Recruiting salespeople is a hazardous business

Slips, trips and falls – Recruiting salespeople is a hazardous business

Did you know that 80% of employee turnover is caused by poor hiring decisions?

You always look for the best candidate when recruiting salespeople. You probably use the same recruitment process every time.

Why, then, does every salesforce have a mixture of top, average and poor performers?

You set out to bring the best possible candidate into your sales team. But somewhere along the way, it didn’t go to plan.

You now have a sales force that looks broadly like this:

Only 16% of a salesforce are typically considered as successful workers

For your sales team to be successful, you need your staff to perform at their best. Sales success is hugely rewarding for your business – which is why underperformance is hugely damaging.

A study published in the Psychological Bulletin states that:

Poor performers deliver 48% less than average performers
Average performers deliver 48% less than top performers
Top performers deliver over 100% more than poor performers

If your sales managers and directors are going to meet their targets, you need to get your recruitment process right.

Why does it go wrong?

Your sales recruitment can go wrong because:

53% of applicants lie on their CV
63% of interviewers judge a candidate within 5 minutes
58% of interviews don’t address soft skills
18% of interviewers don’t ask the best questions

For your sales team to be successful, you need to consider soft skills. This relates to your candidates’ character.

Considering how well your candidate will fit in with the company culture is crucial to your success.

Don’t just take your applicants’ word for it – even poor salespeople are great at selling themselves!

You need a way of identifying which of these candidates is better
than the others

Why does it matter?

In many industries and businesses, high employee turnover has become the norm – especially in the sales and customer service departments.

But it doesn’t have to be that way!

If your candidate leaves…

It costs 50% of their annual costs to replace them.

If your candidate stays…

They underperform – despite you paying for 100% effectiveness.

If your candidate slightly underperforms…

You spend time and money developing them to an acceptable level.

If your candidate massively underperforms…

You have to dismiss them – costing 50% of their annual costs to replace them.

Your business needs to meet its sales targets. Every time you have a vacancy, or someone underperforming, it makes your company more likely to miss your target.

It costs 50% of an employee’s annual costs to replace them

Hit the ground running

You need your new recruit to hit the ground running. You also know what targets you need to meet. But do you know why some people are better than others at meeting those targets?

Knowing that your new recruit will be as good as your best people helps to push your salesforce to the next level.

Great People Inside’s ‘Dimension’ Assessments helps you:

Identify & measure specific skills that make your best salesperson the best
Looks at behaviours & cognitive traits key to success
Find ways where your lower performers differ from top performers – and then train to close the gaps

This means that even some poorer performers can be trained to a higher level.

If you want to know more about the ‘Dimensions’ psychometric assessment, and how it can help your company to measure every potential recruit’s suitability before they join your sales team, then email me at [email protected] or call 01494 573 572.