The quality of salespeople you hire are a DIRECT reflection of you.
Poor-performing salespeople destroy reputations. When you hire low-performing salespeople...
If you are the CEO, you look like you are not paying attention to essential details.
If you are the VP of Sales, you look inept. Your alpha sales wolves will respect you less.
If you are HR, you look incompetent.
If you are the Sales Manager, you look like a pushover and your alpha sales wolves will respect you less.
Who you hire or allow to be hired directly impacts your reputation. You can blame others all you like, but in the end, the bad sales hires fall on your shoulders.
Four essential steps to stop hiring losers.
- Commit to performance excellence.
- Implement a defined sales hiring process and make it unavoidable.
- Use a valid sales personality test.
- Implement fast feedback loops through data analysis.
Commit to performance excellence.
Until absolutely everyone commits to performance excellence, you will never get there as a company.
This is nearly impossible without helping someone a non-believer or two out the door. You have to be willing to help the head fakers move on. The head fakers are those who say they are onboard yet do not model the sales hiring process and/or do not facilitate and engage data analytics. These people must be helped to find employment with competitors.
Implement a defined sales hiring process.
It continues to blow my mind how many companies still hire from the gut, have an adhoc sales interview process, and do not use a valid sales personality test to ensure they are hiring the best salespeople possible.
Until you get a defined sales hiring process that everyone is committed to and using, your reputation will pay dearly.
Use a valid sales personality test.
Remember the movie "Moneyball" where the recruiters and coaches are sitting around the big table saying, "I got a good feeling about..."? Yeah. Those days are long gone. Everyone in baseball is using Moneyball techniques. Smart companies are using Moneyball sales hiring techniques that begin with a valid sales personality test.
If you are not using a valid sales personality test and comparing the results with sales performance, you are not hiring the best salespeople. Period.
If you have questions about which sales personality testing to consider, give us a call. We can share some insights.
Until you get a defined sales hiring process using a valid sales personality test, your reputation will pay dearly.
Implement fast feedback loops through data analysis.
Review the sales performance of each salesperson and compare it to their sales personality results. Identify the combination of Behaviors, Motivators, Acumen, and Skills that correlate with sales performance. Until you review the data, you are going to be blind in your sales hiring process.
The questions you must ask yourself include:
- What experience seems to be adding to sales performance?
- What education seems to add to sales performance?
- What sales personality adds to sales performance?
Again, think Moneyball. The data does not lie. Tweak your sales hiring scorecard. Identify the "uber profile" Hire for that profile. Look for correlation. Improve. Repeat again and again.
Remove non-believers.
