Subject: September Hire Score Newsletter

Welcome to the September Hire Score Newsletter. I am not surprised by the volume of responses to my announcement last month about the Customer Service Perspective (CSP) assessment tool. As promised, I will give you a little more information in this newsletter.

In addition, you are going to get a real bonus this month. I announced a truly breakthrough process that I developed with a strategic partner that solves most of the sales staffing problems. Rather than cover the same ground, I will include at the end of this month's newsletter a complete copy of my September Sales Hire Score Newsletter with the specifics. Don't miss it.

OK, let's talk about hiring customer service employees. In case you don't know the definition of customer service employees, it is anyone in your company that touches your customers. Pretty simple. Most people think only of the support group but your sales people, your support people, your finance people and more are really dependent on customer service skills.

As I have worked with various organizations helping them implement my Selecting Winners process, customer service skills are almost always on the profile. Specific behaviors related to customer service show up on most performance-based success profiles. It seems that everyone is concerned about hiring people that treat the firs's client in an appropriate manner.

You can certainly interview for all these behaviors and skills but some find it difficult. The CSP was developed to help you get the right information so you can make better hiring decisions.

Here is how the CSP was developed. A research study was completed to look at the behaviors most evident in people effective at dealing with customers. I won't bore you with all the science but simply share the results.

There are 8 behaviors and 2 proficiencies that lead to better customer service.

Here are the behaviors:

Trust - Tendency to hold an unquestioning belief that the motives of others are honorable.

Tact - Tendency to state a position without unnecessarily offending others.

Empathy - Tendency to understand another's situation and feelings.

Conscientiousness - Tendency to comply with the rules and those in authority.

Conformity - Tendency to comply with the rules and those in authority.

Courtesy - Tendency to deal with others in a pleasant manner.

Focus - Tendency to stay on target regardless of distractions.

Flexibility - Tendency to explore new approaches to doing things.

In addition two proficiencies were identified:

Vocabulary - Understanding the meaning of words when used in sentences.

Numerical - Understanding basic mathematical concepts and working with numerical problems.

Here is how CSP works. You identify those people in your organization who demonstrate excellent customer service skills. They would take the CSP and the scores in each of the ten categories collated. The range of scores of your best performers becomes the job-match pattern, the benchmark. Candidates scores are then compared in each of the 10 categories to the best practices of your best people.

This process is real-time validity. In simple terms, you want people to behave the same or similar to your best performers. And the CSP measures this very accurately.

If we ended here this would be a great tool. But we're not done. Before you begin to use the CSP, your management has to agree on the definition of good customer service. This ambiguity causes many problems. The CSP provides a 49 question process that your executive team will use to gain agreement on the definition of customer service.

The 49 answers will then be used as a standard that candidate responses can be measured against. You can check alignment of customer service attitudes by comparing the candidate's response to the 49 questions with those of your executive team. This is a very powerful piece if information.

With the Customer Service Perspective, you can determine behaviors and alignment BEFORE YOU HIRE THE PERSON!!

All the administration is done via the internet which makes using the tool simple.

If you are at all concerned with how your employees treat your clients, you really need to consider integrating the Customer Service Perspective into your hiring process.

To get a package of information with sample reports, send an e-mail to staff@selectingwinners.com. Include your mailing address and I will get the information in your hands ASAP. I look forward to working with you on this exciting new product.

New Business:

The cover of Business 2.0 magazine this has the following headline: "NOW HIRING, A Job Boom is coming" Rather then rehash the articles, let me just say that you should get a copy and read it. In addition, there was a study just completed and reported that says 57% of a certain group of people that are currently employed are going to change jobs once the employment market improves. Guess which group of people? The top performers.

I have been preaching in this newsletter for 18 months that the employment market is cyclical. And, that even though you have the upper hand with employees now, you better treat them right or pay the price when things turn. You are going to lose half your top performers when things get better. That is not a very pretty picture. You see, your average employees with stay with you while your top people move on.

You are losing your window to recruit and develop loyalty with the top performers. Please don't waste this golden opportunity.

When you see some of the statistics in the Business 2.0 articles about the difficulty of finding employees with the appropriate skills in the future, you will realize that you better start now.

Call us at 206-230-9400 or visit us at www.selectingwinners.com and see how we can help.

OK, here comes the bonus material about my new sales staffing breakthrough. I cave copied my Sales Hire Score Newsletter in total below. Enjoy!

Have a great month recruiting!

Barry Shamis



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Welcome to the September edition of my Sales Hire Score Newsletter. You probably noticed that the August edition was missing in action. I'll explain.

I have been working with one of my strategic partners on a very complex project for a client. I will outline the history and the project because there is a great lesson to be learned.

My client is completely redoing their business model and as a result their sales organization. They came to us with a number of questions and problems that needed to be solved. The questions that I worked on for the last few weeks were these:

1. How many people do I need in my sales organization?

2. When do I need to hire a new person?

3. How do I know if I have too many people?

4. Are my quotas (sales goals) for my reps realistic?

5. When am I justified in hiring a new salesperson?

Now you have to admit this is an interesting set of questions. I started to do some research and immediately found out that this is a pretty universal set of questions a sales executive would like answered and that the folks who were honest admitted they didn't have an objective way to get the answers.

This meant I had to attack the problems from ground zero and figure a way for a sales executive or business owner to answer these questions.

With the help of one of my partners we put together a model that identifies the variables, the constants, the impactors and the relationship between all these factors. What we determined was that there is a very specific way the pieces fit together to form a model.

We tested the model for a variety of business models (direct, indirect, multiple levels of reps, etc) and it worked for each. By simply working through a very logical process, answering questions about your sales goals, sales process, deal size you get your critical questions answered.

And the most important thing we discovered was that it did not involve rocket science. By answering some hard but reasonable questions and by making some simple calculations, you could get the answers to your sales staffing questions.

One of the key concept to come out o the project was capacity. How many deals can a salesperson carry? How much time can they spend selling? What is their close rate? These and a few other factors put together in the right way define the capacity of your salespeople. This is an all too often overlooked concept. It is so easy to say that you have a $10MM sales goal and have 10 salespeople so each should generate $1MM in sales. I wish it was that simple.

Now, I need your help. Here are the questions I have for you. How would you best benefit from this information? In what form would the information be best put to use? So here is what I would like to know:

1. Would this be of benefit to you?

2. What size (# of sales people) is your organization?

3. In what form would you most prefer this information:

A. Book B. CD-ROM C. One on one consulting D. In a workshop


Please let me know what you think so I can get this information to you in the best form. Send your feedback to staff@selectingwinners.com. I appreciate your response as this is truly the most remarkable breakthrough I have seen for sales staff planning.

I will report the results to you next month.

Have a great month recruiting!

Barry Shamis

PS. Here is a little sneak peak to give you an idea of the power of the model: Change your sales model to lower the amount of time it takes to close a deal and all your sales numbers are improved. The amount of time a deal is in your pipeline affects the number of people you need and your sales quotas.