Eight Steps for Hiring Top-Performing Salespeople
To get great sales results, you need top-performing salespeople. This post is the first in a series of posts on how to hire the best salespeople for your company. Here are the Eight Steps for Hiring Top Performing Sales People.
In this series, we will address common mistakes companies make in recruiting, selecting, and hiring salespeople. We will also present unconventional and very successful approaches to hiring exceptional sales talent.
We’ve helped many clients dramatically increase sales by optimizing their sales teams. Hiring top sales talent starts with hiring stronger salespeople with grit who thrive (vs. gets by) in your environment.
You cannot maximize revenue with a mediocre sales team; yet, 50% of salespeople miss their quota. In today’s global economy, you must hire stronger salespeople to boost sales to new heights.
Here are key steps to use to help you find a top-tier sales talent.
Step 1: Interview the Job
If the job could “talk” and you interviewed the job… what would it tell you it needs in a salesperson who can thrive and exceed quota?
We see too many companies misrepresent the position. This inaccuracy doesn’t happen because company execs are dishonest. It happens because they don’t understand the position!
Instead of trying to describe the job, interview the job! What would the job say it needs in areas such as work ethic, desire, commitment, sales grit, mindset, etc.
What is really hard about this job? What does the job say is its reward to a salesperson? What else would the job tell you it needs to produce wildly successful a salesperson?
To get more information on interviewing for the job, visit our next post on how to establish sales candidate selection criteria.
Step 2: Define Your Real Sales Culture
Everyone says they want “A Players” but they don’t have an “A Player” culture. For example, Google gets 428 applicants for each job opening, does your company? Instead of competing with Google, Amazon, or Zappos, play to your unique cultural strengths. That helps you identify your unique differentiator and the reward of being at your company.
Before you start your search, define your culture. You can discover how to define your sales culture in our next post on establishing criteria for hiring salespeople.
Step 3: Write a Real Ad
Sir Ernest Shackleton led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. The ad he purportedly wrote to attract other explorers is legendary and brutally honest. There is some speculation as to the ad’s authenticity but this is what it said…
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.”
Notice the first part is designed to talk about the tough part of the job. This will attract people who love the thrill and adventure while scaring away people who prefer more creature comforts. The second part talks about the reward or payoff.
Be brutally honest in your ad. You want the right people to apply. If it takes 60+ hours a week to reach the six-figure income, put that in the ad. If they will be on the road 50% of the time, tell them that.
We will provide more details on how to write an ad to attract the right top sales professionals in a future post.
Step 4: Attract Top Sales Candidates
Don’t just spray and pray with your ad placements. Placing an ad on a few job boards may not get you the best talent. Think about where the most successful salespeople hang out online. You want to get your message to people who are not actively seeking a new job. A top performer for another firm may be the best fit for you.
Look for our future post on where to place your ads for new sales talent.
Step 5: Assess All Candidates
Before you interview anyone, ask all applicants to take the sales assessment tests. Don’t start with interviews if you want elite performers.
Take the same approach as top-performing sports teams. Do you think NFL talent recruiters start by asking pro football players to list their top successes? NO. They ask prospects to show how fast they can run 40 yards, how much weight they can bench press, how high they can jump, etc.
Individual interviews are notoriously unreliable in predicting how well applicants will perform on a job. Past behavior predicts future performance. We work with a number of sales assessment tests. You can use a free sample test of one of our favorite assessment tests for a potential sales candidate at this link.
In a future post, we will discuss the best types of tests you should use to assess candidates for your sales position.
Step 6: Qualify
If you can, conduct a phone interview with candidates that pass the assessment tests. You should make this interview tough and very brief. This phone qualification step will help you identify the top candidates you should interview.
Step 7: Conduct a Structured Interview Session
Save the in-person interview until the end of the process. You should not interview candidates until after they have taken your assessments. By interviewing as the last step, you minimize the “I love them” bias. As mentioned above, individuals are very poor predictors of performance.
An article in Forbes Magazine reports:
“Interviews favor candidates who are attractive, sociable, articulate, and tall. They also favor manipulative candidates or ones who know how to make a positive impression even in a brief interview. But those aren’t always the best job performers.”
When you do conduct an in-person interview session, make it a structured interview. We will provide tips on how to conduct a structured interview in a future post.
In summary, if you want to field a top-performing sales team, use a well-thought-out process for recruiting and hiring pros.
Step 8: Build a Robust Onboarding Process
Don’t just dump new hires into the field.
The Aberdeen Group reports that 90% of companies expect employees to make their decision to stay with employers in their first six months. Human Resources Today also reports that employers can improve their retention rates by 25% with a solid onboarding program
Not surprisingly, the best salespeople are the most likely to leave. Top performers have more opportunities. If you are not keeping your top hires, look at your onboarding process.
We’ll provide tips in a future post on how to build a successful onboarding process for new salespeople.
In summary, if you want to field top-performing salespeople, use a well-thought-out process for recruiting, hiring, and onboarding sales pros.
Why You Should Ignore Your Gut We Hiring Top-Performing Salespeople
Gut instinct (or intuition) is the worst basis when hiring salespeople. You’ll hire the right salesperson less than 20% of the time if you base hiring on a gut feeling. Gut-based hiring means you have an 80% chance of choosing poorly. Would you take a bet with those odds?
When managers base their hiring decisions on feelings, they often ignore vital factors. In sales staff selection, companies hire costly underperforming salespeople who flame out in 3-6 months.
Why is Gut Instinct so Bad to Use When You Want to Hire A-Players?
Ignore your gut in hiring A-player salespeople. Hiring for sales is one of the most important aspects of your business. Most managers are unskilled at judging sales candidates on instinct alone. Why? For three main reasons:
Reason 1: Salespeople are Good at Selling and Excellent at Selling Themselves
Many salespeople applying for a job will:
- Tell you what they think you want to hear.
- Reveal only the best parts of their background.
- Watch your body language and respond to your cues.
Reason 2: When You Rely on Your Gut, You Introduce Unconscious Bias
As a selection method, in-person interviews have a horrible record of bad hires. Amazingly, research reveals hiring managers make a yes/no hiring decision in the first five minutes. That’s not enough time to get through the small talk, let alone assess a sales candidate.
You’ll hire better salespeople when you remove bias while hiring for sales. A Deloitte study shows that when companies remove unconscious bias, they increase hiring top performers by 25-46%.
10 Common Examples of Unconscious Bias in Recruitment
If you do not use a science-based selection process, you will likely let common biases interfere with selecting top salespeople. Avoid these hiring biases when hiring for sales:
- Affinity bias means you unconsciously prefer people like you. Face it; we all want to be around people with similar interests, personalities, schooling, etc. While an applicant is different from you, they could be just as talented and friendly as those who are like you.
- Beauty bias refers to physical appearance. Many of us place too much value on how a candidate looks. We unconsciously think they look the part. However, the adage about the book and the cover is real. Don’t judge applicants on appearance.
- Conformity bias occurs when you allow the views of others to influence your own. If you interview a candidate as a group and everyone else likes the person, you are likely to agree, even if you have doubts.
- Confirmation bias happens when you search for bits of evidence to back up your opinion. Confirmation bias leads to selective observation. For example, they went to a university you rate highly. You may look for examples confirming your high regard for the school they attended.
- Racial or ethnic bias means preferring one race or ethnic group over the other. Some people have strong beliefs about race and stereotypes. We may unconsciously favor a candidate because of their race and the qualities we associate with it.
- Gender bias means preferring one gender over the other. Some folks have strong beliefs about gender roles and stereotypes. We may unconsciously favor a candidate because of their gender and the qualities we associate with it. For example, we may think a man is better suited for a grueling travel schedule. Remove all personal biases when you hire A-players for your sales group.
- Halo/Horn effect happens when we focus on one particular feature of a candidate. If you view everything about the person in a positive ‘halo’ light, you see them as better than they are. For example, they work for a competitor, and you want to hire them. You may overlook that they lack even basic selling skills. The horn effect means you focus on a negative attribute, and that shades all other information.
- Anchor bias means hiring managers rely too much on the first piece of information they receive. For example, if you discover the applicant has a high IQ, you will interpret everything through that filter.
- Order bias relates to the order you interview individuals. Research shows that hiring managers are likely to remember candidates they interview first and last. In contrast, managers are more likely to forget candidates interviewed in the middle.
- Cultural noise bias happens when candidates respond to a question according to what they think the interviewer wants to hear. For example, the candidate may claim to be a team player because the interviewer stressed the importance of teamwork in the job. When in actuality, the candidate is a maverick.
Reason 3: Gut is Not Fact (it’s Fiction) When You Hire A-Players
Selling is a brutally competitive environment. If your company does a better job of selecting sales staff, your team will crush your competition. It would be best if you based this decision on science (facts).
What is the best way to hire A-players? Use a multi-measurement pre-hire assessment designed for sales. See our post on pre-hire sales assessments for more info.
Learn more about Big Swift Kick’s Sales Hiring Training Workshops.