3 Powerful Excuses for Maintaining Mediocrity in Your Sales Hiring

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3 Powerful Excuses for Maintaining Mediocrity in Your Sales Hiring - By Graham

I came across this interesting sales article from Dave Kurlan, developer of the Dave Kurlan Sales Force Evalutaion Tools, it may be of interest to you! 3 Powerful Excuses for Maintaining Mediocrity in Your Sales Hiring (Posted by Dave Kurlan on Tue, March 27, 2010)

Yesterday I participated in a Webinar sponsored and hosted by EcSell Institute where I presented my ideas for how not to screw up your 2010 sales hiring. Most of the attendees had participated in a survey where they said that getting hiring right was extremely important, but only 8% felt they had the skills to do this effectively.

When I answered questions from the audience, the best one, in my opinion, was the most obvious. It went something like this: "If your recruiting process works so effectively, and your assessments are so predictive, and they save so much time and money and consistently identify top performers, then why don't more companies use them?"

Isn't that just an awesome question? Without question, it is the question I ask myself every single day. Why are there only 8,000 companies using this great process and assessment when it could be 8 million companies? I believe there are three reasons.

1.Ego. Most sales managers simply have a mindset that they should know how to do this without asking for help, relying on tools, or following someone else's process. After all, they've done it before (badly if you measure it by the percentage of over achievers they hire - fewer than half of the last 10 people yesterday's group hired were achieving!).

2.Money. Every company pays their worst performer far more than it would cost to get the right process, tools and skills in place. Even though every hiring mistake costs as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars, some companies simply don't view those losses as line items. However, they do see the cost of assessments and consulting as line items and mistakenly believe they can't spend the money.

3.Fear. Fear of the unknown, of being wrong, of change, of losing control, of being criticized, and of a learning curve.

These are 3 powerful reasons for not going down this path. Yet, they are 3 reasons over which executives should be embarrassed and apologize. Companies just plain suck at hiring the right salespeople. How could they do any worse by implementing best practices?

End of the article.

Interestly, whenI work with CEOs I ask them this sales hiring question "How many salespeople would you hire, if you knew they would all be successful?" in general the overwhelming answer is "All of them" so why waren't they hiring? Because they have failed in the past for find successful salespeople. If you want to build a successful business you need to find, attract, qualify and retain successful salespeople period. for more infomation refer to my Bio.

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3 Powerful Excuses for Maintaining Mediocrity in Your Sales Hiring - By Graham

About the Author: Graham

RSS for Graham's articles - Visit Graham's website
Graham Rawlinson began his sales career over thirty years ago as a sales representative for a Motorola distributor. Two years later he was asked to join a fortune 100 company, General Electric Company Inc. (GEC) in England. Within the first 2 years, Graham was promoted to National Sales Manager were he recruited and trained a national sales team of 14 sales engineers. During the next 3 years, Graham's team developed GEC's market share to become the 2nd largest player in the UK. In 1990, Graham was transferred to Canada, to head up the Canadian division. During the next 5 years, Graham's division increased sales by over 300% and profits over 400%, all of this during a recession.
Throughout his career, Graham has developed a management style that is consultative and interactive, with a focus on developing, motivating, coaching and training, for management and employees alike. With his engineering background, Graham's approach to business development, sales and management is systematic, following principals that work and produce results. In 1996 Graham established the Sandler Training centre in Cambridge. Graham has helped many companies grow significantly by working with Owners & Presidents to gain control fo the business development department. Graham trained GE Power Control's Top 100 sales people, Top 35 Managers and Sigma Six Commercial Team in 10 European countries.

Graham collaborated with Objective Management Group (OMG) to develop a tool which allows company leaders to develop successful sales teams. The combination of the OMG and Sandler Selling system have been adopted by thousands of companies, including Oracle who are utilizing them on a global basis.

Graham is also a NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Practitioner, certified by NLP Centres Canada. He helps his clients overcome their fears and barriers to success by reprogramming their throught processes to achieve their personal performance goals.

Recognized as one of Ontario's leading sales development experts, Graham is regularly approached to be a keynote speaker at national sales conferences and other major events. He also hosted the "Today's Sales Meeting Minute"® on NewsTalk 570 AM Radio and Your FM, a super concentrated selling and management tip each day, in SW Ontario.

Progressive Concepts Inc.

Click here to visit Graham's website.

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