HireLive Recruiting

I was recently with Rick and he mentioned to me the difficulty of finding good selling professionals. Rick has been a sales manager for 35 years and during that time he has stated that he continually hires trouble. Poor hires manage to always slow down productivity and form a downhill slide into mediocrity for everyone around them. Poor hires only placate morale and productivity.

The problem that I find particularly in today’s competitive environment is finding the right individuals. This runs specifically true in a post recessionary world. As the economy continues to pick up steam there is enormous pressure to recruit and hire the best selling professionals possible. However, there is a great concern over the ability to find the proper personnel with the right talent. The recession provided an opportunity to purge poor salesman. Basically the economic doldrums separated the professionals from the wannabes. Now as productivity needs increase so will the need to find the best to keep organizations thriving.

What exactly might a hiring sales manager today search for?

It’s a job of the sales manager to always be seeking the proper talent for the organization. There’ve been too many times in the past where organizations have hired for behavior and not talent. Talent is those sets of innate skills that people possess. Such skills include relationship building, lead generation and the abilities of poise and professionalism. Sales managers that hire for behavior seemingly fall short of expectations. The problem is that these individuals require too much support, do not invest in self-mastery and weigh heavily on organizational costs. As Jim Collins said in his number-one selling book “Good to Great”, it is essential to have the right people on the bus. Hiring for anything less than talent does not provide the performance expectations required of most organizations.

Second, sales managers must begin an active recruitment process. Consequently even if your staff is at full capacity, it is essential to budget more people. This way if you do find an outstanding candidate you can hire them immediately without special dispensation from senior executives. For more than 25 years I have always required sales managers to utilize the ABLE method of hiring: Always Be looking for Employees. Unfortunately too many organizations and their sales managers are very reactive when it comes to hiring. Why wait when the right one comes along?

Third, among the largest issues for any sales manager is proper compensation. The fact is that in a competitive situation, organizations must have a proper competitive matrix to hire right. It is wise to look at the competitive marketplace and invest wisely in your compensation plan so that good candidates do not transition to competitors.

Fourth, perhaps probably the most missed opportunities during recruitment is seeking people with proper flair. Refrain from only looking at resumes that get people in the door. Look very keenly at the manner in which sales candidates have approached you as a sales manager. Would they do the same in trying to achieve prospective clients? Look for creativity and competitiveness – what got them in the door should keep them behind it, not in front.

Finally, in order to find the right sales talent similar to marketing and other business development endeavors organizations must be visible. This includes using your distribution channels: clients, strategic alliances and vendors. Tell your distribution channel you are seeking talent. You must use all competitive resources possible to obtain them. And, with good relationships these alliances will only provide the best people.

One final note – make sure that you’re not hiring future problems. Years prior to the recession organizations hired quickly because they were forced. However the wrong people were chosen. Commitment and time are the resources necessary to recruiting great people. Do not rush to achieve finding the most valuable resource for your organization.

©2011. Drew J. Stevens Ph.D. All rights reserved.

Uncertain about business development? Take the on Business Development Scorecard, Drew Stevens is one of the world’s leading authorities on Effective Sales Management, Business Development & Sales Consulting. Drew is the author of the successful sales process books – Split Second Selling. He is also the creator of the Sales Leadership Program one of only 14 programs in the United States offering an accredited degree in the profession of selling and has a top ranked podcast called Sales Acceleration. To discover how Dr. Drew can assist your organization visit his marketing and sales consulting website – stevensconsultinggroup.com.

The thought of passively sitting back, and allowing the employees to find the new staff for your company might seem counter-productive. It might go against what you have been told is your job description, which is head hunting, and seeking out new applicants. Why in the world would you want to allow company employees to do this for you, and how in the world would this all work?

Answering the first question, you would and should want to allow your company employees to help you in your recruiting efforts for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a fact that the most common way for a new employee to have found their job is through networking efforts. Most new employees find that when they look in the newspapers for job advertisements, the ads are too general, or they don’t offer enough information. In addition to this, they have to send in their resume, and hope that someone will call them back in response for an interview. The chance of this is very slim because of the sheer number of people who apply for these positions by responding to newspaper ads. It’s a fact that most employment recruiters simply don’t have the time to respond to all of the phone inquiries, or to read all of the resumes that have been faxed or emailed to them. They might pick the first hundred or so, and the rest will get left behind or thrown away.

When a person is desiring to be hired, they don’t have the time to waste, or to wait for someone to give them a call back. So, if they are wise, they will use their connections in the community, or amongst their friends and family in order to get a job or at least an interview. They will ask the people that they know if those people know of a career opening that might be available. Many people either directly know the hiring managers, or they are related to someone who has hiring authority. So when networking is done right, the new job applicant can bypass the long line for a position, and move to the front of the ‘queue’. Many of these people get their positions simply because someone spoke on their behalf.

Now, how that relates to you, the job recruiter, is that you can use a method on the internet to create networks that will lead the job applicants to you. Knowing that most new positions are filled via networking methods and by relationships, you can use the internet to your advantage when you finding new job applicants. You can use social media recruiting websites as a means of bringing the applicants to you. For example, you can create an incentive for current employees if they use their social media web-pages in leading new applicants to your web-page. This will bring to you a wide variety of applicants to choose from. Better still, you can take the time for free to pre-screen these applicants. You can chat with them, and send messages to express everything that you’d like about the position. Then, you’ll know before you extend an invitation for an interview if you have a qualified recruit. You didn’t have to do half the work that you might have done in the past to accomplish this mission.

BraveNewTalent is a social media recruiting website that connects talent to employers. We build targeted talent communities around employer brands and allow both candidates and employers to engage in a much deeper and longer lasting relationship using social technologies.