Top 10 Tips for a Successful Sales Hire by Gary Delbridge
For the past 20 years I’ve been involved in the Hiring, Training and Management of sales teams. I’ve been working with hundreds of companies all of which wanted sales teams strong enough to beat their competition.
In Australia, I set up Sales Recruitment as part of our Sales Development business to make sure that our training clients hired the best possible salespeople for their teams. After all, we had to train them.
The last thing we wanted was for our clients to replace underperforming salespeople with even worst new salespeople and then expect us to make them into Superstars. Even we can’t turn a ‘Sows ear into a Silk Purse’
So, here are my Top 10 Tips to making a Successful Sales Hire based on proven criteria:
1. Have absolute “Role Clarity” as to the role you want to fill and what the priorities that will lead to success.
2. Your recruitment advert should attract the widest pool of candidates possible. Don’t use exclusions in the ad to narrow the field of those who may apply.
3. Use a candidate screening tool to screen out candidates who won’t be successful rather than using the advert to do this.
4. Be Objective! Keep an open mind when assessing possible candidates. Leave your preconceived ideas of what an ideal salesperson looks like, at the door of the interview room.
5. Be Tough in the First Interview. Salespeople face tough situations. You’ll never have a better opportunity to see how well they handle tough situations than in the first interview.
6. Ruthlessly check their referees. Everything they claim should be able to be verified by their previous employers. If they’re still in their current role, make verification of their claims a condition of employment should an offer be made.
7. Good candidates have choices. Once you have decided that they are the right one for the role, don’t procrastinate. Make an offer and get them on-board without delay or else you will lose them.
8. You have 90 days in which to decide whether they are right for the job and have what it takes. Have clear agreed expectations of performance in that 90 days included the training you will provide. If they fail to hit the agreed targets, cut your losses and start again.
9. As their manager, take total responsibility for their induction and coach them in the behaviours and activities that you expect from them.
10. Be honest. There’s nothing worst than losing a great salesperson because you have promised the earth and failed to deliver. Paint a true picture for candidates rather than a rosy one. This is a strong indicator of your culture. Are you honest and genuine.
It’s impossible to guarantee hiring success but I know from following these rules we get a hiring success rate of greater than 90%.
We also know from our candidate assessments that over 70% of all people in sales roles are unsuccessful and fail to make money for their employers. You have to avoid these candidates; and believe me, they are everywhere. You want the top 10% or at worst, the next 20% but never the bottom 70%.
Give these tips a run. They work for me and my recruitment team and they will work for you too.