The Hunter vs. The Farmer

In our world, there are a lot more Farmer types than Hunter types. The people that interview and hire you, such as HR Managers, Sales managers, and even some Managing Directors, tend to be Farmers. This means that they are more likely to “buy in” Farmers to their organisation – and if you happen to be a Hunter, it is much harder to come across as someone they would like to hire, and much harder to show them your sales abilities in the interview if the interview is geared towards showing off Farmers’ skills. It’s like trying to show how fast you can swim, when you’re made to fly!

Bottom line: It’s important to know your sales style so you can present yourself well during an interview. If you are a natural new business style salesperson rather than an account manager styles you will most likely be the exact opposite of the people who hire you.

Know how you are coming across to ensure you are really understood and appreciated….and get the job!

More on BDMS vs Account Managers here

All about SIP Recruitment: Why we write your adverts for you?

All about SIP recruitment program is that we write the adverts for you.  We use your logo, your identity, and we write elaborate detailed adverts that are designed to attract a broader and deeper candidate pool.

So if you are a well recognized international brand, you may be swarmed with candidates.  But to find those rare and few sales people who are suited to your job, we need as big a candidate pool as possible.  The SIP software means that you only need to relate and to talk to the ones that are an exact match.  So the staff who takes care of the majority of the people who are not going to be suited to your selling position, so it’s very time efficient.  We attract the candidates.  You only interview the small population who are suited to your job.

More videos about SIP:  Why you should recruit with SIP

All about SIP Recruitment: Best Sales Recruitment tool in the world!

 

Sales Inventory Profile. I like to call it SIP, is the world’s best recruitment program because at its core is a selling IQ program.

We’ve recruited hundreds of sales people around the country; 70% of those are still in their jobs, 70%! That’s a huge retention rate for sales people. Many industries are averaging 10%. It’s a recruitment system. It has an IQ-based program at its heart that identifies the 75 attributes required to be successful at selling. From these attributes, we are able to detail exactly what’s in a sales person your candidate will become, whether they can cope which is really important to some new business jobs but not all. Whether they are generally a new business or account manager; and whether they have, if they are an account manager, the attention to detail and long term perspective.

We help you with the advertising so that you attract the biggest pool of candidates possible because the number that is really qualified is very small. The program does the short listing. Every candidate who applies to your role has to complete the SIP process, and then you only interview from the shortlist of people who are capable of doing your job.

More on how SIP started: A Lesson in History

All about SIP recruitment: A Brief History of SIP


Sales Inventory Profile. Its acronym is SIP and it has been in the market since 2008. The research was conducted in the mid 1990s.

When I was offering sales training, I was going around the world saying, “Let me help your sales team.” “Let me make them do better.” The biggest objection to my sales training was nothing to do with the training or the quality of the content, or its workshop material. The greatest objection I’ve got through the training was the candidates. My customers will tell me over and over again. No matter who we train them with. No matter what program we put them through. They’re not getting better. One of my clients said that he would spend all of his budget on finding out who could sell before he trains them, and that has been my mission since 1994. It is to work out who can sell before you recruit them and then before you train them.

So you got people in a company that might be good at selling, don’t move them across and say you got _____, find out before you move them. If you move people who are currently not in selling to a sales job and they failed, you’ve lost them forever. Nobody wants to go back to their old life, their old job. We’re able to test your current staff and find out if any of them has this heated dominant sales potential and we are definitely able to recruit only amongst that pool of candidates who are able to sell.

More about SIP and the value of recruiting with SIP for your business

The Role of Fear in Selling

We get it when salespeople freeze up in fear when they start out. But what about when prospects refuse to listen no matter how convincing you are because they are in fear?

How does this work and how do you help them overcome this and close the sale?

To understand how to achieve anything , we need to look at the psychology of fear – the why’s, what’s and how’s of customer fear and overcoming it.

Let’s have a look at this diagram of a person’s head. Let’s pretend it’s transparent so we can see what’s going on inside.

Now at the very top of your spinal cord is the first part of the brain. That’s the part of the brain that all animals have in common. Among its medical terms, It’s also called the primal brain.

All animals have that sort of brain at the top of their spinal cord, and what that is designed to do is take in information from the senses. Your eyes, your nose, your mouth, from your body in terms of touch and your ears.

 Primal and spinal pic 1 blog 1Now what does this primal brain do with all that information it receives from the senses? Essentially, it is responsible for keeping you alive. It manages all of your bodily functions, eating, digestion, removal, and all those good things.

Why it is important to you to understand this process is that predominantly, it is also a fear filter. When something is coming in from the senses, it is the first and dominant decision processing facility. We’re talking about how people decide to buy the Ferrari, the house, or the new pair of shoes. It’s exactly the same process. So this is the bit that can make selling a huge pain for you.

The first thing we have to think about – our primal brain has to think about – is whether that data about the new shoes/car etc passes our fear filter. And if it doesn’t pass the fear filter, as you already would know, then the primal brain triggers the flight, fight or freeze response.

Activating the fear reactor shuts down the rest of the brain, turns off our modern and bigger part of the brain and sends data back to the rest of the body to flee or freeze or fight. It quite simply makes decision making impossible.

fear filter blog 1

So you have to be careful and aware that when people walk into your shop, car dealership, or you enter their home as a real estate agent, you could be sending people into instantaneous freeze, fight or flee response.

So how does it affect my ability to sell if the brain is in fear respond mode?

As mentioned, when in fear response mode, the larger part of the brain, the modern one, will shut down, meaning it will not be able to process information for logic. So…logical thinking? Gone. Rational thinking? Gone. Decisions making is still working as that is in the primal brain, but after the fear response is activated the only decisions the primal brain is willing  to make are about survival.

So until the fear reaction is resolved, no other useful processing will occur.

You can understand this through the diagram where the Modern Brain is being “blocked” by the Fear Filter. The Fear Filter can thus be seen as the gatekeeper to which the Modern Brain can be accessed (or not).

fear filter vs action blog 1

So really, if you have triggered the fear filter, nothing you say after that, nothing coming in from those ears is being pushed through to the logic part of your client’s brain. They are not thinking about return on investment or how glamorous they will look in that new Ferrari or how fashionable the new shoes are, or any other positive thing that your product gives them.

They won’t be thinking about any of it.

They will be feeling and acting on fear.

That’s something you need to be aware of in how you present yourself, how you present your product and how you conduct the conversation with a client.

So how do you get past this tricky fear filter and start selling?

Read on about the role of trust in overcoming the fear filter for the second part of the article.