A
Commentary
Hiring the
Best Salespeople
Hiring
salespeople that will be productive, effective, successful and committed to
doing their part to meet the firm’s revenue goals is a perplexing problem for
many. Yet it needn’t be! There are, much like the laws of sales, certain
fundamentals that remain constant even in the face of a rapidly changing economy,
and the corollary is just as true, there are certain decisions that will nearly
always lead to failure.
Far too
often salespeople are hired out of emotion; “I really like this guy” or “he hit
a homerun at his last place, let’s bet on him doing the same for us”. And then emotion carries the day, while the
firm’s executive leadership hopes for the best, forgetting or ignoring how
expensive failure is.
Let’s
examine some of the early indicators of sure failure
1. Hiring based
on the salespersons industry experience and success at his/her last firm.
2. Offering a
compensation plan that looks like the
one they left or looks like what
“everybody does”
3. Not having a
well thought thru “on-boarding “plan.
Borrowing a
bit from Steve Jobs on what made Apple great; the best hires are those that
come from the intersection of Liberal
Arts Way, Technology Street and Character Avenue.
A Liberal
Arts undergraduate degree brings with it a host of advantages; the ability to
speak and write, and the ability to analyze and think creatively and
independently asexamples.
Next is
technical aptitude. Virtually all products require an ability to master their
design and function. And to a great degree in today’s marketplace, it will
often, if not always, have a technological component. So we must probe, test
for, and understand their technological aptitude.
Finally,
character matters. One executive I know hires only after he has played golf
with the prospect and he and his wife have had dinner with the prospect, their
spouse (or significant other to be correct in today’s politically correct
world). He maintains he can quickly see
how the prospect handles success, competition, discernment, consideration,
honesty, focus and frustration. All key elements of a successful hire, yet
attributes that are either overlooked or under challenged during the interview
process.
Success at a
previous firm is among the least dependable predictors/indicators of success at
the next! It will be a different set of products, even if it’s in the same
industry. It’s a different culture. It’s a new set of policies and procedures. It’s
a lot of change that historical behavior can’t and won’t confirm.
And it’s
likely a variation if not a totally different compensation plan, even if it
seems nearly the same; it’ll turn out to have nuances that will make it new and
different. Compensation plans need to be carefully and thoughtfully designed.
Often they are out of alignment with the culture, goals and the objectives of
the firm. It’s not enough to say the comp plan pays for sales performance. It
doesn’t and it shouldn’t. It rewards behavior! And that’s a concept many don’t
immediately get. The right behavior will
result in the right revenue a lot more often than not!
These
critical elements of a successful hire can be uncovered by skilled interviews,
augmented by sophisticated scientific testing, which is far more likely to be
unbiased and accurate. I have used and recommended, as an example, a firm that offers an electronic set of
questions which normally takes a candidate about 45 minutes to complete at
their leisure, yet it uncovers strengths and weaknesses, degree of honesty,
skills, shortcomings and aptitudes, all of which then allows the firm to
consider and accept or reject the prospect based on these attributes. And if he
is hired, to then plan for and anticipate his unique style, personality
and ability, and to plan around those limitations to assure
his success; along with recognizing
the leadership style they will respond
to most favorably , and to a degree, the type of compensation plan that they will respond to most enthusiastically. It also serves to help recognize, in advance,
the things we might do as a leader that surely won’t resonate with them. And
conversely, those comments and directions that they will respond to favorably.
It just saves months of trying to figure each other out with varying degrees of
success. It has proven to be amazingly accurate and a stunning success for
those who have tried and adopted it. Find one you like and trust and use it!
Once they
are hired, the work continues. Far too often firms take a “to the lions
Christian” view, offering little in the way of an on-boarding process and
expecting this new sales person to be an island of performance unto himself. He
won’t be! He’ll need a well thought thru, hopefully written plan that they know
they can rely on to learn how to function within the new culture they have
stepped into. And they’ll need to be
reminded of the vision, goals, objectives and direction the firm is pursuing
often… over and over!
Finally, they’ll
need collaboration. To be “managed” is largely inefficient and ineffective. But
being lead is another matter altogether. Top down tiered management is a thing
of the past, commerce moves too quickly for it to work anymore. Successful leadership requires
collaboration, involvement and engagement. Using the results of the
profile, those who succeed at hiring plan to come alongside their new hires to
assure success versus condemning them to
failure.
Adopting a
style and plan along this line will prove successful early and often!
