Ok, I have been delinquent in responding to Clayton from Salesopedia and his tag of me. Apparently I have to share 8 little known things about me. I’ll give it a try:

1. I am a twin. I have a “younger” sister – I was born 3 min. before her. Still counts.
2. Although I live in Minnesota, I was born in Ann Arbor, MI and bleed Maize and Blue. I only lived there the first 5 years of my life, but it had a huge impact on me no matter what the Rock Star says.
3. I met my wife at work. I was in sales and she was in marketing. We worked together for 6 months before we found out that we were both ferret owners. I had a male ferret named Otto and she had a female ferret named Emily.
4. There is no sport I enjoy more than hockey. It is simply the coolest game on Earth.
5. I have a weakness for reality shows. Even So You Think You Can Dance. Definitely TMI.
6. I have a desire to be a coffee barrista at Dunn Bros. Irrational, maybe, but truly a passion of mine.
7. I’m a dog guy – can’t stand cats. I may get flamed over this, but I had to share it.
8. I once took a yoga class in college to basically meet some cute gals. At the end of the class, we would stand in a circle as the teacher dismissed us. One time I sat too long with my legs crossed and both legs fell asleep. I was right next to a female student I was hoping to impress. I tried to stand up but kept falling down like a French prizefighter. The entire class stared at me as they tried to suppress their laughter. After multiple attempts, I finally stood there like a newborn deer – teetering on my asleep legs as the teacher quickly dismissed us. The gal next to me did not appear to be impressed. In any way. Ever.

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Here is the ultimate hiring conundrum – you complete all of your sourcing and qualifying to end up with one candidate.  That candidate was strong on the phone screen, has strong online assessments and a notable track record of sales success.

The hope here is that he will interview well and there is not reason to think he won’t.  The issue is that many clients are not comfortable just interviewing one candidate . . . no matter how strong the candidate is.

This predicament is one we are in currently.  The candidate is quite strong and has been excellent throughout our process.  He has stood head and shoulders above the other candidates we have run through our process.

Yet, the thought of someone better out there is a seductive one.  A thought that almost guarantees we will need one more strong candidate before our customer makes their hiring decision.

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Since we work in the sale hiring and management arena, we get the chance to see a sales position from both sides – the sales management side and the sales person side.  It is a unique perspective that we discuss often internally.

Like most people, we tend to look at what goes wrong in these situations and we really see 2 items that lead to performance issues within the department:

Mismanaged – Sales Manager side
This problem is quite severe and certainly is the greater of the two problems.  A sales manager who mismanages salespeople has a tremendously negative effect on an entire company.  The most common problem is disengagement.  A sales manager who does not invest time in his or her people is worth little.  I think this is the driving force behind sales managers who want to hire salespeople from their industry.  The hope is that they won’t have to train the new salesperson.  They can plug them into a territory, walk away and watch the revenue roll in.

The polar opposite of this problem is micromanagement.  In most sales manager cases that we see, the manager morphs into the surrogate closer.  They swoop in to close as many accounts as possible at the end of the sales cycle.  Over time, the salesperson develops a crutch where they must rely on the manager to close.  I believe salespeople gravitate to this position for a simple reason – if the prospect doesn’t close, the blame is shared by the manager and the salesperson.  You could call it performance insulation.

Misemployed – Sales Person side
This term gets bandied about but I think it is accurate.  Most salespeople have a decent set of sales skills (though we have found our share of ciphers).  The misemployed issue develops when their skill set is not a match to the position’s needs.  I know this sounds a bit overly simplistic, but you would be surprised by how many hiring managers are grossly unaware of what skills are needed to succeed in the role.

In these instances, experience becomes the hiring hallucinogen.  The fact that a salesperson has experience in your industry does not mean they have the skill set to succeed at your company.  I suspect a part of this hiring approach feeds back into the previous section in reference to the desire of the sales manager to hire someone and have them start producing with minimal, if any, training.

The outcome of a misemployed salesperson is someone who seems to be close to “clicking” but they never reach it.  The salesperson’s performance resides in what Teddy Roosevelt described as “that grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”  They perform well enough to stay on the team for a time, but they are not strong in their role.  The ultimate issue in this case is creeping mediocrity.  Once mediocrity overtakes your sales team, the fix becomes far more difficult.

Both of these performance problems can be avoided by evaluating your current team (including the sales manager) and ensuring that your hiring process is repeatably accurate.  Most stereotypical sales hiring processes are good strategically but poor tactically.  When this happens, sales manager utter phrases like “I know what I want, I just cant’ find the right person.”  Don’t let this happen to your sales department.  Stay in front of the performance problems and keep your sales department growing.

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