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.

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.

Why Some Salesmen Top Out Below Where You Think They Can?

If this isn’t the oldest question in sales management, it’s the second oldest for sure.

How is it that some sales hires are so perfect in every way – they are persuasive and present themselves well – yet they never seem to make the big monthly numbers?

These are the ones we Sales Managers dedicate ourselves to – training them and cajoling, challenging and mentoring them.

Look back over your results with salespeople like this over your career as a Sales Manager

Tell me what you see? Did you get them to break out and really go for it? Or did they stay so average or slightly below average that you don’t really want to look that closely?

I bet the later because those kinds of salespeople are exhibiting values that people with low money or power scores in the AHS ValuesMatrix™ are likely to show.

Mr. and Ms Sales Manager, it is not your job (nor is it possible in most cases) to change another person’s values.

When Auburn’s line coach Tracy Roker recruited lineman Nick Fairly he was recruiting top talent. He invested time and energy in his recruiting strategy to get the kind of result that gets him a Vince Lombarbi Trophy Ourstanding Lineman.

There is no excuse for a bad sales hire.

So, in answer to the question “Why Some Salespeople Top Out Below Where You Think They Can?” the answer is because the Sales Manager hired the wrong person.

How to fix it? Spend more time mastering your sales recruiting system and you’ll get the salespeople who constantly meet and exceed your expectations. Anything less simply won’t get you want you really want as a Sales Manager.