What caused the huge difference in sales performance? How do enterprises retain the top 30% outstanding personnel? Long Ping, a senior consultant of Shanghai Buyi Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., with many years of statistical experience of human resources quality in statistical agencies and nine years of marketing management experience in foreign companies, has unveiled the "characteristics" hidden in the hearts of salespeople for us, so that the personnel recruitment supervisor can know the "eagle".
Before recruitment-establish parameter standards suitable for "sales characteristics"
At present, the requirements for recruiting sales staff in most enterprises are basically the same: having certain work experience, college degree or above, being proactive, hard-working, having good image and expression skills, and having certain social relations ... However, Mr. Long Ping found that the above characteristics are not related to excellent sales behavior according to the tracking survey of the characteristics and performance-related data of more than 3,470 sales staff in recent three years. He revealed the characteristics of excellent salespeople from three aspects:
1. Discover excellent sales characteristics from performance differences:
The top five abilities most related to sales performance are: customer understanding, competitiveness, pleasing psychology, emotional stability, generosity and self-confidence.
The factors that have the least correlation with sales performance are: education level, work experience, age and working hours.
2, from the customer satisfaction to find excellent sales characteristics:
The top five factors that customers like salespeople best are: being able to understand people, coming up with good ideas, being honest and reliable to people, always caring and helping customers, and not afraid of being rejected.
The salespeople that customers hate most are talkative, deceptive, irresponsible, brainless and impatient.
3. Discover excellent sales characteristics from industry characteristics and sales processes:
There are no ordinary sales talents in the sales field. Even within the same enterprise, the characteristics of personnel needed for mall sales, wholesale distribution network and major customer sales are different, and the styles of sales personnel for new product promotion and old product maintenance are also very different. For example, insurance agents need to have a strong desire to persuade and the courage to "repeatedly lose and fight"; McDonald's waiters should know how to appreciate others' praise for their services and work harder. A well-known brand salesperson needs "patience, careful maintenance of customers and consistent self-management ability".
Therefore, when recruiting sales personnel, if the sales characteristics are set only by feelings, rather than according to the specific needs of enterprises, the recruited personnel often cannot bring great improvement to the sales of enterprises. Therefore, recruiters can use some measurement methods to dig out the * * * characteristics of existing excellent sales staff in enterprises, and take this as a standard to establish a set of recruitment evaluation system that is really suitable for enterprises:
1. Establish an effective sample of more than 40 excellent salespeople. If the enterprise does not have a sample of 40 excellent salespeople, it can learn from the sample information of the same industry;
2. Written test and standardized interview forms shall be filled in by excellent, medium and poor sample sales personnel;
3. Quantify the results of sample evaluation data into MINITAB statistical analysis software;
4. Through the multiple regression analysis between sales performance and multiple test data, find out the top five related factors of excellent sales staff.
5. Establish a data model to evaluate the ability to effectively sell recruitment tests, and verify its effectiveness.
For example, according to the above five steps, a big brand food company found that the top five characteristics of the company's excellent sales staff are: A, please, B, understand desire, C, analyze and judge, D, be introverted and persistent, and E, be good at handling details. Then the regression equation A = AX+BY+ is obtained according to the correlation coefficient statistics of five factors. Among them, A, B, C ... are the proportion of each trait in all traits, while X, Y ... are the corresponding coefficients of A, B and C respectively. Finally, according to the score of sum A, the applied salespeople can be ranked. The one with high score ranks first, indicating that it has high sales potential. On the contrary, there is a certain gap with the requirements of excellent sales staff.
In recruitment, the effectiveness of recruitment can be greatly improved by conducting the above tests on candidates and screening out suitable personnel through objective data model.
When recruiting-all kinds of tests are arranged skillfully
Great temptation (not limited to salary setting and rapid promotion) and low employment threshold (generally college degree or above, hardworking) make many people want to be salespeople. Therefore, in the recruitment process, the examiner needs to ask questions skillfully in order to truly understand the characteristics of candidates. Here are some key skills for interviewing and scenario testing:
★ Interview
1, ask questions with a unified standard. Replace invalid non-selective questions with motivation questions. For example, "what do you do when customers report high product prices?"
2. Avoid the halo effect. The evaluation of candidates should not be influenced by their diplomas, clothes, appearance or someone's recommendation;
3. Give the candidates encouragement to get the real answer. Generally, when facing the examiner's questions, the candidates will be more cautious at first, and sometimes even adjust their answers according to the expression on the examiner's face in order to please the examiner. At this time, what he expressed may contain some untrue things. Therefore, the interviewer should use body language such as eyes and nodding to give more encouragement to the candidates and let them relax. At this time, the answer may be true and reliable.
★ Scene test
Scenario tests should be set up specifically for recruiting salespeople. That is, designing sales scenes or letting candidates enter real work for a period of time. Then, through the feedback from colleagues and customers, I hope to master the real information of the applicant. Of course, there are also questions that need to be answered by the interviewee. For example, he will be asked to write a "list of the most annoying employees". A list of suitable candidates is often few or even blank (an effective collaborator sees others as more advantageous), while a candidate who lacks affinity generally writes a long list of "annoying people". Obviously, the latter person lacks the qualities that an excellent salesperson should possess.
Post-employment incentive plan differences
After a series of characteristics investigation, qualified people can join the sales ranks of enterprises. But it doesn't mean that as long as you have these qualities, you will become an excellent salesperson. There is a division of labor between them: some are particularly excellent, some are average, and some are naturally backward. In addition, the daily management, training, performance appraisal and other aspects of the operation will also have an impact on the performance of sales staff, although this impact is limited.
So, how to manage these people with different performances? Some data show that different incentive methods should be adopted for excellent, medium and backward salespeople, and different incentive methods have different effects in different groups of people.
★ Training
Sales training in general enterprises is only particularly effective for some people, which is in line with Matthew effect. Enterprises should pay attention to the following points when training: 1. Products must be trained before they are put on the market. Otherwise, the market will get twice the result with half the effort; 2. Before training, you need to know the characteristics of the seller. People who insist on their own opinions and do not understand their desires, and those who lack self-motivation, it is difficult to achieve results after training; 3. Know what can't be trained. Such as interpersonal skills, please psychology, reasoning and judgment ability; 4. Is the training aimed at the strengths or weaknesses of the sales staff? Practice shows that strength training can achieve better results; 5. Set up separate training courses according to the promotion fields of different personnel. (The data source of table 1 is the performance data sample of 547 people in a food enterprise. )
★ Different management modes
Different management models will also have an impact on enterprise sales staff. Centralized management is relatively repressive and strict. Although they can motivate and encourage the work of backward salespeople, they will inhibit the performance of excellent salespeople. Therefore, many enterprises often adopt democratic management methods to encourage the enthusiasm of sales personnel, especially excellent personnel. But in fact, "centralization" is not enough, and "democracy" is not enough. Only the management mode that is compatible with centralization and democracy is the most suitable. Let's call this method "advantage management". Comparing the individual performance differences of three branches of a daily chemical enterprise under different management modes, the obtained data show that the hybrid "advantage management" means is more effective for those with excellent performance.
★ evaluation
Strict assessment can forcibly improve the performance of backward sales personnel, but it will bring constraints to excellent ones; However, without evaluating or simplifying the evaluation criteria, the purpose of evaluation cannot be achieved; Therefore, in the evaluation, plans should also be made according to employee classification (Table 3 shows the performance differences of different evaluation methods in a high-tech enterprise).
In addition, making differentiated incentive policies and analyzing the turnover of sales staff are also the core work of management after recruitment, so I won't go into details here.