I’m putting the finishing touches on an article we are going to release next week that deals with hiring salespeople based on experience vs. talent. We advocate sales talent first. A couple of points to whet your appetite:
First, the vast majority of resumes are embellished. We have written about that topic at length. Here’s the rub, if you hire based on experience, I guarantee you are drawing inferences from their embellished resume. You will never truly know the scope of their experience since you cannot reconstruct every aspect of their previous positions. When you interview the candidate, they are going to put as much positive spin on their experience as possible. So you have, at best, a slightly embellished document (don’t know which parts are embellished and which are accurate) which is being undergirded by the author’s overly positive commentary. This approach reeks of trouble.
Second, no two companies compete in the market in the exact same manner. What I mean is that one company’s value proposition is far different than a competitor’s (not talking about price here). The sales skills needed for one company can be far different than another company.
An example: we had a customer who had been hiring based almost exclusively on experience before working with us. They openly discussed this situation. Before becoming our customer, they were able to hire a salesperson from the largest competitor in their industry (at great expense). Our customer’s company was a small, relatively unknown player in that industry. They were ecstatic to land this salesperson and figured he would deliver huge deals for them.
He flopped and was eventually let go. Although he had tremendous industry experience, he lacked the sales skills necessary to sell our customer’s value. First off, the salesperson was not able to prospect. His previous role with the market leader made appointment setting almost automatic. Since our customer was not well known, he had great difficulty securing even marginal prospect visits.
You can guess what the next problem was – he lacked the ability to qualify needs. The market leader actively marketed their value proposition throughout the industry. Our customer relied upon their salespeople to sort out the serious prospects from the tirekickers who were looking for data to plug into their buying spreadsheet. This salesperson was used to selling from a dominant market position so his idea of qualifying was fine wine and country club golf.
Sales process and qualifying are just two points that will be in the upcoming article. I know many of you are thinking that your complex sale requires industry experience. I suspect you have many people within your company who can teach the intricacies to your new salesperson. How many people do you have in your company who can teach them how to effectively sell?