CNNMoney.com Small Business
Fortune Small business
How do I find a great sales manager?
QUESTION: Scott Zimmer, Owner and President, AAA Labor Minneapolis
Where can I find a top-notch sales manager (who would also be the sole salesperson, for now) to help me expand the clientele for my
temporary-staffing firm? I’m willing to offer a very competitive pay package, but it’s difficult to find skilled, experienced candidates.
ANSWER: By Anne Fisher, Fortune Small Business contributor
Dear Scott: As sluggish as the overall job market has turned, demand for the best salespeople is holding strong, so they have plenty of
opportunities to choose from.
Kathleen Steffey, owner of a Tampa-based sales-recruiting firm called Naviga Business Services, wonders if your job postings contain
enough information to entice a top sales pro. The ads should "mention your sales quota if you have one," she says. "That will scare off the
ones who can’t meet it. You should also describe exactly what business you’re in, your company’s culture, and how much experience your
ideal candidate should have. For a salesperson who can take the reins and grow revenues, that would be about seven years minimum." If
you’re willing to let the person telecommute occasionally, she adds, say so: "That’s important to a lot of good salespeople."
As you assess candidates, Steffey says, look for "someone whose references say they met or exceeded their targets. Don’t believe anyone
who makes excuses, blaming the tough economy or some other factor for not meeting their goals." Before you sit down with applicants for
the job, Steffey urges you to read Topgrading for Sales: World-Class Methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives, by
Bradford D. Smart and Greg Alexander. Its compact 113 pages will tell you, Steffey says, "everything you need to know to make a great
sales hire."
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Gulf Coast Business Review
Gulf Coast Business Review
Prostrate economy, but still recruiting
While many recruiting firms are struggling and some are going out of business, Tampa
getting new business every week.
Part of the reason is that Naviga recruits sales executives and sales people, staff members who bring in revenues for co
Kathleen Steffey, chief executive officer and founder of Naviga, has grown the firm to 12 employees since its beginning in 2002 a
serves clients across the country. Its offices are on Bayshore Boulevard in South Tampa.
While Naviga revenues grew at a clip of 110% a year until 2008, the economy has forced the company to shift its business strategy from
relying on Web leads and customers coming to the firm to penetrating its existing customer base.
"We need to stay in front of them," Steffey told Coffee Tal
That has meant things like viral marketing and sending out sales trends and best practices data. It also created a blog for
salesjournal.com to get information, talk to each other and post best practices.
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New York City Journal
New York Journal
Jobs For Salespeople Continue To Grow
by Alice V. Nelson
"...Salaries for talented, experienced
salespeople can be outstanding. Kathleen
Steffey, founder and president of Naviga
Business Services - a national sales/
marketing recruiting firm that does business
in every metropolitan area of the U.S., said
those with experience can earn a six-figure
income.
"If that person has five to seven years of
sales experience, they can make $100,000
to $200,000 base income plus commission,"
Steffey said.
Steffey’s company, in business for the
past six years, recruits and screens creamof-
the-crop candidates before sending
them on to a hiring company. And even
through the process of screening dozens of
prospective resumes, only the top one to
three individuals are recommended for a
business seeking that stellar candidate.
"For example, Clean Energy Fuels Corp.
has a branch in Westchester County," Steffey
pointed out. "They recently hired a sales
representative to manage that territory. I
received more than 2,000 resumes for that
one job."
Out of the mass of paperwork, Steffey
picked 30 for her recruiters to interview..."
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David Stein - Review Article
Dave Stein
Sales Hiring From a Recruiter’s Perspective
As ESR continues to assess our clients’ sales challenges, we maintain that having the wrong
people in the sales jobs is, in many cases, the biggest inhibitor to the success of a training
intervention. My interview with Todd Harris of PI Worldwide highlighted one of the tools
available for sales leaders to get an objective assessment of candidates as well as existing sales
personnel.
I’m far from done with this subject. I wanted to get another perspective, so here are some
questions I posed to Kathleen Steffey, CEO of sales recruitment firm Naviga Business Services,
based in Tampa. Kathleen also writes the SalesJournal blog.
Dave Stein: As CEO of a national sales and marketing recruitment firm, share with me what
changes you’ve seen in your business in the past three months.
Kathleen Steffey: In the last three months I’ve seen growth and expansion with my existing
customer base and a decline in "new" customer contracts. Because of this trend, my business has
made a shift to heavily focus on existing customer penetration and customer management. We’ve
created new programs to capitalize on our existing customer base-viral marketing campaigns,
referral programs, aggressive business development penetration (all inside our existing customer
base). I am also focusing heavily on recruiting performance to make sure we are executing on
every single piece of business we receive to maximize revenue. Customers are behaving in a
very smart way and show a thorough decision making process when it comes to candidates. They
are taking every aspect of the hiring process much more serious as every penny counts these
days. Because my business is steadily growing, we are currently looking for additional recruiters.
Our recruiter candidate pipeline is the best I’ve seen in years, in terms of quality. I am taking
advantage of the down market to select only the best and brightest to join my team in the next
month.
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