While reviewing a DISC Styles profile of a sales applicant with a client I heard an interesting, if not uncommon, response the other day.
It seems the client, who shall go nameless, had skipped quite a number of steps in the AHS Sales Hiring System.
Where the Advanced Hiring System
- Aggressively recruits applicants, then
- Profiles all applicants for Values. If the applicant profiles well for Values, they then are
- Profiled for Style where we are looking to make sure they are naturally persuasive. Finally, those who pass the Style profile are
- Interviewed using the AHS 4-Part Interview Module. The applicant who scores the best in the Interview Module is your best hire.
The client skipped step 1. They only had one applicant who they interviewed. They didn’t use the AHS 4-Part Interview Module in Step 4, but because they “handled themselves really well in the interview,” they ran the Values and Styles profiles on the applicant.
As we reviewed the Styles profile together I pointed out to the client that in all likelihood, despite they’re being as they said “aggressive and a good communicator”, they would fail over the long term. Their DISC Style showed someone who deep down inside found persuasion to be distasteful.
Hiring a Future Sales Superstar can — and should be — reduced to steps. The circulatory system in our bodies where blood is pumped by the heart to the lungs and then throughout the body had better not skip steps. Doing so would mean death.
Likewise, skip steps in sales hiring and you won’t get a Sales Superstar — you’ll get a dead sales hire who ends up putting your business on life support.
