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.
It’s no secret sales turnover is expensive. Putting a number to the financial loss can make you feel queasy. But what’s even worse is finding a replacement for your top rep. It’s an exercise in frustration, disappointment, and frankly, it’s an excruciating process.
Although some turnover is obviously healthy, when you start losing the top 25% of your sales team, things can start to look bleak. Too often it starts when one top rep leaves, then before you know it; your top three performers are gone.
So what can you do to keep your best sales pros happy and productive?
Are you still dealing with high-turnover, under-performers, and missed quotas? The greatest challenge of any sales manager is in the recruiting. Getting the right people, on time, with the right skills that fit the corporate culture is a challenge.
So how do you pick the best sales talent?
Losing out on good candidates to other companies? Wonder why you can’t seem to attract enough sales candidates to make a strong hire? It’s no secret that hitting your revenue targets starts with building a successful sales team. Recruiting the right players who are motivated to succeed will prevent the problems that hiring the wrong people create.
Getting and keeping your sales team in top shape requires an exceptional recruitment strategy. If you’re determined to win the war for talent, you must first win the recruitment battle. It starts with these seven strategies…Read More
As the job market picks up steam in the technology sector and employees have more options, turnover becomes a heated topic. In today’s job market, employers need to continuously protect their hiring investments and work hard to improve retention rates. One way to increase retention rates is to implement training and development programs. Read More
The end of the year is looming. While you’re busy making strategic plans, setting revenue targets, and carefully carving out territory changes for 2016, some of your key salespeople are getting ready to leave. It’s simply inescapable. Healthy turnover is ideally concentrated towards sales reps that’re under performing. But unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Read More
