Peter Gilbert Articles

Questions Every CEO Should Be Asking His Sales Managers - Click To Read Article
High impact sales questions for CEOs

Trouble with Personality Tests - Click To Read Article
Personality tests are commonly used for hiring in organisations. Personality tests attempt to measure a broad range of basic traits, such as the Big Five Personality traits or Emotional Intelligence. Although these may provide useful information on how to describe a person, research has repeatedly shown that they do little to predict how well a person will perform in a given job. Academic researchers are re-emphasizing what Chally reported over 30 years ago -personality tests are simply too broad to predict on-the-job performance. Chally, on behalf of the US Justice Department, found it necessary to research solutions well beyond the accuracy of this type of assessment; to identify and measure very precise, job-specific competencies, behaviours, and skills that have been scientifically shown to predict on-the-job sucess.

Applying TQM to Recruitment Convergence - Click To Read Article
The application of total quality management tools and philosophies (6 Sigma) to areas such as airline safety (takeoffs/landings)has reduced the defect rate to 3.4 per million. In contrast the defect rate in typical employment, selection and deployment runs at around 45 per 100. This article explores how the application of TQM thinking and the use of "best of breed" tools and systems bring dramatic improvements in the following areas: - - reducing unwanted turnover - weak succession planning - losing top talent - matching the right people to the wrong jobs - training the wrong personnel

Work Skills Transcend Cultures Work Habits May Not - Click To Read Article
Since Chally is strongly established internationally, we're often asked what has to be done to alter the testing for different cultures around the world. For the past six years, we have been tracking performance on a Chally assessment versus actual performance on the job across many countries. Our goal was to develop a research database that would highlight differences that were based on geography or culture. For our comparisons internationally, we chose geographic, cultural, and economic regions that were very different. These included England, Sweden, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and French Canada. The results were somewhat surprising, but very logical. Our research results provided clear evidence that the skill and competency scores are stable and equally applicable across cultures all over the world.

The Recruitment Rip Off - Click To Read Article
This unbelievable balderdash was downloaded from a well known recruitment website.

The Sales Professional Is the Sale - Click To Read Article
In B-2-B sales the calibre of the salesperson, is the single most important factor in determining whether a client buys from your company or not.

The Power of the Win/Loss Analysis - Click To Read Article
Typical success rates for closing major new proposals are typically less than 20% when several suppliers are asked to present. Companies often spend tens of thousands of Rands (if not hundreds of thousands) in an effort to win business. For those who failed in their bids, little feedback is offered for why a competitor was a better fit. As a result, the likelihood of winning the next major opportunity remains roughly the same. Independently collected research data, gathered from interviewing supplier selection teams, offers surprisingly simple fixes that losing competitors could use to improve success rates. Yet, relatively few sales forces consistently gather quality data about their losses to permit a legitimate benchmarking, tracking, and management of their proposal and presentation process.

The Nine Most Common Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them - Click To Read Article
To err in hiring is human – and very expensive. Many “standard” hiring procedures are actually common mistakes, so to choose more competent candidates, prepare to revise your hiring methods. Learn the nine hiring errors managers often make, then eliminate them from your hiring practices to help you choose only the cream of the crop.

The IT Sales Model is Broken - Click To Read Article
We are in the midst of a genuine revolution in the way I.T. sales are made. At the heart of this revolution is the issue of competing on value. In many cases, the differences between traditional sales approaches and value-based selling appear to be subtle, but in fact, they are profound, requiring changes in strategy, corporate culture and selling skills. Today’s markets are characterized by rapid commoditization, and it is seldom possible to compete on the basis of product features and benefits for any length of time, if margins are to be maintained or improved. Increasingly, the question being posed to suppliers, by their most important customers is – “How much better off will my company be if I buy your product/service or business solution?”

The Customer Satisfaction Trap - Click To Read Article
Most companies that use satisfaction surveys to learn how happy their customers are with their products and services often mislead themselves. What matters is not what customers say about the level of satisfaction, but whether they feel the value they received will keep them loyal. Loyalty or repurchase behaviour is the only true measure of customer satisfaction. As tools for measuring the value a company delivers to it’s customers, satisfaction surveys are not very useful because, amongst other reasons, they focus primarily on transactional issues, such as product quality, deliveries, technical knowledge, hygiene factors, product specs etc. These items are simply the minimum requirements for entry into the market.

Sales Training that Really Works - Click To Read Article
Research and practical experience reveals that many of the widely used sales training approaches and techniques are largely ineffective with a relatively small proportion of the learnings being retained after the training event. Salespeople have relatively little brain space allocated for theory and respond best to highly interactive, participative and engaging simulations that mimic the reality that they will face in the field. Such simulations are feedback rich and play on salespeople's competitive instincts as they compete with one another in the simulations.

Seeking Sales Answers - Beware The Charlatans! - Click To Read Article
Sales is a challenging and demanding business and any person who chooses sales, even as a last resort, is making a tough decision to depend almost entirely on his/her own efforts, pride and willingness to practice long enough to succeed. Predictably many salespeople seek inspiration, motivation, advice and skills to meet career challenges. There is plenty of advice available and much is useful and productive, but beware there are charlatans lurking in the weeds. They are principally recognisable by their exaggerated claims: "Come to our 1 day seminar and you too will become a sales superstar", "Attend my seminar and you will be able to sell anything to anybody any time"

Sales a Strategic Boardroom Issue - Click To Read Article
Long the corporate stepchild, sales has largely been ignored by academics and many executives. However in increasingly competitive markets and increasingly sophisticated buyers a top notch sales force is no longer a nice to have but a must have. Farsighted executives are taking an increasingly critical look at their sales forces and asking searching questions about the ROI they are receiving from this significant investment.

Sales The Emergence of a Profession - Click To Read Article
Of all the major business disciplines, sales has remained the corporate stepchild, receiving scant or no attention from universities, business schools, senior executives and the financial press. However in the United States and Europe a small number of pioneering universities are offering degrees in Sales and the results are outstanding. The combination of traditional academic input combined with internships is producing a new breed of young salespeople who are financially savvy and equipped with high level selling skills.

Recruiting Sales Talent Major HR Challenge - Click To Read Article
Worldwide companies are dreadfully inept at consistently hiring the right kind of sales talent for the right jobs. There's a higher level of failure and personnel churn in sales than in any other business function. Research indicates that hiring accuracy runs anywhere between 35% and 55%, depending on the sales role. Jobs such as outbound telesales and commission only life assurance sales are particularly problematic. Using the best possible tools greater than 90% hiring accuracy is quite achievable.

Professional Sales Management - Key to Sales Success - Click To Read Article
In an environment where customer demands predominate, because competition is both relentless and increasingly international, the world of selling must accommodate a dramatically changed world of buying. Critically, sales management must catch up to this new world of selling. All too often, many sales forces are populated by dispirited, burned out salespeople and managed by short-term-oriented and narrowly focused sales managers. Indeed many sales forces are managed as if it were 30 years ago and the sales managers themselves were salespeople doing the work, instead of orchestrating the action.

Matching the Right Type of Salesperson to Your Customers - Click To Read Article
The most successful sales managers recognise that all good salespeople must have certain vital skills and motivations. The degree and type required, however, will vary according to what customers need in order to use the product or service. The best strategy is achieved by matching salesperson skills, focus, and motivation to best serve these needs. Market and customer analysis by The HR Chally Group has identified four distinctly different types of customers. They, in turn, respond most positively to four different types of salespeople: - Closers - Consultants - Relationship - Display (Friendly Order Takers)

Is Your Sales Force a Dinosaur - Click To Read Article
As Rick Canada of Motorola puts it - “The traditional sales force is a dinosaur – a remnant of past success.” “Irresistible new forces are reshaping the world of selling. Sales functions everywhere are in the early stages of radical and profound changes comparable to those that began in manufacturing 20 years ago… But one change outweighs all the others. The meaning of selling itself is shifting. The very purpose of sales is being rapidly redefined.” - Prominent sales authority and author Neil Rackham

Innovation in the Sales Environment - Click To Read Article
In an environment where customer demands predominate, because competition is both relentless and increasingly international, the world of selling must accommodate a radically changed world of buying. If you cannot differentiate yourself by what you sell, and are unwilling to differentiate by how you sell, you will, by default, have to differentiate by how much you sell it for. Hence sales forces are seeking new and innovative ways of selling products that are increasingly commoditised.

Is Your Sales Team a Winner or on the Way Out? - Click To Read Article
Think your sales team is in good shape because your customers rank them either good or very good? Think again. Nearly 80 percent of all supplier deserters rate their previous supplier as "good" to "very good," so the outlook for anything less than world-class excellence is not only disappointing but potentially career threatening. A 15-year study on world-class sales by The HR Chally Group determined that only 21 of 7,300 sales forces evaluated by 80,000 customer decision-makers were categorized as “world-class” by their customers. Benchmarking research within these same 17 "world-class" sales organizations, found that they all shared at least six of the following eight best practices: see article

How Many of Your Customers Are Profitable? - Click To Read Article
The provision of value should be a two way street. If providing value to your customers is essential for long-term prosperity, then so is accurately measuring the value you receive in return. This article explains how to calculate the profitability of one’s customers, and offers some thoughts on how to treat the profitable and unprofitable.

Hiring Good Salespeople - Click To Read Article
Customers and markets have changed, competition has intensified and products rapidly become commoditised. Consequently salespeople who are no more effective than a product catalogue will be replaced by a new breed of professionals who have a new focus: Demand creation, philosophical alignement, in-depth understanding of their customers' businesses, positioning, executive credibility and the delivery of value. Consequently sales forces and their HR departments will have to use "best of breed" tools and processes for consistently recruiting genuine sales talent.

Hiring Ineffective Salespeople Costs Real Estate Industry Millions - Click To Read Article
If ever there was an industry that lives or dies by the performance of it’s salespeople, it is real estate. But real estate sales, like insurance sales, suffers from a cripplingly high failure rate when hiring new salespeople, and the reason is that these industries employ highly ineffective processes for identifying and hiring fresh sales talent. In most real estate companies the 80/20 rule (or something akin to it) applies. For example in one major national agency 15% of agents deliver 78% of revenues. What this means is that hiring effective agents is a purely random event - No more effective than tossing a coin.

Hiring a Sales Force That Sells - Click To Read Article
It is no exaggeration to say the world has changed dramatically for salespeople. Not only has the information era radically changed the products we sell, but the sales function is subject to market forces that push up costs while eroding profit margins. The old travelling or door-to-door salesman model hardly exists anymore. Much of the sales done today is or business-to-business, and these sales teams face unprecedented change due to a number of convergent factors. In this business environment, aligning your sales team with the forces of change, and ensuring you have a team that can sell, are not simply nice-to-haves: they are essential. Realising the impact on their bottom line, forward-thinking companies have transformed their sales recruitment and training practices to address change.

Great Sales Challenges of the New Millenium - Click To Read Article
Changing social and economic dynamics are radically changing the way the sales function, and salespeople operate.

Debunking the Great Sales Myth - Click To Read Article
The progress of sales as a profession is often hampered by myths, misunderstanding and plain ignorance. Over many years of testing, recruiting, researching and training salespeople, we have learned quite a few things about salespeople. Some may surprise you and some may not. The 39% factor Interviews with over 100 000 business decision-makers have revealed that in b-2-b markets a customer’s decision to buy is based on:- • Salesperson’s competence (39%) • A total customer solution (22%) • Quality of product or service (21%) • Competitive price (18%) The salesperson is the sale. • Many sales stars operate in commodity marks • Sales superstars usually dont shine academically • Sales talent can be sharpened not created • Sales training is not enough

Beating The 80/20 Rule - Click To Read Article
The span of control of sales managers has a major bearing on saleperson effectiveness. In B-2-B sales the optimum ratio of sales manager to salesperson is around 4-5 to 1

Are Customer Satisfaction Surveys a Waste of Money - Click To Read Article
Customer satisfaction surveys are definitely in! Regardless of where you go or what you buy, the chances are that you will be asked to fill in a form to indicate your level of satisfaction with the product or service. Hotels, restaurants, fast food outlets, car rental companies and motor dealerships are all on the bandwagon. And we customers should be pleased that our suppliers are taking such a laudable interest in our welfare. With all this focus on customers, one would expect to observe a huge outbreak of brilliant customer service and awesome products in the marketplace. Sadly, this isn’t the case. My Mercedes dealership is still the same ineffectual, unreliable, unresponsive clod he was three years ago. All the surveys and irritating telephone calls have not made one iota of difference. So what is the problem?

Are You Cut Out For A Career In Direct Selling - Click To Read Article
Anyone who elects to embark on a career in direct selling had better be able to sell. A person who chooses sales, even as a last resort, is making a tough decision to depend entirely on his/her own effort, pride, and willingness to practice long enough to succeed. It’s tough not to be able to hide behind a corporate security blanket, make excuses, or blame the product, the boss, the company, or anybody else. When they choose sales, they accept the risk to their egos, some people’s derision, and the fears of those not brave enough to stand up to that kind of heat. So, if a career in direct selling beckons, ask yourself the tough question – “Am I suited for a career in sales?”


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