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Case History - How Not to Hire Salespeople

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: A company wants to hire 5000 salespeople - but why? 2000 drop out before completing training, and another 2000 drop out during the first 90 days in the field. Another 500 drop out during the first 6 months, and at the end of the year they only have 500 of the original 5000 standing. What would it be worth to them from a cost, time, resources and practicality standpoint for us to simply identify, in advance, the final 500, before anyone is hired?

Case History - How Not to Hire Salespeople

A company wants to hire 5000 salespeople - but why? 2000 drop out before completing training, and another 2000 drop out during the first 90 days in the field. Another 500 drop out during the first 6 months, and at the end of the year they only have 500 of the original 5000 standing. What would it be worth to them from a cost, time, resources and practicality standpoint for us to simply identify, in advance, the final 500, before anyone is hired?

Can we do that? Yes.

Are they likely to do that? No.

Why? Because that's the way it's always been done in their industry. The Status Quo prevents improved outcomes and nobody wants to make a change that might not work. Well what about the way they're doing it now? Does anybody really believe that it works the way it is? They do!

Let's take a closer look at why their turnover - at 90% the first year - is so high? Let's look at how they select salespeople since that's one of the things that we could change.

They use a behavioral styles assessment. They're OK, but (obviously!!) not predictive of sales success.

This particular assessment is marketed as a sales assessment but it's the same old story. Behavioral Styles assessment that uses some sales terminology and marketing but under the hood it's a behavioral styles assessment. Here are some examples:

The Assessment reports "Prospecting Ability" but they can't actually measure that. They can only measure how extroverted, social and persistent the individual is - in a social context! It has nothing to do with prospecting ability!

The Assessment reports "Closing Style/Ability" but they can't actually measure that. They can only measure assertiveness and sensitivity to rejection - in a social context! It has nothing to do with closing ability!

The Assessment report "Commitment to Sales" but they can't actually measure that. They can only measure self-esteem and how favorable the individual is to a sales profession. It has nothing to do with Commitment to Sales!

And on and on and on it goes...

What would you do?

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Article Tags: assertiveness, assessment report, behavioral styles, closer look, marketing, practicality, rejection, sales success, salespeople, self esteem, social context, standpoint, time resources, turnover



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