As a recruiter who is now going on his 9th year in this business I can say that this article by George Bradt (from Forbes) is absolutely true.......RP

Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions

They are as follows:

1.  Can you do the job (Strengths)?
2.  Will you love the job (Motivation)?
3.  Can we tolerate working with you(Fit)?

That’s it.  Those three.  Think back, every question you’ve ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions.  Each question potentially may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a variation on one of these topics: Strengths, Motivation, and Fit.

As a sales recruiter I often have clients  reach out to me when recruiting sales executives and inevitably the question arises.  Where will this individual be working?  10 years ago the answer was more than likely in our office.  These days,however, that trend is changing quickly as more and more companies go to a virtual sales model.  As a former "territory" sales manager I can tell you that I was a bit skeptical about growing my team virtually.  However I've learned to accept and downright embrace the idea of having your team work virtually.  With web access, IM, Virtual Phones, and mobile devices the office is anywhere you need it to be.  As this article below details hiring/retaining a stellar virtual sales force and running a virtual empire is only limited by your imagination.......RP

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Dig Deeper: Running a Virtual Business


Managing a Virtual Sales Force: Creating an Effective Team Dynamic

Like any great sales team, virtual or not, you'll want to be sure that you're finding the right person for right the job. David Clemons and Dr. Michael Kroth spent the last few years researching how the best leaders manage their virtual workers. For their research, which was published in their recent book, Managing the Mobile Workforce: Leading, Building, and Sustaining Virtual Teams, Clemons and Kroth analyze anecdotes, data, and advice from 39 executives on how to become better at achieving results in a virtual space. According to Clemons and Kroth, one of the most important aspects to manage a virtual sales team is to have clearly defined roles and expectations for each member of the team.

"Entrepreneurs have this idea that they have to be everything," says David Clemons, who also manages his own company with a virtual team, Achieve Labs. "They have to be able to give it up. They're not going trust anyone until they know that the person that is in that role is performing at the level that gives the entrepreneur confidence and satisfaction. So the entrepreneur sits back and holds his breath for the first stage until the employee starts giving measurable results, and then the entrepreneur can start letting their hair down a little bit, giving more freedom to move forward." 

A virtual sales team may conjure an image of employees working around the world, but the reality is that it should function like any other sales team. "The need to build trust is true whether they're sitting across from you in the office or not, but it becomes more important for virtual workers," says Kroth. "The principles of leading are not different. It's the practices that make the difference."

According to Karen Sobel Lojeski, a professor in the department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University, the challenges of virtual workers are not limited to geography. Since 2002, Lojeski has been studying the concept of "virtual distance," which includes the idea that the technology people use to connect can actually drive people apart. According to Lojeski, managers must recognize that virtual workers are not just a voice on the other end of a phone call; to achieve real results from a sales force, a manager must relate to them on a human level. "Remember that there's a human being on the other side of the line," she says. "You need to work on establishing affinity and building a relationship that can be trusted." For example, managers should be willing to offer information about their personal lives, and be receptive to listening to the issues their employees are concerned about. In essence, you're trying to recreate an office dynamic where people can actually get to know one another.

Dig Deeper: Why You Need to Hire a Virtual Assistant

Managing a Virtual Sales Force: Coming Face-to-Face With the Challenges

Without verbal or facial cues, it's extremely hard to understand what another person is thinking, says Richard Lepsinger. "Without them, it's really hard to read how the other person is receiving your message, or to even know what to say next," he says. "You don't even realize how critical that is until it's not there."

Lepsinger advises his clients to use video conferencing as often as possible, and try as much as possible to stay away from e-mail. "It's about creating a 'high touch' environment," he says.  "Fortunately, there are a lot of inexpensive and easy to access  ways to connect. It's immediate. It's real time. It's present." Of course, having on-site meetings every so often will be a great tool to connect virtual workers, though they can be expensive.

Among some of those tools are WebEx and Skype for video conferencing, and Yammer, which is basically a Facebook for the office.

Another challenge arises when it comes to hiring practices. Who do you hire, and how do you know that person will 'fit in' within your organization if they don't spend any time physically there? Clemons and Kroth describe how mangers can identify  "behavioral job demands" to determine if the candidate's personality is a good fit for the position. Once those demands are defined, it's easier to ask the right questions during the interview process. "If you don't have the right person who behaviorally can do that role, you're not going to have success," David Clemons says. "You have to know who you're getting."

Dig Deeper: When to Hire a Sales Consultant

Managing a Virtual Sales Force: Strategies to Consider

"It all comes down to the leader," says Richard Lepsinger. When you're managing a virtual salesforce, it's not enough to merely expect that your team will deliver results. If you're leading a team, you'll need to set the tone for not only how employees interact with potential customers, but also amongst each other. From the very beginning, the leader must identify the boundaries, and enforce them constantly.

Before you launch a virtual sales team, Kroth and Clemons urge that it's necessary to have the communication technology built into the company culture. Employees should understand how and when to get in touch, and how often they're expected to check in. In Managing the Mobile Workforce, Kroth and Clemons present these seven tips to consider when your sales force is deployed.

1.     Center of Excellence: Build a leadership that understands the challneges of virtual working.
2.     Integrate mobile practices and technology into existing systems.
3.     Keep policies straightforward and technology simple to use.
4.     Define roles and expectations.
5.     Collaborate.
6.     Train, learn, and improve.
7.     Support mobile workers as if they were customers.

Ultimately, Kroth and Clemons say that it's up to the leader to motivate his or her sales team. In a virtual setting, employees will lack the face-to-face feedback that's often built in to office culture. Virtual employees can begin to feel like nothing they do matters; after all, it's hard to see tangible results far from the nucleus of the company. A good leader, in their words, is one that can "move someone with low or marginal self-expectations to the belief that he or she can climb mountains."

There’s nothing 100% foolproof and guaranteed, but good methods of pre-qualifying candidates regarding counteroffers will make your life less stressful and more financially rewarding. In addition, if you are straight in your qualifying methods you may even weed out the candidate who would accept the counteroffer and possibly leave you hanging.

First, I know the word “never” is a strong one. I don’t use it lightly or without substantial consideration as my world, both personal and professional, is gray. In this case I believe accepting a counteroffer is positive in a fraction of the cases and it’s just not worth the risk.

It can be career suicide. A counteroffer may be both tempting and flattering to the candidate in question. It may be very appealing to a candidate who isn’t truly committed to leaving his job. I have known people who accepted counteroffers and, most often, they regret their actions.

As a recruiter you must resist the temptation to persuade your candidates into accepting your offer if you have even the slightest hint that the position in question isn’t the right fit. It’s hard, especially if/when you’re depending on acceptance to make a living. We know people buy on emotion, and enticing someone to take your offer (or the current company getting their employee to accept a counteroffer) by getting him excited and hopeful is just plain out of integrity. Temptation can be very seductive and hard to resist. As George Bernard Shaw said, “I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.” That said, let’s look a some of the reasons not to accept a counteroffer. Make sure you’re using these reasons for them to decline a counteroffer wisely throughout the recruiting cycle.

1. The current employer is attempting to cover their tush. When you quit they lose money. When you quit the manager looks bad. Better to keep you on board until they can find a replacement. If that happens your pink slip will follow in short order.
2. You become a fidelity risk to your current employer. You’ve threatened to quit once. It’s only a matter of time before you do it again, and smart companies won’t allow themselves to be put into this situation. You will never be perceived the same to them once you’ve threatened to quit and decided to stay.
3. Any situation which causes an employee to seek outside offers is suspect. For example, if money is your issue why does it take a full court press for your employer to realize they need to pay you more? If you’re worth more money now, why weren’t you worth it 15 minutes earlier?
4. The reasons for you wanting to quit will still remain, even if they are temporarily shaded.
5. Quality, well-run companies won’t give counteroffers…ever! How would you feel if one of your employees forced you into something? ”If you don’t X, then I’m quitting.” I know I’d be angry. I’d be more than angry. If they don’t like working for you then they should go.

If you do get the urge to accept a counteroffer, just be prepared for the consequences whenever they do show up.

I often hear my clients lament that they wish they had a more professional sales force.  That idea of a “professional sales force” gets a lot of conversation in sales management and sales executive circles.  But what exactly does it mean?  And why is it a good thing?

Here’s one person’s opinion.
           
First, let’s eliminate those things that don’t matter.  There are a number of misconceptions about the attributes of a professional sales person that center around the externals of a sales person’s situation.  For example, being a professional sales person has absolutely nothing to do with the product or service the sales person sells. 

I have met very professional sales people who have sold some of the strangest things imaginable.  In almost every open-enrollment seminar that I present, I come across someone who sells something that I have never even heard of before.  In my own experience, for example, I have sold cake mixes, men’s shoes, men’s suits and underwear, surgical staplers, sophisticated amplification equipment for hearing impaired children, business opportunities, life insurance, catheters, hand soap and yes, even sales people (as a sales recruiter), to name just a few.
           
Here’s another irrelevant external issue:  Being a professional sales person has nothing to do with the folks to whom you sell.  There are people in this country who sell something to every single job description and organization imaginable.  Some of the customer types to whom my clients have sold include farmers, both crop growers and live stock growers; tool and die shops, tier one, two and three automotive suppliers; schools at every level, and government agencies of all kinds; the military, grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores and retailers of every kind; contractors of every ilk, including electrical, mechanical, HVAC, plumbing; builders both residential and commercial, etc.  I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  In each and every one of these industries, there are professional sales people.
           
Being a professional sales person has nothing to do with the company for whom the sales person works.  There are thousands of independent representatives in this country, for example, who work for themselves.  Other sales people work for small family-held businesses, others work for large multi-nationals.  Thousands sell for distributors; tens of thousands sell for retailers of every possible thing; more thousands sell for manufacturers and service providers of every type.  Professional sales people are sprinkled throughout every one of these business types.

Finally, being a professional sales person has nothing to do with how long he’s been at it, his educational background or experience level.  I have encountered many sales people who have been selling for over twenty years, for example, who don’t come close to fitting into the mold of a professional sales person.  On the other hand, last week, I met a 21 year old, in his first sales job, who was very professional. 
           
I have met professional sales people who had only a high school degree, and many with college and post-graduate degrees.  None of these things, which are external to the sales person’s character, matter.
           
Now that we’ve eliminated the things that a professional sales person is not, let’s look at the other side and examine the marks of a profession sales person.  “Professional” is the name we choose to put on a certain set of character traits and attitudes that reside inside a sales person.

1. A Professional sales person is proud to be a sales person.
Can you imagine a doctor who is embarrassed to admit that he is a doctor?  Or a nurse who covers up that fact?  A teacher who doesn’t want anyone to know what he does for a living?  A firefighter ashamed to admit it?  A lawyer who pretends to be somebody else?  (Well, ok, maybe on this one.)

You see, in every profession, the members of that profession are proud to be a part of it.  Amazingly, that is not the case with the majority of sales people.  They don’t like to think of themselves as sales people.  Instead, they make up other terms.  They are account executives, product specialists, customer liaison agents, mobile customer service representatives, to name a few. 

On the other hand, the professionals understand the challenging nature of what they do for a living, the importance it has for their families, their companies and the economy as a whole.  The work of the average sales person in this nation supports four other families within the organization.  They are proud of that and proud to be sales people.

They don’t hide it or apologize for it, they revel in it.

2.  A professional sales person likes his job.
Not only are they proud to be sales people, but they like being sales people.  They like the freedom and autonomy they have on the job, and they relish the responsibility that comes with that.  They thrive on the customer contact, and are energized by the constant challenge.  They get a high from closing a big or difficult sale, and aren’t afraid to celebrate those successes. 
That doesn’t mean that they relish every aspect of every job.  I’ve had a sales manager, for example, that I was embarrassed to introduce to a customer.  I’ve sold products that didn’t excite me, and worked for companies whose management styles and cultures left me looking for something else.  In all of these negative situations, though, I never disliked what I did.

3.  A professional sales person believes he is a professional.
He doesn’t see what he does for a living as just a job.  He understands that it is one of the most fundamental and important functions, not only in his company, but in the economy in general.  He realizes that he touches and influences hundreds, if not thousands, of people, that his work supports and enables a number of other families, and that he represents much of the visible face of the company that employs them.  These are serious responsibilities, and the professional sales person understands that to do this well, he must see himself as a professional.

4.  A professional sales person continually invests in his own development.
Over the twenty plus years that I have been training sales people, educating sales managers and working to transform sales organizations, I have stumbled upon an observation which bothers me every time I communicate it.  It’s this:  Out of a group of any 20 sales people, only one has invested $25.00 of his own money on his own development and improvement in the past 12 months.

The non-professional sales people don’t think it’s their responsibility to improve themselves.  They won’t buy a book, or attend a seminar without their bosses paying for it and requiring it of them.  To them, it’s just a job.

The professionals invest in themselves.  Since they see themselves as professionals, they understand that they must constantly and continually “sharpen the saw.”  They buy the books, get the newsletters, attend the conferences, listen to the podcasts, etc. 

Can you imagine your CPA, as he delivers your tax return, mentioning that he hasn’t spent any time updating himself in years?  Or the doctor, as he goes into surgery to work on your spouse or child, off-handedly tossing off the fact that “it’s been years since he bothered to take a class or upgrade his skills.”

These seem like silly examples.  But most sales people (95 percent) don’t bother to take the initiative to upgrade their skills and develop their competencies.  Only the professionals do.

5.  A professional sales person always acts with the best interests of his company and his customer above his own.
There is, resident in the psyche of every professional sales person, an obligation to “serve.”  Ultimately, the professional sales person does serve two masters:  his customers and his company.  A professional understands that the sales he makes are the tangible expressions of  win/win solutions for the customer as well as profitable transactions for his company.

The professional will not “push” an inappropriate solution onto a customer, just to make a sale.  He’s in it for the long term, understanding that his reputation as a professional is worth far more than any individual deal.  “Integrity” is the overriding personality trait, and adherence to a strict code of ethics is the specific expression.

The unprofessional sales person sees his company’s management as, under the worst scenario, the enemy with whom to contend, and under the best, as a somewhat less than competent irritant to be tolerated.  The professional understands that he is an employee of the company, and has a responsibility to nurture the company’s interests.  He is mindful of his need to provide a return on the company’s investment in him, and seeks continually to increase his profitability to his employer.

6.  A professional sales person recognizes a responsibility that is larger than just the job. 
A professional sales person, by virtue of the demands of his job, naturally develops exceptional “people” skills.  He knows how to get things done, and how to work effectively with a variety of people.  These are skills that are helpful in his communities as well as his position.  Since he’s a professional, he invests some of his time in the larger community, serving on boards and task forces, coaching the elementary kids, adding his input to PTO meetings, etc.  He gives a portion of his income to those less fortunate than himself.

He understands that he is one of the world’s more fortunate individuals and accepts the responsibility to pay it forward.  I once heard this expression:  “Service is the rent you pay for the position you occupy in society.”  Professional sales people occupy a favored position, and accept their responsibility to pay the rent.

A professional sales force is an incredibly valuable asset to any organization, and the acquisition and development of a professional sales force is one of a businesses greatest accomplishments

The more time I spend recruiting the more I agree with Tom (author of the article below)  the difference between good sales org's and great one's is training and coaching.  Of course using a recruiter that knows how to find talent doesn't hurt either!.....RP

By Tom Stanfill, CEO of Aslan Training & Development

I have spent the last 20 years singularly focused on answering one question – How do you improve a sales rep’s performance? I know there may be higher callings in life, but this is the path I’ve chosen...and this path has led me to the realization of what is the most important ingredient to not only catapult a rep’s performance, but their level of engagement as well.

So what’s the key? What do all the high performing sales organizations know that maybe you are missing? It is not technology, or focusing on the right metrics, or even training (hard for me to say since I run a training company). It is...(drum roll please)…coaching. I know it’s not real sexy, and it certainly won’t land me on the cover of Time, but it’s the truth.

“Tom, tell me something I don’t know. Everyone knows the importance of coaching.” I agree, but if everyone already knows the importance of coaching, then why are so very few sales organizations coaching their people? If they are, why aren’t they doing it well? I think it has a lot to do with how the role of a coach is being defined. Most organizations confuse coaching with performance evaluations. I’m a big believer in developing a scorecard and ensuring each rep knows where they stand, but knowing “your score” just highlights the problem and offers nothing about the solution. The sports world really understands this, but the business world, in general, is bogged down in metrics.

I played football in college, and I can’t imagine if they followed the same development plan as most sales organizations do. “Hey Tom, for our opener, we are going to be playing Alabama. I really need you to block well and never drop a pass. So do your best this week preparing, and I will check in with you after the game on Sunday, and we will discuss your performance. Good luck, and just remember – we really need to win.” Anyone remotely familiar with sports knows that this will never happen. Why? Because you can’t win games if you don’t help your players develop their skills. In sports you spend a large majority of your time under the guidance of a coach developing your skills, and much less time reviewing your performance. This usually happened on Sunday, after the game; and if your performance was below par, you never had to guess how you played (usually with chairs flying across the room and the quality of your heritage openly questioned). In most sales organizations, we just have the "Sunday meeting" – “Suzie your %s are down, and you’re not hitting your productivity goals. Now go do better and I will see you in two weeks.” That’s not coaching. Coaching is about improving the future and way too many managers just report on the past. They sit on the side lines, filling out their scorecard with the hopes that things will get better – I'm here to tell you, they won’t.

The Application

So as a sales leader, what is your approach to developing your team? Do you typically spend most of your time in “Sunday meetings” vs. helping each rep build their skills through true coaching? If you’ve recognized that, you may need to change your approach. Here are a few tips to consider:

• Don’t be a player-coach. You can’t coach if you don’t observe your reps' performance.
• Protect your time to coach. Under-performing reps will require at least one coaching session per month. If your plate is too full with administrative tasks, you need to ask yourself if you will really get fired for lack of administrative processes or for an under-performing team?
• Recognize the difference between skills and knowledge. Skills must be observed and developed in one-on-one sessions with the reps. Knowledge gaps on the other hand can be addressed by delegating that responsibility to the rep, reducing the time required in a coaching session.
• Focus on your reps' desire. If a team member is unwilling to change, don’t waste your time coaching them. A rep’s commitment to the process is just as important as yours. Communicate that you are more than willing to invest in their developmental process...when they are committed to following through on their development plan. This will free-up precious time to invest in those reps who are passionate about improving (more on this in the next Aslan Application).
• Assess your percentage of positive to negative feedback. Coaching is about looking forward and helping the rep achieve their goals. This should always be a positive interaction regardless of their current level of performance. One simple way to build your awareness about your approach is to watch for signs that reps are looking forward to the next session. If not, your coaching interaction probably feels a bit like a “Sunday meeting" after a big loss.

So with that, I challenge you to incorporate these tips and expand your role to actually coach. Move beyond just delivering a backward-gazing performance scorecard during a "Sunday meeting" to a productive, positive, future-looking coaching session. Although it will require greater intentionality, I guarantee that you and your reps will see the results you are both looking for.

Stay tuned for Part II of this article in the next Aslan Application, where we will identify and address your biggest challenge in making this happen. Until then, if you have any questions or would like to discuss what you have read further, please don't hesitate to call me.

About the Author

Founding partner and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Stanfill has focused his 17 years of experience consulting and developing training programs for inside and field sales organizations. He is widely recognized as a thought leader in the field of account management, acquisition and growth. Tom has published numerous articles on the subject of selling and is a frequent speaker at the most prestigious industry shows.

Prior to starting Aslan, Tom founded and ran eS2 (Enterprise Sales Solutions) – a business-to-business contract sales force that was recognized as one of the 4th fastest growing company in its category. eS2 employed over one hundred sales representatives providing lead generation, account development, and inside sales support to its clients. With the combination of extensive sales and sales management experience and more than a decade focused on developing training programs, Tom is well positioned as the head of program development and the sales subject matter expert.

This is an excellent take on the age old question of when is the right time to hire?  The answer.....well it may surprise you....RP

Although he was on the verge of exhaustion, Kania wanted to be sure the timing was absolutely right before Software Link brought its first salesperson on staff. To Kania, that meant generating enough sales leads for a new person to follow up on. He says he was getting close to that point. Then he got an offer he couldn't refuse. Sage Software, the corporation that makes the applications that Kania sells, proposed to give him $10,000 toward hiring and training a field salesperson. The money could be used on anything from putting candidates through a battery of personality tests to subsidizing salary in the early months to providing the new hire with coaching services up to a year after he or she is sent into the field. The only condition? Kania had to fill the job within 100 days.

Incentive programs are common in the software industry, where, instead of relying on a direct sales force, corporations like Sage often turn to small resellers to pitch their applications to a vast market of customers. Incentives as extensive and generous as Sage's are rare, however. For the past three years, the company (formerly known as Best Software) has invested $1 million a year to provide 100 resellers with $10,000 each to hire a salesperson. The initiative, which Sage calls the 100/100 program, provides interesting insights into why entrepreneurs delay recruiting salespeople--sometimes until their companies falter--and what mistakes businesses make in the hiring process.

The program came into being after Sage discovered, in a survey of its resellers, that an alarming number of these businesses counted the owner as the one and only active salesperson. At Sage, which develops a smorgasbord of business software, executives debated how to persuade more resellers to put, in the words of Taylor Macdonald, who oversees the reseller network for Sage, "more feet on the street." The problem, as always, was convincing them that the potential reward outweighed the risk. "Our partners are always hesitant to hire," Macdonald says. "There are legions of stories of hiring a new salesperson and after 60 to 90 days it doesn't work out and then they're out a whole lot of time and money. Then they become gun-shy." The 100/100 program was designed to overcome these fears.

Brant Wadsworth, the owner of Digitek, a Phoenix-based software reseller with $2 million in revenue, is typical of the CEOs Sage wanted to reach. "I had hired salespeople before, but the process to get them up to speed was difficult, and they didn't work out," he says. "The hardest thing about finding good salespeople is that they're all professional actors. Every salesperson is giving you their best pitch when you're interviewing."

Using the $10,000 that Sage provided, Wadsworth decided to try again. To avoid making another bad hire, he engaged Opus Productivity, a personality profiling company based in Laguna Hills, California. Sage had recommended Opus to its resellers, and had let Opus compile data on the top performers at Sage's top 25 resellers around the country to create a profile of the most successful software salespeople. (What defines success? Sage has come to value the people who are most adept at landing new accounts more highly than the top performers by revenue. This distinction reflects Sage's self-interest, because software makers earn less money from resellers' existing clients than from new accounts.)

After the initial round of interviews and tests, Wadsworth created a short list of six candidates. Then managers at both Sage and Opus interviewed Wadsworth's selections and gave him their feedback. Sage was happy to have a role, Macdonald says, to guard against resellers hiring "their brother-in-law or a buddy from church."

That was two years ago. Wadsworth's hire quickly became the company's top earner and was part of a three-person sales team that landed 31 new accounts in a year. "It was awesome," Wadsworth says. "She was my very first long-term sales hire ever."

Not every company that participates in the 100/100 program enjoys such immediate results, of course. In 2005, Sean Mohan, the founder and CEO of Strategic Sales Systems, a St. Louis reseller with $1.5 million in sales, took Sage up on its offer. He dutifully put candidates through personality testing, but when a low score seemed to discredit his favorite prospect, he decided to go with his gut.

Mohan thought the person he hired, though inexperienced, had great potential. But soon after she came to work, Mohan realized he'd screwed up. As the personality tests had suggested, the candidate's natural exuberance did not make up for a lack of aggressiveness and experience. "Some of the weaknesses we identified in the screening process turned out to be the problem," Mohan admits. After several unhappy months, the salesperson left.

Last year, Sage allowed a repentant Mohan to try again--so long as he was willing to give greater weight to the personality scores. The second hire was productive after only three months on the job, and by his fifth month, he had brought in three customers the company wouldn't have gotten otherwise for sales totaling about $90,000. Despite the happy ending, Mohan's fear of sales hiring persists. "Any time you hire a salesperson," he says, "there's a lot of risk. Until they start selling, you don't know what you're going to get out of it."

Sage, meanwhile, continues to try to get better at predicting who will succeed in the ultracompetitive software industry. The company is quick to point out that the turnover rate for salespeople sponsored by the 100/100 program has been very good. After one year, 78 percent of the salespeople hired as part of the first class were still employed with the resellers who hired them; the two-year figure was 65 percent. For typical sales hires, the software maker estimates, Sage's resellers retain only 32 percent after one year and 15 percent after two.

Despite these enviable statistics, Sage has spent a lot of energy looking at the small group of salespeople who didn't last. Low test scores are common. Feuding between the new salesperson and the owner of the business is another recurring theme. To figure out the root causes of these clashes, Sage put some of the software entrepreneurs through the same personality test as the sales candidates.

The findings revealed that, as a group, the business owners were more introverted and patient than the top salespeople. The best salespeople, meanwhile, were impatient and aggressive, and needed a lot of affirmation and encouragement. Business owners didn't see the need to celebrate every small step on the way to making a sale, which is exactly what the salespeople craved.

As a result of that discovery, Sage has begun to offer training to business owners on how they can become fair and supportive sales managers. The company also has beefed up training for the new recruits. Soon after they are hired, rookie salespeople are whisked away to an intense, weeklong boot camp. The sessions combine various selling exercises, including question-and-answer forums with real customers and what Macdonald calls "the dreaded role-playing," wherein recruits are videotaped making sales pitches and then critiqued (read: roasted) by their classmates and instructors.

Back at home, new salespeople are shadowed for up to a year by coaches who engage them in regular conference calls and Web seminars, providing them with encouragement, helpful feedback, and an outlet to vent whatever frustrations they may have with their new job or their new boss. The support provided in the early months, some resellers say, can be more valuable than the $10,000 subsidy.

That was Stan Kania's experience. In a twist Sage may not have anticipated, Kania used his $10,000 to poach a young salesperson named Dan Gimbert from Sage's nearby software support center. The 27-year-old rep was new to field sales but he had valuable experience at inside sales. "It took him 90 days to understand the process, and he was somewhat discouraged he hadn't made a sale yet," Kania recalls.

With the help of his coach and with Kania's feedback, Gimbert landed his first sale in his fourth month of employment. "Then it was one after another," Kania says. With average sales of $30,000 per account, Gimbert contributed heavily to Software Link's sales growth that year, which increased the company's top line by $1 million. Not bad for the very first salesperson Kania ever hired