In the mid-1990’s an “Entrepreneurial Seizure” lead me to form a company called Radio Profits Corporation. Through luck, good fortune and a brilliant partner, we were able to turn that company within 7 years into a sales machine with 200 salespeople generating 40,000 individual business to business sales a year.

We made our share of mistakes in the beginning, and it seemed at times that our concept was doomed to fail. After all, in 1996 there was no Internet to speak of and, yet our business concept involved hiring a team of 200 salespeople located across the U.S., U.K and Germany. Each one sold into their local market, talking with businesses about local community involvement.

Its hard to imagine what it was like before the Internet. How did we stay in touch without email and Facebook and Skype? The answer is we did it purely by telephone and fax

One mistake, however, nearly sank us and it was something we created by ourselves — and took us a while to recognize. Since we had a remote team we figured that the more managers who “touched” our salespeople, the better. Two heads are better than one, right?

However we began to notice a certain paralysis of activity.

Organizational Chart — Don’t Neglect This Critical Step

We realized that the rule must be: One manager and one manager only — all direction must be filtered to the salesperson’s manager. Accounting was forbidden to make reporting demands, Operations was forbidden to make suggestions directly to the salespeople. Immediately we saw the productivity per salesperson increase. Paralysis ended.

You are running a business, not a commune. Businesses that succeed have a clear Organizational Strategy with no departmental crossover. If you are permitting anybody but your Sales Manager to talk with your salespeople you’re setting yourself up for sales hiring failure.

Maybe you’ve seen one; maybe you’ve even been lucky enough to hire one. There are some salesmen who seem to do everything right, from getting the right leads to closing the deals. It seems like magic; it’s like they have a crystal ball that tells them which clients to go after and how to approach each one.

The truth is, it’s not magic—not really. It’s sales intuition, and it’s how rock star salesmen are always getting better and better sales.

Although intuition is not something that can be identified on a DiSC assessment or the Values or Styles Matrices used in the AHS sales hiring system, any salesman who has strong intuitive skills is going to bring better sales to your company. By definition, intuition is the ability to know or sense something without the use of logic or rational processes. In sales, intuition tends to tip the scales, smoothing out most facets of the process. Basically, it’s selling by gut feelings.

Yes, we know. We’ve addressed the issue of how gut feelings can steer you wrong in sales hiring, but now the game has changed. Now the salesman is on the hunt—tracking down the client, discovering his problem, offering a solution, dealing with objections, and closing the sale. Let’s see how intuition will work each part of the process and create the potential for better sales.

First, finding the client. Whatever process the salesman uses to acquire leads, sales intuition can save him a lot of time if he can isolate the prospects that offer him the best chance for better sales. A little research to gather information about the prospects, and he will most likely develop some rational ideas about which ones are more open to dealing with him. But if he has a good sense of intuition, he’ll be able to use the facts to “sense” the right person to approach as well as the right style to adopt in making the initial contact.

Once contact has been made, intuition helps a salesman understand the best time to make the presentation as well as the appropriate method. When the prospect raises resistance or makes an objection, the salesman uses intuition to gain insight into what might be behind the objections and creates alternative solutions to dispel the prospect’s reservations.

Sales intuition enables a salesman to manage the delicate balance of knowing when to be assertive and knowing when to back off and give the customer some space. With intuition, he is confident that the sale will go through; he just needs to listen to the inner voice that tells him where the customer stands in relation to making the commitment, and wait for the appropriate moment to guide the prospect toward closing the deal.

To clarify, intuition is not something that just happens. It develops as the salesman focuses on what he sees, hears, and experiences as he communicates with a customer. Learning to read between the lines and interpreting body language are key in developing these magical insights. So it’s no crystal ball, but sales intuition is an invaluable tool that ultimately leads to better sales.

It happens to all sales managers—even the best. You’ve done everything you can to retain your salesmen: you’ve used the AHS hiring system to identify the best, most successful candidates to hire, then you’ve managed them in an environment designed to keep them happy. And it’s paid off. Your company’s profits are through the roof.

But now you’re losing one of your best salesman. It’s not because of anything you have or haven’t done as his manager, it’s for something completely out of your control—personal reasons. That’s the problem that most sales managers don’t think about. Until it happens. While you deal with your salesmen on a professional level, you are often completely unaware of what’s going on in their personal lives.

Maybe they won the lottery or came into a huge inheritance, so they would rather spend their time doing something besides working. But a more likely scenario is issues that develop either suddenly or gradually. Issues such as family obligations (raising children, taking care of aging parents, etc.) and health factors are just some of the personal reasons that can cause your star performers to leave.

And now you have to hire salesmen again, and it’s not going to be easy to replace your top performer. It’s a lot of pressure!

Okay, we don’t mean to say I told you so, but if you had followed the recommendation in the Advanced Hiring System course, this wouldn’t have to be an emergency. If you had been maintaining a regular schedule of recruiting the best candidates, you would have either enough personnel to keep the sales machine running smoothly, or one or two candidates in the pipeline, ready to come on board.

As it is, now you have to hire sales people from whatever is out there right now, and sometimes the choices aren’t all that great. Even when you apply the targeted recruiting ads in the AHS sales hiring materials, you may not get any of the top-flight candidates you’re looking for. Oh sure, you’ll have some applicants; there are those who’ll throw their hat in anybody’s ring, and some of the lazier types view selling as an easy way to take home a paycheck without exerting much effort. But when you mention the pre-employment assessment, some will be no-shows, and the others will score at a level that you don’t even interview.

Now you have to make a hard decision: spend more time and money to continue your recruiting efforts, hoping that this time at least one viable candidate will apply; or take a chance on the candidate who didn’t fit the salesperson profile, but who had a great résumé.  As we’ve stated before, don’t count on résumés to help you find your best candidates. If you settle for someone who’s merely average, or worse, incompetent, you’re damaging your entire sales team. After all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

No, the solution to sales hiring is to always be recruiting. Even when you feel you have a complete sales force, it can only benefit you to bring a rock star on board. By constantly recruiting, you’ll find that you have the upper hand when it comes to building a sales team, and instead of a pressure cooker, you’ll  find that your sales hiring tasks will become a walk in the park.