Posted by Dave Kurlan on Wed, Feb 06, 2019 @ 18:02 PM
For most companies, hiring the right salespeople has always been problematic. With the shortage of quality sales candidates, it's now more difficult than ever. The pressure to fill a role often causes sales management to hire the best from a limited and deficient pool of candidates instead of hiring the right candidate for the role. The difference is huge, especially if you have a complex sale, a long sales cycle, a high-priced product or service, or a lot of competition. If you rush to hire someone and get it wrong, three things usually happen. The first and most obvious is that you will inevitably have to begin the hiring process all over again in several months. Second is the lost opportunities from having a weak salesperson and for periods of time, no salesperson. Finally, there is lost revenue from customers who are stolen away, creating negative territory momentum, where the pendulum swings to favor the competition in that territory.
Hiring salespeople does not have to be like a pot luck supper or a coin flip. If you are selective instead of impulsive, good things will happen. Take a look at the image below.The spreadsheet shows the difference between one company's top 3 producers and their 3 worst producers. If you notice the difference in color between all of the green at the top and the red down below, you'll see the findings and competencies that differentiate the two groups. At Objective Management Group (OMG) we call this a tailored fit. It's the last of two levels of customization to fine-tune our sales candidate assessment criteria and that is what allows us to make such accurate recommendations and achieve predictive validity.
For the real company in this example, from 180 possible findings, 27 clearly differentiated their tops from their bottoms. Of the 27 differentiators, the following were represented:
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12 of OMG's 21 Sales Core Competencies
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3 non-core sales competencies
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3 summary scores
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9 other findings
Candidates who meet at least 80% of these 27 findings WILL succeed in the role.
You can easily hire the best salespeople for the role with help from (1) a predictive sales candidate assessment that provides the equivalent of a crystal ball and (2) having the discipline to be patient enough to wait for the right candidate. What's holding you back?
There is one more thing you are required to do. After hiring your salespeople, you must provide them with a comprehensive 90-day on-boarding process so as to assure their success rather than setting them up for failure.
Image Copyright iStock Photos
