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Building
an Organization that Sells
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By Tony Horwath, managing director of Sales Focus Incorporated (SFI) The importance of systematic process in recruiting a sales person In managing sales professionals, the company must maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of its sales staff. Using the knowledge about human behavior, attitudes of success and techniques required for successful relationships will produce positive, short and long-term results. Management can systematically draw from many sources of knowledge and experience to create a process to generate successful outcomes for building a sales organization that sells. By applying a systematic process in recruiting and hiring sales candidates, companies can grow winners and develop a sales force into a powerful selling machine. You can have excellent management skills and be able to mentor and coach excellent industry understanding and strong product knowledge, but it’s meaningless if you don’t have people you need to do the sales job that your company requires. Clearly one of the most critical duties of management is to hire the right sales professionals. Think of the time and expense involved in picking the right people for the sales job and then training and supervising them for the best performance; then you understand how critical hiring can be to your company’s success. The Search to Hire Process Step One: Recruiting The successful company is always recruiting. Recruiting begins even before any specific job search. The manager’s role is a link between the company, the team, the job and the applicant. The manager needs to anticipate the needs of his or her organization and proactively seek out the candidates for the position well before the job description is formally posted. During this process, the manager may come across someone who is an “ideal” candidate, but for whatever reason a position may not be available for that group so the manager may need to try to find a position within a different group or create a position tailored to that candidates background. Given the choice, you’d much rather find a position for an “A” player on your team rather than your competitors. Step Two: Interviewing: The first part of the interviewing process is to strategically narrow the field
of recruits to determine whom to interview. Once candidates are selected for
interviews, the manager must apply the skills necessary to get information needed
to determine the best candidate for the position:
It is very important to use a team approach in the interviewing process, preferably over the course of several days to weeks. Any individual can have a good day or a bad day and the decision to hire a person (or not) should not be made on simply on the outcome of a single discussion. It is equally important for the candidate to have a chance to meet multiple people from the organization prior to making a decision to join the team (or not). Step Three: Inventorying Inventories are instruments, which can be used to help gather information about characteristics of candidates relevant to the specific job under consideration. Through the use of inventories and assessment, management can gather information to supplement what they learned in the interview process. This helps narrow the field further. There are a variety of instruments available to help collect, quantify, qualify and archive the relevant information about each candidate. The information should be retained in a file for immediate opportunities as well as for future reference. This information should also be shared with other colleagues within your organization to give the company and the candidate the best chances of finding an ideal match between the organization's requirements and the candidate's skills and objectives. Step Four: Assessing This is a critical step when you compare the qualifications of the candidate to the profile of the “Ideal Sales Candidate Template.” The concern is not so much in selecting the best credentials or most proven salesperson, but to decide the best fit between the candidate, the requirements of the job, the needs of the team and the culture of the company. Step Five: Decision-Making The Decision-making needs to be strategic, employing a structured process so that management doesn’t rely only on opinions and gut feelings. Avoid ‘false-positives’ – selecting someone who is not best suited to the sales job. This is far more important than avoiding ‘false-negatives,’ – removing from consideration someone whom may be the best fit for the job. The process has ramifications for both the candidate and the company. It’s a decision making process that deserves the proper attention to detail. Throughout the process, it’s important to check both voluntary references and involuntary references to make sure the candidate is everything their resume says they are. You should assume that the references the candidates give will generally give positive remarks about the candidate, which is why you may have to do a little research to seek our someone who knows the candidate, but isn’t on his or her reference list. The process of hiring someone should never be rushed simply to fill a position for the sake of satisfying a personal management objective. The process should be viewed as a long- term commitment on the part of the candidate and the company. Step Six: Hiring Hiring is the manager’s vision of closing – and more. This involves much more then offering a position and taking a new employee on board. What happens here sets the stage for successful performance in the short term and over the long haul. The hiring process should carry over to the first 30 to 90 days in the position to make sure there is still a good match. Conclusion Successful performance and positive outcomes are not magic, but rather the results of using a powerful process which generates positive outcomes. Hiring the right people helps the organization meet its objectives. Hiring the wrong people results in poor performance, poor morale, increased turnover and the need to go through the process all over again - much sooner than all involved would like. Tony Horwath has experience in the start-up and management of sales organizations in stand-alone, Fortune 50, and privately held companies. Tony has held executive positions for over 17 years, and is experienced in Outsourcing, Systems Integration, Internet Products and Services. He is the managing director of Sales Focus Incorporated (SFI). http://www.salesfocusinc.com |
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