How can we apply our knowledge of the attributes required for sales success to improve the proportion of top performers on a sales team? A good place to start is with an overhaul of a company’s recruiting ads and job descriptions.
Many recruiting ads and job descriptions include “knockout factors” that actually screen out qualified sales candidates. Here are two examples:
- Education: A requirement for an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or a degree in a specialized field of study (Example: Engineering)
- Experience: A requirement for a minimum number of years of sales experience, or a minimum number of years experience selling a particular category of offering
It is easy to rationalize why education appears to be a reliable knockout factor. A manager might think, “We have a very technical offering. You really need to be an engineer to understand it. So, we should focus our recruiting efforts on individuals with engineering degrees.” Or, an alternative line of thinking might be, “Our product line is constantly changing, and we have a rapid rate of new product introductions. Our salespeople need to be pretty sharp to keep up with all of the new product knowledge. So, we should only hire people with college degrees, as these people have proven they know how to learn.”
These lines of thinking seem logical. However, are people with engineering degrees really the only ones who can understand detailed technical information? Also, how does the acquisition of a college degree identify whether an individual learns quickly or slowly (bucket vs. milk jug)?
Another common mistake is focusing recruiting efforts on candidates who meet certain minimum requirements for amount or type of sales experience. This practice is based upon expectations that past sales experience will produce future sales results, and that these candidates will not require a lot of sales skills and/or product knowledge training. Their experience is expected to enable them to “hit the ground running”. As a result, companies are often willing to pay a premium to attract experienced candidates.
Unfortunately, there is compelling evidence that the vast majority of the time hiring experienced sales candidates accomplishes nothing more than the recycling of mediocrity. If we revisit the statistics that were referenced in Why Salespeople Perform Differently, fully 55 percent of salespeople should be doing something else for a living, and another 20 to 25 percent are selling the wrong type of offering. Based upon these statistics, the practice of hiring experienced sales candidates will produce an unsatisfactory result as much as 80 percent of the time!
A much better indicator of future success is whether a company’s sales candidates have the attributes required for success in that company’s specific sales job. Candidates who have the attributes required for sales success and significant experience selling similar offerings are truly ideal candidates. However, if a company has to choose between experienced candidates who lack key attributes required for sales success, and inexperienced candidates who have all of the attributes required for sales success, which candidates should they choose? They should choose the inexperienced candidates! Why? A lack of experience can be overcome with training. A lack of the attributes required for sales success cannot!