Are we the Cobbler’s Children when Recruiting Sales Talent?
Let’s consider at least three ‘Hiring Ailments’ we see our colleagues fall victim to.
Ailment 1: Just-In-Time Recruiting – How many of our clients tell us that they are about to go into their “hiring season”. Really? This would be like announcing deer hunting season. Sales pros are not deer and they don’t multiply like rabbits in the spring and need to be thinned out when you decide to hire. The good sales people don’t keep their job-hunting powder dry until they see the whites of your recruitment eyes. The best candidates – either active or passive—come to market randomly.
The Cure: A.B.R. You should Always Be Recruiting for sales people. The good ones are in high demand and short supply. They don’t just walk by your door when you are ready to hire. Yes, it is extra work and more dollars but consider the cost of missing the opportunity to find the best talent because you are not looking right now. Sales recruiting is not a part time job; it’s 24/7 and requires a consistent process of always having your line in the water—that’s how you catch more “BIG” fish!
Ailment 2: Not Inspecting What You Expect – Unlike expense reports, call reports, forecasts, and other routine metrics you use to monitor business progress, recruiting status updates (if they exist at all) are rarely visited and generally overlooked. A simple set of standard metrics ensures you are heading where you need to go. Keeping recruiting top of mind for everyone in the organization helps embed the discipline and cure mentioned in Ailment 1: Always Be Recruiting!
The Cure: Make Sales Recruiting Due Every Friday at 5:00 PM – Ok, so maybe weekly is too much. However, keeping and discussing just a few numbers helps you keep the spot light on sales recruiting and gather information for trend analysis. How many new applications – % rejects – how many phone screens – % qualified candidates identified – how many hires – how many “quits” – face-to-face interviews held – interview-to-hire ratios – I could go on. One very simple metric we used at Xerox was simply listing two people you could call and pick up a recruiting conversation with if one of your reps left tomorrow.
Ailment 3: One Size Fits All And Fuzzy Logic – If you believe a sales person, is a sales person, is a sales person, then you may suffer from not knowing the many differences between sales professionals and what the “right fit” is for your particular sales situation or challenge. There are myths in profiling sales reps: the glad hander, the chatty one, this school or that sport, or ( my all-time favorite) they had a newspaper route. The most important part of your selection process is defining your ideal candidate profile. If you can’t answer that question with real tangible specifics then you are playing a mild form of Russian roulette hiring. Our science has discovered and mapped 14 different types of sales people. Knowing which one has the right skills, the right motivations, and the right cultural fit for your job is the key.
The Cure: Study Failure To Understand Success – Determining your target job profile requires that you not only examine “what good looks like” but you must also study failure. It turns out that top performers and bottom performers actually share some 95 percent of the same skills, characteristics and traits. That is why poor performers get hired – in an interview they look like a winner. You must find those DNA markers that distinguish the top performers from the bottom and then scale your recruiting to that profile.