Does the AHS System really work?

Here’s a story I love to tell about how a Tire Changer was selected by the Advanced Hiring System — and how he lead our client’s sales department in new business development.

Erica M is a sales manager in San Francisco at a radio station. She had been a client for a number of years. She knew the system and had used it successfully for over two years.

One day I got a message from her, “Call me immediately. I need to talk.” I returned her call (our clients get unlimited real time access to a real person) and she asked me to look at applicant Jose R.

He profiled well. He had good values. And a good personality style. In fact, he graphed perfectly according to Advanced Hiring System standards.

I asked her if she had interviewed the applicant.

“Yes, I’ve interviewed him using the AHS 4-Part Interview Module.” She said, “He interviews well. Highly motivated, articulate. He’s accomplished quite a lot, given his situation”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

It turns out that Jose R is a young man who married very young. And, given that he married young, he took the first job he could find to support his family…

Busting tires in the back of tire store. He had earned his GED in the evenings.

When Jose heard the ad on the radio station looking for salespeople he applied. Although he scored well on the profiles we use in the Advanced Hiring System, Jose wasn’t the kind of applicant a sales manager expects to hire.

Erica is located in California. Unemployment premimums are killer and she was extremely cautious. Too, Jose was rough he lacked grooming skills, which count in salesmanship.

In talking with her, since he had done so well in the Advanced Hiring System evaluation, I suggested she use some sort of trainee position for a period of 45 days.

At the end of the period if he had demonstrated ability, she would switch him to sales.

The story has a very happy ending. Six months later he led her sales department in new business development the following year he was overall top biller.

He was a natural salesperson who just needed to be discovered. There are people who have the ability to sell but they’ve never applied because their resume doesn’t have sales experience.

Stay turned to find out what makes Jose tick and how if you think “people don’t want to work today” you might be just going about it wrong.

Stay tuned in the next section I’m going to show you how to find applicants to apply for your sales position who are highly motivated.

I’ve been helping clients hire better salespeople for 16 years now. And the lineup of things we’ve got set up for you in 2015 is truly mind-boggling.

The Challenge is on. So starting tomorrow we are going to start pushing you to focus on hiring better salespeople — because even with all the wizz-bang marketing in the world, you still need great people to help close the deal for you.

But today, I want to remind you to celebrate with your kids and the people you love.

I’m proud of this video. Christmas Day on the beach in front of our beach house on the Mediterranean in Israel, my wife, Leah, and two of our grandkids.

http://youtu.be/V3CQW8KIlqc

I’ve spent May traveling the East Coast of the US from New York to Virginia. I have a lot of friends and relatives I hadn’t seen for years, so decided to take a month and visit.

I’ve had some very good meetings in NY that will result in some real opportunities to expand our AHS service to you, our valued clients, as well.  More to follow on that later…

My 32 year old daughter joined me for a full week of the trip. She and I have not had that kind of time together in more than 14 years.

Being on the road, I’ve been looking at the newspapers along the way. Some of the targeted ones – those that are specific to a group, are full of ads.

I am shocked at how empty most general newspapers are of ads. Most newspapers who are not clients of ours are totally sleeping. I turned page after page without one single ad!

My friend, Scott Wolf told me that newspapers spend 20x what it costs Google to deliver an impression. This is somehow supposed to be an explanation.

I think the sales departments are asleep all across the newspaper industry.

Google would think they’d died and gone to heaven if they could do what a newspaper does: drop a physical ad on a prospect’s doorstep.

Jeff Bezos is no dope. Many say it’s some sort of hobby to have bought the Washington Post. Ha. He can now put a physical ad on a doorstep and if you don’t realize the value that brings, you are missing the point.

In a virtual world, physicality is still preeminent. If you doubt that, imagine kissing your lover virtually compared to the real thing – lip to lip.

When I was in Franklin, Virginia my friend Jim Ellenson said Union Camp shut down the paper mill which killed the town. He said, “no one uses paper anymore.”

Ha. Maybe the little kiddies in college have something against paper but paper production is at 80% of what it was and that is still a huge number. (And don’t worry about the trees — they grow back.).

So what is the problem in the Newspaper business? In radio, we had a rate card based on demand. As more advertisers buy ads the price goes up due to increased volume.

Newspapers need to do the same thing. Drop the price until advertisers buy.

I would love to make a sales call on the local Italian Restaurant in any city saying “we see how over the past few years Subway has been ‘eating your lunch’ so we want you to put a printed ad in our newspaper that says “Bring this coupon in Wednesday from 1:30-3:30 for a business lunch special 79 cents with the purchase of a drink. If it works we want an over the top testimonial.”

Or go to a bar and offer a coupon “Bring your wife in for a Free Drink on Thursday night. Buy one get one free for the less expensive drink. When you pack your bar, I need a testimonial.”

You get the idea. Unless newspaper closes their doors this week, their sales team needs to get some ads in the paper – and newspaper better than any other media delivers a physical ad to the doorstep.