Hiring sales talent is often a costly, difficult, and time-consuming task. However, it's mandatory in order to grow an organization and sales team.

In this blog, we discuss how to identify top talent and minimize hiring mistakes by following a 4 step process.

Hiring mistakes are expensive. Before we dive further into this topic, let's consider the following:

• According to the Department of Labor, the cost of a bad hire can be as high as 30% of first-year earnings
• Additionally, the CEO of Link Humans estimated the average cost to be as high as $240,000 plus expenses
• A study of CFOs said that not only do bad hires cost them productivity, but managers spend 17% of their time supervising underperforming employees
• Lastly, CareerBuilder reports that 74% of employers state they hired the wrong person for the job

If you have a salesforce of 25 people and 20% of your new hires fail due to lack of performance, the cost can be $100,000.00+. In a conversation with Roy Riley, President of Peel and Holland Insurance Agency, he stated that hiring mistakes are a 2-comma problem.

Maybe you are part of the 26% that have not admitted to making hiring mistakes. Perhaps a better piece to read would be this article, What Elite Salespeople Do Better, by David Kurlan.

Otherwise, here are four steps that, if followed and executed effectively, will cause you great excitement, create a more positive impact on revenue from new hires and drive a more profitable margin for your business.

Step #1: Hire for Will to Sell rather than Can Sell  

Most personality evaluations will tell you if a candidate has the personality traits consistent with successful salespeople. This information will tell you about characteristics like building relationships, being solution orientation, etc. 

What you want to know is their:

• Desire and commitment to be successful specifically in selling
• Ownership of outcomes
• Motivation to succeed (specifically what motivates them)
• Outlook when things aren’t going well

Step #2: Hire those that are big, fast, and strong

In other words, hire for specific sales DNA such as:

• Ability to Recover from rejection
• Beliefs about selling that support success in sales
• Not inhibited by their own need for approval
• Comfort asking about and discussing money
• Can overcome their own buying beliefs so that they can execute a milestone centric sales approach

Step #3: Always be prospecting 

100% of the time, when I ask if a company is pro-active or re-active in their recruiting, they will tell me re-active. Yes, they go into the market and talk to candidates. But hiring people when they don't need them or hiring people that they can’t afford are not consistent traits. Here are my recommendations:

• Schedule at least 20% of your time to focus on prospecting new sales candidates
• Have a system in your organization where key people are responsible for setting prospecting activity goals and asking for introductions to other talented salespeople
• Report recruiting activity just like you ask your salespeople to report sales activity in huddles or sales meetings

Step #4: Eliminate variability in the performance of your recruiting process

Too often, companies with a large footprint allow market executives to sway from the recruiting processes established by Human Resources. Companies assume that the local executive needs to have the flexibility to maximize the recruiting opportunities specific to their area. Which is causing ineffective results. Instead:

• All job attraction posts must work from the same format
• The first step is always to evaluate the potential candidate using a sales-specific skills assessment
• The next step is to do a 5-10 phone interview (unless phone skills are not important)
• The initial interview must operate like an audition
• Use scorecards for the assessment, phone interview, and initial interview so that decisions to move forward are objective
• Provide the next person in the selection process an interview guide with key focus points
• Make offers to only those candidates that are committed to making a transformational career change
• Prepare candidates to decide at the time of the offer by eliminating think it overs after you present your offer
• Confirm with the candidate that they are prepared to go through your 3-to-6-month onboarding process in its entirety. No Exceptions.

In the next article, I will go through the steps and provide some more detail about each, and share with you how data can help you select candidates so that you can improve your success rate to 92% and grow your business!

In Part 1 of "Negotiating on the First Tee, we discussed the practice of negotiating with your prospect before you begin your presentation.  In Part 2, we continue this discussion and add more to the conversation.

In order to increase sales and close more deals, you must understand the client's business strategy, build a strong foundation for negotiation, and cross off all the boxes for a killer Sales DNA.

1. Establishing the ground rules for time of presentation are critical. Before we get to that though, you must have a transitional discussion
   • "Let me take a minute to review where I think we are..."
   • "You have the following issues a,b, and c that if not taken care of within this time frame will cause the following to happen and this outcome is a have to fix problem"
   • "Your capacity to invest time, money and effort to fix the problem is this…"
   • "And I’m assuming for a minute that if we are able to fix this for you, in the budget you’ve identified with the right criteria and priorities, you would also want me to be in a position to answer any and all questions at that time"
   • "Did I get this right?" (Buyer says yes)
   • "Good, assuming we can do this I will be prepared to do all those things. If I can’t, I will call in advance and cancel our presentation meeting.  Fair?" (Fair)
2. Ground rules discussion:
   • "It may not be effective here, but there is a process that we recommend to make sure we are all on the same page, can I share that with you?" (Yes)
   • I need for you to be prepared as well:
     • "As I am going through my presentation, you will be thinking one of 2 things: 1) this makes all the sense in the world; let’s do this, 2) This won’t work for me, the money is wrong or I don’t think there is a fit"
     • "When I’m finished, I’m going ask you which one you are thinking. What objections do you have to that process?"
   • Anticipate and prepare for objections when you complete step six. Keep in mind that  an objection, stall or questions does NOT mean they are telling you no. They just need more information or you need to find out more clarity about compelling issues, capacity to invest or clarity on decision making. At the end, you do your best to eliminate any TIOs (Think It Overs)
   • Let's assume for a minute that this works for you. You are not done minimizing the opportunity for negotiation at time of presentation.  When you finish this discussion, you must return to your  office and write out and send the "As we agreed to letter" that covers the 3 “Cs” and inform the buyer you will call to confirm the information you’ve sent.  Then call to confirm.
   • Presenting to get a decision is as much of a mindset as it is a process:
     • Review what you’ve discussed
     • Review the as we agreed to letter including money and decision process that will take place today
     • Ask, “What’s changed?”
     • Make the presentation starting with their priority item not the first page in your presentation
     • Answer all of their questions about each solution, get them to score that solution on a scale of 1-10. If you are 7 or better you are in good shape but still you need to get them to a ten.  Once you get the ‘10’ you check that item off.
     • Ask our closing question:
       • "What where you thinking as I went through this. Assume for this discussion they said, This is really great we should do this! 
       • You ask, what should we do now?

• Or your alternative is:
  1. Do you believe based on what we presented that we understand your business and what you are trying to accomplish?
  2. Do you feel we can help?
  3. Do you want our help?

6. Despite this great process and effort, you can expect buyers to ask you questions that they haven’t asked yet, raise objections, or present you with stalls.  The first thing is this: Be prepared by conducting pre-call strategy meetings and role play these challenges.  Always understand that prospects are looking out for their best interests and not yours. Do not get emotionally involved when they throw you the curve ball!

Now I bet you are thinking, Tony, where is all the negotiation stuff?  Well that’s it right there. You win the bet on the first tee.