Recruiting a Stable Sales Team

Most participants were struck at our November Tradewinds Council© meeting https://www.jimthomasintl.com/the-tradewinds-councilcopy.html that most of us are facing a glaring issue that prevents growth-a dearth of human resources to help us implement the tasks to meet our goals.

We tend to think the sales function is all about short term tactics.  Longer term we need to expand though enhanced salesperson productivity and adding resources.  We develop blind spots around crucial processes such as recruiting, hiring and training and development.  Inability to recruit and manage salesperson retention can stall your scaling efforts.  Core processes around the three phases of salesperson development must become part of a Sales Manager’s daily rigor.
Recruiting
The key is finding the best salesperson match with the requirements for the position.  Pattern your recruiting after the successful salespeople of today and what you want to recruit for the future.

• Do you really want a hunter or farmer attitude?  Don’t be too quick to blurt out hunter.  Not all organizations require hunters-what does this specific role require?  Most hunters challenge the organization and drive change-do you want that?  Or is the role a hybrid of both-how will they work prospects and existing accounts?
• Do they generate their own leads or do they follow up leads from Marketing?  If you recruit someone that does their own lead gen chances are they will “poo poo” leads from other sources.
• Which channel are they selling through?  If you are planning to steer more attention to direct sales then recruit persons that are selling to major accounts today to the types of accounts that you want to penetrate.  If you are selling multi-channel make sure that the persons that you are recruiting know how to manage territories and multi-channel conflict.  If you are selling through third party channels make sure your sales reps will have experience training distributors, conducting joint visits and can talk on the level of distributor principals.
• Do you sell big ticket items that have a long sales cycle which will take a strategic team selling process or are your products more of a repeat transactional sale?  Will they sell to one decision maker or multiple decision makers?  All salespersons have to be good at business development, but not all of them will have the stamina and wherewithal for customers requiring a longer sales process.  The buying process is constantly changing and becoming more conservative.
• Where are your products/services on the competitive value landscape?  Can the salesperson sell higher premium products or are they negotiators selling on price and terms?

Hiring
It is always good to have a pool of candidates to select from before you start looking.  Harvey McKay sold a lot of the book Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.  Most Sales Managers, yours truly included in his early years, hire in their own image.

• Identify the behavioral characteristics you seek.  I like to understand if the person is coachable, how they prepare for calls, their analytical capabilities, and their listening and questioning skills
• Establish a hiring process and a team of interviewees for all candidates for a set position.  Inform this group which type of sales rep will be successful in your particular environment.
• Ask your team to hone in on a couple of predetermined attributes you seek in a candidate.  Develop a set of questions for the interviewers and divvy them up.  At the end of the interview day, gather the interviewers and compare notes.  Don’t wait >24 hours to do this.
• Develop a spreadsheet with attributes on the vertical axis and the candidates on the horizontal access.  Compare and contrast them.  Stack rank the candidates.  (I learned this technique from a very savvy Chinese recruiter).
• Update your hiring process as your business changes and your current team matures.

Training and Development
Now that you have hired the candidate

• Have you identified the attributes you’ll need to coach your new hire through their first 18-24 months on the job?  Explain this process to your new employee.  Most new hires need reinforcement, periodic upgrading on a finite number of skill sets and motivational help.
• What will be the candidates learning process to absorb this feedback and make improvement?  Will there be outside seminars, reading, mentoring that needs to take place?  Have your new hire take responsibility for initiating their learning process.
• Does your new recruit feel comfortable discussing their shortfalls with you?  If they can identify their missteps they are most prone to corrective action.  This is also a trust building exercise that must take place for retention.
• Coaching and development must be adapted to the individual and be updated regularly to be effective.  Develop a cadence to make this part of your regimen.

I have continued to mentor and coach salespeople-it is one of the more pleasant tasks at this stage of my career: http://www.jimthomasintl.com/mentoring.html.

Next month’s blog will deal with filling the void of a lost sales resource.
Good Selling and have a great start to  2018!