It’s been a tough winter for many in the US and Europe, but that’s changing now… Spring Holidays are about rebirth and rejuvenation.

As I was out on my morning daily run along the sea, it reinforced that we need to take the time to enjoy what we’ve got.

At 61 I am happy to be still going out on my daily run. Maybe I’m not as fast as I used to be but, for me still getting out every day and “crank out the miles” is a great part of the day.

If running isn’t your thing, (I can see the looks on some of your faces as you read this) pick something for yourself, whether it’s going for a walk or a bike ride, do it and enjoy the season. Work will be there when you get back.

At 61 I can tell you without a doubt, health trumps wealth. And mental health drives health.

Speaking of enjoying the spring, I am traveling all of May. First stop is my 40th W&L reunion in Lexington, VA where I will, of course, run the college running trail — the Turkey Trot. Haven’t set foot on it since 1974 – should be fun!

I am the worst comedy movie critic you’ll ever meet — ask my wife, Leah. These days most comedies are about high school sex or marital infidelity. I usually get up from the couch or walk out of the theater in the first 20 minutes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not prudish; I just think common culture is, well, so common and low class these days.

But as a sales guy, the movie, “The Internship” teaches us a valuable lesson about what makes the “Sales Personality Style” critical.  And, given that Google had a hand in the movie it shows even the great and mighty Google is fairly clueless about what makes salespeople critical in growing sales.

The plot of the movie is that two sales guys get blown out when their company closes down. In the course of figuring out their next move, the character played by Vince Vaughn has an insight that he wants to go work at Google. This is an important characteristic of the Sales Personality Style.

The Sales Personality Style has the ability to comfortably imagine far-fetched scenarios. This is not to be overlooked when you go about staffing your sales team — and is the first and foremost reason why you need to make sure you’re only bringing Sales Personality Styles in to be interviewed.

When they are interviewed it is by video. This is a concept we’ve encouraged our clients to implement.  Interviewing by video is simple these days. As a Founder and CEO I work with software developers. Given the size of our company — and since most developers are located remotely from my two offices in Norfolk or Nahariya, I use video interviews.

Video interviews are efficient and can give you 90% of what an in-person interview gives. Today with Google Hangouts or Skype you can get more done in less time. Perhaps for the last interview you’ll want to make it face to face.

In the movie, where the two 50 something sales guys are in way over their head in Google’s core business, which is coding and developing software, they shine when it comes to people. Salespeople, as it turns out, even at the great and mighty $48 Billion a year Google are invaluable when it comes down to what makes Google great — revenue generation.

A recent client email message said, “Alan, we’ve had 20 applicants apply and NONE have passed the second profile.”

We’ve been testing and tweaking the system for nearly 16 years now… We have a huge database of what works in sales hiring. Clients who’s results don’t match our model get my attention.

We know that out of 20 applicants, 10 should have passed ValuesMatrix™ and of those 10, 3 should have passed StylesMatrix™.

I responded in an email “XXXX, let’s talk. Something is not right. Let’s set up a meeting to go over those results.”

We recently had a health issue with my wife.  After 37 years of marriage I’ve got her “broken in” just the way I love her. So I went along to a series of doctor’s appointments.

Friends, MD’s and humble Sales Hiring Wizards follow the same procedure. MD’s have a series of diagnostic steps to arrive at the problem.

The AHS Sales Hiring System is, well… a System.

Here are the steps:

If something is not right then, somewhere along the line someone changed a step.

Like going to the MD who says, “Take the medicine 3 times a day for 10 days.” But you decide you can’t be bothered to do it that way. So you make up your own schedule.

Same thing in sales hiring… you must follow the system to get the expected results.

As it turns out the client skipped Step 1… They decided to use the ad they like, not the ad we recommend.

Each step in the AHS System is designed to get maximum results for minimum effort. Skip a step and you’re not going to feel very good about hiring salespeople.