Today’s guest is Wayne Herring. Wayne is an expert on coaching business owners on how to build, grow and manage their sales teams, all while leading their families and living their dreams!

This podcast is a deep dive on:

 

• How to hire the best sales team,
• What tools you should use in your recruiting and hiring process, and
• Applying the “The 80/20 Principle” to your hiring process.

Wayne and I also cover how to avoid some of the biggest mistakes business owners make when hiring for one of the most vital roles in your company: Sales.

We talk about some of the essential features of a well oiled hiring machine: from pre-hire assessments and short structured screening calls to some of the “magic questions” you should be asking candidates to gauge fit and  – more importantly – longevity at your organization.

We talk about the importance of defining the roles you’re hiring for, not rushing the process and we cover how to use data, technology, and inbound selling to take your business from $0 to $100 Million in revenue.

Regardless of the size or stage of your business, this conversation with Wayne will have something valuable that you can use during your next interview!

LISTEN RIGHT NOW HERE

Even better, why not subscribe to the “Startup Selling Podcast: Talking Sales with Scott Sambucci” on iTunes?

Show Notes and Topics:

• Explanation on building a sales teams and helping them grow
• What’s the #1 biggest mistake small businesses make when hiring they’re first salesperson?
• Importance of defining the role
• You don’t have to be perfect to hire your first sales person, but you need to have pioneered your system
• Review of assessments used to hire sales team
• Overview of Sales DNA related to money
  • Supportive Buy Cycle – How I buy things is how I sell things
  • You have to stand in front of a mirror and say your price
  • Comfort Discomfort
  • Non-Supportive Buy Cycle
• Advice for founders on how to get comfortable asking for business
• Difference of headwinds and tailwinds
• Importance of talking to others and getting difference perspective on hiring
• Difficulties you may across interviewing sales people and how to manage it
• Advice on not rushing a hire, using the 80/20 Principle
• Best standards on hiring to save you time and find the right person
• Ask the “magic questions” during the initial phone interview
• How to make the interview process as efficient and beneficial as possible
• The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million
• What’s the 80/20 Principle to screening and interviewing salespeople?
  • 1 – Pre Hire assessment
  • 2 – Short Triage Call / screening
  • 3 – Get enough candidates – quality retained search recruiter, Indeed/job boards, admin/partner to learn a process quickly
    • Keep your job page up
    • Free Ad on Indeed – refresh every 30 days
    • Tag contacts on LinkedIn

 

• Wayne Herring on LinkedIn
• Blount, J., Weinberg, M. Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling
• Warrollow, J. Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
• Check out Wayne Herring’s website Herring Coach, LLC: https://herringcoach.com/
• Davidai, S., Gilovich, T. “The headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry: An availability bias in assessments of barriers and blessings
• Objective Management Group – Pre-Hire Assessment
• Zero-Risk Hiring System
• Contact Wayne Herring
• Business Builder Camp – Male business owners who also want to be good dads and husbands
• Check out Roberge, M.The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million
• Inspect what you Expect:
• Example of scheduling a brief screening call
• Objective Assesment Blog on Non-Supportive Buy Cycle article: 

About Allbound: Problem & Solution

Definitions: Channel Partners vs Referral Partners vs Co-Marketing Partner vs Reseller vs Affiliates

Listen to the episode here:

Even better, why not subscribe to the “Startup Selling Podcast: Talking Sales with Scott Sambucci” on iTunes?

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO

THE STARTUP SELLING PODCAST ON ITUNES

 

When should I start thinking about External Partners?

• Affiliates & Co-Marketing – Never too soon for these. Make sure you and your partner are speaking the same profiles/customers. Co-marketing tend to be “nice-to-have”
• Referral Partners – Once you’ve identified the right Product-Market fit. Have an ideal Customer Profile & Buyer Personas built
• Reseller Partners – Most resellers want to own implementation. Make sure your product can support a reseller. Every Reseller is assigned a Customer Success Manager. One reseller could equal 10, 50, 100 customers

“Partners” – The best partners provide you a predictable revenue stream.

Structuring Programs:

• Look at other firms and partners. Learning from Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce
• i.e. 10% of first-year revenue
• Evolve the program

Implementation:

• Things fizzle. A Partnership is a relationship.
• “Partners are people too.”
• Train, educate. Treat your Partners just like a brand new sales rep.
• Channel people are massively under-resourced
• Outline and structure – online meetings, vs in-person, self-serve. Be transparent and map out in an Agreement.

4 Pipelines:

1. New Customers
2. Renewals
3. Professional Services
4. Partner Pipeline

4 Pillars:

1. Content – The way that knowledge transfer happens. Access to content (ie. training, internal price sheets, playbooks, data, research); PLUS end-user
2. Collaboration – Include your Partners in your product communication, pricing, services
3. Customer Success – How does my customer want to buy? How do they want to be serviced & supported?
4. Culture – Touches every part of your business & approach

The Honest Conversation – Sometimes the timing isn’t right. Be honest. Let’s come back to this in 6 months, 1 quarter.

Exclusives: Think really

MyChannelScore.com

Unusual:

• Completely different vertical or space
• Expand

Show Links:
Jen LinkedIn
Jen on Twitter
Allbound Blog
MyChannelScore.com – Score yourself on Content, Co
The Allbound Podcast on iTunes
Blog Post – “The Subscription Economy: Why Channel Sales is Essential for SaaS”
B2B Growth Podcast
Tiffani Bova