In this election year, there are, as usual, a large number of voters who are dissatisfied with their options at the polls. Most elections are like that—we want at least one candidate who is clearly perfect, but what we are given rarely lives up to our expectations. Most of us sigh and punch the ticket for what we consider to be the lesser of two  evils, and some of us just stay away from the polls, feeling completely ineffective.

Sales hiring is a lot like an election: some sales managers are forced to sigh and choose the lesser of two (or three, or four) evils, and they find themselves with more dead wood on their sales team.

The reason is usually a flawed sales hiring process, and it begins with step one—attracting the right candidates. If you don’t have A players in your hiring pool, you’re not going to end up with the A team that will take your company to the top.

The best place to start sales hiring top performers also offers the best price: free. You undoubtedly have networks of associates, friends, even employees who can direct you to some viable candidates. All you need to do is have them put out some feelers to find the quality applicants you’re looking for. Your network is also a good place to get candidates because your connections can talk up your company as a great place to work.

If your network happens to be a little short of ideas, you’ll need to do some recruiting for your sales hiring. Some companies actually hire recruiters to find candidates for them, but that can be a little risky if you’re not sure of the recruiter’s track record. You’ll save some money and possibly get better results by doing your own targeted recruiting.

Most top talent is not going begging for a good sales job. To attract A players, you need to have an ad that far outstrips the competition. Fortunately, much of your competition is still relying on the same old “help wanted” ad with a laundry list of desired skills, but those types of ads aren’t going to attract the superstar salesmen. In fact, your ad should specify that you’re looking for a superstar, instead of mere “help.” That will be sure to appeal to the top salesmen egos out there. And instead of listing skills needed, inspire them by boasting about results, challenges, and opportunities. If you highlight the ways your company makes a difference, you’ll be able to attract the very best and find good salesmen for your team.

In order to seduce the types of applicants that will round out your A team, remember that, in sales hiring, the devil is in the details. Since the best salesmen are extremely Money and Power driven, make them salivate with your descriptions of great compensation, benefit packages, perks, rewards, recognition, and status. Create a powerful headline that will virtually pull their eyes to the rest of the ad, then tantalize them with targeted keywords, as recommended in the AHS ad writing module. They’ll be knocking at your door well before their scheduled appointment (after all, they are superstars!).

Once you’ve attracted the best applicants, you can use the rest of the AHS sales hiring tools to narrow the field. With a hand-picked set of candidates, you can rest assured that you’ve elected—I mean hired—the very best salesmen.

Scott Wolf at Arcamax pointed me to a link for “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion” by Professor Robert Caldini.  Its a Harvard Business Review publication from 2001.

Nothing new from Dr. Caldini, by any stretch,  but nonetheless, it’s worth reading.

The article is a rehash of NLP 101, which Richard Bandler and John Grinder created in the late 80’s. Scott Wolf and I had a stint in a former life, promoting NLP Master Trainer Kenrick Cleveland in 1988. It was an eye-opener for both us us — in many ways.

Caldini lists six tools master persuaders use to convince others:

1. Liking. People like those like them, who like them.
2. Reciprocity: People repay in kind
3. Social Proof: People follow the lead of similar others.
4. Consistency: People fulfill written, public and voluntary commitments.
5. Authority: People defer to experts who provide shortcuts to decisions requiring specialized information.
6. Scarcity: People value what’s scarce.

Any sales professional is going to agree with the list. You get a couple of those going for you — or even one well executed, and you’ve got a buyer.

Of course, the question is, can you teach this list to salespeople and get better results. If you could script it and coach it, you’d just collect the orders.

But, any sales manager who’s been around sees most sales training produce a “temporary bump,” at best. Only a small percentage of salespeople (1 out of 5)  “get it” and end up with any long term improvement.

The reason is because only natural salespeople can really sell. I’d go as far as to say that non-natural salespeople, in their heart of hearts, find persuasion distasteful.

There’s no question persuasion can be “engineered” to a more predictable result as Caldini suggests. However the salesperson’s Personality Style and Personal Values ultimately predict sales success over the long term.

Like many of you, I like to read. I’ve always got a novel, business book and self-development book on the nightstand. I was referred to a website, 37signals.com as an example of some very clever thinking built around a business book, Rework.

37signals has a great story and some really helpful business tools. I’m reprinting their chapter on workaholism, which has been a pet peeve of mine for years.

Workaholism

Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We hear about people burning the midnight oil. They pull all-nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a badge of honor to kill yourself over a project. No amount of work is too much work.

Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it’s stupid. Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.

Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve. First off, working like that just isn’t sustainable over time. When the burnout crash comes–and it will–it’ll hit that much harder.

Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.

They even create crises. They don’t look for ways to be more efficient because they actually like working overtime. They enjoy feeling like heroes. They create problems (often unwittingly) just so they can get off on working more.

Workaholics make the people who don’t stay late feel inadequate for “merely” working reasonable hours. That leads to guilt and poor morale all around. Plus, it leads to an ass-in-seat mentality–people stay late out of obligation, even if they aren’t really being productive.

If all you do is work, you’re unlikely to have sound judgments. Your values and decision making wind up skewed. You stop being able to decide what’s worth extra effort and what’s not. And you wind up just plain tired. No one makes sharp decisions when tired.

In the end, workaholics don’t actually accomplish more than nonworkaholics. They may claim to be perfectionists, but that just means they’re wasting time fixating on inconsequential details instead of moving on to the next task.

Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.