Finding the Most Qualified Sales Applicants With or Without Industry Experience

Can’t get really good sales applicants to apply? Maybe you’re stuck in the great myth that plagues sales managers all over the world:

Applicants need previous industry sales experience.

People Used to Believe the Earth Was Flat

Let’s examine this belief:  Is your top earning rep currently looking to leave?

Ridiculous, right?  If you’re doing a good job as a sales manager, the answer better be a resounding “NO!”  Your top reps should be making way too much to consider leaving.

Top reps have an established base of business and referrals, so they’re happy.  And since life is good for them, they’re not going anywhere.

Any competitor stupid enough to try to recruit them away is going to have to pay a ton.

The myth of successfully hiring a seasoned rep is, well — a myth.

Revolving Door Mediocrity

So what really happens when you recruit for previous industry sales experience?

You’ve seen it firsthand, over and over and over. You get weak salespeople. You get the slugs from your competitor’s team, the people who are not making it.

They’re not bad people. They’re just not cut out for sales. They always think the problem is not them. They figure THE COMPANY is the problem. At THEIR company, all the good accounts have been taken by the top salespeople. They want to work for YOUR company so some of that juiciest fruit will fall to them.

What they don’t realize is, top salespeople go get business. They don’t wait for it to appear on their account list. Mediocre salespeople wait to be told what to do and where to go get it.

And if you hire one of these previous industry sales experience second stringers, you’ll get to be their Daddy or their Mommy.

Full of Piss and Vinegar

Think back to when you were a young first-time salesperson. If you were like me, you were a 23 year old who was looking to make their mark — and you came in early and left late.

My rule was “be in before the boss and leave after he does.”

Being a young, inexperienced rep means you’re coachable. Young people are often two or three years out of school. They’re used to being a student and paying attention to what the instructor says.  They want to make their mark.

Not all young applicants should be considered. We’ve developed a strategy for figuring out which ones to interview and which ones never to call back. Click here and watch the video we’ve prepared that shows you the best way to hire salespeople.

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If the data is correct, the average age of a top-performing Financial Advisor is 62. For those of you who’ve taken a statistics course, that is about as bad as things get. The insurance industry is going to find its back against the wall within two years.

Every week I personally make a series of client service calls. My team thinks I’m crazy for doing it because it takes time. But I’ve been doing it for 16 years now and every week I learn something. (Besides, deep down, I’m a sales guys who likes talking with my clients.)

I was talking with a General Agent client, Harry, last week. He was telling me that the average age of a top-performing Financial Advisor at his agency is 32. He’s got two agents who’ve won his company’s top performer awards.

Harry is MDRT and he told me that at least 4 of his agents will end up MDRT.

I asked him why his agents are so young compared to the industry average. Without a pause, he said, “Your Advanced Hiring System is the key. It helps me spot the best talent without any prejudice. Before we used Advanced Hiring we did what every other insurance agency does. Their standardized testing sucks compared to AHS. Plus they start out looking for the wrong things.”

If you’re an insurance agency looking for talented applicants for the key Financial Advisor role, click here

Insurance companies have whole teams of analysts who know better than anyone why an aging sales team spells trouble. The key to recruiting younger team members is to start with a proposition that interests them.

Take a look here for some fast answers

Hiring Salespeople Who Perform Well After the Interview

Have you hired too many salespeople who were great during the interview, but who failed? Were you sure during the interview they were “handling themselves so well”, that they just had to be the one? Did you feel yourself sold on them in the interview?

Allowing yourself to sell or be sold in the interview is a fatal mistake.

Pretend You’re an Engineer – Adopt the “Engineer Persona”

It’s tough for us sales managers not to get fired up in the interview. Our enthusiasm and natural persuasiveness got us to where we are.

Selling is our “default setting.”

But to do well in sales hiring, you’ve got to get out of the “Salesperson Head.”  Instead, the best mindset to use in interviewing is the “Engineer Head.”

What a 62 Year Old Engineer Taught Me About Making Good Decisions

When I was first in sales, my customers came from many backgrounds. One in particular, Jacque, controlled a large ad budget for a technology company. Jacque was an engineer.

I wanted to get a hunk of his budget for our Rock and Roll radio station.  I knew our audience would respond to his offer and I knew I needed a big budget to make it work. No one had come close to cracking the account.

While I was presenting, he was impossible to read. I was sure I was getting nowhere with him during my presentation. He kept looking down at his desk. He seemed bored.

You know what THAT feels like in a sales presentation. I wanted to stop in the middle, because I “knew” he wasn’t buying.

I got to the end. Silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Finally he looked up and said that it sounded good.  And he bought. And that is how I sold Jacque and brought in the largest annual contract ever.

I was 22 years old and I learned an important lesson. 

Jacque taught me why it is so important to stay clear on your goal. And don’t let your emotions control the decision process.

Too many sales managers make the fatal mistake of turning the interview into a sales call.

Stop getting tricked in the interview by scripting your interview. Break your interview down to sections. Each section needs to cover a key personality characteristic.

• Stick-to-it-iveness
• Entrepreneurialism
• Ability to overcome adversity

We’ve put together a video. Watch it and see how to construct an interview that gets you salespeople who perform.

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