Hiring not so professional sales people can cost your company a heavy fortune. Not only in terms of monetary loss, but the improper hiring of sales person can lead to losses in terms of customers, client base and decreased morale of the employees. Higher growth targets set by the sales executives are dependent on the work of the sales people. It is the performance of the salespeople that determine if the targets are hit steadily or not.
The unfortunate truth of today’s business world is that most managers are not that good, when it comes to hiring sales people. According to a survey, one in every five recruits are ‘’bad’’ according to the managers surveyed. It therefore becomes important to examine the crux of the process of hiring sales people and why are so many managers bad at it. So let us look at the reasons your sales hiring sucks.
-
Misunderstandings about the role of the manager: Many managers believe that the entire sales role are the same, and hence do not differentiate between the type of role a sales person has to play. This leads to hiring a wrong man for the job.
Fix: Write the roles and responsibilities on a paper and the qualities required to fulfill those roles, and then while interviewing refer that list for the qualities required.
-
Looking at the wrong places: Best salespersons are already employed. By posting advertisements on the job portals like monster and LinkedIn, you are looking at the wrong places.
Fix: Headhunting salespeople who have had rigorous targets during the last 5 years of their assignments and have managed to hit those targets.
-
Lack of attention during the interviews: Some manager lacks the attention factor when taking an interview. One should not go directly into hiring one salesperson without having a proper feedback on his work styles and attitude.
Fix: One should speak less and listen more in an interview, and one should also entice the salesperson during the telephonic interview. If he is a serious candidate, then he will come for the second round of an in-person interview.
-
Hiring according to your wants not according to your needs: This is the biggest challenge a sale executive faces. Due to the deadline, a manager can hire someone who is available and would prefer not to wait for someone, who is worthy for the job, but is unavailable at the moment.
Fix: Rethink on the Talent recruitment strategy, and one should plan and execute the recruitment, instead of hiring as required.
-
Lack of thorough background checks: All the biggest companies in the world do background checks before recruiting their employees. Sometimes, managers make a mistake of not taking the task seriously. Sales people are made to sell and are good at interviews. Therefore, it becomes important to conduct thorough background checks.
Fix: Put a robust reference check procedure in place, and hire a background check agency with strong fundamentals.
To avoid such mistakes one can also use the services of a sales recruiters company. This would save the company of all the extra work related to bringing out a new recruitment strategy, looking for the best individuals, performing background checks etc.
