising research about what you can do to achieve higher win rates, as well as which sales technologies enable greater sales goal achievement.
In this webinar you will learn:
-What separates top-performing sales organizations from the competition
-Which four questions you must answer to win the sale
-Which sales technologies can help you increase conversion rates and contract value
Featuring Gabe Larsen, Director of Momentum at InsideSales.com
Inside sales is growing three times faster than traditional sales. To help you better understand this shifting sales environment, Gabe Larsen will share which trends have forever changed selling and how organizations can adapt to stay ahead.
In this webinar you will learn:
-How sales specialization can help achieve a higher close rate
-The keys needed to map your sales process
-How to create a prioritization strategy that aligns effort with your best prospects
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You BackInsideSales.com
Featuring Michael Pedone, Founder of SalesBuzz, and Gabe Larsen, Director of Consulting at InsideSales.com
In this free 45-minute webinar + Q&A, Michael Pedone and Gabe Larsen will share proven tips & secrets that will increase your cold call voicemail callbacks today!
Specifically, you'll discover:
Why voicemails fail and how to fix it
How to use email to get your voicemails heard
Best practices to achieve more live conversations as a result of your voicemails
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...InsideSales.com
Featuring Michael Pedone, founder of SalesBuzz, and Anil Somaney, VP of Business Development at InsideSales.com
Call reluctance is the #1 hidden fear of B2B inside sales reps and it’s costing them and their companies thousands of dollars in lost potential revenue every month. As a straight commission sales rep for 20+ years as well as a small business owner, Michael Pedone has been on both sides of the fence.
In this webinar you’ll learn:
• What causes call reluctance
• 3 steps to overcome your fear of rejection
• How to make sure it never comes back
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpiInsideSales.com
Featuring Chuck Coonradt, author of The Game of Work and Ken Krogue, president and founder of InsideSales.com.
A recent study indicated that 87% of employees are not engaged in their jobs. Learn five key principles from the author of the bestselling book, The Game of Work and seven best practices from Ken Krogue – that make sales fun and engaging.
In this webinar you will learn:
How to motivate reps to crush their quotas
How to increase the frequency of feedback to improve quality and quantity of performance
How to sell more while boosting team morale
Why the success of video games should matter to a sales manager
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting SecretsInsideSales.com
Jul 16th , 2015 at 11:00 a.m. PT
Featuring Ken Krogue, President and Founder at InsideSales.com and New York Times Bestselling Author Grant Cardone.
Breathe new life into the argument that cold calling may be alive and well, while warm calling and follow up calling bring even better results. All will be discussed in light of the latest technologies and techniques of research, sales training and sales systems. Grant and Ken share value that can make you millions on the phone today.
In this webinar you will learn:
How to Handle Price on the Phone
How to Get Past the Gatekeeper
How to Create Urgency
How to Close on the Phone
How to Separate Yourself from the Competition
How to Qualify the Buyer Over the Phone
What to Never Say on the Phone
How to Follow-Up the Unclosed Buyer
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda HolmesInsideSales.com
Featuring Ken Krogue, President, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at InsideSales.com and Amanda Holmes, CEO of The Chet Holmes Institute
Is your marketing being heard through the noise of your competitors? Does your sales team maximize the leads marketing generates? Learn the art and science of lead generation and management strategies that leverage your marketing spend and increase response rates.
After listening to this webinar you will be able to:
Get 9x the response from your marketing spend and Increase Response 342%
Learn 7 proven ways to increase your response rates
Understand 5 reasons your marketing isn't working like it should (and know how to fix it)
InsideSales.com CEO & Founder, Dave Elkington, speaks at the AA-ISP Inside Sales Leadership Summit 2015. Dave spoke on "Applying Predictive Sciences To Sales." A full transcript is coming soon.
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of SalesInsideSales.com
Ken Krogue presents The Next Generation of Sales as the Keynote for the Big Business Expo 2015. For the 10th year Ken Krogue shares research and best practices about selling in a high velocity business model at the largest annual conference in Utah Valley.
New this year is information on Inside Sales, predictive analytics, innovation, women in sales, and social Selling
Dave Boyce, VP of Product Marketing at InsideSales.com, loves rock ’n’ roll, but even more than that he wants to make you a Q4 rock star. He uses real examples of companies who have identified how much time they have left in the quarter and what strategies and cutting-edge technologies they used to double or even triple results.
Watch On Demand: http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/how-to-rock-your-sales-revenue
You’ll learn best practices that increase:
Inbound and outbound call volume
Contact rates up to 57.8%
Prospect-to-appointment conversions by 16.7%
InsideSales.com President Ken Krogue, recently recognized as the second most influential social seller in the world on Forbes, has interviewed some of social selling’s greatest influencers. He has compiled these interviews and combined them with his own winning strategies for this webinar.
Watch on Demand: http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/31-social-selling-tips
Join us to learn:
The latest LinkedIn and Twitter strategies, tactics, tools and best practices
How to use the ACQUIRE method for social nurturing
What is really working and what is not
The 7 Levels of Social Media Success
How you can master social selling in 31 days
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...InsideSales.com
During the 2014 #SalesSummit, InsideSales.com's CMO, Mick Hollison, explained how science holds the key to unlocking human potential. Using technology in predictive analytics, communications, hiring & motivation, and data visualization will deliver revenue growth and eliminate the competition.
Learn How to Make Email your New Favorite Sales ToolInsideSales.com
Despite reports to the contrary, email is not dead. Indeed, it’s still a critical communications tool for sales reps, especially in the later stages of closing deals. Join us as we discuss:
· Which communications methods are preferred – and most effective – to reach prospects
· How email can be used to know your prospects wants and when they want it
· How insights from Vision by InsideSales.com can help you accelerate your pipeline and close more business today
Why LinkedIn is the Ultimate Social Selling Tool InsideSales.com
Last year InsideSales.com, LinkedIn Sales Solutions, and Vorsight partnered on a webinar which turned out to be one of the most successful webinars the companies had ever done. The presenters shared best practices on how to prospect more effectively, including using social networks such as LinkedIn. In part two of this webinar, Ken Krogue and Ralf VonSosen will reflect on the past year and review key metrics on company adoption of social selling and offer strategies to excel at modern prospecting.
Data Science: Your Secret Weapon to Closing More DealsInsideSales.com
Ever wish your sales reps and executives could predict the future? With predictive analytics, they can come pretty close. Predictive analytics is transforming the nature of politics, consumer credit, fraud detection and healthcare outcomes, but nowhere is the use of analytics potentially more valuable than in sales. Predictive analytics helps you make better informed decisions using existing and historical patterns and behaviors of people.
Learn how predictive analytics:
• Improves the accuracy of your sales forecasting
• Enables you to know how and when to communicate with prospects
• Identifies the best leads and predicts who to call and when to call them
• Pinpoints the opportunities that are most likely to close, fastest to close, or that offer the largest revenue
• Empowers you to consistently hire top sales performers
Data-Driven Hiring – Using Science to Build a Winning Sales TeamInsideSales.com
Perhaps the single greatest key to sales success is hiring the right sales people. Get it right and you can accelerate sales. Get it wrong and you waste a lot of time and resources, and miss closing important deals.
A recent study indicated that 87% of employees are not engaged in their jobs. Learn how you can leverage the principles found in video games to harness the competitive spirit of your salespeople – making sales fun and engaging.
Social Selling Tips and Tools for High Velocity Cold CallingInsideSales.com
Join Ken Krogue and Sean Burke to learn how to use social selling to increase your revenue.
Learn to use the ACQUIRE method of Social Selling. Understand how to use LinkedIn the way it was designed to be used. Score your prospects so you always work the most qualified opportunities, Find the relationships you have to refer you to any decision maker.
The right team structure can unlock additional revenue today, without more people, marketing spend, or additional leads. Whether you call it sales development (SDR), business development (BDR), or lead qualification (LQ), building the team can accelerate revenue from both your inbound and outbound efforts. In this webinar, you’ll learn: How you can turn your inbound marketing leads into revenue growths, How you can improve your outbound/self-sourced sales leads, Best practices for building, measuring, incenting and equipping an SDR team that can unlock sales growth.
Whether your looking to build a new SDR team or optimize the team you already have, join Mike Plante and Tom Pilkington for this must-see webinar.
Featuring Gabe Larsen, Director of Momentum at InsideSales.com
Inside sales is growing three times faster than traditional sales. To help you better understand this shifting sales environment, Gabe Larsen will share which trends have forever changed selling and how organizations can adapt to stay ahead.
In this webinar you will learn:
-How sales specialization can help achieve a higher close rate
-The keys needed to map your sales process
-How to create a prioritization strategy that aligns effort with your best prospects
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You BackInsideSales.com
Featuring Michael Pedone, Founder of SalesBuzz, and Gabe Larsen, Director of Consulting at InsideSales.com
In this free 45-minute webinar + Q&A, Michael Pedone and Gabe Larsen will share proven tips & secrets that will increase your cold call voicemail callbacks today!
Specifically, you'll discover:
Why voicemails fail and how to fix it
How to use email to get your voicemails heard
Best practices to achieve more live conversations as a result of your voicemails
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...InsideSales.com
Featuring Michael Pedone, founder of SalesBuzz, and Anil Somaney, VP of Business Development at InsideSales.com
Call reluctance is the #1 hidden fear of B2B inside sales reps and it’s costing them and their companies thousands of dollars in lost potential revenue every month. As a straight commission sales rep for 20+ years as well as a small business owner, Michael Pedone has been on both sides of the fence.
In this webinar you’ll learn:
• What causes call reluctance
• 3 steps to overcome your fear of rejection
• How to make sure it never comes back
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpiInsideSales.com
Featuring Chuck Coonradt, author of The Game of Work and Ken Krogue, president and founder of InsideSales.com.
A recent study indicated that 87% of employees are not engaged in their jobs. Learn five key principles from the author of the bestselling book, The Game of Work and seven best practices from Ken Krogue – that make sales fun and engaging.
In this webinar you will learn:
How to motivate reps to crush their quotas
How to increase the frequency of feedback to improve quality and quantity of performance
How to sell more while boosting team morale
Why the success of video games should matter to a sales manager
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting SecretsInsideSales.com
Jul 16th , 2015 at 11:00 a.m. PT
Featuring Ken Krogue, President and Founder at InsideSales.com and New York Times Bestselling Author Grant Cardone.
Breathe new life into the argument that cold calling may be alive and well, while warm calling and follow up calling bring even better results. All will be discussed in light of the latest technologies and techniques of research, sales training and sales systems. Grant and Ken share value that can make you millions on the phone today.
In this webinar you will learn:
How to Handle Price on the Phone
How to Get Past the Gatekeeper
How to Create Urgency
How to Close on the Phone
How to Separate Yourself from the Competition
How to Qualify the Buyer Over the Phone
What to Never Say on the Phone
How to Follow-Up the Unclosed Buyer
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda HolmesInsideSales.com
Featuring Ken Krogue, President, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at InsideSales.com and Amanda Holmes, CEO of The Chet Holmes Institute
Is your marketing being heard through the noise of your competitors? Does your sales team maximize the leads marketing generates? Learn the art and science of lead generation and management strategies that leverage your marketing spend and increase response rates.
After listening to this webinar you will be able to:
Get 9x the response from your marketing spend and Increase Response 342%
Learn 7 proven ways to increase your response rates
Understand 5 reasons your marketing isn't working like it should (and know how to fix it)
InsideSales.com CEO & Founder, Dave Elkington, speaks at the AA-ISP Inside Sales Leadership Summit 2015. Dave spoke on "Applying Predictive Sciences To Sales." A full transcript is coming soon.
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of SalesInsideSales.com
Ken Krogue presents The Next Generation of Sales as the Keynote for the Big Business Expo 2015. For the 10th year Ken Krogue shares research and best practices about selling in a high velocity business model at the largest annual conference in Utah Valley.
New this year is information on Inside Sales, predictive analytics, innovation, women in sales, and social Selling
Dave Boyce, VP of Product Marketing at InsideSales.com, loves rock ’n’ roll, but even more than that he wants to make you a Q4 rock star. He uses real examples of companies who have identified how much time they have left in the quarter and what strategies and cutting-edge technologies they used to double or even triple results.
Watch On Demand: http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/how-to-rock-your-sales-revenue
You’ll learn best practices that increase:
Inbound and outbound call volume
Contact rates up to 57.8%
Prospect-to-appointment conversions by 16.7%
InsideSales.com President Ken Krogue, recently recognized as the second most influential social seller in the world on Forbes, has interviewed some of social selling’s greatest influencers. He has compiled these interviews and combined them with his own winning strategies for this webinar.
Watch on Demand: http://www.insidesales.com/webinar/31-social-selling-tips
Join us to learn:
The latest LinkedIn and Twitter strategies, tactics, tools and best practices
How to use the ACQUIRE method for social nurturing
What is really working and what is not
The 7 Levels of Social Media Success
How you can master social selling in 31 days
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...InsideSales.com
During the 2014 #SalesSummit, InsideSales.com's CMO, Mick Hollison, explained how science holds the key to unlocking human potential. Using technology in predictive analytics, communications, hiring & motivation, and data visualization will deliver revenue growth and eliminate the competition.
Learn How to Make Email your New Favorite Sales ToolInsideSales.com
Despite reports to the contrary, email is not dead. Indeed, it’s still a critical communications tool for sales reps, especially in the later stages of closing deals. Join us as we discuss:
· Which communications methods are preferred – and most effective – to reach prospects
· How email can be used to know your prospects wants and when they want it
· How insights from Vision by InsideSales.com can help you accelerate your pipeline and close more business today
Why LinkedIn is the Ultimate Social Selling Tool InsideSales.com
Last year InsideSales.com, LinkedIn Sales Solutions, and Vorsight partnered on a webinar which turned out to be one of the most successful webinars the companies had ever done. The presenters shared best practices on how to prospect more effectively, including using social networks such as LinkedIn. In part two of this webinar, Ken Krogue and Ralf VonSosen will reflect on the past year and review key metrics on company adoption of social selling and offer strategies to excel at modern prospecting.
Data Science: Your Secret Weapon to Closing More DealsInsideSales.com
Ever wish your sales reps and executives could predict the future? With predictive analytics, they can come pretty close. Predictive analytics is transforming the nature of politics, consumer credit, fraud detection and healthcare outcomes, but nowhere is the use of analytics potentially more valuable than in sales. Predictive analytics helps you make better informed decisions using existing and historical patterns and behaviors of people.
Learn how predictive analytics:
• Improves the accuracy of your sales forecasting
• Enables you to know how and when to communicate with prospects
• Identifies the best leads and predicts who to call and when to call them
• Pinpoints the opportunities that are most likely to close, fastest to close, or that offer the largest revenue
• Empowers you to consistently hire top sales performers
Data-Driven Hiring – Using Science to Build a Winning Sales TeamInsideSales.com
Perhaps the single greatest key to sales success is hiring the right sales people. Get it right and you can accelerate sales. Get it wrong and you waste a lot of time and resources, and miss closing important deals.
A recent study indicated that 87% of employees are not engaged in their jobs. Learn how you can leverage the principles found in video games to harness the competitive spirit of your salespeople – making sales fun and engaging.
Social Selling Tips and Tools for High Velocity Cold CallingInsideSales.com
Join Ken Krogue and Sean Burke to learn how to use social selling to increase your revenue.
Learn to use the ACQUIRE method of Social Selling. Understand how to use LinkedIn the way it was designed to be used. Score your prospects so you always work the most qualified opportunities, Find the relationships you have to refer you to any decision maker.
The right team structure can unlock additional revenue today, without more people, marketing spend, or additional leads. Whether you call it sales development (SDR), business development (BDR), or lead qualification (LQ), building the team can accelerate revenue from both your inbound and outbound efforts. In this webinar, you’ll learn: How you can turn your inbound marketing leads into revenue growths, How you can improve your outbound/self-sourced sales leads, Best practices for building, measuring, incenting and equipping an SDR team that can unlock sales growth.
Whether your looking to build a new SDR team or optimize the team you already have, join Mike Plante and Tom Pilkington for this must-see webinar.
10. Moneyball: The search for Sabermetrics in hiring
Using objective data to predict future performance of stars
11. 6’4’’ 200 lbs
23rd Pick 1st Round
5’10’’ 160 lbs
314th Pick 13th Round
?
3x All-Star
World Series Champion
Silver Slugger Award
12. • Ivy League school
• 10+ years experience
• 3.0 GPA
• Fortune 500
• Endlessly resilient
• Hunger to learn
• Understands people
• Desire to be the best
13. GPA & test scores are
worthless when predicting
performance
14. • Ivy League school
• 10+ years experience
• 3.0 GPA
• Fortune 500
• Endlessly resilient
• Hunger to earn
• Understands people
• Desire to be the best
16. Talent is not only measureable, but talent can
be used to predict success in a role.
Potential applicants fill out out elaborate
surveys that include ‘talent’ questions to predict
how well people will perform at Google
18. “You Can’t Teach height”
Navy Seals: Experience Dog Whistle
Phil Jackson & Tribal Leadership
“If it doesn’t matter who wins and loses, then why keep score”
21. When it comes to hiring, data trumps intuition, facts trump gut-feelings, reliable predictive
statistics and systems trump the attractiveness of a of a well-crafted resume.
Sports and sports figures often can’t be trusted but there was one sports story that changed the landscape of sports and in particular major league baseball and is a must know for every business person.
It’s calledMoneyball”--a best-selling book—and hit movie. It explains how the Oakland A’s 2001-2002 baseball team, with a comparatively miniscule budget of $41 million, out-performed teams like the the New York Yankees with their staggering budget of $125 million.
Prior to 2001, the Oakland A’s were trying to do the impossible: apply traditional thinking on team management without the resources necessary to accomplish their goals. They could not begin to compete with other teams, and so, between 1980 and 2000, they finished above .500 only seven times.But something changed in 2001 and 2002. The explanation for “David finally beating Goliath”, derives from Oakland’s refusalto follow the traditional way baseball owners and managers constructed and managed their teams.
Oakland adopted a scientific/statistical metric-driven system that focused not on buying players with big resumes and enormous salaries, but rather focused on applying their budget to buy wins. While most teams used traditional standards to measure the abilities of big leaguers,the A’s used a new metric called Sabermetrics. This innovative and insightful solutionreplaced old-fashioned, unworkable “intuition” and “gut-feeling” with reality-based understanding and prediction. It gave Okland the ability to hire hire optimal performers whom few othersrecognized.It was the word objective that was key inSabermetrics. Before the Okland A’s, baseball teams were using largely subjective methods—gut feel, intuition, simplistic assumptions to inform managerial decisions.
Resembling baseball, most managers believe they can intuitively determine the character of salespersons and predict top performers. From the moment they walk through the door for an interview, managers trust their gut-feel and intuitive responses to make hiring decisions. In one scene from “Moneyball,” the movie, the general manager and his talent-scouts discuss which minor-leaguer to call up to the bigs. One scout says “I like Perez.” Another scout retorts, in all seriousness, “Perez has an ugly girlfriend and an ugly an girlfriend means no confidence.” and thus Perez is a poor prospect.
We laugh at examples like that but how often, when discussing applicants, have company managers and their hiring team based their views on gut-feelings, intuitions or ridiculous criteria based upon a theory closer to magic than science? How many players refuse to wash their socks, eat at the exact same restaurant on game day, use the same bat,all so as to improve performance? Managers and Scouts are similar in this respect. Both use intuition and even superstition to manage their teams
Whether in baseball or in business, here is a maxim about which you can be completely certain: data trumps intuition, and data really trumps superstition. Facts trump gut-feelings, reliable predictive statistics trump the attractiveness of a candidate’s main squeeze.
So what is the equivalent of Sabermetrics in business hiring. Does it exist? Can you hire a sales person based on objective data rather than a well written resume and your own intuition?
Let’s look at an example from baseball. Billy Beane, the current general manager of the Okland A’s and the main character in the movie Money Ball, was the prototypical high school athlete. He was 6’4’’ and just under 200 pounds. He was the highest scorer on his basketball team, the quarterback of the football team, and the best hitter on his baseball team. Scout’s loved him but he never made it as a big league star. Lenny Dykstra, a teammate of Billy Beane’s in the minor leagues, was measly 5’10’’ and 160 lbs. Scouts didn’t think much of him but he became a big league star playing for both the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. How could this happen?How did Billy Bean the prototypical Major Leaguer fail while Lenny Dkystra succeeded? Think about your sales department. How does a kid with no resume going part time to a state college become one of the best salespeople your company has ever seen while the individual with the right resume, right experience and right background fail?
Consider for a moment, the best sales-person you’ve ever known. What made/makes him or her exceptional? Was it the degree from an Ivy League school? The 10 years’ of experience? Their employment at a Fortune 500 company? I have posed this very question to thousands of sales managers and leaders and if you responded as most of them have, then you probably didn’t identify one of the criteria on the left but rather the criteria on the right.
It’s intuitive. Everybody knows innate chacteristics are what makes the best salesperson yet the entire system on which our hiring decisions are made is based on GPA & Test Scores and they are not predictive!
The crucial difference between the first list and the second list and the main difference between Lenny Dkystra and Billy Bean is the difference in experience, skill, and talent. Yeah Billy Bean had the resume and the test scores or batting average but he lacked the resilience to overcome defeat and the challenges that awaited him.
What is talent? To us at InsideSales.com, talent is defined as configurations and inclinations of human character that can be effectively applied. The words “effectively applied” are indispensable because natural inclinations of the human psyche can also be ineffectively applied.
Can Talent be measured?According to Gallup, talent is not only measureable, but just as Oakland used Sabermetrics to predict player performance, so talent can be used to predict top performance in a role.Gallup is not alone in this belief. Google as you saw has thrown out traditional metrics and is now asking applicants to complete an online survey that explores their attitudes, behavior, personality which they believe is more predictive of performance.Still, not every company is following Google in their detailed analytics of applicants. A study by Deloitte Consulting indicated that among companies with 25,000 or more employees, only about 5% are using predictive analytics in human resources.
If these talents are so important then what are they?It is very difficult to objectify the hiring process andpredicts performance but it can be done. It helps to have a team of researchers that have extensive experience andadvanced degrees in psychology, statistics, econometrics, computer-science, and philosophy. At InsideSales, Dr. James Siebach leads just such as team researching behavioral prediction. His team has been studying factors that uncover the top performers. Not surprisingly when it comes to differentiating top performers, the data shows that the longest resume and the best education do not reliably correlate with sales success. A company which aspires consistently to hire top performers must concentrate on that element called talent. Dr. Siebach and team have identified four key talent themes using a tool they call the Salesfinder . . .Let me review each theme with your brieflyA. Empathy: Empathy is the ability to comprehend precisely the emotional and psychological state of customers. Top performers seem to have a sixth sense about the mental and emotional state of their prospective client.Average sales reps, resembling old-fashioned talent scouts, confine themselves to old approaches from which they rarely deviate. Average sellers think it best always to employ a ‘don’t take no for an answer’ attitude, or “always stick to the trusted five-step sales process.” Top reps know when to push harder, be more aggressive, and when to relaxbecause it’s their natural instinct to recognize the emotional state of customers. B. Resilience:Resilience is the ability to cope with difficulty, to negotiate obstacles, to optimize performance in the face of adverse reality. More simply, it is the ability to work through disappointments and so-called “performance failures.Most companies believe top sales representatives never experience fear. There are those unique individuals who are fearless in all their sales activities. The data says otherwise. The truth is that the greatest sales people do experience fear just as the rest of us, but unlike the average sales person top sellers’ talent in resilience allows them to push through those fearful situations, to overcome obstacles turning challenges into strengths. C. Ambition:Ambition is the drive to be successful, the broadest sense of successful. Ambition is not simply the drive to be number one: it’s the life-long pursuit of prosperity or success.Top business sales representatives have ambition is this broad sense; they seek to flourish in every area of life. D. Open-ness:Open-ness refers to curiosity about the world in which we find ourselves. Top sellers are intellectually curious, not only about their customers, but their customers’ businesses, their customers’ problems,
If talent is so important, where does it fit into the hiring process?As the use of Moneyball grew within the Oakland organization and in other big league baseball clubs, the job of traditional scouts changed. Sabermetrics did not eliminate the need for scouts, but clubs needed fewer and used them in different ways. Today most companies review resumes and then subject candidates to as many manager-interviews as possible. As talent becomes better understood and utilized to select sales stars, the traditional hiring process will have to change. 1: Match Optimal Talent to Role/PositionIt may sound harsh but as Red Auerbach said, “You can’t teach height” so you might as well begin with height when recruiting basketball centers. Likewise, because it’s tough to teach talent, it’s best when hiring sellers to begin with talent. 2: Find the Optimal Experience for the Position. For years the Navy Seals have had a problem, recruiting and retaining top talent. Traditional recruiting channels were not working so the Navy commissioned a study to determine what background and experiences their top performers have. The results were surprising, if a candidate has spent countless hours swimming in a pool during water polo matches or if he’s an avid rock climber or mountain biker he’s more likely to be a top performing Seal. This information completely revolutionized the way the Navy Seals hired. Capt. Adam Curtis, compared the study results to a “dog whistle.” Candidates with the right experience were successfully recruited almost as if they were tuned to the right frequency so they alone could hear itWhat are your ‘dog whistle’ experiences? Can you score them? 3: Match Optimal Skills for the Position. Most organizations have kept their HR teams in the dark ages by requiring them to create endless paper trails and “play nice” under all circumstances. They say, “It’s not nice to score and rank people.” The problem is the game has changed and the competitive search for talent is intense. If an employer intends to play the game, let alone win, HR must “keep score”.Research has revealed that assessment centers top the list for hiring importance. An assessment center is a fancy way of saying “you shouldn’t hire a sales person until you’ve seen them sell.” Managers must observe this interaction and use use a common scale to rate or grade each applicant in order that scores be reliable. 4: Aligning Player Profile with Team CultureMost everyone knows Phil Jackson - 13-time N.B.A. championship coach, winningest coach in basketball history. Few people know how Coach Jackson achieved this record. Jackson lays out the methods and secrets of his coaching success in a new book titled, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success. He reveals one of his tools in the following experience. My goal in my first year as head coach was to transform the Bulls from a stage 3 team of lone warriors pursuing their own individual success ("I'm great and you're not”) to a stage 4 team in which the dedication to “We” overtakes the emphases on “Me” ("We're great and you're not”). In other words he assessed his “team culture.” and he did it using five stages.Companies expend tremendous energy, defining their values and measuring employees against them. This energy may not be well-spent. For this reason I recommend interviewing candidates in an informal interview using the five stages of culture listed by Jackson. Managers should ask, “Is this candidate a team player who is going to give their all or is he or she a lone wolf, pursuing his own interests exclusively?”
Once a year scouts and managers gather for the official draft day; the day they analyze, discuss, debate, and decide which future player will or will not join a pro-team. In order to optimize their success on draft day, teams need qualitative and quantitative tools to ensure they evaluate candidates reliably. 1: Draft BoardFrom an analytical point of view, the hiring process should be no different from draft day. Managers should meet to analyze, discuss, debate, and decide which candidate is optimal. That’s where a draft board comes in.The draft board is a digital panel which displays the sum of all candidates’ qualitative metrics. The daft board visually compares candidates to one another and to current “members of the team.” The board’s y-axis is titled “candidate performance.” It’s the experience, skills, and cultural scores that each candidate earned.The x-axis score represents the candidate’s potential, measured by using the talent assessment Each candidate is plotted to determine his or her position relative to other candidates and/or current members of the team. With this visual, managers can discuss each candidate using meaningful numbers. If a management team would like to study a candidate in greater depth, the team can utilize the “player’s baseball card.”
The individual baseball card includes all the candidate’s relevant data. It allows managers to better analyze and understand candidates, as well as see their specific scores; e.g., experience, skills, talent. Managers should use the baseball card as a common and reliable data-base for each candidate.
In 2002, the Oakland Athletics took an enormous risk. They abandoned traditional and outdated management techniques by introducing a revolutionary analytical tool for assembling their player-roster: Moneyball and its analytical component, Sabermetrics. Sabermetrics replaced intuition and superstition with an objective system employing scientific data. Using Sabermetrics not only to evaluate player performance but to predict future player performance, they went from a sub-500 team to Division champions. What can we learn from their experience?