Let’s face it: everything we do as sales managers revolves around one idea—ROI. Even our sales hiring methods impact our company’s bottom line. For that reason, we want to make certain that our process assures us of hiring the right person the first time, and that has to do with your hiring speed limit.

I know, you’ve got a high-performance company, and it’s important to you to keep it running at top speed and top efficiency. When something needs to be done, you want it done day before yesterday. That’s what better sales is all about.

The problem is, it’s not often possible to realize the greatest benefits of good sales hiring if you’re racing through the process at mach speed.

If you race through your sales hiring or skip some of the steps in the process, you can actually be incurring substantial expenses by ending up with the wrong people. They won’t contribute to better sales, they’ll be miserable, you’ll be miserable, and soon they’ll be gone. That’s practically a given. Then you’ll have to hire again, and if you don’t have proper sales hiring system in place, as well as the patience to follow the procedures, you’ll find yourself in a recurring loop of hiring failures.

Following the process outlined in the AHS Sales Hiring course materials may seem as though it will take up a lot of time in the beginning, but it actually evens out during the entire process since it significantly reduces the number of viable candidates you’ll end up having to interview. The DISC assessment, along with the values and styles matrices, will allow you to focus on the potential top performers as you eliminate candidates who don’t fit the salesperson profile .

Taking the time to give more than one interview per candidate is also an essential step in effective sales hiring. Remember, for every coaching system for sales hiring, there are probably five coaching systems for interviewing. A candidate can appear polished and perfect during one interview, but that could just be a well-coached façade. Making the time for additional interviews will give you an opportunity to identify inconsistencies and see below the surface.

Of course, no highway system runs smoothly without also having a minimum speed limit, and there is a need for one in sales hiring as well. You don’t want to wait around until there’s a huge need before you think about recruiting new blood. While there may be many top performers out there, chances are they’re not all standing in line until you’re ready to hire them. It’s important to keep yourself open for sales hiring opportunities when they present themselves, even if you weren’t necessarily considering hiring salespeople at the time. After all, an investment in quality will only bring in better returns.