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Patience is a Virtue in On-Boarding New Sales Hires

On-Boarding New Sales HiresThere aren’t too many instances when a new sales hire produces sales immediately upon joining a new company. I wish this weren’t the case, but with the exception of short sales cycles and call centers, most new sales people need time to learn how to sell a new offering and to start building and converting a pipeline of new business. But results aren’t guaranteed.

Many years ago, as a young sales manager, I hired a rep and provided them with an annual sales quota, and then foolishly failed to assign the rep any shorter term goals such as a 90 day target. I had no real way of evaluating the progress of the new rep, and was under a lot of pressure to deliver sales results myself. As a result, I simply transferred that pressure to the rep by constantly asking them why we weren’t seeing results a few weeks into their time with us. I wanted to be patient, but I hadn’t thought through how long it would take to develop a pipeline and realistic forecast. I created a ton of needless stress for the rep and myself. 

One of my mentors at the time took me aside and suggested that I cool my jets. “Give the new rep time to develop” he said. “Pressure is not a bad thing, but it has to be the right kind of pressure and if you keep busting his chops, he won’t be in the right frame of mind to deliver what you want.” Very important words indeed.

Things would have been easier had I had the forethought to map out how long it would take the rep to make sales after making the first calls or had I planned out the first 90 days in terms of exposure to our products, sales training, customer visits, calls, and check ins with me. I did not do these things but as luck would have it the rep was experienced enough to figure some things out on their own and produce sales in time, but I was not in control.

Actively Patient

Hope is not a good strategy and it is always better to be in control of your sales force. Therefore, the moral of this story is to have a plan for on-boarding a new rep that is just as comprehensive as the plan you have a plan for managing existing reps. Map out the first 90 days (at least) with a new sales rep in day by day detail, determine the right level of support over the course of this timeframe, provide this support and know you are doing everything you can to make a new rep successful so that you can patiently let the right results unfold.

To your success!

Image courtesy of  digitalart | freedigitalphotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

How Valuable is a Book of Business in Sales?

Book of BusinessOften prospective employers will call us seeking to hire a candidate that has a “solid book of business”, or a list of former and/or current clients in which the candidate has key contacts. As the thinking goes, this will allow the rep to quickly generate considerable sales upon joining the new employer. I like the optimism and I can’t blame any sales manager for trying to get a leg up on the competition in acquiring and developing new accounts….unless the requirement to hire someone with a book of business means putting little or no emphasis on hiring someone with the experience and DNA required to be successful in the new role.

Reasons Why a “Book of Business” is Less Important Than it Might Seem

1. Expiration Date – In many sectors, people change jobs regularly, so having a handful of buying contacts today might be completely value-less in 6 or 12 months. Once a buyer moves to a new role or employer, there may be other existing vendor relationships already in place, or their purchase requirements may have changed.

2. Company Loyalty – Often times, a buyer is equally loyal to the vendor and the salesperson, so the buyer-salesperson relationship is effectively compromised once the sales person switches employers.

3. Difficult to Quantify – When interviewing, candidates will often drop names and tout the value of their “extensive rolodex”, but in a lot of cases, the past business volume has more to do with being in the right place at the right time and filling orders than actively generating business. How much business will come their way this year. In most sectors where demand is unpredictable, forecasting sales based on relationships is virtually impossible.

4. Non-Competes – When a rep departs from one employer, there may be residual obligations in their employment contract which prevent them from being able to pursue opportunities and contacts that they were exposed to in their previous employment, which obviously diminishes the value of these contacts and associated opportunities.

5. Old School – Sales has changed a lot since the Mad Men days when a salesperson could call a customer and lean on their relationship or twist an arm with an old “friend” to close a sale. Nowadays customers perform more research before making each purchase – even repetitive purchases – and they want the best deal each time. They are more inclined than ever to try new vendors to get what they want. This is particularly true with business buyers who may be required by company policy to hold a fair and transparent competition for every purchase. Prior relationships may matter very little in such cases.

You Can Bank on the Abilities and Traits

Perhaps the most risky aspect of hiring someone based primarily on their relationships is that they won’t actually have the right DNA to actually sell in the new role (See the The Pitfalls of Hiring Sales People Based on Experience). Sales people who are perennially successful, have sold at the right volume in an environment similar to yours, and possess all the other requisite abilities will develop the right relationships and locate the opportunities required to meet or exceed sales goals. To exclude these candidates from your sales recruiting efforts would be a risky strategy, but chances are your competitors are doing just this.

The most successful sales managers don’t fall into this trap.

To your success!

Image Courtesy of  digitalart | freedigitalphotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Why Market Sales Compensation May Not Be Useful in Your Hiring Efforts

It is well known that you have to pay at, or more likely a bit above market levels in order to attract the best sales talent in the business. There are numerous surveys that indicate what sales reps are getting paid and there is always anecdotal feedback that comes to an employer either via its own sales reps or through candidates in the interviewing process.

But all this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There are several reasons why the market may be wrong and why your compensation plan may need to be different. We take a brief look at each of these reasons.

The Numbers are Inflated – Reps have a tendency and, when making a career change, a direct incentive, to overstate earnings. So often there is lot of misinformation about who is making what compensation in any sector.

Different Compensation Models – There is the concept of total target income (the amount a rep will earn in base and commissions at target), but without holding a competitor’s compensation plan in your hand, it can be tricky to reverse engineer to know how total compensation is earned. Different companies pay different ratios of base vs commission, the commission rates may be different for different types of deals and there may also be achievement accelerators and spiffs. All of which have varying levels of attainment difficulty. The skill set and effort required to earn $X in one company may be completely different in another.

Different Business Models – While the compensation plans are different across different companies, so too are the business models which ultimately dictate the selling activities and abilities and traits that reps must possess in order to be successful.  One company may sell direct while another may sell primarily through channels. Even small differences in business model can have a huge impact on the profile of the successful rep and the compensation model.

Non-Monetary Incentives Matter – Sales people value various rewards besides the cash compensation. Career growth, company culture, vacation and flexible hours, for instance can offset a lower compensation.  Even the culture or values of the company can play as significant factor as compensation in the career choices of sales people. Just as much as sales people want to optimize earnings, they want to work in jobs they like for companies they admire.

Company size – In most sectors, the largest companies are able to pay more than smaller companies (with some exceptions such as the market leaders who leverage name brand to attract talent while paying slightly less than competitors). While the best sales people in the business gravitate to successful companies that pay more, often it is a different breed of sales person that belongs in a large company versus a small company so it can be like comparing apples to oranges.

Figuring out the meaning of market compensation can be tricky in sales and in the end it often comes down to what you have to pay in order to get the candidates you want.

To your success!

Image courtesy of  jesadaphorn | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Interview Tactics that Make or Break Your Sales Hiring and Sales Results

Interview TacticsInterviewing sales people is just like interviewing candidates for any other position in your company. Right? Wrong.

Sales professionals are wired to project a positive image since that is how they succeed – it is a key part of the profession that they chose. They are interviewed everyday by potential customers, and the good ones, at least, are quick on their feet. Candidates have their brain picked and grilled by customers, and are either intrinsically immune to the pressure associated with tough questions or trained to be so. As a result, they are prepared for the run-of-the-mill questions your HR department will probably ask and are ready to respond with a clever or witty responses.

Organizations that are serious about looking for top sales performers know that it is not good enough to approach interviews with a simple approach that involves:

A) taking sales interview answers at face value, and/or

B) relying on common questions in the first place.

The interviewer must elicit meaningful and insightful responses from sales candidates. It is therefore important to identify some of the best questions to ask candidates since it could save your organization .

The selection of top sales performers is largely determined by the types of interview questions asked and one of the main tactics that Peak promotes to its clients is to have the candidate interviewed by multiple people who will be overseeing and working with the candidate. That’s often the easy part – the hard part is deciding on what to ask the candidate. Many hiring departments will rely on these basic questions: Are you comfortable making cold calls? Are you comfortable presenting in front of target accounts? Do you prefer a long or short sales cycle? What are some of your strengths and weaknesses? What type of company do you want to work for? What is your Ideal work environment? All of these types of questions are easy for all candidates to answer positively. “Am I comfortable with making cold calls? Yes absolutely.” “What kind of company do I want to work for? Yours.” These questions will not separate good from bad candidates, let alone the good from great.

Peak recommends several tactics for effective interviewing and assessments:

  • Structured interview process – Well scripted set of steps that throughly and objectively assess each candidate’s ability to perform against a set of performance objectives.
  • Behavioral interviewing – Ask candidates not would they would do, but what they have done in relevant sales environments and customer situations. Ask a mix of open and closed ended questions and the same questions in different ways so it is less easy to predict the answer required to secure the role.
  • Interviews with multiple stakeholders – have the candidate meet with several members of the management and sales team that they will be working with. Collect detailed notes and make a committee decision on the candidate’s score against the criteria.
  • Reference and background checks – Conduct through, scripted, behaviorally oriented  references calls with former managers and background checks to cross-reference the claims of the candidate and the observations of your own assessment team.
  • Third Party Testing – Psychometric testing and other types of benchmarked sales competency tests can provide valuable insight to augment your own observations and assessments.

No two sales roles are identical, so the ideal set of interview questions must be tailored to the unique position you are hiring for and the specific situations the rep will be in if employed by your organization. If you decide on asking a list of static, predictable questions, they must be framed in a way that the candidate cannot provide one word answers.

For instance if you are hiring for a new business development role, you might be inclined to ask questions such as: Are you comfortable making cold calls? To get a better assessment of the candidate rephrase the interview question so that you get the information you are really looking for: Describe your most difficult type of cold calls in your last role? How did you structure your day so that you were able to make all the calls required? How did you ensure the effectiveness of each cold call? How did you deal with the high level of rejection associated with cold calling?

Posing the question as open ended where the onus is on the interviewee to demonstrate the degree to which they are familiar and comfortable with cold calling will allow you to determine if they have the ability to fulfill one of the most basic requirements of the position for which you are hiring. In order to dig even deeper, ask for specific instances where cold calling opened a door to a large deal – and ask the candidate to demonstrate how they approach a cold call. By mixing in situational and behavioural based interview questions that are tailored to your unique hiring requirements, you give your organization the best opportunity to avoid costly hiring mistakes and hire a candidate who will meet or exceed your sales targets.

Here are other examples of behavioral type questions you may want to ask:

  • Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a complex customer strategy?
  • Have you ever had to make a sale based on analysis of data? Describe the process in detail.
  • Give an example of a situation in which you had to make a decision when you didn’t have all facts available. What process do you follow for making decisions for these different circumstances and were you satisfied with the results?
  • How do you go about opening doors in the C-suite? Is there a specific process you follow? How heavily do you rely on your ability to develop relationships?

To your success!

Image courtesy of artur84 | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

The value of IQ tests in sales hiring

We don’t use IQ tests to evaluate sales people (we are more interested in predicting how they will behave and produce in certain situations), but we know that being smart usually is not a liability if a sales person has good sales DNA.

I was curious to see who is using IQ tests in sales hiring so I jumped on google and and didn’t find much. If anyone is using IQ in sales, they are not publishing their results.

IQ tests have been a popular way of testing intelligence since they were first introduced in the early 1900’s, in spite of the criticisms that they are not accurate. According to the American Psychological Association: “intelligence testing has also been accused of unfairly stratifying test-takers by race, gender, class and culture; of minimizing the importance of creativity, character and practical know-how; and of propagating the idea that people are born with an unchangeable endowment of intellectual potential that determines their success in life.” According to the Association, although the tests have evolved over the years, the consensus is that IQ tests should not be relied upon and while it may be logical to assume that people with higher IQ’s earn more, the research to support this theory is cloudy. Research scientist Jay Zagorsky has shown there does seem to be a correlation between IQ and income, but there seems to be no correlation between IQ and wealth – as if to say smart people can earn more, but don’t know what to do with their money.

According to wikipedia a 2002 study by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis concluded that an individual’s location, inherited wealth, race, and schooling are more important as factors in determining income than IQ. That said many companies still use IQ tests and there are literally hundreds of tests available online.

Anyone thinking about using any of these online tests may want to take a look at this article in the Guardian about one person’s own experiences using online IQ tests. To make a long story short, blogger Dean Burnett took several tests which all indicated that he had very high or genius level intelligence which makes sense since he has a Phd in neuroscience. This would be a good endorsement for the ability of these tests to measure intelligence except for the fact that when he took the tests (all multiple choice), he selected answers entirely at random and very quickly (which triggers bonus points), so either his random responses were either surprisingly correct or the tests are probably useless in predicting anything.

To your success!

Sources:

Online IQ tests: are they valid?

American Psychological Association – Intelligent intelligence testing

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Build a Sales Team vs. Outsource the Sales Function – Which is Right for You?

Build a Sales Team vs. Outsourcing the Sales Function

We continue to get a fair number of companies asking for our perspective on outsourcing the sales function and whether we are talking about independent reps or outsourced call centers, our answer remains the same and it is based upon experience. It make sense if:

Your product is well known – If the market knows your product and will be asking the reps for your product, there is a higher chance of success since the reps don’t know your product that well, they tend to sell what is being asked for, particularly in the case of reps that carry other products.

Your product is not complex – When a product requires strong domain knowledge or there is a long sales cycle associated with closing new business, then the outsourced model is problematic, because it is difficult to transfer that type of knowledge to a third party, with VAR’s being the exception.

You don’t need to be close to your customers – If the product is mature and detailed feedback from customers is not required, then the outsourced model might work, however this is not the case for many start-ups where the product management team needs to be in very close contact with customers to gather feedback critical to the evolution and improvement of the product.

You don’t need to own the customer relationship – If follow on business is a big part of your business and this requires relationship development with customers, then it serves to have that in-house where you can control the development of the relationship and handle matters like staff turnover. Conversely, if most of the sales are one-off, then an outsourced model can work.

When branding is less important – It can be difficult to control the brand and reputation of the third party selling your product, and your message may get watered down, particularly if the third party seller is representing other brands. Plus in many cases, particularly call center type sales models, you don’t actually know who will be selling your product. This may or may not be an issue depending on your business.

You don’t need complete visibility on activity – Depending on the outsourcer, you may or may not get detailed or timely insight into sales activity and calls. If you want that market data, it needs to be part of your arrangement with the third party seller.

You need trained salespeople quickly – Notwithstanding any of the issues mentioned above, going with an outsourced sales model can be attractive because they take care of hiring, training and managing the sales reps so you can focus on your business.

I have seen a lot of disappointment with outsourced sales models, but I have also seen it work well. Your business and sales plan dictates whether it will work for your organization.

To your success!

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Words We Would Rather Not See on Sales Resumes

For a lot of people hoping to land a new sales job, it is a priority to create a resume that is search engine friendly. Unfortunately, this often leads to resumes that are less succinct and are jammed with keywords which distract from the accomplishments and abilities of a salesperson.

To those of us that make a living separating good from great salespeople, a poorly written or confusing resume can be a signal that someone is not all that capable. And, by the way, we are pretty strong when it comes to separating the good from the great (96% success ratio in picking salespeople over the last several years).

Here are some of the worst words and phrases that find their way into sales resumes with a tongue in cheek explanation of why we’d rather not see them:

Responsible for …

– Hiring managers aren’t as much interested in what a salesperson was supposed to do versus what the salesperson did do.

Results-driven

– Kind of like saying motivated….I think. Maybe? Wait it might mean that they want to achieve results but can’t. Not sure. Why not just identify the results that have been delivered which implies a familiarity and comfort with driving for results?

Well rounded

– Hiring managers care about hiring someone who can sell. They don’t care what shape the person is.

Experienced

– Everyone who has worked one day in their life has experience so using this word doesn’t say anything about what makes the resume’s owner unique. Superfluous.

Seasoned veteran

– Does this mean the sales rep comes with pepper and cajun spice? I would rather see years served which tells me a bit about maturity.

Team-player

– One of the most overused words and least understood. In my career, I have heard about 500 different perspectives of what constitutes a team player (some of them contradictory) and if I saw that on a resume, I would have no idea which of the 500 definitions was being referenced.

Solid

– We see this a lot in conversation, but the adjective means not having the form of gas or liquid, which is good I suppose, but usually doesn’t give us much insight about sales capabilities.

Dynamic

– Ever changing? Energetic? Not quantifiable and will be measured subjectively depending on who is measuring.

Motivated

– Everyone is motivated or at least they should be. But can the rep sell better than the rest?

Objective

– Opening a resume with the career objective of the job seeker is like starting a conversation with a prospect with how much commission you want to make. How about a summary of what the rep does well and the tangible results delivered to employers?

Contentious and hard worker

– This one is more of a typo. Sales reps that want to make a good impression proof read their documents before sending them to a prospect.

We

– A hiring manager is looking at a resume and seeking to hire an individual so they are interested in what the sales person did, not what the sales person did with their friends.

Creative

– When someone describes themselves as a creative sales professional, I wonder if the person is trying to tell me they like to paint and do artwork on the side? And then I wonder if they can sell, because they haven’t yet answered that question.

What We Like To See

It’s simple. We look for results and examples to support claims of talent. The best salespeople let their accomplishments do the talking and as we have said before, the best resumes say a lot by saying a little, so if you are reviewing a group of candidates for your open sales position, watch for candidates who use superfluous words and resume filler that distract from what really matters.

To your success!

image courtesy of nuttakit | freedigitalphotos.net

To those of us that make a living separating good from great salespeople, a poorly written or confusing resume can be a signal that someone is not all that capable. And, by the way, we are pretty strong when it comes to separating the good from the great (96% success ratio in picking salespeople over the last several years).

Here are some of the worst words and phrases that find their way into sales resumes with a tongue in cheek explanation of why we’d rather not see them:

Responsible for …

– Hiring managers aren’t as much interested in what a salesperson was supposed to do versus what the salesperson did do.

Results-driven

– Kind of like saying motivated….I think. Maybe? Wait it might mean that they want to achieve results but can’t. Not sure. Why not just identify the results that have been delivered which implies a familiarity and comfort with driving for results?

Well rounded

– Hiring managers care about hiring someone who can sell. They don’t care what shape the person is.

Experienced

– Everyone who has worked one day in their life has experience so using this word doesn’t say anything about what makes the resume’s owner unique. Superfluous.

Seasoned veteran

– Does this mean the sales rep comes with pepper and cajun spice? I would rather see years served which tells me a bit about maturity.

Team-player

– One of the most overused words and least understood. In my career, I have heard about 500 different perspectives of what constitutes a team player (some of them contradictory) and if I saw that on a resume, I would have no idea which of the 500 definitions was being referenced.

Solid

– We see this a lot in conversation, but the adjective means not having the form of gas or liquid, which is good I suppose, but usually doesn’t give us much insight about sales capabilities.

Dynamic

– Ever changing? Energetic? Not quantifiable and will be measured subjectively depending on who is measuring.

Motivated

– Everyone is motivated or at least they should be. But can the rep sell better than the rest?

Objective

– Opening a resume with the career objective of the job seeker is like starting a conversation with a prospect with how much commission you want to make. How about a summary of what the rep does well and the tangible results delivered to employers?

Contentious and hard worker

– This one is more of a typo. Sales reps that want to make a good impression proof read their documents before sending them to a prospect.

We

– A hiring manager is looking at a resume and seeking to hire an individual so they are interested in what the sales person did, not what the sales person did with their friends.

Creative

– When someone describes themselves as a creative sales professional, I wonder if the person is trying to tell me they like to paint and do artwork on the side? And then I wonder if they can sell, because they haven’t yet answered that question.

What We Like To See

It’s simple. We look for results and examples to support claims of talent. The best salespeople let their accomplishments do the talking and as we have said before, the best resumes say a lot by saying a little, so if you are reviewing a group of candidates for your open sales position, watch for candidates who use superfluous words and resume filler that distract from what really matters.

To your success!

image courtesy of nuttakit | freedigitalphotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

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Keys to Getting Sales Hiring Right – from Miller Heiman

Miller HeimanThis year, sales training company Miller Heiman, published Best Practices in Sales Management: A Resource Guide for Sales Managers. In the guide, Miller Heiman shares its three keys to getting sales hiring right and looks at common missteps in sales hiring, long-term impact on sales, qualities of top sales people and revealing interview questions.

All Sales Roles Are Different

The guide begins by pointing out that different sales positions call for a different skills and experience and more importantly, different cultural and attitudinal traits. We couldn’t agree more and it is safe to say that many organizations have poor clarity where these last two intangible traits are concerned. It is simply much easier for organizations to use sector experience or years of selling as the basis for selecting a sales person.

The Cost of Failure in Sales Hiring

According to research firm Leadership IQ, 46% of all new hires fail within 18 months of being hired, primarily due to attitudinal factors. On the other hand, employees that fit their position and company produce 250% compared to those who do not, tend to stay longer, and contribute to more of a positive environment.

Ramifications of getting it wrong spread beyond lost revenue. Your company’s credibility and your personal reputation are on the line. The monetary impact of getting it wrong includes actual losses in revenue generation, wasted salary for the salesperson, plus the loss of production during ramp up. Sales force churn also creates customer uncertainty, potentially lowering customer confidence, and can impinge upon your company’s overall reputation and credibility.

Miller Heiman asserts that “World-Class Sales Organizations” exercise discipline in their sales hiring efforts. They first benchmark their successful sales people to identify critical traits, they use psychometric assessments to assess candidates rather than depending upon unreliable gut feelings about candidates and they exercise patience in waiting for the right mix of traits before making a hire. Again we couldn’t agree more. We know from direct experience that the more structure in the sales hiring process, the better the hiring record.

“Not everybody who is fantastic at selling is right for your company,” said Chris Ainslie, a Miller Heiman Sales Consultant and ex-VP for a global company

Common Errors in Sales Hiring

The guide identified several common sales hiring errors made by sales organizations:

1. Hiring from only one source – Many companies favor candidates with industry experience and/or contacts over candidates who have the right traits for success.

2. Corporate neglect – Requiring new sales people to “figure it out” on their own.

3. Lack of clarity on salesperson attributes – Many organizations focus on skills or experience versus the more critical and intangible traits of successful sales people.

Qualities of Top Salespeople 

According to Miller Heiman the basic traits of top performers include persistence, curiosity and empathy. While we agree that these are important factors, this is by no means an exhaustive list and these alone will not guarantee success. Peak’s own recruiting experience over the years indicates that  sense of urgency, ambition, competitiveness, optimism, and confidence are also critical traits.

The long term upside.

Experienced, tenured salespeople are a vital asset of any enterprise, clearly outperforming those with less experience.

Turnover is not only costly, it hurts sales production in many ways. “World Class Sales Organizations” take sales hiring very seriously and invest as much in the hiring effort and strategy as other critical company functions, and consequently when combined with other important factors such as sales on-boarding, sales process and strong management, these organizations reap the rewards in terms of higher sales.

To read the full report, click here.

To your success!

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Sales Hiring Statistics – De Paul Center for Sales Leadership

The De Paul Center for Sales Leadership is one of the leading sales learning institutions in the country. Every few years the University publishes the Sales Effectiveness survey which observes the sales practices and results of over 435 organizations across 10 business sectors.  Some useful insight is shared in this report:

Age profile – % by age
– 14% 18-25
– 27% 26-35
– 27% 36-45
– 20% 46-55
– 12% 56 and over

Annual Hiring Levels
– Less than 50 hires per annum – 68%
– 50-249 hires pre annum – 21%
– more than 250 hires – 11%

Value of Education in Sales Hiring – Percentage of sales managers that considered the education levels below very important
– Some prior training – 50%
– College 48% (37% for business college)
– Graduate 22%
* 30 of new hires did not have a college degree.

Number of Face to Face Interviews Prior to Hire
– 2 interviews or less – 31%
– 3 interviews – 39%
– 4 or more interviews – 30%

Interview Time with New Hires
– less than 1 hour – 14%
– 2-3 hours – 43%
– 4-5 hours – 26%
– 6 or more hours – 17%

Cost of Entry Level Sales Hires
– Less than 20k – 43%
– 20k-40k – 23%
– 40k or more – 34%

Time to Turnover for Entry Level Sales Hires
– Less than 12 months – 33%
– 13-24 months – 29%
– 25 months and onwards – 38%
* The number one reason for leaving was unmet expectations

Cost of Turnover
– Average cost of turnover approximately $49,508
* When acquisition, training, lost time and replacement were factored in, the average cost of turnover rose to approx. $115k

On-Boarding and Development
– organizations that had some sort of on-boarding process – 73%
– firms with an on-boarding program of 30 days or less – 60%
– primary method of determining success of training – informal management appraisal – 72%

Average Earnings by Performance
– top third of reps – $188k
– middle third of reps – $107k
– bottom third of reps – $65k

Sales Process
– value selling – 47%
– strategic selling – 38%
– conceptual selling – 28%
– spin selling – 25%
– proprietary model – 19%
* 54% of firms claimed to use the sales process always or frequently.

photo courtesy of Salvatore Vuono | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

The Ultimate Sales Recruiting Cheat Sheet for VP Sales, CEO’s and Hiring Managers

After many years of answering all sorts of sales management, recruiting and performance questions, I decided to put together an FAQ for hiring amazing sales people.

These lessons have been learned from decades spent in the trenches building and managing successful sales teams as an entrepreneur and sales leader, as well as recruiting, investing and advising to CEO’s and founders. I have the battle scars from wins and losses, so I have some strong opinions, but feel free to disagree with me in the comments below and/or add anything I missed.

More comprehensive answers to all of these questions can be found elsewhere on this blog so in order to keep this in the form of a cheat sheet, I am going to provide little or in some cases no explanations for my answers.

  1. How important is hiring to the success as a sales leader? I can’t think of anything more integral to achieving sales results than getting the right sales people onto the team.
  2. What is a great salesperson? One who consistently meets or exceeds targets.
  3. Can I build a solid sales team of people that are less than great? With mediocre sales reps you can expect mediocre results.
  4. Why is it so hard to hire people who can consistently exceed targets? Because they are rare.
  5. Are great sales people born or made? A bit of both.
  6. Hire top sales talent or invest in training and managing? Get the best people onto your team unless you like wasting your time and money on managing and training.
  7. What level of sales rep turnover is acceptable? A low level. Turnover is extremely costly in terms of lost time, investment, and opportunity.
  8. Do great sales people manage themselves? No.
  9. Should I hire a diamond in the rough? Yes, if you have the time and patience to allow them to make mistakes and learn to sell. You must also have a good process for picking diamonds in the rough.
  10. Smart vs. experienced? Smart will figure out what they need to know, but not everyone has sales DNA.
  11. Do good looking people sell more? Great sales people sell more.
  12. My sales person hates making sales calls, what should I do? Transfer them to accounting.
  13. What are the key traits of great hunters? Drive/ambition/need to achieve, self motivated, competitive, perseveres/resilient, positive/confident/optimistic, action oriented/sense of urgency, problem solver, needs to interact with others and persuade.
  14. What are the traits of great farmers? Ability to develop relationships, conduct consultative selling, and ability to remember birthdays.
  15. Do I need a hunter or a farmer? What does your sales plan say?
  16. Inside vs outside sales? What do your customers want?
  17. Should I hire hunters or farmers? If you need to acquire new customers definitely hunter.
  18. Should I hire someone who can hunt and farm? You can but they will be better at one so know which one you care about more. Furthermore, hunters can farm more easily than farmers can hunt.
  19. Promote my top sales rep to sales manager? Only if you can afford to have a poor sales manager and lose your top rep. Totally different jobs that require different traits.
  20. How important is like-ability? Important but not the definitive factor in success.
  21. Hire or outsource? Hire if you care about your customer relationships and why they buy.
  22. Are all the sales roles the same? No. Different cultures, selling processes, company stage, market maturity, price, sales targets. These all mean you need a different mix of skills, experience and DNA to be successful.
  23. Should I terminate a sales rep that is not achieving targets? No. Turnover is costly. Work with them first and make sure you are doing everything possible to make them successful.
  24. When do I know it is time to dump my sales person and replace them with a better rep? When the current sales person stops demonstrating the behaviors they need to be successful and won’t respond to your coaching.
  25. How long should I keep a rep that is not performing? How long can you tolerate missed targets, frustrated customers and disruption to the morale of the winners on your team?
  26. Hire one or two sales people? Two are always better than one if you can afford it. Internal competition is great.
  27. How many of my reps should be at target? The industry average is about 60%. Of course the number is irrelevant if your targets are too high or low. Your business plan will tell you what you need. 80% or more is good.
  28. Is it true that 20% of reps make 80% of the sales? The 80/20 rule applies in most parts of life, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept it.
  29. Has selling changed over the years? Sales has changed immensely in the last 20 years. Customers prefer to buy rather than being sold and can easily get information online without a salesperson being involved. Sales people need to create conditions where customers want to buy from them.
  30. Is sales an art or a science? Both.
  31. How can I tell if my sales management is the barrier to the success of the sales team rather than the quality of the reps? Are the reps clear on what they need to do in order to be successful? Are the reps held accountable? Does the manager meet with them regularly to review progress and adjust activities? Does the manager coach the reps to make them more successful? Does the manager clear obstacles to success? Does the manager create a winning culture? If the answer is yes to all of these, then it is the reps.
  32. My rep has an offer from another employer. Should I counter offer? No. If they are not motivated to be part of your team, let them go.
  33. What are passive candidates? People who are not looking to make a career change.
  34. Are all great sales people passive candidates? No. There is a small percentage of great sales people that are looking to switch and there are others that are not actively looking, but will consider new opportunities.
  35. Do top sales people make career changes differently than the rest? Absolutely. They are looking for different things and they make changes more carefully.
  36. Hire based on ability or experience? Ability.
  37. Recruit from my competitors? If the sales person will fit into your team culture and selling system, then yes. Grab as much competitive info as possible while you are at it.
  38. Hire from a big company into my small company? Usually no. The sales challenge is fundamentally different. Going the other way is much easier.
  39. Recruit from outside my industry? Absolutely if you want to expand your candidate pool and avoid paying a premium for talent.
  40. Where do I find great people? Look everywhere and always be recruiting.
  41. How can I stop my competitor from hiring my reps? See above on becoming an employer of choice.
  42. Can I hire great sales talent even if we are not an employer of choice? Yes, but you will spend a huge amount of time and effort.
  43. How do I hire from my competitor? Call the reps.
  44. How do I hire great commission based reps? Look in industries that employ commission based reps.
  45. How can I get top talent to want to work for my company? Pay above market, offer careers, get known as an employer of choice.
  46. Should I use a recruiter or not? Not if you have the time and resources to find great sales people, otherwise recruiter.
  47. Retained recruiter or contingency? Contingency if they can find great sales people. Retained if you want an expansive, in-depth search for the top talent.
  48. In-house or external recruiter? In-house if you have enough hiring volume, can afford a hunter who can knows how to source, qualify, assess and attract great sales talent and you can give them the time to get the job done. External if you want to focus on your core business of finding and satisfying customers.
  49. How do I know if my recruiter is any good? They understand what mix of traits are required for a sales person to be successful in your company and they can consistently attract top talent to your company.
  50. Should I hire someone who was recently laid off? Yes if they have the right traits, but great sales people don’t usually get laid off, except for some geographies (ie. the Valley), they aren’t let go multiple times.
  51. This sales rep is not working. Does that mean they are not that great? Top sales people are always employed.
  52. This rep has made a lot of moves, does that mean he is not that great? It takes time to make, develop and realize a pipeline so high achieving sales people don’t move around much. Northern California and other start-up cities being the exception.
  53. Should I leverage a different process for recruiting sales managers than sales reps? No.
  54. This candidate had an amazing resume, but wasn’t all that impressive in person. Why? Because the candidate paid a resume writer to create the resume.
  55. This candidate was very impressive in the interview, but couldn’t sell once they joined our company. What did I miss? Your interview process was not robust and you got fooled by someone who has had more practice interviewing than closing sales.
  56. Is a resume useful at all for predicting sales success? Yes and no. Not all great sales people can write well. They may not have to. Moreover, not all great sales people bother to keep their resume polished because they get lots of offers. You can often see a progression of responsibility and results from a resume.
  57. Can I rely on my gut to select great sales people? No because the gut is too easily influenced by non-critical factors which lead to poor hiring decisions. Better to look for proof that someone will be successful on your team.
  58. How do I know if a sales rep will be great? Find out where they have demonstrated the behaviors required to be successful on your team in a similar environment.
  59. When should I hire my first sales rep? When you have repeatable sales, prove that you have a business and you have resources who are ready to manage them.
  60. Traits of top sales managers? Delegator, team builder, coach, manager, leader, trainer, talent magnet, strategist.
  61. Hire a player coach? Sure, but they will be better at one or the other, so know which one is more important to you.
  62. How can I ensure my rep is successful? Make sure they are set up to succeed. Clear the obstacles, help them focus and manage their time, be clear about expectations, provide support and tools, hold them accountable, tie incentives to sales goals, and communicate often.
  63. Can I turn around this rep even though they haven’t been successful? Good luck.
  64. This rep has a huge desire to want to work on my team. Should I hire them? Most job seekers have desire to land a job, but few have what it takes to be successful. Desire is important, but not enough to be successful.
  65. What do I need to know before interviewing sales people? What a rep needs to achieve in order to be successful on your team and what behaviors lead to that success.
  66. What should I ask in an interview? Ask for examples of where they have acted the right way and achieved the right things in a sales environment similar to yours.
  67. Is sales interviewing different than interviewing for other functions? Yes. It is a sales person’s job to interview and they are trained to sell you.
  68. What should I expect to hear from a great sales candidate during an interview? They will provide proof that they have done the job you need them to do and they will be clear about what they want to achieve personally.
  69. Who should interview the candidate? Managers, peers, HR. The more the better.
  70. What are the biggest interviewing mistakes? Making a decision subjectively. Too much talking, not enough listening. Unstructured interview.
  71. Is there one most important sales interviewing question? No.
  72. What are the best techniques for determining if someone is what they say they are? Comprehensive hiring process with many checks and balances, multiple interviews and interviewers, tests, reference and background checks, role plays and take home assignments.
  73. Is there anything I cannot ask in an interview? Laws vary in different states and countries, but generally avoid age, race, marital status, sexual orientation, and religion amongst other things. Stick to the competencies required to perform the sales job you are seeking to fill.
  74. Use tests to screen candidates? No. Many great candidates will not bother with a test too early in the process. Plus tests should not be used to select candidates. Uses tests to confirm your observations, but not to select candidates.
  75. Can assessment and pyschometric tests identify great sales people? If properly constructed they can identify the traits common to great sales people. Some tests are benchmarked for accurately predicting top sales people, and some are not.
  76. Can candidates fool a psychometric test? Tests that are poorly constructed can certainly be fooled. Beware of tests that are not benchmarked.
  77. How important are reference checks? Absolutely critical. It is a huge red flag if a candidate doesn’t have previous managers who can speak about what it is like to employ them.
  78. How do I do thorough reference checks? Ask the same questions you asked the candidate and don’t accept superficial answers. Dig deep.
  79. Should I select sales reps randomly? Yes if your hiring record is so poor, that you would be better off saving yourself the time and effort.
  80. Is it a problem if the candidate lied to me during the interview process? If you like employing dishonest people then no.
  81. Pay market or below? Pay above market if you want to attract consistent high achievers and top sales talent.
  82. How do I find out what is the market rate in my industry? Interview 3 great salespeople and ask them.
  83. Pay on revenue or profit? Either is fine but make sure it is motivating for your reps and keep it simple.
  84. Is money everything? Not beyond a certain point. Then it becomes career. High achievers pick employers that offer both.
  85. Do I have to offer draws to hire great sales people? If you want to hire sales people that are already working, then you will have to at least match their previous cash flow while they developer a new pipeline.
  86. Full commission or base salary + commission? Full commission if that is the norm in your industry and/or you don’t mind your reps job hunting while they work for you, otherwise salary+commission.
  87. Should I offer my reps equity in my company? Sure, but high achievers aren’t inclined to assume big risk when they can get cash and shares elsewhere.
  88. How do I use the sales compensation plan as a lever to achieve my sales goals? Pay the reps for events and outcomes that you want.
  89. Are inside reps compensated differently than outside reps? Not really. It boils down to what the sales results the rep can achieve and what that is worth to the company.
  90. Should I adjust the commissions on windfall sales? Yes if you put this in the comp plan so it is understood in advance, but be aware that this impacts incentive to secure windfall sales.
  91. Should I let my CFO revise all the sales comp plans. Be very careful. Many great reps have been lost to the competition over comp plan revisions.
  92. How do I prevent counter offers from a candidate’s existing employer? Offer them desirable things their current employer can’t give them and do a mock resignation prior to making the offer.
  93. What if a great candidate rejects my employment offer? Stay in touch.
  94. What can I do to make my new rep be successful as quickly as possible? Comprehensive on-boarding program.
  95. Do hunters get paid differently than farmers? Yes. Hunters will assume a bit more risk for higher total compensation.
  96. Is on-boarding the same as sales training? No. On-boarding involves training, coaching, shadowing, communication and testing and is very specific to a company’s selling approach, offering and customers.
  97. If I only did one thing to on-board my reps what would it be? Map out the day to day activities you expect them to perform in the first 90 days.
  98. Who should be involved in the on-boarding activities? Members of the sales team, management and people in other function of the company.
  99. Is on-boarding an HR activity. No.
  100. How can I attract great talent to my start-up? Look for people that are excited by the start-up stage and all its challenges.
  101. How long will it take to recruit the right person?  It takes time to find good talent. Expect 90 days. Less for more junior positions and more time for more senior positions.
  102. Has sales hiring and recruiting changed over the years? Yes. Sales reps can be found online nowadays, but that is a double edge sword because there are more employers vying for the attention of the top candidates.
  103. What are the main benefits of a structured sales recruiting and hiring process? Avoid bad or mediocre sales hires, and make sure you consistently hire the right people.
  104. What does a successful sales recruiting function entail? Clear understanding of what you are looking for, a multichannel sourcing program, a rigours interview and assessment process, and being an employer of choice.

To your success!

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)