James Michael Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

The easiest way to think about OKRs is to think about the inputs that result in the outputs that you desire as a company. For example, monthly sales numbers are the results (output) and the inputs would be meetings, quotes, pipeline created, etc. Let me know if you’d like to discuss more.

Setting extremely clear expectations is the first place to start. Understand where you're headed and what your goals are so you can back into the expectations or more importantly, the behaviors that align with your desired outcomes. Accountability and two-way communication are the tactics to stay focused on the results.

Jeb Blount - Fanatical Prospecting
Stu Heinecke - How to get a meeting with anyone

Also, check out white papers and ebooks on account-based marketing. You also want to heavily invest in content, thought leadership and branding to credentialize yourself. Good luck!

Invest it in yourself and find a great job that will pay the bills while you work on your own venture. Whether that means buying new work-appropriate clothes, books in your profession, a new certification or even interview coaching is up to you. I'd find a company that is emerging in an industry that you find interesting and go after working for that company. Good luck!

There are a couple of routes you can take. You can research people with the background you are looking for in LinkedIn, post a job to indeed, recruit on indeed, network or hire a recruiter. There are pros and cons to each. Let me know if you'd like to chat about these options. I have experience doing all of the available options.

The best commission model is one that reinforces the behavior and activity that you are asking the sales person to do. So if the goal of your sales person is to simply set up free consults, maybe they get a flat fee for each call they set up or maybe a percentage of the deal if it closes? Or maybe you set goals and if they reach the goal each month, they receive a bonus paid monthly. There a variety of ways to set this up but definitely think about the behaviors and how to reinforce for the specific activity you need from the rep.

I might be sharing the obvious but facebook and google are incredibly powerful to drive traffic to your website. Retaining comes down to how well you solve your customers problems. Good luck!

To sell them on the value is helping them to realize how your solution impacts one of more of the following areas: image, finance and/or productivity. When they understand they will have a better image (don't think just physical image), save money in the long run or be more productive during the hectic period of getting married, they will then correlate those benefits with your price point. In the wedding industry, it should be easy to tie your product features to all of the perceived benefits around image, finance and productivity.

Do you have a network of these individuals who would utlimately make the sale for you? If you have connections, you could offer demos or some type of product evaluation so you could get some success stories to help you leverage the product.

Whenever you pitch to these people, always remember, "what's in it for me" - me, being the account managers. Without the account managers clearly understanding the benefits, you'll never get them to sell for you.

I have some other ideas around strategy here if you would like to chat.

I would be curious to know why you feel it is important to use personality testing. I have hired over 20 sales reps and I have never used any testing. I have conversations with my hires because that is going to tell me more about their personality any day than a test. Plus you might eliminate someone because of a test score that could be a great fit for your organization. I have a pretty strong process for hiring sales people and could share with you my steps and even the questions if you would like.