OPUSBOB: Would You Hire a Known Conniver?
November 6, 2009 – 3:51 pmBob Kreisberg asks your opinion. Would you hire a known conniver?
I want to talk to you today about an interesting conversation that I had with a candidate who is applying for a position with one of my clients. I had a chance to review her personality profile with her and she liked the results very much and she was very animated, so she went on to tell me that she has always been a top sales person, everything that she has every done is life, she has always been the best. In fact Bob, she said to me that I was the very top girls scout cookie sales person, when I was at girls camp. And I said, oh! That’s great. She says, yeah, let me tell you how I did it. On the days that the girls scout cookies were delivered to our house, I faked being sick that day, so I could go home from school early and get a head start on all of the other girls that were in my troop and as a result of that I got out to all the houses first and I got all my cookies sold. And she was obviously very proud of this otherwise she wouldn’t have brought it up.
Now, when I had an opportunity to talk with my client to review the personality profile, and the conversation that I had with the candidate, my client was a bit perplexed about a person who would readily admit to being devious in selling girls scout cookies. And they said to me, we’re a very high integrity organization and if this person who readily admit to being devious about selling cookies, I don’t know that I can trust her when selling my software. I said, well, I understand where you stand. So later that day I had another conversation with another hiring manager and talked about the conversation regarding the girls scout cookies. That manager’s reaction was completely different. That manager said, that’s exactly what we need. I need people that think outside the box and you know what if they are a little devious I think that’s okay. So interesting conversation, curious to know what you think, do you think you’d be interested in going after the person who figured out a way to sell more girls scout cookies by faking being sick or would you see that as a behavioral trait that you would want to avoid in a person? Thanks for your time.
OPUSBOB: Employee Morale
October 30, 2009 – 1:23 pmBob Kreisberg talks about how certain methods of sales training can be destructive to employee morale.
I want to talk to you today about how companies could inadvertently destroy the morale of their employees although they are well intentioned in their efforts. I want to talk to you about a sales woman by the name of Miller. She went to a sales training class where she was learning about complex sales and this is the type of a training class that many companies have and one of the exercises that they did at the beginning of the class was a very simple personality assessment kind of a tool, not something that we offered in this particular class but the kind of work that we actually do. Well, after the sales people went through the exercise, they were broken up into the different behavioral styles that showed up in the group. There were people that were high in dominance and there were people that were high in extraversion, people high in patience and people high in conformity. My friend, Miller, happens to be in the high conformity group. Well, the sales trainer who perhaps was a high dominance person himself started to talk to the class about all of the positive things about being a high dominance sales person. The competitive nature, the desire to win to do what ever needs to be done at all costs and then proceeded to pretty much slam the other three behavioral styles that the high extraverts talk too much and the high patience people don’t know how to create conflict and the high conformity people get all wrapped up in minutiae. And my friend Miller didn’t come out of this feeling very good about herself.
Well here is the amazing fact, the week before on the last day of the quarter, my friend Miller closed a $5.3 million deal in software licenses for her company and all of those high dominance people that were fist pumping and chest bumping themselves about the great personality styles… They didn’t close anything. And if you really look at what the skill set is for handling a complex sale that involved a year’s worth of discussions and demonstrations at the technology level, at the application level, meeting after meeting after meeting at all different levels of the organization. You can understand that Miller’s high conformity trades really served her very, very well because after all was said and done the buyer bought from her because they genuinely believed in her competence and her ability to have her company deliver what needed to be delivered. Now that’s not to say that high conformity people are the only strong behavioral profile for sales but we get so wrapped up and thinking that what we need is the aggressive no hold bars type of a behavioral style that we forget that the complex sales cycle requires many different talents. No one brings all of them to the table and as a manager’s job it is your responsibility to understand what your people naturally do best and help them focus on adapting their style to meet the other requirements and providing them with the resources that they need, so they can be successful.
By the way, this was a new name, new logo account and they beat out their number one competitor who was the incumbent who by the time the deal got done was prepared to provide the license software to the client for free. So think about that and think about what the behavioral style must have been of the sales person who had just taken over this account for the competitor. So don’t be so quick to put down the other sales people on your team that may not bring that very aggressive “A” type personality to the table. They may be just what you need, in fact my friend Miller told me that the other sales person who was the high conformity sales person in the group is about to get a $10 million deal this quarter. Why? For basically the same reasons. Thanks for your time.
OPUSBOB on the Obama Education Speech as it relates to Business Leadership
October 22, 2009 – 3:57 pmOPUSBOB on the Obama Education Speech as it relates to Business Leadership
So what I want to talk to you about today is to relate President Obama’s speech that he gave last week to the school kids about what is important to them and the thing that stood out in my mind is when Obama talked about how students need to try to learn different subject matters because that gives them an opportunity to find out what their strengths are. If they work hard in a biology class they may find out that they are really good at doing science like things. If they work hard in an English class they might find out that they are really good writers. It is the strength based approach. And think about it from a work standpoint. Think about how important it is that the people that we have working for us are doing things they are naturally good at. That they are working in areas that play to their strengths and different people have different strengths that may be in the same job.
So you as a manager need to understand what you need to be able to do to help the people that you have on your team utilize their own strengths. For instance some sales people have as a natural strength very strong problem solving skills. So if you have good strong problem solving skills the best bet for that person is to take advantage of that and show their buyer how they can help him solve their problems. It is a very different approach and for instance a sales person that has relationship building skills nothing wrong with being a good relationship builder but it is different than being a problem solver. If you can help your sales people that have relationship building skills focused on their strengths and problem solvers focused on their strengths then you are really making a difference as a leader within your organization, thanks for your time.
Tags: Business Leadership, Education, Obama, Opus Productivity, Opusbob