My Favorite Sales Job Ever (Except This One): Nextel Communications

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The first time I hit the Push-to-Talk (PTT) button and reached my entire team in real time—it felt like magic. No dialing. No waiting. Just click and talk. That moment hooked me. And the company behind it, Nextel, quickly became my favorite sales job ever (aside from this one).

From my graduation at San Diego State in 1987 to launching a Nextel dealership in 1998, I spent 11 years in roles that shaped how I work, lead, and think today. My time as an Account Executive at Nextel stands out for three simple reasons: Atmosphere, Technology, and People.

Atmosphere Forget “culture,” Nextel had atmosphere. The kind you could feel the second you walked in. The VP of the region John Combs trusted the GM of San Diego Chris Duggan, who trusted my Manager Sally Fleck, who trusted me. That chain of autonomy made us fast, focused, and fearless. The founders—Brian McAuley and Morgan O’Brien— were serial entrepreneurs, and their spirit ran deep in the company. I ended up working with them again later at Pacific DataVision. But perhaps the biggest spark came when Nextel opened indirect distribution, and Brian Moses brought me an opportunity. I co-founded Aadvanced Wireless, our own Nextel dealership. That hands-on experience launched my journey into entrepreneurship.

Technology We were selling the first digital voice/data combo in the country—TDMA, for those keeping score. In 1994, our first Motorola-made handset (the Lingo) looked like an old school two-way radio with rounded edges. It weighed enough to act as a self-defense tool. But the Push-to-Talk feature? Game-changing. Tech Magicians like Jack Demers kept innovating. By 1999, the units got smaller, features and functions leapfrogged ahead and you were suddenly holding a mobile computer in your hand.

People At the heart of it all: the people. Sally Fleck assembled a crew of sales pros I’m still in touch with today. John Stevenson came into sales leadership next and brought in more top-tier talent. We pushed each other. We won big. And we celebrated even bigger. Our 1997 Presidents Club trip to Jamaica? Unforgettable, mon (as seen in the attached picture). And we will be together again soon—reuniting in Long Beach this August after 30+ years.

Looking Back—and Forward Nextel didn’t just give me a paycheck—it gave me a blueprint. Empower your people. Trust their instincts. Lead with energy. I’ve carried those lessons ever since.

If you don’t enjoy what you do, it shows. Nextel was the kind of place where I wanted to show up. And that still makes all the difference.

Wendy Carter, Tracey Fryer, Mark Schechter, Zara Sclar, Jeff Dalton, Glenn Bowie,  Roxanne, Lynnda Shepherd, Eric Meehan, Jack Demers, Bill Leversee, Keith Schneider, Tamara Chamberlain, Pam Wylie, Troy Parish, Marc Savas, Chantal Turenne des Pres, Shannon Skaff, Don Girskis, John Pescatore, John Zarb, Troy Knuckles, Ned Bliss, Margaret Carroll

 

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A Winning Process for Recruiting Top Sales Talent

 

 

Every sales leader knows that recruiting and hiring high performing sales reps is a key driver for meeting and exceeding revenue goals. But bringing in top talent is not as easy as it may seem.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet – no simple formula that will guarantee you great results every time. But the following is a proven process the sales leaders at Flannery Sales Systems have implemented to effectively double sales rep retention and performance.

The key is to identify which qualities your top performing reps have, and then develop an interview questionnaire and hiring process that ensures you are only bringing on salespeople that exhibit those qualities.

Interested in implementing this kind of process in your organization? Read on for a step-by-step guide:

  1. Interview front-line managers. The first step is to talk to your sales leadership, and especially the managers directly overseeing your sales team. Your goal is to have them identify the skills, relationships and personality traits shared by their top performing reps. This conversation is best handled as a group via a meeting or conference call.
  2. Create a list of required attributes. Tape your meeting or call above so you can go back and pull out the key characteristics discussed during the session. The goal here is to create a laundry list of all traits identified during your interviews. These need not be prioritized – yet. That comes next.
  3. Rank the list. Print out your list of sales rep attributes and ask front-line managers and sales leaders to rank the attributes in order of importance. This exercise should be done independently and each attribute should receive some number ranking.
  4. Identify attributes that can’t be learned. In addition to ranking the attributes, sales leadership should also identify any attributes that can’t be easily learned (this often includes personality traits such as hard working or charismatic but can also include things like existing relationships or a book of business).
  5. Summarize results. Once your sales leaders have individually ranked the attributes and identified any that they don’t believe can be learned on the job, you need to compile the information. Take the average of each manager’s rankings to create an overall ranking of sales attributes. Mark the ones that can’t be taught as “required” competencies.
  6. Develop an interview questionnaire. From the document above, which could be entitled “Required Competencies for Sales Reps,” create a set of two to three questions designed to uncover whether or not the rep possesses each key competency. For example, if the competency is being a self-starter, a corresponding question might be “tell me about a time when you built something from scratch and how you were successful.” There should be a few questions for each competency from which the interviewer can choose.
  7. Set the interviewing protocol. Now that you’ve created an interview questionnaire, you need to establish a protocol or process for your organization. We recommend strongly that at least two people interview each candidate using the questions you’ve developed. Interviewers should not speak to each other about the candidate before interviewing. During or immediately after the interview, they should complete a feedback form indicating whether or not they feel the candidate possessed each required competency.
  8. Conduct a post-interview huddle. Once all interviewers have had a chance to talk with the candidate, they should get together to discuss interview feedback. Discuss each competency one by one. If any of the interviewers felt a candidate didn’t exhibit a required competency, it should be flagged and one of the interviewers (most often the hiring manager) will have a follow-up conversation with the candidate.
  9. Call out missing competencies. As mentioned above, if any of the interviewers felt a candidate didn’t exhibit the required competencies, a follow up conversation with the candidate will need to take place. The recommended approach is for the interviewer to let the candidate know there was some concern over their ability to demonstrate a certain competency and wait for the candidates to react. If they become defensive and aren’t open to receiving the feedback, they are likely not a person who you’d want on your team. If they welcome the feedback and provide a good response demonstrating that they do in fact have that competency or the ability and desire to develop it, then that’s the sign of a great team member.
  10. Make a final go/no go decision. The final step is to reconvene your interview team to discuss how the candidate handled feedback on the required competencies the team had called into question. Based on how the candidate reacted, each interviewer should individually express a “go” or “no go” recommendation. The hiring manager will make the final hiring decision based on the group’s recommendation.

And, that’s it – a solid process your organization can rely on to ensure you are bringing in top sales talent. As with all processes, this one should be re-assessed periodically to ensure the required competencies are still relevant and the interview process is working.

Additionally, we recommend that you record baseline metrics before implementation so you can measure change and improvement. Some metrics that would be particularly applicable here would be average sales per rep, average sales rep retention, and percentage of monthly goal achieved. Then make sure you continue to measure these metrics once the process has been implemented to ensure it’s working for your organization.

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Transitioning A Salesperson To A Manager’s Role

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sales manager

Transitioning a sales person to a sales manager

Transitioning A Salesperson To A Manager’s Role

One of the most costly mistakes in business is to promote your most successful sales person only to find that they fail as a manager.  What makes this even more disheartening is that you may also lose some of the revenue from that producer’s territory. Sales people are promoted because they have performed well and management mistakenly believes that the super star sales person is also a great manager and trainer.  Too often, the great sales person doesn’t even realize what they are doing different.  They may be intuitive or just particularly committed to cold calling or business development.  It is not uncommon that the sales person doesn’t really understand what behaviors have lead to above average results.

Being a super sales person and being a great manager often have traits that are diametrically different.  The successful sales person is usually easy to engage and empathetic with customers.  The really great ones are excellent listeners.  The exceptional sales manager is more analytical in that they can evaluate how effectively a sales person is executing their sales process and then provide concrete, specific feedback and exercises that will lead to improvement.  The listening skill that might have made them a great sales person is often a trait that enhances success as a sales manager. Larry King is credited with saying “I never learned anything while I was talking” and his words are well worth considering.

The sales manager that says, “Watch how I do it” is often using his personal skills to role model behaviors and that field experience is valuable but of only limited value.  Sales managers need to be coaches to be successful.  Few football coaches are world class quarterbacks, kickers or tight ends.  The way that a coach is able to field a winning team is to be able to assess the strengths and weakness of each player, to be able to diagnose the appropriate development and course of action and to be able to communicate the recommended changes in a manner that is clear and compelling.  If the sales manager is not able to change the attitudes and the behaviors of the sales team, it is questionable if the performance of the team will improve.  Think about the skill set required to change attitudes and behaviors.  That skill set may not be the same one that was able to close enough deals to get the salesperson promoted to sales manager.

Transitioning managers to a coaching role is the key to upgrading the collective results of the team.  Is the manager providing the appropriate development for the team and addressing individual needs?  Is the manager asking the right questions?  Is the manager effectively listening?  Is the manager good at making accurate assessments?  Does the manager use a sales process as his playbook and work with the team to practice the process?

The manager as coach analogy is a good one although there are many playback videos of sales people performances to assess.  Start by asking sales people specific questions:

  1. What does a qualified prospect look like?
  2. Who needs to be involved in the final decision that will lead to an order?
  3. What’s the cost to the buyer of not making a change?
  4. What value does the buyer/prospect see in your offering?
  5. How are we positioned against our competition?

The answers to these types of questions will enable the manager to make an assessment of how best to coach the sales person to success.  Increasing the overall effectiveness of the sales organization is the primary goal of the sales manager.  A sales manager that is a good coach is most likely to lead his team to greater success.

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