DEI Principles
Shortly after hiring a new salesperson, most sales managers will develop a case of “tunnel vision” by setting their sights on one single, seemingly all-important metric: the first closed deal that salesperson posts. Assuming that your process does not incorporate a single-call close (a decision to buy that occurs on the very first appointment or visit), giving this metric center stage in evaluating your new salesperson is a huge strategic mistake. Here is why: The new salesperson will probably not close that much-discussed, much-anticipated first deal until long after the “time window” has closed during which you can most easily part company.
At DEI, we believe that you have 200 working hours – five weeks – in which to make a good, evidence-based decision about whether to hold on to the salesperson you have just hired.
You are not testing “closing skills” or “sales ability” during this period. Accordingly, the question of whether or not a salesperson closes a deal during the first 200 hours is, in most cases involving business-to-business field representatives, irrelevant. During this period, you are testing two things and two things only:
- The salesperson’s ability to spot and capitalize on opportunities, and
- The salesperson’s ability to move those opportunities forward.
Presumably you hired the person because you believed he or she had these two abilities. Once the salesperson begins to work for you and the probationary period begins, your job is to find out whether you were right or wrong. You should make that determination in an environment where both you and the salesperson know that a 200-hour “countdown clock” has been set in motion, and is now ticking. At the end of that 200-hour period, you will make a decision about whether or not the relationship is working. If it is not, you will let the salesperson go.
When I am coaching brand new sales hires for my own organization, I make certain that we both understand the following points on the very first day:
- The 200-hour clock is now ticking.
- That’s five 40-hour weeks, starting today.
- I will decide whether to move this hiring decision from “provisional” to “permanent” at the end of those 200 hours.
- Since our sales cycle is typically eight weeks, I will NOT be judging you by whether or not you close a deal during those 200 hours.
- Of greater concern to me is whether you can ….
- TARGET ONE: Each and every week, for the next five weeks, you should set five brand-new face-to-face appointments with prospects you have neither met nor worked with before.
- TARGET TWO: Over the course of your 200-hour evaluation period, 90% of those scheduled face-to-face meetings with new prospects should actually take place. If you set the right number of appointments, but half of them cancel or don’t show up, you’re not hitting the target.
- TARGET THREE: Each and every week, you should turn two or three of those scheduled first meetings into scheduled second meetings that actually take place.
Targets One, Two, and Three, above are much more important to me than a single closed deal when it comes to evaluating whether I should hold on to, or let go of, a new salesperson. In fact, a new deal that comes in during the first 200 hours may be a net negative for the new salesperson I’ve just hired. Why? Suppose the decision maker behind that first deal is an existing contact from the salesperson’s last job. By closing that deal within the first week, the salesperson may be reinforcing a habit of relying on old relationships, rather than developing new ones!
The new salesperson’s first 200 hours on the job is a critical period. Use it to determine whether this person really can get new relationships on the calendar and move those relationships forward through your organization’s sales process. If the salesperson can do that, you can congratulate yourself on a sound hiring decision. If the salesperson cannot do that, let him or her go and find someone else to fill the spot.
DEI Sales System, 6-9 Trinity Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel: +353-1-6177890
