Hiring Good Salespeople
Hiring Good Salespeople
Our customers have changed. The economics of our businesses have changed. Our markets have changed, and we face new competitors on every front. Is it any surprise that our sales
organisations must change to adapt to dramatically changed circumstances? But, in many cases, sales organisations and the HR functions which support them, have failed to respond.
Dramatic shifts in buyer-seller relationships have seen the balance of power swing back from sellers to buyers. In short, buyers have become better at buying than sellers at selling. Sales organisations face huge challenges because there is no longer any sustainable competitive advantage through product superiority. Author Jerry Stapleton points out that a second problem is that the sales reps’ customers just do not need them any longer – at least not the
way that they used to. Traditionally, salespeople brought value to their customers by facilitating transactions and communicating information about their products and services. Almost overnight these two core functions of salespeople have lost their value. These functions, once the life blood of selling, are diminishing in value as a new era of selling is replacing the old. Customers will not pay for them and often will not even tolerate them.
They are making that known to their suppliers.
The market today is demanding, highly professional and highly specialised salespeople who have a new focus: demand creation, philosophical alignment, in-depth understanding of their customer’s businesses, positioning, executive credibility and the delivery of value. These people are in desperately short supply and sales organisations are increasingly turning to their HR functions for help and guidance in recruiting the new sales talent, and finding that the cupboard is bare. Research is revealing that the calibre of the salesperson has become the single major determinant of whether customers will buy from your organisation or not. So having the knowledge tools and processes to identify genuine sales talent is vital.
Key Learning Point No.1
Sales is becoming increasingly specialised and there are at least 14 different types of salespeople. So it is absolutely crucial to understand what type of salesperson is most likely to succeed in a specific sales role. There are simple tools available to make this determination.
Factors Influencing Customers Decision to Buy
Price 18%
Quality of product/service 21%
Offering a total solution 22%
Calibre of the salesperson 39%
Key Learning Point No. 2
Really great salespeople are often not much interested in theory and tend to be intuitive rather than academic. They are definitely not stupid, but they have other priorities. In HR Chally’s database of over 500 000 salespeople there is an inverse correlation between
academic achievement and sales success, so many organisations who demand rigorous academic standards, often screen out the best sales talent. This is particularly common in banks and IT companies.
Key Learning Point No. 3
Is there a link between academic achievement and sales success? Sales is more a talent based than a learned skill. You can teach anybody to play golf, but you cannot turn the average weekend golfer into a Tiger Woods. It is the same with sales and the rule of thumb the 20% rule applies for training salespeople. You can turn a 5% into a 6% (a poor investment) but you can turn an 80% into a 96%.
Key Learning Point No. 4
Hiring accuracy for sales performance is generally poor – often little better than making decisions based on the flip of a coin, because the most common tools used for recruitment are ineffective. Hiring success rates aren’t much better than a coin toss*
Selection Method: Improvement Over “Chance” (% increase)
Typical Interview 1%
Personality Tests 1%
Experience 5%
Scorable Interview 7%
Criterion validated test 25-35%
Key Learning Point No. 5
Sales managers and HR departments draw up long laundry lists of desirable attributes for salespeople, with no evidence about which are important and predictors of on-the-job performance. Statistical research (validity) studies on predictors of job success indicates that the single most important predictor skill or criteria accounts for almost half the total success prediction. Each additional criterion adds around 50% of the value of the preceding one. More than six factors actually dilute the accuracy of selection.
Factors Affecting Selection Accuracy
1st factor 50%
2nd factor 25%
3rd factor 12%
4th factor 6%
5th factor 3%
Key Learning Point No. 6
Evaluating personality instead of job skills has proved ineffective in predicting future performance in different job roles. This is especially problematic in the popular “short tests” with 20 to 30 questions. Some tests that fall into this group are: MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator), DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness), PIP (Personality
Interview Profiler), PSI (Personal Style Inventory), OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire) and many others. Many of these tests are useful but not predictive.
Any truly effective sales recruitment system would contain the following elements or steps:
1. Clearly understand and define the specific sales role
2. Understand that you find different types of salespeople in different places;
3. Define your “disqualifiers” and screen out unsuitable candidates;
4. Develop a preliminary short list and utilise role specific, structured scorable interviews to develop a short list;
5. Conduct thorough reference checks; and
6. Finally, utilise a criterion validated predictive test to determine the candidate’s suitability for a specific role.
As a guideline, you should achieve 90% or better hiring accuracy and a 20 - 40% improvement in sales productivity.
Hiring Good Salespeople - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Gilbert's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
Hiring Good Salespeople
Our customers have changed. The economics of our businesses have changed. Our markets have changed, and we face new competitors on every front. Is it any surprise that our sales
organisations must change to adapt to dramatically changed circumstances? But, in many cases, sales organisations and the HR functions which support them, have failed to respond.
Dramatic shifts in buyer-seller relationships have seen the balance of power swing back from sellers to buyers. In short, buyers have become better at buying than sellers at selling. Sales organisations face huge challenges because there is no longer any sustainable competitive advantage through product superiority. Author Jerry Stapleton points out that a second problem is that the sales reps’ customers just do not need them any longer – at least not the
way that they used to. Traditionally, salespeople brought value to their customers by facilitating transactions and communicating information about their products and services. Almost overnight these two core functions of salespeople have lost their value. These functions, once the life blood of selling, are diminishing in value as a new era of selling is replacing the old. Customers will not pay for them and often will not even tolerate them.
They are making that known to their suppliers.
The market today is demanding, highly professional and highly specialised salespeople who have a new focus: demand creation, philosophical alignment, in-depth understanding of their customer’s businesses, positioning, executive credibility and the delivery of value. These people are in desperately short supply and sales organisations are increasingly turning to their HR functions for help and guidance in recruiting the new sales talent, and finding that the cupboard is bare. Research is revealing that the calibre of the salesperson has become the single major determinant of whether customers will buy from your organisation or not. So having the knowledge tools and processes to identify genuine sales talent is vital.
Key Learning Point No.1
Sales is becoming increasingly specialised and there are at least 14 different types of salespeople. So it is absolutely crucial to understand what type of salesperson is most likely to succeed in a specific sales role. There are simple tools available to make this determination.
Factors Influencing Customers Decision to Buy
Price 18%
Quality of product/service 21%
Offering a total solution 22%
Calibre of the salesperson 39%
Key Learning Point No. 2
Really great salespeople are often not much interested in theory and tend to be intuitive rather than academic. They are definitely not stupid, but they have other priorities. In HR Chally’s database of over 500 000 salespeople there is an inverse correlation between
academic achievement and sales success, so many organisations who demand rigorous academic standards, often screen out the best sales talent. This is particularly common in banks and IT companies.
Key Learning Point No. 3
Is there a link between academic achievement and sales success? Sales is more a talent based than a learned skill. You can teach anybody to play golf, but you cannot turn the average weekend golfer into a Tiger Woods. It is the same with sales and the rule of thumb the 20% rule applies for training salespeople. You can turn a 5% into a 6% (a poor investment) but you can turn an 80% into a 96%.
Key Learning Point No. 4
Hiring accuracy for sales performance is generally poor – often little better than making decisions based on the flip of a coin, because the most common tools used for recruitment are ineffective. Hiring success rates aren’t much better than a coin toss*
Selection Method: Improvement Over “Chance” (% increase)
Typical Interview 1%
Personality Tests 1%
Experience 5%
Scorable Interview 7%
Criterion validated test 25-35%
Key Learning Point No. 5
Sales managers and HR departments draw up long laundry lists of desirable attributes for salespeople, with no evidence about which are important and predictors of on-the-job performance. Statistical research (validity) studies on predictors of job success indicates that the single most important predictor skill or criteria accounts for almost half the total success prediction. Each additional criterion adds around 50% of the value of the preceding one. More than six factors actually dilute the accuracy of selection.
Factors Affecting Selection Accuracy
1st factor 50%
2nd factor 25%
3rd factor 12%
4th factor 6%
5th factor 3%
Key Learning Point No. 6
Evaluating personality instead of job skills has proved ineffective in predicting future performance in different job roles. This is especially problematic in the popular “short tests” with 20 to 30 questions. Some tests that fall into this group are: MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator), DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness), PIP (Personality
Interview Profiler), PSI (Personal Style Inventory), OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire) and many others. Many of these tests are useful but not predictive.
Any truly effective sales recruitment system would contain the following elements or steps:
1. Clearly understand and define the specific sales role
2. Understand that you find different types of salespeople in different places;
3. Define your “disqualifiers” and screen out unsuitable candidates;
4. Develop a preliminary short list and utilise role specific, structured scorable interviews to develop a short list;
5. Conduct thorough reference checks; and
6. Finally, utilise a criterion validated predictive test to determine the candidate’s suitability for a specific role.
As a guideline, you should achieve 90% or better hiring accuracy and a 20 - 40% improvement in sales productivity.
Hiring Good Salespeople - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Gilbert's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
Dave KurlanDave Kurlan 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 and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
|||
George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Peter's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 Your Life Your Legacy Positive Thinking CAN-Spam Checklist Leadership Style Assessment Performance Emotional Intelligence |
|
 | ||
 |
Top 50 Diversion Blogs
Top Diversion Blogs of 2009 | |
 |
Top 50 SEO Posts - 2007
Top SEO Posts of the Year | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
