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.
