How to Hire Sales People Under Pressure

(or How to Hire a Dud Salesperson)

One of the most common mistakes made in hiring salespeople is hiring under pressure.

I wish I could give you some tricks to improve the odds of hiring successfully under pressure. The fact is that, short of using lucky fairy dust, the odds of making a successful sales hire under pressure is less than 1 in 5.

  To understand why hiring top sales performers takes time, compare hiring under pressure to trying to make quota on the last day of the month.

There you are on the last day of the month, one big sale away from making goal and collecting your bonus. But anyone with an ounce of experience in sales knows the odds of succeeding are not good. Yes, it’s possible. (And we sales types are optimistic by nature.) But the odds are low of making quota on the last day of the month.

“Having studied the problem for years, I think it comes down to a question of too much pressure.”

Let’s try to imagine the problem with making the big sale on the last day of the month. First of all, you don’t have enough time to really prospect for the most likely buyers. And second, you will unconsciously be applying too much sales pressure. Pressure doesn’t work, but your bonus is at stake so you apply a bit too much urgency.

Same thing with trying to hire under pressure. Our research shows hiring a top performer means you need to filter through 25 applicants. Filtering means more than “I’m only talking to them if they have previous sales experience or not.”

From those 25 applicants, you then need to get down to 3 who you will interview intensively. And by interviewing intensively I mean conducting at least 3 – and preferably 4, well-planned interviews with each of those applicants.

Our research shows that it takes four interviews to really get to know whether the applicant really did all the things they claimed they did.

Hiring well is one the most profitable activities a sales manager does. Our research also shows, unfortunately it is the thing that tends to get left until last. Hence the average sales manager’s rather unspectacular record as a sales hirer.

Better Sales – Managing Different Styles – The High-D

The D score is defined as Dominance. I like to call it Ego Drive and I think that conforms more with the seminal article “What Makes a Good Salesperson” published in Harvard Business Review

High-D’s are highly motivated salespeople. In fact, the reason that they are successful is because they are so highly motivated.

To a High-D there is literally a dialogue going off in their heads that says ”I can make it. I can do this work. I am the one who can make this happen. It’s all up to me.” (They might have different words, but that’s the essence.)

High-D’s love a challenge. They are never satisfied with the status quo and will be attracted to the new and different. This is a great asset for you, as a manager since you can be sure they have the ability to achieve more.

Whether you can get them to live up to their potential is another thing.

Hopefully after you read this, and other more detailed tools in the Member Area, you will know more about helping them to maximize their productivity.

High-D’s don’t shy away from confrontation. And if they are not getting enough challenge or they are feeling frustrated they are more likely to get involved in conflicts.

I joke that it seems like they can almost appear to encourage fights. “I’m bored, why don’t you two fight?” In some ways it’s not really a joke because they like being highly charged.

The way to motivate a High-D is to challenge them. For the Low-D confrontation is a turn off and leaves them hurt and retreating. For the High-D they don’t get offended when you call them out. Tell them that they darn well could do better than they’re doing.

Give the High-D a goal to shoot for – and then make sure the reward is congruent with their highest ValuesMatrix^TM value. (Just look at page 2 of the ValuesMatrix^TM and match the reward to the number one value in the report.)

High-D’s might seem a bit difficult, but once you understand what makes them tick they’re easy to manage. The trick is to challenge them to reach a goal that matches their values, then get out of their way…

A P.S. to this, is be sure you really have a High-D. Check their StylesMatrix^TM to be sure. If you don’t have a true High-D and you try and manage them like one you will wish you hadn’t…

Can Using a Sales Hiring System Really Help You to Hire Sales People Who Really Can Sell?

Since 2000, I’ve been asking clients the question, “What is your Sales Hiring Success Rate?”

I’ve come to believe that the dirty dark secret in sales management is Sales Managers are struggling when it comes to recruiting and hiring salespeople. When pressed on their strategy for sales hiring, most will point to their training strategies, their account management strategies, their leadership ability and all the things that happen after bringing a new team member on board.

It’s a case of the cart before the horse, yet as an industry we can’t see it for the life of us.

Hire better salespeople and you can count on better sales results

Let’s talk about sports teams.

Bear with me, because this is going to be an important lesson. First of all sports teams are something we are all familiar with. They are extremely public organizations. Newspapers, websites and sports radio blab on 24/7 about them. They are easy to follow.

Sports and sales are related, but did you ever think about what is the real similarity?

Sales teams and sports teams are evaluated based on immediate results. What you did yesterday on the field has no bearing on today’s game. Sports teams live in the Now of immediate results. And so do sales teams.

The kind of individual who can deal with the constant pressure of immediately measurable results is the kind of person who can thrive in a sports team. And this is a rare individual. Leave aside the physical characteristics because there are many who have those characteristics but still fail as athletes.

Now consider that sports teams spend considerable resources constantly recruiting for that rare individual who can be an athlete. They realize that without constant recruiting they are dead. Because they are looking for a rare type of person.

Did you ever stop to realize that sales is the same way? Great salespeople have a rare personality style.

Personality is not something we can train. You either is or you isn’t. And if you don’t believe that, think of all the duds you’ve hired who started out great but six months later are dog meat in your company. They didn’t have the personality and over time they had to fail. We can’t fake who we are deep down inside.

Bottom Line:  who you put on your sales team is so much more important than anything else you can do.