From Dave Kurlan’s Myths About Top Performing Salespeople:

Most companies have “them”.  Most managers brag about “them”. Most of “them” toot their own horns.  Most are their company’s role models. Most companies would love to have more like “them”. They masquerade as the top salespeople in their companies, a claim supported by data, spreadsheets, commission statements, awards and accolades.  But who are they really?

Most of them are sales frauds.  Most of them have everyone fooled. Most of them, if you took their cushy, big accounts away and asked them to go out and find some new business would fail.  Most of them aren’t very strong salespeople.  Most of them don’t possess a mountain of selling skills.  Most of them just aren’t what everyone thinks they are.  Most of them have inherited their customers, have the biggest territories, have the best accounts or have been out there for decades.

When we evaluate sales organizations, we are always able to identify these sales frauds.  But what does it mean for the company, for the sales frauds, for the sales organization, once they are exposed?

History tells us that most of these sales frauds are actually great account managers who should continue managing those great accounts.

He’s right.  We’ve seen this first hand in some of our accounts.  The supposed top salesperson, once assessed, was revealed to be a salesperson of limited sales skills.  I remember in one account we assessed the top salesperson and he came back rather weak.  He owned the number 1 account in the company and was placed on a pedestal by the ownership.  The truth came out after talking to one of the people who worked with him.  This “top” salesperson inherited the large account (before it was large) from a retiring salesperson when he first began with the company years ago.  He did grow the account and deserves the recognition for that important activity.

But we had to explain to our customer that he was not the model salesperson for the hunter position we were hired to select.  There were many discussions regarding this topic and eventually we established our point.

A key point to remember regarding salespeople is that they may have been the right hire at the time you hired them.  However, that does not mean that same person would be the right hire for today.  Markets change, position requirements evolve, sales tools expand and so forth.  These factors are the basis for not benchmarking your existing salespeople when hiring a new salesperson.

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From Seth Godin’s Marketing your job post:

This is part of a larger trend, which is realizing that an amazing hire is worth far more than a mediocre one, or even a very good one.

My take?

There’s a difference between being noticed and succeeding.

Sometimes you need to be noticed far and wide in order to succeed. That’s why some TV ads for low-involvement products are noisy or funny or over the top.

Often though, especially for something like a job, I think that sacrificing your message in order to get noticed is a mistake. Making a video that tries to be funny in order to spread doesn’t necessarily get you the right applicants.

He’s right – this strategic approach is to be broad and wide which will lead to many respondents.  I suppose the hiring company believes they will then sift through the overwhelming response and find the proverbial needle in the resume haystack.

Here is something I often tell prospects – If we were able to do our job perfectly, you would only interview 1 amazing candidate and you would hire him or her.  But we’re not that good so you may have to interview 2 or 3 of them.

But hiring managers usually do not take this approach.  We have had many customers who have hired the first candidate, but not before interviewing 2 or 3 more candidates.  The hiring manager, when presented with an amazing candidate, still hesitates in their decision.  Instead, he or she seeks to reaffirm their impending decision by comparing this strong candidate with other candidates.

The allure is that there is someone better in the marketplace.  There is.  Yet this allure, if unchecked, leads to a hiring treadmill where no candidate is ever quite a fit.  Do not succumb to this trap – hire the amazing candidate you have identified even if they are the one and only option.

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Great story from Foxnews.com – Nesting at Work: What Does Your Office Say About You?

Recently, a friend forwarded me an e-mail exchange that had kicked off a brief, surreal dustup at Natural Resource Group, a small environmental consulting company in Minneapolis. Here’s how it began:

“Rich, I noticed that there is a deer head in the office next to you. Is it yours? If not, do you know whose it is? If it is yours, I will need you to keep the light off in that office and close the door as we have auditors touring the offices today. Also, if it is yours, you will be taking it home with you tonight, correct?”

Intrigued, I called Stephanie Schlichting , office manager at Natural Resource Group and author of that initial query. Schlichting explained she was concerned about the trophy’s effect not just on outside visitors but also on the sensibilities of some members of the staff.

Fantastic.  If you haven’t lived here in Minnesota, I’m not sure you can fully appreciate this story.  A mounted deer head in an office seems a bit over the top, but this is a quirky state.  One thing is for certain, people up here take their hunting quite seriously.

Good shot from the article’s author at the end:

As for the impression on outsiders€”that matters of course. But is professionalism chiefly about appearances? Or is it about actions?

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