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When’s the Best Time to Hire Sales People?

 

It happens to all sales managers—even the best. You’ve done everything you can to retain your salesmen: you’ve used the AHS hiring system to identify the best, most successful candidates to hire, then you’ve managed them in an environment designed to keep them happy. And it’s paid off. Your company’s profits are through the roof.

But now you’re losing one of your best salesman. It’s not because of anything you have or haven’t done as his manager, it’s for something completely out of your control—personal reasons. That’s the problem that most sales managers don’t think about. Until it happens. While you deal with your salesmen on a professional level, you are often completely unaware of what’s going on in their personal lives.

Maybe they won the lottery or came into a huge inheritance, so they would rather spend their time doing something besides working. But a more likely scenario is issues that develop either suddenly or gradually. Issues such as family obligations (raising children, taking care of aging parents, etc.) and health factors are just some of the personal reasons that can cause your star performers to leave.

And now you have to hire salesmen again, and it’s not going to be easy to replace your top performer. It’s a lot of pressure!

 

Okay, we don’t mean to say I told you so, but if you had followed the recommendation in the Advanced Hiring System course, this wouldn’t have to be an emergency. If you had been maintaining a regular schedule of recruiting the best candidates, you would have either enough personnel to keep the sales machine running smoothly, or one or two candidates in the pipeline, ready to come on board.

As it is, now you have to hire sales people from whatever is out there right now, and sometimes the choices aren’t all that great. Even when you apply the targeted recruiting ads in the AHS sales hiring materials, you may not get any of the top-flight candidates you’re looking for. Oh sure, you’ll have some applicants; there are those who’ll throw their hat in anybody’s ring, and some of the lazier types view selling as an easy way to take home a paycheck without exerting much effort. But when you mention the pre-employment assessment, some will be no-shows, and the others will score at a level that you don’t even interview.

Now you have to make a hard decision: spend more time and money to continue your recruiting efforts, hoping that this time at least one viable candidate will apply; or take a chance on the candidate who didn’t fit the salesperson profile, but who had a great résumé.  As we’ve stated before, don’t count on résumés to help you find your best candidates. If you settle for someone who’s merely average, or worse, incompetent, you’re damaging your entire sales team. After all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

No, the solution to sales hiring is to always be recruiting. Even when you feel you have a complete sales force, it can only benefit you to bring a rock star on board. By constantly recruiting, you’ll find that you have the upper hand when it comes to building a sales team, and instead of a pressure cooker, you’ll  find that your sales hiring tasks will become a walk in the park.

 

 

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What Every Sales Manager Must Know About the Advanced Hiring System

New clients are great! They approach the system like enthusiastic young puppies. They want to know everything about — and especially how to interpret the graphs.

I got a series of emails from new client, Angie. She’s been a top performer as both Sales Manager and Salesperson. She’s worked for the biggest radio broadcaster and has recently been recruited by our client to run one of their properties.

Angie sent me an email:

 Explain why or direct me where I can learn more about what does it mean when someone has their natural and adapted in the same circle?

My response to her was to simply make sure the graphs plot in the “sweet spot”:

My suggestion is to just stick to the system for now “Outside three rings: Persuaders, Promoters or Conductors”

Next morning Angie had taken the profile herself. Here’s a copy of the graph pages:
My response: Proof of concept. Persuader Promoter or Conductor outside three rings.
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How to Hire a Salesperson: Look for the Energy Factor

 

 

 

What little boy or girl hasn’t dreamed of becoming a super-hero when he or she grows up? Their heads fill with images of jumping tall buildings (“in a single bound”), racing locomotives, and defying all the basic laws of physics. When they grow up, they realize that becoming a super-hero is probably not an achievable goal, after all; but if they turn their energy toward becoming super salesmen, instead, you could end up with the opportunity to hire sales people who will record better sales for your company. And they’ll do it faster than a speeding bullet. The key? Energy.

 

Energy equals productivity; high energy salesmen make more sales calls, develop more leads, and convey more enthusiasm to the client. Theoretically, more sales calls means more sales.

 

In spite of what it says in the Constitution, all men are not created equal when it comes to their energy levels. This is important to keep in mind when you’re building a sales team.  As you hire sales people, be aware of the candidates who spend their leisure time looking for things to do rather than lying around on the couch with a beer, a bowl of popcorn, and a remote. Of course, everyone needs a little down time, but the more “down” a person’s down time is, the less likely it is that he will have the energy needed for pulling his weight as part of your sales team.

 

A sales career isn’t for sissies: moving through the various aspects of the job, salesmen can be spending time on the road, in the sky, on the phone, or on the internet at any given time. They have to perform research or develop contacts in order to identify prospects, make the connection, make appointments, keep appointments (where they will discuss customer needs), develop presentations and proposals to meet those needs, and ultimately—hopefully—close the sale.

 

Then there’s the paperwork. Sales call reports have to be completed, sales calls need to be tracked, proposals have to be written, etc., etc., etc. When salesmen aren’t busy doing all of that, they have to keep up with phone calls and emails; spend time learning about the product, the competition, and the customers; and keep polishing their likeability factor. At the end of the day, they have to prepare for whatever tomorrow has in store.

 

Whew! It would be hard to do all this with even an average amount of energy. No, the ideal salesmen must have energy levels that are fine-tuned to smoothly  transition from a mad dash through a crowded airport, to a long spell at the wheel of a rental car, to sustained intervals at phones or computer screens, to appointments and/or meetings that tend to drag on and on.

 

So, because of the very nature of the selling game, it’s important to be able to spot the high energy applicants when you’re building a sales team. The first step is to single out the candidates who score a high D or I on the DISC assessment. Candidates who score low on Drive or Influence are not likely to have high energy levels. If they also score high Money and Power on the Values matrix provided in the AHS hiring system, you can be pretty confident that these salesmen are going to have the energy levels necessary to focus on the goal and keep your company moving skyward. And all without the use of performance-enhancing drugs!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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