Top 5 Sales Recruiting Observations of 2010

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan
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Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving - By Dave Kurlan

If you follow this blog you know that recruiting salespeople is an often repeated topic, albeit from many different angles.

Today, I'll make some observations about the sales recruiting activity taking place this summer that either reinforces some of the things I've said in the past, or modifies my original stance.

In no particular order, but of equal importance:

Candidates that respond more than 1 week after a job has been posted are always either not recommended by the assessment or they live beyond the acceptable commuting range.
There are approximately 4 times more sales management candidates than sales candidates.
The 3-5 minute phone call to screen recommended candidates is still the second most powerful filtering tool available after the sales candidate assessment. If you don't like the way they sound and they can't prove they have the experiences you specified in your ad, don't interview them.
If you think you can simply assess your 3 favorite candidates and end up selecting a winner you a badly mistaken. Recruiting statistics haven't changed much in the past year. It still shows that for every Great New Salesperson hired it requires:
1. Face to Face Interviews with the 5 Best Candidates
2. 15 Recommended Candidates Screened by Phone
3. 30 Assessments Taken
4. 50 Resumes Received
5. Ads posted on two successive weeks on targeted multiple sites
6. There are still two kinds of sales managers - those who get the process required to hire great salespeople and those who fight it. Guess which group consistently ends up with the best salespeople?
7. There are just as many awful salespeople as there ever were - the conversion statistics above show that 30% of the 50 resumes received are recommended by the assessment and only 10% get interviewed for one reason or another. Our statistics on more than 500,000 salespeople assessed indicate the number is 26% strong/74% weak.
This is the best time to recruit great salespeople. They are out there, but you have to find them and recognize them when you assess them, talk with them and interview them. Many companies and industries are still struggling and salespeople in those markets will leave for an opportunity to earn lucrative commissions.

Hire some great salespeople today - but do it the right way!

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Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving - By Dave Kurlan

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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