Blog Post: Building Your Sales Team with A-Players

How many sales people would you hire this year if you knew they would be successful?  When you hire a new sales person, how long does it take you to figure out whether they'll be successful or not? If you hire the wrong sales person, how many bad impressions does he or she make in your market? How much harder is it for your next hire as they reach out to prospects your bad hire has already visited?  

Attracting and retaining the right sales talent could be the most challenging aspect of a sales manager's job.  It's also one of the more critical inputs to their long term success.  In our experience working with companies of all sizes, a sales manager who:  

• Gets the right people...

• Using the right system...

• Calling on the right prospects...

• Asking the best questions...

....is light years ahead of the competition.  But we rarely see this situation.  

More often than not, we see sales managers who are not up for the job and don't understand the critical role they play, let alone how to play it.  We see sales managers who:  

• View recruiting as a chore rather than an opportunity.

• Blame HR for the poor candidates they're getting but can't articulate what they're looking for beyond "find somebody like Jim."

• Accept mediocrity and fail to hold their team accountable.

• Have no idea how strong their pipeline is or what to do to manage it better.

• Don't ask questions or ask the wrong questions of their sales team.  

What are you doing this quarter to improve your sales team?  Who's the weakest link on your team and have you established a plan to either help them succeed or find a different opportunity?  Does that plan have a specific target to hit and a deadline?  How many strong candidates are you seeing for the open sales positions in your department?  Do they want to come work for you and if not, why not? 

The bottom line is, do you have a recruiting system that will get you the results you need?  Would you like to learn about a sales recruiting system that predicts sales success with 95% accuracy?  If so, please visit our B2B Sales Idea Blog or contact me to arrange an executive briefing.