Hiring the Right Salesperson

“Ducks in Eagle School” --by Steve Chriest

Anyone who has managed salespeople must admit to making hiring mistakes. At one time or another all of us have found ourselves unable to resist the temptation of hiring the next great superstar, even though our intuition made us uneasy, or something in their story just didn't jibe with reality.

If you continue to rely on “gut checks” in your hiring process, you are likely to make more bad hires than necessary. I once heard someone admonish sales managers: “Don't send your ducks to eagle school!” It just won't work. You send the ducks out hunting, they find a rabbit and they make friends with it! You then yell to the ducks, “No, no, reread page twenty-one of your hunting manual!”

The same thing happens when you send the wrong salespeople on a hunting expedition for new prospects and you realize that they make friends with potential customers, buying them lunch, treating them to sporting events, and showering them with expensive gifts. In frustration, you yell, “No, no, bring in the orders, close the prospects, close the prospects!”

The first step in avoiding hiring mistakes is to recognize some of the myths about sales. For example, just like expecting ducks to hunt, you can't train someone for a job they can't do. All the training in the world won't help someone with a poor aptitude for math work successfully as a physicist.

Another myth about sales is that you can train talent. The truth is talent can't be trained. You either can sing like an American Idol or you can't. When it comes to talented salespeople, however, the experts tell us that talented folks can be improved by up to 20%.

Let's look at the numbers. If you can improve someone in the 80 th percentile by 20%, they can become a 96%. The bad news, unfortunately, is that all the time and money in the world won't make a 20% more than a 25%!

Nearly 45% of all money spent by business on employee training and education is spent on sales. At some point companies will demand a better system for selecting sales candidates with the potential and will to perform up to management's expectations. For many companies, this may become their single most important investment to improve market share and profitability.

Finally, avoiding bad hires is a true win-win. The company and sales managers win because time and resources aren't squandered on candidates that just don't have the aptitude or the will to succeed in sales. The candidates win because they are free to pursue other opportunities more suited to their talents and predispositions.

Copyright © 2006 Selling Up TM . All Rights Reserved.

About the author: Steve Chriest is the founder of Selling Up TM (www.selling-up.com), a sales consulting firm specializing in sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of industries. He is also the author of Selling Up , The Proven System for Reaching and Selling Senior Executives. You can reach Steve at schriest@selling-up.com.