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Bench Strength - The Key to Replacing Salespeople

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: When you send your replacements into the field, are your fingers crossed hoping they don't make mental errors that help competitors close business or are you confident because your replacements are better than those you replaced? Those are the two keys right there:

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Bench Strength - The Key to Replacing Salespeople



bberrorEarlier this summer I wrote about how the Red Sox are decimated by injuries. It's not so much that they have 11 starters on the disabled list as much as it's about their replacement players and whether they could hold things together.

Yesterday, two of those replacements, failed to make 4 plays that led to all of the Texas runs.

In baseball, physical errors happen but managers go nuts when mental errors are made and yesterday's errors were all mental - the kinds that rookies usually make.

When you lose salespeople through retirement, resignation, defection or termination, do you have an adequate bench or minor league or do you rely on free agent signings?

When you send your replacements into the field, are your fingers crossed hoping they don't make mental errors that help competitors close business or are you confident because your replacements are better than those you replaced?

Those are the two keys right there:

  1. You must always have replacements available so you must always be recruiting.
  2. Your replacements must always be better than those you replaced. Never compromise.
If you aren't allowed to compromise but must have replacements ready to go, that could certainly put a lot of pressure on your company's ability to recruit quickly. But if you have an effective, on-going sales recruiting process and employ best practices throughout, your next hire could be last week's great interview or today's great phone conversation.

Don't put yourself in a position where you have to worry about your new salespeople. Once they're on board, make sure you have a structured, effective 90-day ramp-up program to assure they succeed instead of setting them up for failure.

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Article Tags: agent signings, bench, best practices, defection, failure, fingers, free agent, hspace, li li, minor league, nuts, phone conversation, ramp, red sox, replacements, resignation, retirement, rookies, salespeople, starters

About the Author: Dave Kurlan
RSS for Dave's articles - Visit Dave's website

Dave Kurlan is a best-selling author, top-rated speaker and thought leader on sales development.  He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling (Dan Seidman), Stepping Stones (Deepak Chopra and Brian Tracey) and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2 (David Riklan).

Click here to visit Dave's website
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