Want more sales? Improve information when you recruit.
Picture the scene: you’ve just recruited an amazing new salesperson from your competitor. They’ve always been a highflier for your rival, and now you want them to work the same magic for you.
Yet, despite a huge contact list, the sales figures don’t materialise. Your new recruit isn’t as good as your best current salespeople. It’s a recruitment disaster.
But why has it happened?
It’s easy to believe that sales success in one place can be translated anywhere. However, company culture also plays a major part.
Sometimes a previously successful salesperson doesn’t work out – and pours money down the drain.
Success in your company depends on:
Redefining the role
Offering great training
Selling differently for your company
There’s nothing wrong with looking at prior sales success – unless it’s the only thing you base your decision on.
What sales excellence looks like depends on your:
Company culture
Customers
Products & services
Use your top salespeople to create a benchmark against which existing and future staff are measured. Hire more people like those who are already successful.
Identify your ‘brightest shining’ salesperson – and then use them as a benchmark
Research shows that fitting people to the job you’re offering is the only proven method of predicting success in that role.
Great People Inside’s ‘Dimensions’ assessments allow you to:
Set your professional standard
Measure top performers against a benchmark
Recruit & develop salespeople to grow your business
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.
https://greatpeopleinside.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/unique-shine-scaled.jpg20782560vladhttps://greatpeopleinside.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/gpi_logo3.pngvlad2020-04-11 17:11:562020-05-04 13:28:17Want more sales?
Whatever your business spends money on needs to offer a good return on investment.
It’s the same when recruiting a new salesperson!
Forget Casinos, bookmakers’ shops or online Bingo – recruiting someone into your salesforce is a gamble.
Every day, businesses across the world employ:
Salespeople who can’t sell
Customer service staff who frustrate customers
Managers who can’t manage
But your company doesn’t have to be part of this group! By adopting a sustainable recruitment process, you put your business far ahead of the competition.
Recruiting a new salesperson is a gamble
Hiring your effective salesforce
You need to be sure that your new recruit is going to be effective for your company.
Every time you recruit a new sales executive, you’re taking a £10,000+ gamble. Therefore, if you use the same-old tried and tested methods, such as…
CV
Reference Check
Interview
… then the odds of you getting the right person are one in four.
You want to make sure that you’re using your company’s money wisely. If you are in charge of hiring for the sales team, you need to hire candidates that give your company the best possible chance of success.
Would you place a bet of £10k with a one in four chance of winning? Probably not.
Isn’t recruiting the wrong salesperson just bad luck?
People ask me this question a lot. Many people believe that ‘revolving doors’ is the norm for a sales department – but it doesn’t have to be this way!
Sometimes, recruiting the wrong salesperson is bad luck. But most of the time, it isn’t.
If you know how, you can reduce the amount of ‘chance’ involved and increase the amount of success. The more effort you put into getting your recruitment right, the more you ‘load the dice’ in your favour.
By considering more than just sales figures when recruiting your staff, you load the dice in your favour
One method of improving your success further is to use psychometric assessments. Some ‘hardened’ managers believe that psychometric assessments have limited value in the recruitment process – especially (for some reason) in sales and telesales. But this isn’t true.
If you want your sales recruits to be successful, you benefit from considering psychometrics in your hiring process.
Why assessments?
Psychometric assessments are crucial for you to achieve success from new recruits. You face many challenges when hiring new staff.
This is because:
2 out of 3 recruits disappoint in the first year
95% of applicants ‘exaggerate’ to get a job
63% of interviewers judge a candidate within 5 minutes
If your salesforce is going to be successful, you need to address these factors. All of the above cost your business money – and can be avoided!
If you want to reduce your staff turnover, assessments are crucial. People who fit the role they were recruited for, as well as the company, are more engaged. This means that they stay longer at your company – reducing your recruitment costs and increasing productivity.
Psychometric assessments reduce your costs – and improve your chances of success
Research also shows that businesses with engaged employees:
Outperform companies with unsatisfied staff by 20-28%[2]
Have a 19% increase in operating income over 12-months[3]
In another study, companies with 60-70% employee engagement had an average total shareholder’s return of 24.2%. On the other hand, businesses with 49-60% employee engagement had an average total shareholder’s return of 9.1%. Companies with engagement below 25% suffered negative TSR[4].
Does it take a long time?
Your psychometric assessment doesn’t have to be a painfully slow process.
Assessments no longer involve lengthy paper-and-pencil completion or a time-consuming evaluation of the responses. Likewise, you don’t need an expensively trained practitioner to receive benefits.
Modern psychometrics are:
Completed and evaluated online
Reported back within minutes of completion
With the interviewer minutes after completion
Minutes after completion your assessment is with the interviewer, highlighting any areas for concern and suggesting questions. That way, your interview can probe the candidate’s response – and get the best outcome.
Psychometric assessments are quick and easy to complete – saving you time
Improving your odds
You need to improve the odds of a successful hire.
Using assessments, combined with a job profile (benchmark), improve your chances of success from 26% to 75%.
Psychometric assessments measure a candidate’s profile against a profile for the sales role they have applied for. This role profile is based on current top performers in the role.
That way, you are identifying what success looks like – so you can recruit more success!
Great People Inside assessments:
Only measure the things you care about
Help you recruit the right sales staff
Improve the performance of existing staff
You benefit from our assessments through the process of ‘job matching’. This allows you, as the employer, to match candidate profiles to the agreed profile for the job.
Adding this significantly improves the likelihood of your company recruiting the right person, first time around.
Protect your money – hire the right people
For you to recruit the right person for a role, you need all the best resources available to you. This means that whilst the traditional methods of…
CV
Interview
Gut feeling
… still play a part, you can back these up with effective psychometric evaluation. This saves your business thousands of pounds each year.
For recruitment success, you need all the best tools available to you
Great People Inside is the world’s leading provider of customised sales assessments. We offer proven successful assessments to help you get your sales recruitment right.
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.
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.
https://greatpeopleinside.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Trio.jpg710978vladhttps://greatpeopleinside.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/gpi_logo3.pngvlad2020-04-11 16:51:552020-05-04 13:29:11Recruiting salespeople is a hazardous business
