OPUSBOB: What is the Next Step with Two Great Candidates?

Even in these difficult economic times, our clients still find it very difficult to find quality candidates that they are prepared to hire. We would like to think that people are just sticking out there, you know, hanging around the telephone booth waiting for the phone call but the fact of the matter is most of us have very, very specific needs and it’s hard to find candidates that really do fit the bill. But every once in a while, you find two.

The question becomes:

What steps can you take when you really have two quality candidates?

That was a dilemma that one of our clients was facing. It was a position for sales and they had two candidates, each had very different personality profiles, both of them could certainly be very effective in sales. But their situations were very different. One person had been out of work for a while, had taken a bit of a sabbatical to deal with some family-related issues which is not at all unusual. The other person was gainfully employed, working for a competitor, and was being recruited by them, so to speak.

Well the first candidate was going full speed all out to get the job. Anything that needed to be done as part of the interview process, they really went overboard and did everything perfectly. The other candidate who was gainfully employed didn’t put nearly as much time into the effort. As a result when it came to presentations and follow-up, they really didn’t measure up at the same level. But the client understood why.

So we talked about it. I made a recommendation to let both of them know that there is competition for the position, and to let them know what your concern is in each case. Give them a chance to see how they would respond and how they would deal with that situation because after all, for sales people, this is going to be a natural evolution and this is an opportunity for you to have evidence of their behavior.

You might likely say, well the person who’s gainfully employed, well they’re not going to put in the same effort and the person who is unemployed is really going to knock themselves out. But the true nature of a competitor will come through when they realize a position that they say they want is on the line.

So the morale of the story is, give your candidates a chance to compete and pay close attention to how they deal with it because the way they deal with that competition will be very much the way they deal with…working for you.

Tags: behavioral profile, Bob Kreisberg, candidate assessment, OPSUBOB, Opus Productivity, Opusbob, Performance, personality, presentation, Sales, value

Posted in candidate assessment, Performance, Sales, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

OPUSBOB: What is a Cold Call Really Worth?

We’re going to review an email that I received over the weekend. These are the kind of emails that can really make a weekend special let me tell you. I’m going to leave off the details because they’re irrelevant to the story but it reads like this:

It says, “Hi Bob. I have recently joined a company. My current employer doesn’t
know this yet, so please keep that quiet. Please find copied here with, the name of the Human Resources Manager. She is our Senior Human Resource Manager and we have discussed using your services as part of our recruitment process. I would also be interested in you conducting an analysis on the existing sales team as a way to understand more deeply the team we already have in the field.” And it’s signed by this individual who is the new Senior Vice President of Sales.

So this had great meaning to me for a lot of reasons. Obviously it’s a new prospect. It looks like the sales cycle is going to be relatively short. The SVP of Sales has worked with us. He gets it. He understands what the value is. How great is that?

What’s really interesting as a business person and as a sales person is to really
grandfather where this came from because this obviously didn’t start with this company and it didn’t even start with the company that this person worked for. It started with a company one before that. Because the individual that brought our product to the company where this person was started with us about 10 years ago and we worked with that person for a number of years with that company. He then moved over into this new organization and brought our services with him.

The writer of this email was one of the managers that when our services were initially presented, kind of rolled his eyes and said, “What do we need that for?” Well that was about five years ago. We had an opportunity to work together obviously over those years and now we’re going to continue to have an opportunity to work on that.

All of this started with a cold call. All of this started because somebody who was on my team had the guts to pick up the phone and call a senior level executive and talk to them about what we did and engaged them in conversation. So for all of you cold callers out there, banging your head against the wall wondering what they’re really worth, when you strike the gold line, you can write it for a long way. This client will be the seventh client that we will do business with over the last decade that all came from that one sales person picking up the phone to talk to one prospect.

So keep at it even though it’s hard. Even though you may get disappointed based on the percentages, remember we’re not playing baseball. Nobody cares about your batting average. All we care about are hits. Keep swinging for the fences.

Tags: Business Leadership, candidate assessment, Cold Call, Lead, Percentages, Performance, personality profiling, Sales, Sales Call, Services

Posted in Business Leadership, candidate assessment, Performance, personality profiling, Sales | No Comments »

OPUSBOB: Making a Difference

You maybe aware of a quote from Henry David Thoreau – probably
something he came up with on a rainy day, when he was sitting at Waldon Pond,
which said, “most of us live lives of quiet desperation”. I’ve always found that quote
disquieting and I really feel that it doesn’t necessarily apply to everybody equally. And
I’ve never really felt that it’s applied to me. But there are times of quiet when I think
about the service that Opus provides to our clients. And I really try to understand the
value that we can bring to you, by utilizing our services.

I think its important that we all feel that we do something of value. And so I give this
probably more thought than other people do. And I really think the value is around
helping you understand motivation, what motivates you as an individual, what’s
important to you to help somebody confirm and affirm your own motivators, and then to
help you understand what motivates the people around you. Because if we understand
what people are motivated by, then we can understand what we can do to help them
accomplish what’s important to them.

And it’s not the things as much as it is the intangibles. We all have them, the desire to
win, the desire to be part of the team, the desire for security, the desire for harmony.
Whatever it is, we all have motivations that go beyond what we normally see. And
our job, and what hopefully we do well for you, is to help you understand your own
motivation and what motivates others. And for doing that then maybe, maybe Thoreau
didn’t get it right as it relates to OPUS.

Posted in candidate assessment, Employee Morale, Performance, personality profiling | 3 Comments »

OPUSBOB: Trapped on an Escalator

A new year has arrived giving us a renewed sense of beginning and another chance to step off the escalator of life that sometimes takes us for a ride.

I want to share some thoughts with you about a video that I saw probably two years ago when I attended a presentation that was done by a friend and client, Rob Johnson, of Sage Software. He kicked off the session by showing a video clip that’s called, “Stuck on an Escalator.” And we’re going to include the url so you can go and watch this video as well because it should haunt you the way it’s haunted me for the past couple of years.

The concept is very simple. There are two people. They are riding up an escalator in either an office building or wherever. You can’t really tell. And all of a sudden, the escalator stops. And they kind of panic. They’re standing there and they start talking
to each other. They start calling for help. Somebody does show up to theoretically fix the escalator, although that person doesn’t fix the escalator. And the people that are on the escalator stayed there. And you want to scream at them. “Just look. Just get off the escalator. It’s up to you to step up the escalator. What is your problem?”

But obviously it’s a metaphor. And the metaphor is that we get stuck on our own escalator of life where we don’t move. We get stuck with something and we don’t fix it and we don’t really understand why.

I looked at that tape and I thought about it. I said, “No. That’s not me. I would never do that.” If I had anything in life and I got stuck, I know I would just step right up and get off that escalator.

But you know what? The reason it’s haunted me is because I also know that’s not true. There are situations in all of our lives that cause us to get stuck on the escalator. And it’s our job as grown ups to figure out when we are stuck because help is not on the way. And more often than not, its tied to our behavioral style. It’s tied to doing something that is opposite from what our strengths are. And we avoid it.

Well this video helped me recognize those times in my life when I needed to kind of give myself a boot in the butt to get myself going. And I think that the video could do the same thing for you.

By the way, kudos to my friend Rob Johnson because since that time, he’s written a book about salesmanship and I’m going to give him a plug right now. It’s called “Kick your Own Ass: The Will, Skill, and Drill to Sell More than You Ever Thought Possible.” You go Rob. Watch the video. Tell me what you think.

Tags: behavioral style, Escalator, life, New Year, Rob Johnson, Sage Software, strengths, struggles, Stuck

Posted in Business Leadership, Performance | 6 Comments »

OPUSBOB: What I Learned From My Kittens About Persuading People

Bob Kreisberg: For those of you that have a family cat, you’re going to understand
exactly what I’m talking about right from the get-go. But for those of you that maybe
dog people or for those of you that don’t have any animals at all, this may be a little bit
different for you, and I appreciate that.

My wife and I and children were dog people for many, many years. And we found that
having dogs was a great pleasure. They came when you call them. They sat when you
ask them to sit. And they pretty much did whatever you wanted them to do.

Then came the kittens. My daughter introduced us to kittens and we brought them in the
house. And lo and behold, the kittens ended up in the sewing room, and I remember the
first time I try to get the kittens out of the sewing room, and it was impossible. I mean
I was pulling my hair our trying to figure out how to get these kittens out of the sewing
room.

My daughter, who is a veterinary technician and a master psychologist as it comes to
animals especially cats, said to me, “Dad, what you need to figure out is what motivates
them, not what motivates you. Because if you can figure out what motivates them they
will respond to that.” And she said, “The good news is, you can find some thing they
will be motivated by. It could be a food snack. It could be an empty box. It could be a
tinkling sound. Or maybe be a moving feather. Figure it out and you’ll get the cats out
of the sewing room.” And she was right.

It was an important lesson to be learned because although with dogs, you may be able to
tell them what to do. With cats, with customers, and employees, finding out what really
motivates them and figuring out a way to bring that to them will get you far better results.

And we’re all motivated by something. It may not be a shiny light. It may not be a
tinkling sound. But it has to do with who we are and what our personality is and what
makes us tick. And just think about this. We maybe very motivated to do things that we
like but we’re even more strongly motivated to avoid things that we don’t like.

Understand the nature of the person that you’re working with so you can figure out
whether or not it is the empty box or the tinkling sound. And when you can deliver that,
then you can motivate people just the way we motivated the kittens to do what we wanted
them to do.

Thanks for your attention.

Posted in Business Leadership, Performance, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

OPUSBOB: I am Here to Sell You Something

I want to tell you a little story about a meeting that I recently attended. A presenter came up to talk to the group and the first thing he said was, “I am not here to sell you anything.” I thought back to the movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, where the madam says to her daughter, “don’t trust anybody that ever says, trust me” and I think I have learned that same lesson whenever anybody says to me, “I am not here to sell you something.” That’s the time that you want to reach for your wallet and hold it with both of your hands , because clearly the person is there to sell you something.

It’s so interesting that people take the approach that says ” I am not here to sell you something.” Isn’t the reality that we are all here to sell everybody everything, and its so much better if you can just admit that. When I am talking to my clients about the behavioral profile and the value that we bring to the table, I am obviously trying to sell them on the value . If a candidate is talking to me about why they are a good sales person, they are trying to sell me on that. I really think that you need to be careful if you take an attitude that says I am not here to sell you something . Either its an indication that you are trying to be devious or you really don’t know why you are there.

If you are there to sell something to somebody there is nothing wrong with letting them know that you really believe in what you have got and you hope that after you have been able to talk with them that the value that you see in what you offer they are able to see as well.

Sales is an honorable profession, don’t ever forget that.

Tags: behavioral profile, Bob Kreisberg, candidate assessment, OPSUBOB, Opus Productivity, Opusbob, Performance, personality, presentation, Sales, value

Posted in Business Leadership, Integrity, Sales | 7 Comments »