Too fast too costly in sales recruiting

Our available assessment data and third party’s research shows that on average 10 to 30% of sales people are really suitable for their job. The more challenging the position gets, the more difficult it is to find the right people. This means a further drop in the percentage that might be out there.

One fact is also that managers sometimes lose patience during the recruitment process and try to get people in as soon as possible. Often without doing a pre-hire assessment or good reference check. This can be a costly venture. The cost of a wrong hire can be steep and can cost you your company’s reputation. In the end we might be talking 5 to 6 digit amounts or more.

Here are some steps to avoid this:

• First take time to prepare the recruitment project
• Setup the right profile you are looking for, including responsibilities and tasks
• Formulate your Value Proposition. You do want to be attractive for the right sales people
• Find and put in place a pre-hire sales assessment which has proven success and is sales specific
• Investigate and choose the right channel on the Internet to post the job
• Scrutinize the applicants, this also includes understanding that there are specialists who can make a CV very sexy
• Investigate interesting applicants on social media
• Setup a long list
• Plan and execute short telephone interviews (10 minutes) with serious candidates
• Propose to take the online pre-hire sales assessment
• Setup a short list of the candidates with good results and invite them for face to face interviews
• Make your choice and don’t forget the on-boarding process

By doing it the right way, you will be able to hire the best sales people!

If this all seems too time consuming, you can consider a professional organization specialized in recruiting Sales Professionals. Contact here.

How to save time, money and lower your losses when recruiting sales people

Recruiting and deploying the wrong sales people cost companies hundreds of millions of Euros a year. Is this fake or reality?

I recently met an old friend of mine who has been in sales for as long as I have. He is the CEO of a high tech company and has managed to steer clear of the crisis due to the reputation and the services of his organization. The last couple of years has not been easy, due to the lack of sales power.

The markets he operates in are demanding more professional attention and a different tactic from sales people. Traditional sales approaches don’t achieve the results like they used to. This is something we see in the different European countries where we operate. It requires much more selling value instead of price. And this is often a major obstacle to sales people.

So he set out to add a different type of sales professional to his team. People who are able to sell value and not cave in to price. He spent more than 200 hours over the last year trying to recruit the right sales people. He met and spoke to different recruiters who presented tens of sales people who did not fit the job requirements and wasted his precious time. In the end he hired one so called sales champ who turned out to be a sales chimp. This person was terminated after 4 months after doing more damage than you can imagine.

Conclusion: the traditional way of recruiting sales people has taken its toll. There are more innovative and cost effective methodologies to search, find and recruit the right sales people from whom you expect above average results in more difficult markets.

What do you need? Professional and effective methods and tools. If you are using a recruiter, then you need a professional one who is specialised in sales, uses effective tools and approaches to present to you the right people. Not a CV pusher.

Call me and let’s look at sales recruiting from a different perspective.