Pity the fool that has no Sales A-Team

What does it take to build a world class sales organization? Salesforce.com executives, Scott Keane and David McNeil, recently shared their own strategies for hiring the right sales talent, training and enabling their sales teams and take a look at what they wish they had known as they began their own journey into sales.

Here's a look at what these two sales gurus had to say.

When you’re putting together a sales team, what qualities do you look for in the salespeople you hire?

David: I look for someone who’s a continuous learner. Someone who wants to understand everything about our products, our solutions, and the customers we serve. They spend inordinate amounts of time diving into the guts of a business, and really trying to understand its process, drivers, and problems. The second characteristic is a winning attitude. They’re driven to win and to succeed. The third piece that goes along with that is that they want to win as a team. They understand the value of playing a team sport and giving back to the team. Everything they do is in collaboration with others. They should instinctively understand you’re not doing it solely for yourself and that if you’re doing it for the customer and the team, everybody wins.

How do you train and enable your sales teams? How often do they train, and in what areas?

Scott: We make a major investment in our new hires. They spend the first two weeks doing what we call “pre-work” for our sales bootcamp – looking at videos, training materials, and really getting the context for what salesforce is all about from an insider’s view. Sales bootcamp is a week of intensive training held at Headquarters that every salesperson from around the world attends. Our most junior salesperson all the way up to our most senior account executive receives the same training. They learn all about our products, our solutions, the way that we sell…it’s very consistent and intensive. The junior people on my sales team are consistently amazed. They’re like, “Wow, I’m sitting next to this well-known sales exec who has been selling for 25 or 30 years, and I’m getting the same training – it’s awesome.”

Next, we have specific training programs for the SRs and for the EBRs. These are role specific, three-day breakout sessions where we teach them how to do their job. We take the general training that they’ve received from bootcamp, and then show them how to apply that to their specific role. This training includes working in the application, overcoming objections, practicing with mock calls, and acclimating to this sales environment and the new team.

For my team, there’s a week and a half of training before you actually get on the phone. We give them a little bit more time with some mock calls, and have managers coaching them on their process and conversations. In the final stages of training, we’re saying here are some of the things you didn’t get at bootcamp, giving you some very practical training in the app and on the phone, getting you practice leads and letting you start calling people that reached out and wanted to talk to us maybe two years ago but haven’t talked to us since.Pretty low risk. As someone who’s just getting on the phone, if you mess up, it’s okay because we haven’t talked to these people in the last couple of years. And then, a week later they’re on.

Are there any specific skills that you look for Sales Reps to develop in their first year?

Scott: They’re only on my team for a year, so ideally, we want the sales reps to learn the foundation for providing our customers with an excellent experience. In order to ensure that we’re providing that, we want to understand who they've already spoken with at Salesforce, so that we’re able to reference that in the conversation that we may end up having with them.

The first thing they must master is...deduping. When a lead comes in, SRs will hit the “find duplicates” button, and then check to see if we have leads, accounts, contacts that match this person in the application. If we can match them with a previous interaction, then we’ll be able to have a better conversation.

Second, our SRs need to understand what first inspired the prospect to reach out - a demo, free trial advertisement, ebook or whitepaper - and why it sparked their interest now. It’s critical to have context.

Lastly, SRs must learn to connect, which involves understanding the prospect's business, and connecting their business needs with our solutions. It’s really the beginning of a sales apprenticeship – helping new sales reps understand 1) how do I connect with a prospect, 2) how do I understand their priorities, and 3) how do I marry their priorities and our solutions. They’re honing their business acumen.

What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started in sales?

David: The one thing I wish I knew when I started in sales was understanding that it’s about the customer and the team, not about myself. As I’ve matured in sales, I’ve figured out that one of the tenets I have within my organization is that you live within a “value triangle.” At the tip of the triangle is the customer. Then you have your team, and you have your partners. If you always stay within that triangle, and you’re serving those different points at any given time, you’re always providing value. If you do that, everybody wins. If you aren’t doing that, then you’re not adding value.

For a look at developing the perfect sales attitude and other sales success tips, be sure to download the free ebook below.

Image via Wikimedia Creative Commons