Managing a sales team is a complex and challenging job. It’s also a very different job within companies of varying revenue sizes. In some cases, you’ll need to be a front-line seller, in others, you’ll need to be a sales strategy master. Yet in all sales leadership positions, you’ll have to have command of more than just sales skills, you’ll need to be able to lead others.
Anyone who’s recruited for their team’s openings already knows that posting a list of job openings alongside a graphic of your company’s values is the easy part. Demonstrating those values in person is the real challenge. There is an attitude from both sides of the interview table that can leave the entire interview process flat, disconnected, and cold.
Sometimes an executives busy schedule is not his or her own. Let’s face it, “things happen.” Unfortunately, this happens to some busy hiring managers or recruiters more than others. When you are unable to consistently keep your calendared appointments, arrive late, or constantly reschedule there are both direct and indirect costs.
To build a rock solid high-performance company you must hire the best salespeople you can recruit. So, what can you do to attract A-players? First, it’s important to understand what salespeople want. What keeps salespeople engaged? When we ask thousands of sales reps across the country what kinds of environments they thrive in, we heard common themes.
.What Motivates Recruiters to Help You Find Top Sales Talent?
Yesterday I had a conversation with a potential client.
He was frustrated because he hadn’t been able to find a replacement hire for over seven months. He was already working with three other recruiters and had no candidates in current consideration for the role.
Are the recruiters to blame? They had presented multiple candidates, and the one that the client was most interested in was over the budgeted compensation level. He made a comment that he thought perhaps the recruiters just wanted more money and were inflating salary expectations.
In good economies and bad, finding top talent is difficult. Think it’s any easier for Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Google? Sure, they have distinct competitive advantages, but it still takes teams of recruiters interviewing around the clock to recruit and hire staff even for well branded growing organizations.
With everyone promising high-growth, big OTEs, and amazing products, it can be hard to compete for top sales talent. Many of today’s sales candidate have been promised the moon a few times, only to become a bit more skeptical with each job move. A CEB study in 2014 concluded that 65% of Millennials are more skeptical of employer claims than they were in 2011.
Quality of Hire: Another Meaningless Metric for Sales Hires
Measuring recruitment success in the sales department has never been more important. In today’s hyper-competitive landscape, every sales hire counts. Time-to-fill, the all-time most important recruitment metric, has been replaced with an overarching obsession for “quality of hire.” Yet one deeply entrenched problem remains inherent in this metric. Unlike measuring time-to-fill, which is a fairly straight forward calculation, untethering quality of hire from other variables is virtually impossible. You don’ have a shot at making this measurement meaningful for your sales hires. It’s too intertwined and dependent upon other pre-hire variables.
I had a candidate in my earlier years that loved to talk. At the time, I thought perhaps he just loved to talk to ME. I considered myself to be a pretty good listener so I figured he would cut down his answers in the proceeding interviews.
Well, despite my warnings about being careful not to “hog all the air time”…he wasn’t able to apply the feedback when he met with my client.
If you told me you’ve tried using a recruitment firm in the past, and things didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be surprised. Although there are a lot of exceptional recruiters out there, a few bad experiences can taint a person’s willingness to try again.
If you’re looking at a recruiting firm like a commodity, you probably won’t get good results. I’ve gotten calls from companies who’ve had searches out to multiple firms and are were adamant about paying discounted fees. Saving a few thousand dollars today was more important than hiring the best employee.
