Category Archives: Sales Force Management

Professional Selling and Social Media: An Excellent Conversation on Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

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Hola Todos!

I’m a fan of the Social Media Marketing podcast with Michael Stelzner and last week, he hit on a topic that is perfect for my deep dive into professional selling and social media nuggets.  In the podcast, Michael interviewed Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale: How to Build a Digitally Powered Marketing and Sales System to Better Prospect, Qualify and Close Leads.  Yes, that’s a pretty long title but nuggetworthy nonetheless.

I’m happy to say that Michael and Tom spend most of the interview discussing ways to use social media to find more leads.  Or perhaps I should re-word that last statement and say – social media can bring more leads to the sales person.  This is inbound marketing personified but with a better story (read=more nuggets) on how it can be used by sales people.

Something to check out today…

Best regards

Dr. Dan-o

 

Daniel M. Ladik, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor of Marketing

Stillman School of Business

Seton Hall University

 

 

 

 

If you want to be persuasive, DO NOT ignore your nonverbal communication

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Hola Todos!

I’ve said it more than once and I will say it 100 times more:  “less than 10% of total communication is actual words coming out of your mouth.”  If you want to be persuasive, do not neglect non-verbal communication.

In an excellent post that I had to share, Julie Bawden Davis detailed “5 body language poses that can sabotage your success.”  Item #4 on the list is eye contact and of all the non-verbal communication we give, I have always stressed that eye contact is the most critical.

Check out all 5 today…

Best regards

Dr. Dan-o

 

Daniel M. Ladik, Ph.D.,

 

Associate Professor of Marketing

Stillman School of Business

Seton Hall University

 

 

 

 

Some Nuggets on Professional Selling

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Hola Todos!

I am happy to say that I’m teaching Professional Selling again this fall semester so one would expect to see a few more selling nuggets over the next few months on DigNuggetville.

To begin, everyone needs to be persuasive in some way, shape or form but perhaps sales people need to more consistently polish their persuasion skills.  A recent article from Inc Magazine highlights 7 Things Really Persuasive People Do.  Item #2 – listening – is 100% spot on.

Second, Gary Vaynerchuk’s (CEO and founder of Vayner Media) most recent post is on storytelling – a passion of mine.  The best sales people do not just hammer features, advantages and benefits – the best sales people do a spectacular job of telling the story of the value proposition.

Finally, Professor Greg Marshall, one of mentors and the author of the sales text we are using this fall semester, is organizing an excellent session titled “Aligning Sales with Marketing.”  The session is sponsored by the American Marketing Association and will be held in San Francisco on October 3rd & 4th.  For those of us who cannot attend, Greg created an excellent podcast that highlights a few of the key nuggets that will be discussed in the session.

All of the above are great nuggets to add to your journal today…

Best regards,

Dr. Dan-o

 

Daniel M. Ladik, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor of Marketing

Stillman School of Business

Seton Hall University

 

 

 

 

Body Language Can Kill Your Interview (or Sale)!

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Hola Todos!

For those of you who have been tortured in one of my professional selling classes, you have heard me say, “less than 10% of total communication is actual words coming out of your mouth.”  In other words, your body language, your tone of voice, and your eye content are more important than the actual words you use in an interview or a client meeting.

Translation:  you can say everything right and still screw up the meeting!

The following article emphasizes this very point – particularly the eye contact.  In my opinion, non-verbal communication is one of the most overlooked elements in relationship building.

Something to think about today…

 

Best regards,

Dr. Dan-o

 

Daniel M. Ladik, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor of Marketing

Stillman School of Business

Seton Hall University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are High Performing Sales Women More Loyal To Their Firm, Than High Performing Sales Men?

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Hola Todos!

Research is clearly one of my passions (remember, I’m still aiming for tenure) and I want to get back to one of research streams from a few years back.

Early on in my Ph.D. program, I worked on an interesting sales force study with my professor at the time Greg Marshall, as well as, co-authors Felicia Lassk and William Moncrief examining a sales person’s propensity to leave the firm.  Previous papers found that high performing sales people had a higher propensity to leave the firm.  After all, these sales people were at the top of their game and perhaps it was time move on to a higher paid gig or more prestigious company.  Makes sense right?

What made our paper unique was we examined different time periods (e.g., propensity to leave the firm at 3 months vs. 6 months vs. 1 year vs. 2 years), as well as, male vs. female sales people.  The data examined in the paper was robust including 1042 industrial salespeople representing 61 different companies and 15 of the 20 standard industrial classification (SIC) manufacturing categories.

We found that low performing salesmen and saleswomen behaved the same; both had an equally high propensity to leave the firm because they knew they had to due to their low performance.

By contrast, high performing sales women had a significantly lower propensity to leave the firm across the time intervals described above compared to their male counterparts.  For high performing men, their propensity to leave the firm increased from 3 months to 6 months and then again to 1 year.  These salesmen probably had some rough time estimate to how long it would take to land a new gig plus I’m sure they wanted hang around in the short term to collect some commissions coming to them.  Beyond that, their eyes were on moving on and moving out.  For the salesmen, job satisfaction with pay was most significant for the high performers.  For the saleswomen, job satisfaction with co-workers was the most significant for high performers.

As with all academic research, these findings need to be replicated to strengthen its claims.  In addition, I would like to strengthen the job performance measure.  The original study featured self-report job performance and I would like to add managerial job performance measures as well.  Finally, the original study featured a 75/25 male to female ratio and I would like to have more of a balance in the sample.

I’m currently looking for companies with a large in-house sales force to explore these findings.  If you know of a firm I can talk to, drop me an email and I’ll take it from there.

Best regards,

Dr. Dan-o

 

Daniel M. Ladik, Ph.D.,

 

Associate Professor of Marketing

Stillman School of Business

Seton Hall University