Having a sales hiring system means, you have a system for sales hiring. A system is a system because the steps of the system have been tested and measured. Each step has been optimized in terms of time and result.

The Advanced Hiring System is not about tests. It is about following the steps of the System.

Because other profile vendors often just sell tests – I can rely on getting a call every week that Vendor X’s tests just didn’t take care of helping them hire a good salesperson.

Not surprising. Any company that claims that their test is a super secret to hiring well has either invented something I’ve never seen in sixteen years or is attempting to mislead the market.

Tests are important, no doubt, in hiring top sales performers. I wouldn’t interview a sales applicant without seeing both of the tests: ValuesMatrix™ and StylesMatrix™.

However before the test, I’d make sure that my Ad was written according to the formula in the AHS Ad-Writing Module and it was running in a place that matched the formula in the AHS Ad-Placement Module.

Most important, I’d make sure to get at least 3 applicants to pass both the ValuesMatrix™ and StylesMatrix™.

Finally, I’d interview each of those applicants 4 times using the script in the AHS 4-Part Interview Module. I’d grade the answers each applicant gave me, tally the scores and hire the one who scored the best.

Following that system I know I am most likely to hire a stud. Conversely if I take shortcuts in the steps I know I am relying on gut feel. Art Sobczak at Business by Phone says, “Gut feel hiring usually just gives you a pain the gut.”

I used to travel a lot for client meetings before the entire set of Internet tools existed for online meetings. One client meeting comes back to haunt me.

My client was having a terrible time meeting his revenue goals. When I arrived on the last day of the month for our meeting, he called an ad hoc sales meeting and invited me in to observe.

The disaster was what I smelled as he told his team they were X dollars off-budget and today was the last billing day of the month. They needed that revenue, he said.

End of meeting.

In his office later he was distracted. For the life of me I couldn’t figure why he had insisted we meet that day.

It became obvious fairly quickly that he, a newly promoted sales manager, was in way over his head. Why? One simple reason:

Any successful sales manager knows that the time to hit this month’s revenue goals was to start last month. If you are not 75% of the goal going into the month you’re way behind.

Sales hiring is the same way. If you want to make a great sales hire to fill a position opening up in two weeks you had better have started 12 weeks ago.

So how do you know you’re going to have an opening? You don’t.

If you’re not running an ongoing recruitment program, you are guaranteeing mediocrity in your sales hiring. No way around it.

If your sales hiring record is 1 good salesperson for every 4 hires, we have designed the AHS Sales Hiring System to fix your problem – that is, IF you use the system.

For more information click here and complete a 60 Seconds Survey. Our tool will help you identify what is really holding you back from hiring top sellers.

Absurd, right? So why do most companies not actively recruit salespeople?