Spending most of my time for the last 12 years in Southern Florida, I have had the unusual experience of seeing the world of baseball from a great “behind the Wizard’s curtain” angle. Our family is 10 minutes from 2 different spring training facilities and within 2 hours drive of 4 others. Then there are the “Grapefruit League” minors toiling the summers away.
I’ve had the opportunity to talk with club personnel about the art and science of selecting “A” players for the “big show.” Watching games it is often difficult for the layman to distinguish a very good technical player from the rare rough gem who is destined for greatness. So, I made the mistake of assuming that the talent scouts make lots of “my gut tells me” decisions. When the question came up at a community forum where a representative of the Minnesota Twins organization was speaking, he said as diplomatically as he could,
“Don’t be an idiot. -- Certainly it’s difficult to know for sure who will be great. But, which of you wouldn’t weather considerable difficulty not to be the person in your organization to make a Million Dollar mistake?”
Are you facing the difficulty in your sales organization of not knowing for sure who will be “great?”
I talk with CEOs and Presidents of all varieties of sales organizations who make sales hiring decisions based solely on “gut” decisions. They are putting their company’s revenue futures on the line based upon a “feeling” rather than using any quantitative data. Some admit they knowingly hire 3 sales people for every one they hope to be a “keeper.”
Considering the cost of your time and resources in the hiring process, training and ramp-up, the opportunity cost of real prospects not identified and closeable sales lost to ineptitude, how many of these bad hires would it take until you have made the Million Dollar mistake?
So, how do you avoid making bad sales hires?
- Have a system. A properly built system lets you test and measure results. Tracking the results of changes you make within the hiring process allows you to hone the outcome for each step. Ultimately that gives you more flexibility, not less.
- Frontload the system with unemotional measures. The Twins representative said they know the data for more than 15 statistical categories before anyone “gets a look.” At Capstone our clients rely heavily on a pre-hire screening tool licensed by Objective Management Group called Express Screens. We build the system around this tool to ensure the best chance of identifying who can and will be successful selling in their organization. Our clients have objective and quantifiable data to use in the sales hiring process.
- Put your gut where it belongs. Instead of using your gut to decide who to let into the sales hiring funnel, use it as the last filter for what comes out the bottom.
- Trust the system. Now that you have an objective system for identifying, qualifying, interviewing, and hiring “A” players - trust it! Don’t do an end-run around it at every opportunity. Follow the system, track the results and prove its effectiveness.
When hiring sales people, expect more - and believe that you can get it. Don’t let fear keep you from making a change to your current sales hiring practices and from finding those “A” players for your company.
Do you have ideas on how to hire the right people? Let us know.
Charlie Ingram