“To improve your odds of getting hired in sales. Know your numbers and check the sales math.” – Chris McNeill in today’s Tip 1292
Do you know your numbers in the corresponding sales math?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Chris!
1284: How to Get Hired in Sales (Part 1)
1285: How to Get Hired in Sales (Part 2)
1291: How to Get Hired in Sales (Part 3)
Chris McNeill on Sales Success Stories Interview
Chris McNeill on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today we continue Chris McNeill’s multi-part series on How to Get Hired in Sales. Chris is a long-time contributor to the Sales Success Community and serves as a Director of Sales at Infinite Convergence Solutions. Here he is:
Chris McNeill: Hello again Sales Success Community, Chris McNeill. You guys still haven’t asked me to stop this, so I’m just going to keep going. Sharing tips about what has helped me succeed as an individual contributor.
What’s been top of mind for me and the sales organization I’m working with is recruiting. So I’m going to share some more tips focused on helping folks get hired in sales.
Hopefully, it’s useful. If it is, let me know, or if it’s not, let me know. Just ping me on LinkedIn.
This is tip number four of ten, so make sure you listen to some of the other ones.
Today’s tip know your numbers in the corresponding sales math.
Recruiting and onboarding salespeople boils down to a few decisions. Will this person add to the team and the company? Will they be a good culture fit? And are they the best way to add revenue to my pipeline? That last question is really what we’re focused on today.
Know your conversion rate, your win rate, your quota, your ACV, or your average contract size. Days to close. Be able to talk through a standard sales process in terms of meeting cadence. Talk through your prospecting process. Know your conversion metrics. Those are all things that I’m typically looking to understand in a recruiting process.
If I hire someone, I have to make sure that they’re going to bring a process with them that will help them hit their goals if they’re able to execute that process.
So take time, know your numbers, check the math, and be ready to help walk me through your conversion metrics. That way I can easily fill in the blanks with our own sales organizations numbers and forecast the results that I can expect. It’s also a way in a lot of interviews that I’ve been part of in the past for sales organizations to check for transparency and validity when salespeople tell them that they’ve attained certain things, we like to take apart that number and understand exactly how you got there, who sourced those opportunities. How did you work those, and then we try to triangulate in on the truth on that.
Now, there’s a flip side to this coin. Ask for data during your interview process and do your best to check that sales math as well. It can be a little bit difficult when you’re just starting out or early in an interview process. So I typically hold these questions until we’re almost at an offer stage in a discussion, but it becomes very important later stage. There are some organizations or leaders that like to set quota in the corresponding OTE higher than is actually attainable and part of your job search should always be to check the math on your prospective employer, share your average deal size, your deal flow, your quota and ask that that be reciprocated, right?
If you share what percentage of plan you’ve been historically, you should be comfortable asking what percentage of plan most reps hit or the sales organization hit last year.
I always look for honesty when I’m recruiting, and I always give it back to folks, even if it’s not perfect. If an employer is cagey with you about sharing the results they’re hitting, I would take that as a red flag that you should make note of in your consideration. I’ve been in interviews with sales leaders that had me walk them through my sales math from pipeline creation, average deal size, win rate, annual attainment, looking to smoke the BS out, which they should, honestly. They’re making a big investment in bringing someone on, and they need to know that that individual can be trusted and that they’re going to hit the target.
But it’s perfectly allowable for you to do the same. You want to make sure that your potential employers being transparent with you upfront so that you can make a sound decision about where you want to work. So that’s today’s tip to improve your odds of getting hired in sales. Know your numbers and check the sales math.
Scott Ingram: For a link to ping Chris on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1292. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!