A lot of employers find it hard to find and hire good people. Over the years, I have learned that good people are attracted to the company just as much as they are found by it. In order to attract “A” players, you have to be attractive. “A” players are not attracted to the same things as “B” & “C” players, yet most employers write ads that appeal directly to those “B” and “C” players.
Everyone tells me they want to hire “A” Players and at the same time they are ill-equipped to do so.
First let me define “A” Players .They are typically only the top 6% of the sales population.* Below are some defining characteristics of “A” Players:
This list would also include attributes like; they do whatever it takes, keep score themselves, hate to lose, etc.—but that is for another article.
There are 4 stages in the hiring process: Identification, Sourcing, Screening and Recruiting. By the time you get through those stages, you’re exhausted and can’t wait to get back to doing your job. Just when you want to get back to normal, your candidate is in anything but a normal state.
Here is what I have learned from 30+ years of hiring “A” players. First, they have to divorce themselves from their current relationships—both customers and co-workers—and they have to keep their spouse reassured that this was a good move for them. In addition, your “A” player has to contend with his employer’s efforts to retain them by offering increased pay, more responsibility, more accounts, a better territory or a promotion.
“I want someone with an entrepreneurial mind-set in this position,” a client recently stated. I’ve heard this comment many times before, and it triggers my cautionary response, “Are you sure?”
Too often we believe we want attributes like self-starting, proactive, and organized in a person. In other words, we are looking for someone who fits the “entrepreneurial” mold without really defining the desired behavior exhibited by a person who could have these attributes.
Have you noticed? Lead stories in the news are no longer about high unemployment, a bearish stock market, lack of consumer spending, or foreclosure numbers. I noticed it and thought, “So, this is what recovery feels like.” It has been a long time in the making.
This economic recovery has been atypical because the 2008 recession was not a typical recession. What made it unique is the entire country and all industries went into it at the same time. Plus, it did not discriminate; it affected all economic classes of people. While we all went in together, the recovery happened at different times for each industry and geographic area. For some of you, the recovery may still be coming.
Whenever I conduct my Hire the Best Workshop, I always ask participants what a person needs in order to be successful in sales. Typically, I will hear that they need to be: a good listener, rejection-proof, a team player, organized, an effective communicator, have perseverance, be goal-orientated, have industry knowledge, be money-motivated, be self-motivated, etc.
I have interviewed salespeople for over 35 years, and during that time I’ve developed some insights on effective interviewing methods. Here are five of my strategies that will enable you to better evaluate the salespeople you are interviewing:
Here is our preferred process at Performance Group:
This week’s blog comes from guest blogger, Dave Kurlan. Dave is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly-regarded sales leadership expert.
Would you believe me if I told you that in a recent sales force evaluation, nearly 50% of the 300 inside salespeople were not in the right role? Recently, we evaluated a large inside sales force and I thought it might be interesting to share some of the more unusual findings that were responsible for this sales team’s inability to achieve the revenue goals that the company expected from them. It isn’t uncommon to learn that salespeople are not in a role for which they are best suited, although it isn’t as easy to determine in sales forces when there may be only one role – like territory sales. On the other hand, when we evaluate a company with multiple selling roles, our analysis will identify the best role for each salesperson and, as I mentioned at the outset, most on this sales force were not in the right selling role!
One of the challenges of sales management is the constant need to improve your sales team’s performance. However, when you do invest in their development and they fail to execute on what appears to be the simplest techniques, you say to yourself, “How hard can this be?” When this happens what it should affirm is that they need additional coaching or training. The question is which one, coach or training? The reality is that some of your salespeople need coaching, some need training and some need both.
If you are like most managers, you were promoted to your position because you were proficient at you job. Top salesmen get promoted to sales managers, top engineers get promoted to chief engineers, top accountants become partners in their firms, etc.
To stay proficient at your role as a manager, you have to make the shift from getting things done yourself to getting things done through other people. There are a lot of competencies you must master in order to be successful at this and at the same time, it can be narrowed down to just three. They are your ability to lead, to delegate and to choose your team.