In this blog post, we ask the question, "Are you looking to hire better salespeople or are you looking to hire salespeople that will simply replace your former employees?"
According to Geoff Smart of Topgrading, 75% of new hires do not perform as well as the employee they replace, or they perform just as well as the person they replace. In order to hire better people, you must know what you're looking for!
So, what are you looking for in your next great salesperson? I guess the most important question is this: Are you looking to hire better salespeople or are you looking to hire salespeople that will simply replace your former employees? Will you settle for someone that is “at least as good as” the most average salesperson on your team?
No one in their right mind would say “yes” to those questions, but if your sales organization is large enough, the data would support that your hiring practices are getting you exactly that. According to Geoff Smart (Topgrading), 75% of the hires do not perform as well as the employee they replace, or they perform just as well as the person they replace.
If we were to look at the 80/20 power curve in your organization, we would probably find out what we normally do – that about 36% of the sales force is responsible for over 90% of your sales results. So, what is the other 64% doing? How did they end up on your sales team?
In order to hire better people, you have to know what you are looking for in your next hire.
Here is the list of 28 sales traits to identify when hiring new salespeople that we’ve come up with after analyzing the sales teams of 5 of our clients in the financial services/banking business:
What I find interesting about some of the items is that there are a few that have a significant variance between the performers and non-performers:
How do you explain that last item? Look at the others strengths: Desire, commitment, trainability, hunter, figure-it-out qualifier, consultative, posturing… they are REJECTION proof!
The purpose of this post is to get you to think more seriously about what it is that you really know about the candidates you are looking to hire, as well as what you really need to know before proceeding with the interview and hiring steps.
Interested in learning more? Watch this video below from our Founder and CLO Tony Cole on the difficulty behind hiring salespeople that will sell for your organization:
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