Hiring salespeople is the difficult combination of science and art weighted perfectly to select the right person for the position’s requirements.  Obviously, knowing the position’s requirements is the preeminent step.  Many sales managers believe they know what it takes to be successful in the position and they do to a certain extent.  Yet, their knowledge often consists of themes as opposed to specifics.  This reason drives us to profile the sale as the very first step in our sales hiring process.

ManageSmarter.com’s Is Hiring Mediocre Good Enough? approaches a hiring process with some valuable insight and other items I wouldn’t recommend.  First, the reason astute hiring is mission-critical to corporate success (my emphasis):

According to a 2004 study by HR Hub.com, more than 1 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) or $105 billion is lost every year to “poor hiring and management practices.” The Society for HR Management found the cost of a poor hire can range from $20,000 to more than $300,000—as much as 15 times the employee’s base salary.

Of course the hidden cost of a bad sales hire – the opportunity cost of losing good prospects to your competition – is immeasurable.

This approach from the article is one we don’t use:

“We evaluated each of the most successful ‘A’ performers in a particular position according to intellectual, behavioral and occupational interests,” says Vancini. “Using that as the standard, as candidates were interviewed, they were screened and matched against those known ‘A’ performers. It made the decision process easy and fact-based.”

Cloning may work for other positions, but I do not recommend it for sales positions.  The strongest sales teams have a variety of styles and abilities.  That variety is what gives the team strength.  There are core sales abilities that transcend positions and companies (e.g. handling rejection, qualifying skills, Utilitarian motivation, etc.), but most cloning involves behavioral styles which is not a predictor of success in a given sales position.  Don’t fall for this conventional wisdom.

Companies like to be inclusive, inviting as many peers and associates into the process as possible. Yet these interviews are not well thought through, and do not dig in and measure critical skills, which results in marginal feedback. This can stall the hiring process for weeks or months. Feedback from the myriad of interviews needs to be collected and easily available to provide detailed but focused feedback.

Drilling down on candidate responses; having clarity about their answers is the essence of good interviewing.  Yet, most prospects that we encounter over-rely upon the interview.  Using bad interview techniques as the backbone of your hiring process is the ultimate recipe for disaster.

If you are facing many challenges when it comes to hiring successful salespeople, we can help.

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The Herman Trend Alert offers up their 2008 forecast in this week’s electronic newsletter.  Since I do not have a link, here is the forecast in it’s entirety:

This year, once more, we offer you our full forecast for the coming year:

1. Recruitment in a Tightening Labor Market
Even the coming economic slowdown will not completely stop the creation of jobs. Moreover, stimulated by job creation and the fact that skilled workers in many occupations are in short supply, time-to-fill openings will also continue to increase as will the costs.

2. More Employers Turning to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
In an effort to reduce costs, more large employers will turn to companies like The Right Thing, Inc. and others will step in to provide a wide variety of recruitment services on an outsourced or insourced basis, including providing customized services for clients, based on specific needs.

3. Retention in the Face of Increasing Choices for Employees
Recent studies reflect that employee turnover is accelerating. With increasing choices we will see more attrition, especially from the ranks of long-term employees. Wise employers will conduct “stay interviews” and provide re-orientation to their seasoned employees. More employers will begin to be aware of the value of contingent employees and address the issues of retaining them.

4. More Employers will focus on Metrics
Following the lead of large employers, more medium-size employers will embrace technology to manage the employee life-cycle and operate more efficiently. This increased efficiency will drive more profit to the bottom line.

5. Leadership Deficit Becomes More Apparent
As companies experience the re-careering of Baby Boomer executives, they will become more aware of the lack of qualified supervisors and managers to move up into higher positions. The organizations’ previous lack of training for would-be leaders is to blame.

6. Lack of Succession Preparation
Organizations will become more acutely aware of their lack of succession preparation. They have simply not invested in leadership training so that their supervisors, managers, and executives are not ready to move into the positions.

7. More Employers Accommodate Older Workers to Maintain Intellectual Capital
The drive to retain older workers will cause companies to work harder to accommodate the wants and needs of older workers. AARP will support employers’ drives to hold onto these valuable employees. More employers will embrace flexibility in all aspects of work to adapt to the wants and needs of their retirement-age associates.

8. More Awareness of the Link between Economic- and Workforce Development
Workforce development issues move to top-of-mind for communities, as they become more aware of the workforce imperative—that business and industry will only locate where there are the skilled workers to fill their open positions. This awareness will lead organizations to focus more on middle- and high-school students to begin to expose them early to the careers available in their communities.

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Older article here from our local StarTribune paper – Sales Skills Hiring Managers Seek.  There are some interesting points from the quotes in the article, but one thing that stands out to me are these quotes from different recruiters:

…and have achieved in athletics.

and

A sports background also helps.

This background is couched around the competitive nature of sports transferring to successful selling.  I’m not sure I buy into that correlation, but it does intrigue me.  I played sports throughout high school and college and can envision many self-centered teammates I would not recommend for any sales position.  Still, I am probably over-focused on the exceptions.

However, I do find these pieces of information far more valuable:

“In general, however, companies are seeking salespeople who listen well, ask pertinent questions and bring creativity to the sales process.”

He also seeks people with a good emotional quotient or EQ. “You need to understand your personality style and that of others to be successful in sales,” he adds.

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I heard a radio commercial this morning for one of these credit card debt consolidation companies.  The closing line from the commercial:

Must have over $10,000 of credit card debt to qualify.

Qualify?  Exclusivity in a club for which most people would not want to qualify.  Excellent spin.

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