If you replicated your best salespeople, how much would you increase sales?
Chances are the sales increase would be significant. What are you waiting for?
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? The 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Twenty percent of all salespeople reap eighty percent of all sales results.
In fact, the top 20th percentile of all salespeople typically outsell a MULTIPLE of that of the rest of the sales team. We often see 20th percentile salespeople produce 10-20 TIMES that of an average salesperson.
Run the numbers to create your sense of urgency.
Take a look at data for your current sales team. Identify the sales performance spread between your top 20th percentile and your bottom. Identify your average sales production.
Unless you make the cost of bad sales hires real by looking at the hard data, you will continue to allow low performers to get on your sales team. Unless you feel pain, the status quo will prevail.
If pursuing the best salespeople seems too lofty of a goal for you, at least consider staying away from hiring the bottom 20th percentile - the worst of the worst salespeople.
ROI consolation prizes abound.
There are several additional ROI "consolation prizes" of hiring only those salespeople who have the ability to consistently sell in the top 20th percentile. They include:
- Reduced turnover, onboarding, and training costs.
- Customers become more "sticky" - retention increases.
- Sales managers focused on potential rather than problems.
Most people fixate on turnover costs because they are more tangible. The ROI you should focus on is the ROI of gaining the lost sales you have been missing because of bad sales hires. The single greatest ROI of hiring only the best salespeople will always be significantly-increased sales performance.
Committed or interested?
Interested people do what is convenient.
Committed people do whatever it takes.
Which are you?
Commit to measuring the sales performance spread of your top, bottom, and average salespeople. Dollarize the problem.
Commit to hiring only the salespeople who have the capacity to consistently sell in the top 20th percentile.
How to replicate your best salespeople.
The key to improving the quality of your sales hiring is to get serious about doing so. Replicating your best salespeople requires you to know who your best salespeople are and why. You must know what makes your best salespeople who they are. Following are two essential steps that will accelerate you in your journey:
Step One is to identify your top 20th percentile sales performers.
Step Two is to objectively identify their traits using a sales personality assessment with validity backed by brain research. Once you benchmark the position and seek to only hire candidates with the requisite traits, you will be on a path to significantly-increased sales success. We are happy to help in your benchmarking.
We strongly-recommend using a sales hiring scorecard to ensure every sales hire fulfills every criteria.
Interested in reading more? Check out my posts on Power Law Distribution - Let Your Competitors Hire the B Salespeople as well as What Bad Sales Hiring Decisions Really Cost You.
