Hiring Freeze

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Hiring Freeze? Unfreeze your existing sales assets!

When businesses introduce a hiring freeze, 3 things tend to happen:

1. You wish you’d recruited quicker for that vacancy.
2. You rethink whether now’s the right time to get rid of any underperforming members of staff, knowing they won’t be replaced any time soon. 3. Your sales targets are just as high as they were before.

But when you look at your sales team, this is what you’ll usually see:

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

Studies have shown 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

Why do I have poor performers?

You planned to recruit excellent performers into your business – and yet you’re stuck with several poor ones. That wasn’t part of the plan!

Your recruit may have a fantastic track record of being a superstar elsewhere – but that isn’t enough. You need your sales recruit to perform successfully in YOUR business.

The problem is, the salesforce you are left with during the hiring freeze still has to hit your targets. So, what do you do?

Most people consider one of three tried, tested (and often failed) things:

  • Crack the whip
  • Focus on getting more from your top performers
  • Bring sales forwards from next year

Instead, you require a different approach.

You need to find out:

  • What makes your top people so successful?
  • Where are there gaps between your top, average and poor performers?
  • What can you do to reduce those gaps?

Let’s be honest: it’s unlikely that your poor performers will ever be top performers. But if you improve their performance by 10 – 20%, it will still make a dent in your targets.

And if you can help some of your average performers become top performers – happy days!

By improving your salespeople’s performances by 10 – 20%, you go a long way to reaching your target

How do you do this?

Your sales numbers tell you who’s performing well – but do they tell you why?

You need to understand what it is about your top performers that sets them apart from the rest.

Why are they able to…

  • Quickly identify opportunities?
  • Delight their clients?
  • Close sales quickly?

… and most importantly: why can’t everyone else do it?

Great People Inside’s Dimensions assessment tells you:

  • What makes your top performers so great
  • Why your average performers are less effective
  • How to improve your least successful performers

By working with you, we create an assessment tailored specifically to your organisation. This includes a benchmark created from your top performers (not a random collection of external organisations).

We then use this assessment to measure all of your sales team.

By doing this, you are able to provide individual (rather than ‘sheep dip’) development to improve your sales figures in the middle of a hiring freeze.

What’s more, the same benchmark will help you recruit better when the freeze is lifted!

Is it free? Unfortunately not, but having zero recruitment budget often doesn’t mean you have zero development budget. Take a look!

If you’re in a hiring freeze, or about to enter one, but still have a training and development budget, why not contact Great People Inside and let us unfreeze your sales assets.

Email me at [email protected] or call 01494 573 572.