Hiring Salespeople is Like Training for a Marathon

Anyone who has ever crossed the finish line of a 26.3 mile marathon knows how it is a life changing event. Less than 50% of those who begin a marathon achieve their goal

Son: What does running a marathon and hiring a sales team have to do with each other?
Dad: Everything, son. Everything

Running a marathon requires daily attention to daily mileage goals. You can skip a day every once in a while. Skip two and your odds of success fall dramatically.

Successful sales hiring is also built from the ground up. Step by step we build. First placing ads, then profiling all applicants and finally only interviewing those applicants that have passed the profiles. We exercise discipline in our interview, as we interview each of the three applicants who pass both profiles.

Some managers tire of the process and try to skip steps. They often try to select applicants by scanning resumes. They think they are saving time, but in the end their team is made up of mediocre players. They try to patch that by giving rah-rah motivation.

Just like training for a marathon, half steps always lead to failure. Skip steps, try and train sporadically and you’ll be lucky to cross the finish line running. In all likelihood you’ll be out of the race.

Note: Alan ran The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Marathon, his first marathon, in 2001 at age 48. This year he’s training for the Tel Aviv Marathon at age 58.

Sales Hiring is Easier Than Hiring a Web Designer

Clients watched “live” the recent debacle for a simple change of the look of the Advanced Hiring System website. Starting Friday I notified clients that we were going to swap the “skin” of the site.  We figured everyone would be out barbecuing in honor of our vets and web traffic would be low.

As it turned out, because I violated my own rules on how to hire a temporary contractor, I ended up with a nightmare. From Saturday until Wednesday the site looked like an elementary school student had designed it. Repeated calls, emails, SMS’s went unreturned. When I finally did get connect, the excuses were a yard long and a mile deep.

After deciding “enough was enough” I contacted our Developer and we went back to our old skin.

Sales Hiring using the Advanced Hiring System, on the other hand, is something so predictable it’s laughable.

Follow the Steps and Welcome A Hunter to Your Sales Team

The steps are:

1. Write an Ad using the model and keywords contained in the AHS Ad Writing Module. This is important because the ad is the first step – and as the old expression goes, “How you start is how you finish.
2. Place the ad and use Social Media using the steps contained in the AHS Ad Placement Module. The steps will save you countless wasted hours and frustration
3. Profile all applicants using the AHS ValuesMatirx (TM). This determines what are the values most important to the applicant. Top sales performers have values in common regardless of what product or service you sell.
4. Profile all applicants with the correct values with the AHS StylesMatrix (TM). This is to check for the personality style. Your top sales performers have similar personality styles.
5. Interview applicants who have similar styles to top performers using the AHS Four Part Interview Module. Conduct a scripted interview. DO NOT WING YOUR INTERVIEW. Better to be boring and thorough. Don’t be a salesperson here.

Do this and watch your sales hiring results soar. If you want more info consider signing up for the AHS Sales Hiring E-course. It’s the cheapest $47 you’ll ever spend. And if you don’t think it’s worth it, let us know and we’ll give you a no hassles refund for every nickel.

Paying Top Salesmen Well is Not Only Fair, It’s Good Business Sense

If you’ve recruited real salesmen (and not a faker), paying them well is not optional.

A compensation plan for real salesmen, needs to be designed so that salespeople who “kill it”, make a ton.

Advanced Hiring System clients understand this, but it bears repeating: top sales performers are what are called by Abraham Maslow “High Practical Personality styles.”

In short, top salespeople do not wake up in the morning, open their eyes and ask themselves “How can I serve humanity” — not gonna happen.

Top sales performers are money or power motivated. They are driven by wanting to gain a greater sense of control over their lives. In a free market economy (and we still have one, despite the efforts of our politicians), salespeople want more money in order to feel in control.

If you try to chisel a salesperson, if they are a real top performer, you might increase your profits short-term. Long term, they’re going to be looking for a new home where they can achieve their goals.

Weak salespeople, those who know deep down inside they are fake salespeople will accept lower pay. But those kinds of salespeople are a dime a dozen – and they are not real salespeople. In the old days we called them “cheeks in the seat”.” In the beginning when I did some work for Sprint, that’s all they wanted – people to “make dials”. But that’s not selling.

Selling is having the intuitive ability to help others to reach a favorable decision for our proposition. It is a rare skill to be able to really sell.  And yet, it is a skill that can be identified in a highly predictable way using the tools we’ve developed for our clients.

We heard recently one of our clients held members of his trade association’s annual meeting spellbound. He was talking about “the amazingly simple system they use to identify to hire “hunters” time after time. Thanks, Chris!

We’re always looking for new clients who realize that the only way out of the mess created by Washington or London is to hire top salesmen. Click here to take a free profile and find out more. Sales Managers or decision-makers, please.