A sales professional's success is determined by your willingness to invest in yourself. There are two areas for personal development that most will invest in, and one area only Top Producers invest in. Those who aren't Top Producers never even think to invest in themselves in this way.

That's not to say you shouldn't invest in all three areas because you should. The two areas you're familiar with are self-improvement and sales process training. The area you may not be so familiar with is customer focus.

Self-improvement development is designed to help you to increase your personal productivity, enthusiasm, and energy level. Yes, you need to be focused on doing the things that directly lead to business with enthusiasm for what you have to offer and with an energy level that reflects your commitment. Salespeople who are lacking in these areas tend to be very busy doing lots of "things", but have little production to show for their efforts.

Sales training development is essential. There's no question you need the skills to prospect, present, overcome stalls and objections, and close the sale. Without proficiency in these key sales skills you struggle only landing the occasional easy sale.

Client focus development is the critical difference between the average salesperson and the Top Producer. When you've developed your client focus skills you're able to: clearly understand the clients goals and get the client to openly share those goals with you, you're able to work with the client to develop a plan for the accomplishment of those goals in a mutually engaging on-going conversation, and you're able to develop a relationship with the client based on integrity and accountability leading to repeat business and referrals.

Do you view prospecting as an outcome or an opportunity? Do you think of prospecting in terms of a process or an event? The way you answer those questions makes a big difference in the results you experience.

Many people view getting the attention of a prospect as the outcome. That's not a good thing, and it causes you to miss many opportunities. Getting the attention of a prospect is simply an opportunity for you to develop and continue a relationship with that prospect.

Most people who treat getting the attention of a prospect as an outcome aren't able to capitalize on that attention. That's because to them the appointment was what they wanted and what they got. They weren't necessarily able to convert that appointment into a client and they didn't have anywhere meaningful to go with the prospect once the appointment ended.

Oops, big mistake. You get yourself in these dead end situations because you think of prospecting and the appointment as an event when you should be thinking of them in terms of a process. Getting the attention of a prospect is the first step in a process that builds a relationship with the prospect leading to a meaningful sales conversation where you're both there for the same reason.

You're both agreeing to the appointment to determine if there is a reason for you to do business together. To have a process for prospecting you need a multi-step, perhaps even multi-media, plan to continue to connect with the prospect adding value to the prospect so the prospect wants to continue the relationship and know more. Throughout the process you're conditioning the prospect to hear from you and to respond to you. And that gives you the power to turn opportunities into business.

Due to the acute shortage of experienced, good sales people, more and more companies are looking to hiring such sales people (and sales managers too) through headhunters. Unfortunately, most of the results are quite disappointing.

The purpose of companies engaging headhunters is usually to seek direct and alternative ways to source for good candidates. Alternative in the sense that the candidate will not be reading about the position in recruitment ads. Instead, companies hope that headhunters will have a large pool of ready candidates, and in lieu of that, can actually make the cold-calls and poach the right candidates from other companies.

Unfortunately, many headhunters, including some international ones, tend to be rather passive in the hiring process. If they have a good pool of suitable people, that's great. If not, they simply take out an advertisement and publicise the vacancy, something which the hiring company could have done by themselves anyway.

In many cases, the consultants working for the headhunters tend to be also very junior, and may not have the right exposure to decide what will make a good fit for the hiring company. They may be susceptible to manipulation by some candidates, and in some cases, even willfully recommend the hiring company to meet up with less-than-qualified candidates, just to prove hey are doing their jobs.

As a result, most headhunters don't really add value to the hiring companies. That's no to say that all headhunters are bad. There will be times that headhunters can save time and resources while providing candidates that fit at the same time. It's a question about how you evaluate and choose whom to work with.

Here's a list of questions that you may want to ask yourself, or the prospective headhunter, before you decide hiring them:

* How is the track record of the headhunter? How many sales or sales management positions have they filled in the past year? Can they give you references from their other clients for similar positions?

* Do they understand your business, and the qualities and behaviours needed to succeed for the candidates? Will they know if the candidate will fit into your unique sales culture?

* Do the consultants have real work experience, or are they fresh out of school? Do they have a structured interview process that allows them to identify the good-fits from the rest?

* Do they pro-actively solicit good candidates in your industry? If yes, how well do they perform for such pro-active recruitment?

* Do they guarantee you a time frame for the search?

* Will you be updated regularly on the progress?

* Do they make reference checks? How do they make them? (note: your competitor will be most delighted if you were to hire their worst performing sales person, and hence may give glowing references!)

While engaging headhunters may save some time and resources, there is still a lot of groundwork to be done in the initial process. Headhunters should not be perceived as the "all cure" that solves all your hiring problems in an instant. Instead, the good headhunters will be your partners in identifying and planning for your long-term hiring needs.

When faced with declining sales and missed targets, many companies opt to hire a "sales superstar", one whom will do the wonders and rev up sales single-handedly. Unfortunately, most companies almost always end up with mediocre results at best, and sheer disappointment in most cases.

In fact, the notion of trying to hire a "sales superstar" is a mistake itself. Here's why:

The Elusive Sales Superstar

Usually, the term "sales superstar" refers to an ultra-aggressive sales person who simply doesn't take "no" for an answer, and is just fantastic in generating great sales results real quick. This kind of sales person represents only about 1-2% of the entire sales population.

As such they are very difficult to find. But finding them is just the beginning of more challenges. You will face issues such as:

1. Sales superstars are highly paid individuals, and to entice them to work for you will mean you will have to pay even more, for both fixed and variable pays;

2. As most sales superstars are currently happily making money with their current employers, and hence that means you will have to proactively reach out to them. The usual employment ads won't work, and even most headhunters don't go around poaching candidates. In worse scenarios, you get candidates who claim to be sales superstars, but are far from it;

3. The sales superstar you hire may or may not fit into the way you sell, or into your company culture. If that happens, and it quite frequently does, you simply end up with a very expensive dud!

Even when you hire THE sales superstar who's producing good results for you, you'll still face 2 possibilities:

1. Despite your sales superstar's Herculean effort, you still are not able to stem the tide of declining sales;

2. Due to your sales superstar's good efforts, you have now seen sales increasing as a result.

Most companies who have hired a sales superstar will eventually find that to increase sales and profits on more sustained basis, you will need a lot more than an individual's effort, and thus diminishing the sales superstar's impact on the bottom line.

However, it is the 2nd consequence that poses the most danger to the company. If you have one sales person who can single-handedly turn the tide for you, then you may have a situation where a significant amount of sales are held in the hands of just one person. If that is the case, your company may be taken hostage by this individual easily, i.e. whatever he/ she demands, you'll have to oblige, or else he/ she will just bring all your major customers to the competitor.

Why Not Build a High-Performing Sales Team Instead

Rather than hoping to find an saviour in the form of a sales superstar, what companies can do is to make sure that all sales persons hired are first equipped and then train in the skills that make them good sales people in your unique sales culture.

While you are highly unlikely to groom sales superstars in your own company, you may actually build a team that collectively produces much more than a superstar ever will. Here's how it works:

1. Compare the best performing sales person(s) with the rest (the middle and worst performing) in your company. Find out what are the qualities or behaviours that are ONLY present in the best people, which the rest are not doing;

2. Structure the interview processes where you look for past performance whereby the candidate has demonstrated such ideal qualities or behaviours;

3. If the qualities or behaviours can be learnt, structure your sales training such that everyone on your team can learn and internalise them.

In doing so, while you may not have sales superstars eventually, but you will get a team of sales people who are performing well above average.

Now, what if you are unhappy with the performance of the entire sales team, and in your view, there really isn't any quality or behaviour that you want your staff to emulate from your best sales person, there's still hope.

The HR Chally Group is a leader in the field of sales staff research, and they have identified the ideal qualities and behaviours that are needed for each of the separate pre-determined 14 sales and 8 management position categories.

The Sales Superstar Isn't Going to be Your Next Sales Manager

Some companies may now be thinking that if they haven't got any good sales people that they want to emulate, then perhaps they can hire a sales superstar and get that superstar to be their sales manager so that all can learn from him/ her.

Unfortunately, the sad story is that only 15% of sales superstars will be competent managers. Here are the reasons why:

* Selling is about getting things done through the customer, while sales management is about getting things done through the sales team;

* The sales superstar is a highly skilled specialist in the former, but not in the latter;

* When the sales team faces difficulties in getting better results, the sales superstar tends to fall back on what she does best, i.e. to take over the sale. In the long run, you'll end up with a sales team of one, the superstar herself;

* Sales superstars know that they are good, but they usually don't know why they are good. hence, they will find it difficult to reflect and analyse what makes them successful, and how to make others be as successful as well.

Indeed, sales superstars can be trained to become good managers. However, in doing so you are depriving the superstars to do what they do best, which is closing those deals!

Interestingly, the best candidates to be the sales managers that are required to coach the sales team to better performance tends to sales people who had shown drastic improvements over the course of her career. These people are usually not "naturals" when it comes to selling, but have improved their performances by analysing, learning and applying the skills that make other sales people successful.