Start the 2018 Recruiting year with a Proven Plan & Process

Many are now looking forward to 2018 flush with a new budget and making headcount adds ready to take advantage of a vibrant economy.  Recruiting great talent is a fun challenge.

All participants at our November Tradewinds Council© meeting https://www.jimthomasintl.com/the-tradewinds-councilcopy.html commented they are facing a glaring issue that stifles rapid growth-a dearth of human resources to help implement the tasks to meet aggressive goals.
We can 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 these three phases of salesperson development must become part of a Sales Manager’s daily rigor.

Recruiting
The key is matching the best salesperson 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 it a hybrid of both roles?
• Does your sales team generate their own leads or do they follow up leads from Marketing?If you recruit someone that does his own mining chances are they will readily dismiss leads from other sources.Do they embrace CRM and see it as their tool or are they victims entering information from their hotels at night?You better understand how much data entry you want them to do.
• 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.If you are selling multi-channel make sure that the persons that you are recruiting know how to manage territories and multi-channel conflict.Sales reps selling through third party channels should have experience training distributors, conducting joint visits and can talk on the level of distributor principals.Sales reps than can both through distributors and direct as well are a rare breed.
• Do you sell big ticket items that have a long sales cycle? Is there a strategic account team selling process or are your products more of a repeat transactional sale conducted by individual contributors?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 becoming more sophisticated and your sales team has to adapt to these changes.
• Where are your products/services on the competitive value positioning landscape?Can the salesperson sell higher premium products or are they better negotiators selling on price and terms?Value means different things to different people.
  

Hiring
It is always good to have a pool of candidates to select from before you start looking.  Most of us have a few dream candidates we’d like to recruit.  In this environment you will have to compensate more than you want to attract these stellar candidates.

• Identify the behavioral characteristics you seek.Have you determined if the person is coachable, how they prepare for calls, their analytical skills, their listening and questioning skills
• It is best to complement your own assessment with others.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 contract them.Stack rank the candidates.(I learned this technique from a very savvy Chinese recruiter).
• Constantly update your hiring process as your business changes and your team matures.
  

Training and Development
Now that you have hired the candidate continue the trust building process don’t let up -you’re still vulnerable.

• Have you identified the attributes you’ll need to coach your new hire through their first 18-24 months on the job?Most new hires need reinforcement and periodic upgrading on a finite number of skill sets.
• 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?Review your 18-24 month training plan with your new recruit.
• Do they feel comfortable discussing their shortfalls with you?If they can identify their missteps they are most prone to corrective action.
• Never stop communicating-always be motivating.Change is harder for them than you-stay on task.

Coaching and development must be adapted to the individual and be updated regularly to be effective.
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.

Do you want to have a free fifteen minute discussion so we can discuss recruiting and retaining a great sales team? Sign up on my web site http://www.jimthomasintl.com/ or contact me directly by phone.

Good Selling!