How to Greatly Minimize the Risk of Bad Sales Hires

Hiring well is not easy. We know. We’ve tried and failed more than we like to admit.

And when you’re hiring for a sales position, the ante is up. A poor sales hire can affect your bottom line and reputation with customers for months to come. This would not be good news for you as the sales leader and certainly not good news as you have to report missed targets after investing so much time, effort and money getting a new sales person up to speed.

We certainly recommend using a behavioral interviewing process that helps you dig beneath the surface to the approach and performance that a candidate will actually display on the job. Of course, this means that you have first identified the specific behavior-based sales competencies and attitudes that lead to success for your unique selling situation. This includes making sure the candidate is a good fit culturally. Someone can have all the qualifications but be so out of synch with the way your customers, team and company operate that they will not succeed or last long. 

Let’s assume that you’ve followed the process, the rest of your team concurs, and you are ready to hire. This is when you must continue to draw some lines. The sales onboarding process is critical is critical. No matter that your candidate has participated in solution selling training and excelled at each performance test. What really matters is what happens next…when the new hire is tested for real…on the job and face-to-face with current and potential clients.

To minimize the risk of having made a big mistake in your sales hire, we recommend you establish clear guidelines for activities that measure success. You need early leading indicators of whether or not your new hire can measure up and deliver. Be crystal clear about what you expect in terms of activities, behaviors and performance the first 30, 60 and 90 days. These should be presented in the hiring process so the candidate knows what is expected.  For example, one client holds new sales hires accountable to spending 6 days per month in the field with experienced sales reps to learn how the company approaches potential candidates, holding weekly reviews with the team of the 5 most likely-to-close deals, and attending bi-weekly meetings with their sales manager.  This client also wants the pipeline to represent 50% of their Q1 quota after 90-days for net new business.

If you establish clear leading and lagging success metrics at the outset, you will quickly know if the candidate will make it or not. If not, you need to move them on. If they meet your guidelines for success, engage, develop and retain your successful sales hire.

Learn more at http://www.lsaglobal.com/solution-selling-training/