T H E C E O ' S G U I D E

T O B U I L D I N G

S A L E S T E A M S

W O R L D L E A D E R S S A L E S

K A R E N B E N J A M I N

Welcome to theCEO's Guide to Building Sales TeamsThis guide is intended to be direct and actionable for helping the leaders of B2Btechnology organizations to build or improve their marketing and sales team. If you are reading this guide, you are most likely in one of the following situations:

You have unfilled positions. You have open positions that your team has beentrying to fill for quite some time but haven’t had any luck. Everyday that goes byequates to lost potential revenue in the assigned territory and wasted managementtime and resources. This is the guide for you as we use the recruiting methodologytaught to help companies hire a top performer within 3-5 weeks.

You have under-performing reps. You have under-performing sales andmarketing reps on your team. They don’t meet quota, they don’t produce qualitycampaigns on time, and they don’t acclimate well to the rest of the team. Thesereps are wasting sales & marketing resources and are failing to add incrementalrevenue to your organization. This guide is for you as it teaches the methodologyused to search for top talent in your industry that is currently employed and meetingperformance objectives.

You want to make talent acquisition your competitive advantage. This guideisn’t only for those that are struggling face-to-face with a staffing problem. You mayhave a team that performers well and can attract new workers. But now you have agoal of building a repeatable recruiting process for attracting, finding, and on-boarding a pipeline of qualified candidates. This guide is for you as we look at howthe top 1% of companies are building a strategic talent acquisition program.

Karen is the co-owner and outsourced recruitingpractice leader at Worldleaders Sales where sherecruits top talent for her clients. She has spenther career finding and recruiting marketing andsalespeople for over 250 B2B technologycompanies. The guide introduces her process forattracting, finding, interviewing, hiring, and on-boarding marketing and salespeople. If you have any questions throughout your read orwould like to talk further, please call, text, or emailher at kbenjamin@worldleadersinc.com or at 585-732-6496.

Author: Karen Benjamin

Connect with me on Linkedin

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/worldleaders/https://www.linkedin.com/in/worldleaders/https://www.linkedin.com/in/worldleaders/

Part 1: Strategy & Structure

Your sales & marketing team is an important and deployable part of yourorganization’s strategy and goals. It’s their job to be on the front lines, drivingyour company to where it needs to be & executing your corporate strategy. To build or modify your team correctly, you must think through the strategicdirection you would like to pursue. Once you have your direction, you can begincrafting the roles and finding the people needed to pursue that direction. To build your strategy, you’re going to think through:

What is our financial growth goal? Market share objectives?

What markets should we penetrate? Do we focus on certain geographies?

Are we expanding to new markets? Or by rolling out new products/services?

Who are our top 3-5 competitors and why should someone buy from us?

Do we need a bigger pipeline of leads or to win more existing sales cycles?

Do we have good sales leadership?

Should we focus on inbound queries or focus on outbound prospecting?

Are we focusing on direct vs channels? Both?

Once you have good answers to these questions, you can start planning theorganizational structure and filled roles you will need to support your strategicdirection. For example, if your company were to succeed in accomplishing its marketingand sales strategy – what concrete results would your team need to deliver andwhat day-to-day responsibilities would support delivering those results? Let’s get your roles on paper and create a job specification so we can look forsuitable candidates. We’ll use an example of an outside sales representative.

"The top B2B marketing and sales organizations

always look at what must be done before

looking at who they need to do it with."

-Karen Benjamin, Worldleaders Co-Owner & Author

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Once you have the corporate sales strategy, the organizational structure andthe specific job specifications for the roles in your organization, you can askyourself: do we have the current in-house staff to perform these roles anddeliver the objectives? If so, promote/transition identified staff within yourcompany into these roles. If not, let’s move on to looking for suitable talentoutside of your organization.

Determine how hiring decisions are made up front. We’ve seen organizations lose largesums of potential revenue and extend candidate searches out months and sometimeseven years longer than necessary by failing to employ a decision-making process.Figure out who needs to be represented from the leadership, marketing, sales, and HRteam to make a good and timely decision of who will be joining your organization.

Set aside a budget, because hiring is rarely cheap. And when it is – typically thecandidate’s performance is also cheap. The unrecognized revenue & cost of continuousreplacements adds up to be far worse. Be willing to pay the market rate for somebodywho 1) has a history of performing the role and delivering the results that you need 2)has sold to the industries / markets that you are and 3) is a better & more qualifiedmarketing/salesperson than your best current representatives.

Top 1% Hints

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Part 2: Attracting Talent

When adding to or building a marketing & sales team, most organizations havea single strategy: post a job and hope for applicants. While that could be atleast a partially viable option for large, reputable brands – most B2B technologycompanies must do more to drive inbound applicants.

In recruiting today, it’s not only recruiters who are

doing the research. With 85% of job searches

starting with a search engine, top talent is searching

for a company the same way they would any other

purchasing decision – which is why employer

branding is so critical.

– Matt Charney, Executive Editor at Recruiting Daily

The top organizations focus on building an inbound presence & creatinginterest within the candidate market. They make the top candidateswant to leave where they are and come work for them. Since attracting talent is ultimately a corporate responsibility and driven as partof the organization’s strategic direction, it must be initiated and supported fromthe top of the organization. While each department will have its own role inattracting talent, the leadership team must take action to make people want towork for them. Let’s look at the three main areas you should focus on to attract talent to yoursales team. Corporate Leadership Presence & PositioningThe top outward-facing leaders in your organization (CEO, President, CMO,CRO, VP of Sales) must have a visible presence among the workforce andcandidate pools. When a marketing/salesperson begins to evaluate a companyas a desired employer, they begin asking what are they selling, who are theyselling it to, why do their customer’s buy, who are their leaders, who will be mymanager, what can I expect? In most cases, the best person in your organization to answer those questionsare the company leaders themselves. By leveraging social media, videos, andPR, your leaders should be positioning your organization to the workforce.Minimally, they should be speaking to the greater purpose/objective of the

organization, how they are positioned/operating among competitors, thecompetitive advantage that allows them to compete & succeed, and the two tothree things that governs their culture and daily operations. Marketing/HR Content & Promotion Your leaders have positioned your organization and laid the groundwork – nowit’s time for your communication departments to broadcast them. Just as youhave marketing campaigns, landing pages, blogs, ads, email series, andnetworking events designed to target a prospective client to buy from you, youwill have these campaigns and mediums dedicated to making prospectivecandidates want to work with you. While specific channel & content mixesmay vary depending on industry, geography, position candidate role, etc., thekey is to make the communications integrated across platforms and themessaging created with that ideal candidate persona in mind. The objective isto think through intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that will make successfullyemployed people want to leave where they are and come represent you andyour organization. Marketing/HR Candidate ExperienceIt’s important to make your company, leaders, and position attractive, but it’salso important to make a candidate’s experience clear and easy. Help them getthe information they need by having a section of your social and web presencededicated to the position(s), the company as a whole, and anything thatmarketing/salesperson would need to know to leave where they are andrepresent you. Since you’ve thought through your organizational structure, youcan explicitly demonstrate how a marketing/salesperson would fit into yourorganization and how they would expand their career. Do your best to answer(or anticipate) their questions early in the process & invite them to apply. Justas a prospective customer most likely won’t convert if you don’t ask for theclose, an interested candidate may not apply if you don’t ask them to.

While there are many ways to showcase your company leadership to the market,candidate attraction videos are simple and effective tools to create & use.

Make attracting candidates a priority and use the created campaigns, content, and webpages as tools to not only build a pipeline of interested candidates, but as resources tokeep the candidate engaged and interested later in the process.

Top 1% Hints

candidate attraction videos

https://youtu.be/iC5Z9mZiq6I

Part 3: Finding & Contacting Talent

You have your inbound model in place for attracting talent, now it’s time tofocus on an outbound model for finding talent. To make recruiting much more time, cost, and performance effective, westrongly recommend that when you perform outbound searches for candidates - start by using LinkedIn (only). LinkedIn is one of the largest databases of online professionals readilyavailable to organizations. What’s more? LinkedIn allows you to search forpeople based on geography, industry, job titles, years of experience, company,and individual keywords. It’s like having everybody in the world’s resume, with the ability to sort/prioritizethem, and a built-in tool for contacting them. Let’s take it a step further. From our experience and research, we find that marketing and salespeople thathave an updated LinkedIn profile are more likely to be successful in networking,prospecting, and campaign development than marketing and salespeople thatdo not have a LinkedIn presence. Because of this, we recommend strictlystaying with LinkedIn for conducting outbound searches. Now let’s start DIGging through LinkedIn for top talent. When sourcing through LinkedIn you are going to want to focus on three majorcriteria.

iscipline – The type of role that you are attempting to fill. Is it amarketing-based role? Prospecting/business development?Sales engineering and closing? If you are proactively looking fortalent, search for people that have a track record of performingthe role that you want to hire them for. It’s much easier totransition somebody with the same discipline to anothercompany than it is to change their disciple entirely.

While there are many ways to bring your company leadership to the market, candidateattraction videos are one of the most simple and effective tools to create and use.

Make attracting candidates a priority and learn to leverage the created campaigns,content, and web pages as tools to not only build a pipeline of interested candidates,but as resources to keep the candidate engaged and interested later in the process.

ndustry – There are two considerations here. You are looking formatches in industries represented and industries targeted. Industriesrepresented identifies the type of companies that a candidate hasmarketed/sold for. A match in industry(s) represented will allow the repto quickly understand your technology during on-boarding & have arough idea of how to represent your product/service in the market.Industries targeted identifies the type of companies that a candidatehas marketed/sold to. A match in industry(s) targeted allows them tobetter understand the business objectives of the targeted decisionmakers, the mediums/prospecting tactics that are most effective, andthe elite may have a thought-leadership reputation within the market.

eography - Where should this person be located? Is itessential that they are close to one of your facilities? Whatgeographies and territories should they be responsible forserving? Geography is of the more finicky search criteriabecause it can drastically change the quantity and qualityof potential candidates. We recommend really thinkingthrough how tight your geographical constraints need tobe in order to bring in the best possible talent.

Optional Search Criteria Years of experience, current/past companies, education, etc. are other possiblesearch criteria you can use. It’s easy to begin listing tight criteria to equate a“perfect candidate”. However, you can only employ what the market produces.Decide which criteria are essential to the candidate’s ability to perform the rolesuccessfully during the initial search.

Making Contact

Search for better than your best. Just because somebody with misaligned DIG criteriahas worked on your marketing and sales team before doesn’t mean that it will work outagain. Stack the deck in your favor by looking for highly qualified talent.

Mix and match optional criteria. Just as a Google search will produce different resultsbased on your input criteria, so will a LinkedIn candidate search. Try running a searchwith a set of criteria, and if your pool is too big/small, add or eliminate some criteria.

Your long-term goal is to create a “short list” of qualified potential candidates for yourorganization. If you can build a database of right-fit candidates, you can turn to thatdatabase first prior to perforrming an outbound search.

Top 1% Hints

If a role [responsib~lity · sounds interesti 1g to you . .

I'd love o exp ore if being a part of our team wo Jld be a good fi fo you.

We are a [con1pany ype] organization tha speciaHze·s in helping

[ta get custo 1er base] to [business impac delivered].

Right now, we, ar1e ~ooking for a osit ion ti le] t ha wil l focus on

[responsibdity 1] and [ esponsibi lity 2].

Due to your bac ,,·ground as uob t itle] re·presenting [curren employer/

currenr industry] I thought you 1d be a g1ood fit

If t his is interesting to you, II Im including a Ii nk to a video f rorin our

[CEO, President CMO/ CROr or VP of Sales] t hat d iscusses our organiza ion strategy[ purpose[ rinar-ket osi ion, cori petitive

advan age, and what you can expeci out of t his position

If you are interested in applying or ,ave a y questions, please message

me back or call me at [p' one number.

By he way/ we are committed to providing our appl icants fai r market compensatiori1 for t he role/experience as well as comple e

confidentiality throughou the process.

[Name and contac info mation]

Part 4: Interviewing & Evaluating

Hopefully your search and communications have produced a pool of interestedrespondents. *If you are still struggling to produce a pool of the rightcandidates, please contact me at kbenjamin@worldleadersinc.com Now it’s time to quickly conduct interviews. Most candidates are on the moveand could take another position in 2-4 weeks after the initial contact. While there are many different strategies and perspectives for interviewing, let’slook at some of the must-haves for interviewing marketing and salespeople. Research-Based Questions: These are essential for marketing andsalespeople. You want to understand their ability to research your industry,your company, and their position. Performing research is a big part of asalesperson’s job; see how they do with researching your company. Skills, Experience, Accomplishment Questions: To make sure you arehiring the right candidate, you want to inquire about how their skills (ex:prospecting calls), experience (ex: 2 years of business development and acommunications degree) and accomplishments (ex: exceeded new customerquota by X% and made president’s club) fit the given role. Not only is the datathat these questions produce important to have, but these questions also testthe candidate’s ability to position and present themselves. Detailed Responsibility Questions: Your unfilled position(s) should havespecific responsibilities and performance metrics assigned to them.Responsibility questions are designed to verify success on each area of the jobspecification. Make sure to ask for examples of how they’ve done X or how theywould approach Y. You can also evaluate their problem-solving skills byinquiring about times they’ve done something under duress or how they coulddeliver a desired outcome while having limited resources.

Sales Process Questions: While often the most overlooked part of theinterview, sales process questions may deliver the most predictive data onwhether a given candidate will succeed. You are going to want to understandtheir process for building campaigns and prospecting, performing needsassessments, building business cases, writing proposals, closing, andmanaging the account. If you’d like a little help here or want to learn the salesprocess that the top 1% of selling professionals use, we invite you to checkout the Live-Testing Questions: You’re hiring sales and marketing people, right? Thatmeans you can have a little fun with the interview. If they say that they are goodat asking prospects questions, then put them on the spot and ask whatquestions they have for you. Do they claim to be good at researching andunderstanding the technology? Ask them questions about yours and your idealcustomer to see if they did their homework. Do they say that they are good athandling objections? Give them a put-off and see how they move forward. Throughout the interview you are not only looking for the logic and sciencebehind their responses, but you are also looking at how they handle theconversation emotionally. Think: can this person have a businessconversation with the targeted decision maker of our most desired prospects?Can they demonstrate how our offering can move the customer forward andwhy they should select us rather than our competitor?

Evaluating – Score Cards Once you’ve completed interviewing your candidates, you will then objectivelyanalyze each candidate. Each member of the hiring committee should fill out ascore card and indicate whether the candidate met each of the evaluationcriteria. Comments can substantiate caveats, management required, trainingrequired, etc. that would impact the hiring decision. You should hire thecandidate with the most “yesses” and with the most addressable concerns.

The Smart Sales Method.

https://www.worldleaderssales.com/documents/The_Smart_Sales_Method_2ndEditionPDF_2.pdf

If your hiring committee has a tie between two candidates, you can bring the candidatesback for a tie-breaker presentation. Give them a scenario to prep for: you are in ameeting with X person at Y company and you are presenting Z solution. Have bothcandidates give the presentation and whoever performs better, is your new rep.

Salespeople that follow a repeatable process for prospecting, building the businesscase, presenting, closing, and managing the account are much easier to transition intoyour organization and are ultimately much more successful.

Top 1% Hints

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Part 5: Offering & On-boarding

You’ve identified the candidate that you’d like to hire, now let’s make them anoffer. To start, you should have a short offer letter that welcomes them to thecompany. Included in that letter should be exact information on their on-targetearnings, base salary, commission structure, revenue goal, and targeted startdate. While it is recommended to keep the offer letter short, you can have anaddendum for additional parts of your offer such as non-competes and theprocess for signing/accepting. Remember, if you are hiring a top performer that is successful at their currentcompany – their current company is probably going to want to keep them. Beprepared for counter offers. The easiest and most straightforward way to avoidcounter-offer complications is to refrain from attempting to make a “low-ball”offer. Offer what the person is worth and what the going rate for somebody withtheir skill set is.

“A good new salesperson, without formal,

structured on-boarding, direction, accountability and

coaching, is just as likely to fail as a lousy

salesperson”.

- Dave Kurlan

On-boarding Congratulations! If you’ve made it to this point, you’ve hired a top performer thathas a track record of selling what you sell to the types of companies that yousell to. So, now what do you do? Your new hire will focus primarily on two things during their first few months onthe job: Corporate Knowledge Transfer and Skill Gap Closure. Corporate knowledge transfer may sound self-explanatory but is a huge part ofwhat makes a sales rep able to meet/exceed quota within the first year. Thenext page contains a corporate knowledge transfer checklist that each repshould be able to answer before interfacing with a prospect/customer.

     

What products/services are you selling?

Who are you selling to? Who's the decision maker?

What problems/goals does the ideal buyer have?

What is the business case of your offering?

What are the risks/disruptions that could occur?

What alternative choices could the customer take?

What is the technical feasibility of implementation?

What is your daily prospecting plan?

What will you ask during a need’s assessment?

How will your write a proposal and present it?

How will you ask for the close?

How do we manage the account to maximize LTV?

Corporate Knowledge Transfer Checklist

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Skill Gap Closure Skill gap closure is another important part of on-boarding. Every marketing &sales candidate has their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses. Duringthe first few months on the job, your sales leadership team should focus ontraining the new hire to eliminate weaknesses and become well-roundedsalespeople. If you need help determining your new rep’s weaknesses, wehave a predictive analytic assessment that measures their sales skills andcompetencies across core sales functions.

If you are interested in learning more about sales & marketingevaluations, please reach out to me at kbenjamin@worldleadersinc.com

The Will to Sell Competencies

DESIRE ■ COMMHMENT ..

OUTLOOK ■ MOTIVATION

750/o 550¼· . . 0 RIESPO . SIBIUTY D

1QQ10/o

Sales DNA Competencies D

DOESN'T NEED APPROVAL ■ 881%

CONTROLS EMOTIONS D 89%

SUPPORTIVE BELIEFS ■ 87 1%

SUPPORT VE BUY CYCLE™ .. 71 o/o

COMFORTABLE DISCUSSING MONEY U 1 QQ%

HANDLES REJECTION .. 56%

Selling Competencies

HUNT NG P a1°1c ·o RELA.TIONSHIP BUILDING .. 38%

CONSULTATrvE SELLING .. 80°Jo

SELLI . G VALUE .. 96°Jo

QUALIFYING D 71°Jo

Sales Percentilel' •

89% STRO G W l L TO SELL PERCENTILE 50%

SALES DNA PERCENTILE 95,% SELLING PERCENTILE 86%

Development

WILL TO SELL D

70% FIGURE-IT-OUT-FACTOR D

68%

PRESENTATION APPROACH .. ao010 CLOSING .. 28%

SALES PROCESS D 63°/4

CRMSAWY .. 55%

SOCIAL SELLING D 78%

COACHABLE D 1 QQ0/o

OPPORTU . ITY U

41%

85%

Sales Process Your new representative will also be learning your organization’s sales process(or learning The Smart Sales Method?!) during this time. Make sure they havea systematic approach for opening a conversation and positioning yourorganization, converting and performing a needs assessment, building abusiness-case, writing a proposal, and asking for the close.

While corporate knowledge transfer, skill gap closure, and sales processimplementation will be what your new hire will be focusing on in the first fewmonths, on-boarding continues indefinitely. Make sure you are constantlychallenging your marketing and sales team to grow and become future leadersin your organization.

The Smart Sales Method

Present the offer in person. Just as your salespeople should present their proposal tothe customer in person, you should present the offer in person. This way, you can fieldquestions/objections in the moment and ask for the close.

Giving a candidate time to think their decision through is important but too much timereduces their chances of coming aboard. Make your offer valid for 48 hours.

Top 1% Hints

THE

SMART SALES

METHOD SECOND EDITION

THE CEO'S GUIDE TO IMPROVING SALES RESULTS

FOR B218 TECHNOLOGY

SALES TEAMS

MOROI\JE I BEN.JAMIN I SMITH

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https://www.worldleaderssales.com/documents/The_Smart_Sales_Method_2ndEditionPDF_2.pdfhttps://www.worldleaderssales.com/documents/The_Smart_Sales_Method_2ndEditionPDF_2.pdf

Pulling it All Together

As the leader of a B2B technology organization, you need the right talent in theright seats. This approached is designed to help you fill unfilled positions,replace under-performers, and make talent acquisition your competitiveadvantage. I hope you enjoyed your read, and if you have any questions aboutthis methodology or would like to discuss how it could be applied to yourorganization, please reach out to me at kbenjamin@worldleadersinc.com.

The CEO's Guide to

Building Sales Teams Strate,gy & Structure

,Goals & Directio,ns

• Or,g .. St ructure I '1!-.. D • . t" ou . escr1p, 1.0,ns

Attracting Talent :Lea,d,e,rship Presence S Positioning

Mark.eting/HR C'.ontent: and Pr1om10 ion

Marketing/HR 1Candidate Experience

lnteruiewing & Eualu,ating

Finding Talent D. ~ 1· lSC]p, me I ndustry

Q eography

• Research-Based • Skills, Experience, Accomplishinents

• Detailed Responsibility • s ,ale:s Process

1Skill Gap Closure

• Candidate, Score Cards

Offering & On-boarding