{"id":1393,"date":"2008-01-28T07:54:10","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T13:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/01\/topgrading-the-sales-force\/"},"modified":"2008-01-28T07:05:20","modified_gmt":"2008-01-28T13:05:20","slug":"topgrading-the-sales-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/01\/topgrading-the-sales-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Topgrading The Sales Force"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That is an excellent turn of phrase from <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.omghub.com\/salesdevelopmentblog\/tabid\/5809\/bid\/3659\/Management-Resistance-to-Topgrading-the-Sales-Force.aspx\">Dave Kurlan&#8217;s recent blog post<\/a>.\u00a0 He provides an excellent explanation of how hiring processes regress to the stereotypical approach that leads to &#8220;safe&#8221; hires that don&#8217;t produce sales.\u00a0 I know Kurlan is accurate because we see this regression occur first hand.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Companies often become frustrated with the process itself.\u00a0 Some would rather hire <em>anybody<\/em> than wait for the right person to come along.\u00a0 When they get frustrated they don&#8217;t follow the process and won&#8217;t listen to expert advice, defaulting instead to their old position of taking somebody they <em>like<\/em>, who fits the <em>industry<\/em> profile, rather than the other compromise, taking someone who was <em>recommended<\/em> by the assessment that they don&#8217;t particularly like and may not fit the industry profile.\u00a0 What&#8217;s the difference?\u00a0 Candidate number one hangs around too long because he fits so well both culturally and industry wise, despite failing to meet expectations.\u00a0 Candidate number two performs well but doesn&#8217;t get the support he needs because the company doesn&#8217;t like him and their expectations are too low so he voluntarily leaves.<\/p>\n<p>The latest <em>Topgrading<\/em> study of 507 managers that hire $100,000+ people revealed that, on average, companies waste $1.5 million and 150+ hours every time a C Player is hired.\u00a0 Is it really that important to hire <em>somebody<\/em> when being patient and hiring the <em>right person<\/em> could save you $1.5 million <em>and<\/em> the frustration of having to start all over again in several months?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t agree more with that summation.\u00a0 What is interesting in our business is that we are often approached by companies to help them hire stronger salespeople.\u00a0 Many times we have a discussion about how we do what we do and then the prospect will often disappear.\u00a0 The unique process and different approach seems to scare them away.<\/p>\n<p>The prospect then continues hiring salespeople who &#8220;taking somebody they like, who fits the industry profile.&#8221;\u00a0 Unfortunately for them, they continue to hire mediocrity.<\/p>\n<p>After that approach continues to produce the same marginal results, they contact us again.\u00a0 This time they are open to our approach and usually become our customer at that point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That is an excellent turn of phrase from Dave Kurlan&#8217;s recent blog post.\u00a0 He provides an excellent explanation of how hiring processes regress to the stereotypical approach that leads to &#8220;safe&#8221; hires that don&#8217;t produce sales.\u00a0 I know Kurlan is accurate because we see this regression occur first hand. Companies often become frustrated with the process itself.\u00a0 Some would rather hire anybody than wait for the right person to come along.\u00a0 When they get frustrated they don&#8217;t follow the process and won&#8217;t listen to expert advice, defaulting instead to their old position of taking somebody they like, who fits the industry profile, rather than the other compromise, taking someone who&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/01\/topgrading-the-sales-force\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[125,257,1762,256],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-mt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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