In this section of the Advanced Hiring System E-course we will create the message you will need to attract the best sales applicants.

Marketing your position in the Internet age has become both harder– and easier.

It is harder because we live in a time some have called The Attention Deficit Age. People are being pulled in all directions and its sometimes difficult to get their attention.

Its easier because you can do most of this from your computer.

When you think about hiring as a process the first step in the hiring process is advertising… Both what our ad will say and where were will place it to look for applicants.

Before we start to write the ad I want to focus you here with one question…

“Why are you hiring a salesperson?”

“Ah, to bring in more sales,” you say

OK but tell me more…
1. Are they required to generate their own leads?
2. Do you have any success stories for this position?
3. If they do a good job what will they earn?
4. Is your compensation strategy realistic?

Answer those questions before you start writing

Expert ad writers call the headline “The ad for the ad.” Consider that statement for a moment. The headline is the part of the ad that calls out,
“Hey Jim,” on a crowded subway platform that gets Jim’s attention.

Writing great headlines is overlooked by most sales recruiters.
Great copywriters spend three-fourths of their time writing their headline because if the headline is weak no one will read the ad

Your headline is the first thing the applicant sees in your ad

Scroll through the ads on internet job boards right now. Most of the headlines are boring or trite or just stupid. Your headline either causes the right applicants to read your ad or to ignore it.

Your ad’s headline must stop them in their tracks and get them to read about your offer.

There’s a trick to writing great headlines: Borrow on.

Here are some examples of taking great classic headlines and turning them into sales hiring headlines:

Do You Consider Yourself to be Strong-willed, Forceful and Determined?
Last Year Our Top Salesperson Earned $135,400 In His 2nd Year Working With Us
Did You Ever Tell Yourself That Your Talent As A Salesperson Ought To Be Worth More Than You’re Making Right Now?
Who Else Has Got What It Takes To Earn $138,900 (that’s what our top sales rep earned last year)?

If you follow this formula your ad will be more powerful than the thousands of other ads you are competing with.

If the data is correct, more duds are hired for sales than studs.

Most sales managers when given the task of hiring salespeople couldn’t pick a sales stud out of a stack of resumes if he or she bit them in the butt.

We go on daily, thinking that nobody wants to work these days.  We hire hoping that it will work out, but it is pure guesswork using resumes and gut feel interviewing.

Here are the facts:

Most people don’t want to work — However this is nothing new. Its always been this way. Long before our current numb nuts politicians screwed things up… previous generations of politicians screwed things up… Get over it.

The economy has made selling harder than ever — This might be somewhat true for our lifetimes, but things have been a heck of a lot worse. In the 1930’s there was a killer Depression. Worldwide economies were stagnant. Guess what? IBM was founded during the Depression.

There is no test to really prove whether a sales hire will work out — Actually there is… well, actually there are two tests that we use to get inside an applicant’s head. Here’s what Matt McCallum of Great American Publishing said to me the other day.

“The Advanced Hiring System tests are amazing. And whenever I have violated the rules of the test, I ended up sooner or later (usually sooner) finding out I hired a fake.”

Now is the time to start looking for those studs. The economy is not going to give you a better time to hire (just look at what Big Blue IBM became from their start during the Depression.)

Most sales training books are same old crap, different day. Sad but true.

But every so often there is something that puts a whole new spin on what works and what doesn’t.

Just recently the book Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff was recommended to me by my business coach who I meet with weekly. (Yes even I need a coach.) I thought this was going to be a waste of time. (And made a mental note to check our contract to make sure I could cancel the coaching with no penalty.)

But I’ve learned in the years I’ve been in business that it doesn’t hurt to look. So I downloaded the book, stuck it on my phone and went about my business.

That afternoon as I was sitting in the waiting room to see the Orthopedist (and hoping he’d agree to take off this damned cast so that I could go for a run) I started reading Pitch Anything.

Holy crap, this guy is the real thing. Totally new perspective on what happens in a sale – and how in today’s Twitter environment you’d better get to the point quickly and make that point dramatically.

If you read no other business book this month, pick up a copy of Pitch Anything.