Posts tagged building a better business

Last week on Twitter we posted, “How many sales people would you hire if you knew they all would succeed?”  We got a great series of responses and retweets about this simple question.

Better sales teams generate more sales, which makes you more money – it’s as simple as that.  It seems like most business owners can relate to the experience of having some “dud” sales people, as well as a few really strong performing people.  The hiring process can sometimes feel like a gamble; sometimes people that you think will turn out to be excellent performers end up totally and completely tanking.  This is related to a few fundamental problems with the strategy and approach that many companies take with recruitment.

Taking your sales team from “okay” to outstanding is easier than you think! Here are a few little ideas that make a big difference when hiring, recruiting, and evaluating:

Raise Your Expectations

1) Use a system

Often when people perform truly amazing, they don’t know how they did it; everything just came together.  Equally, people have a hard time understanding why they did poorly, and this limits the ability to fix the problem.  Incorporating a structured hiring system and recruitment methodology that evolves with you and your business will allow you to consistently hire sales stars.

2) It’s okay to outsource

“Why would I pay somebody to do what I can do?” Well, very simply put: your time is valuable.  If you look at the amount of time, energy, and (most importantly) money that you spend on hiring, it becomes pretty easy to establish a value to the process.  You could just as easily dedicate a fraction of that value to hiring a great company that excels in the process to do it for you; just make sure you critically assess if one of these companies is a good fit for you.  Great outsourcing recruitment companies will profile your business, share their systems, provide you with strong feedback about their recommendations, and most importantly confirm that each of their sales hires will be a strong and accurate “fit” for your company (see How to Hire Sales Stars Every Time).

3) Have high expectations

Too often companies “hope for” rather than “expect” great performance.  Setting clear and concise expectations while at the beginning of the recruitment process, and then maintaining those throughout the tenure of your salespeople will optimize sales.  Expect outstanding from the get-go and watch the quality of your legitimate candidates increase.  Setting the bar too low prevents strong goal oriented people from reaching their full potential because they simply are not aiming high enough.

So last week when we posted, “How many sales people would you hire if you knew they all would succeed?” on Twitter; @FourFecta responded, “All of them!”  The response was simple, and incredibly true.  You can hire top performing sales stars that will succeed, and you should!  Taking your sales team from “okay” to outstanding might feel like a challenging undertaking, but it is possible and can be so much less intimidating.

If you are interested in seeing your sales team become outstanding, Smeester and Associates specializes in How to Hire Sales Stars Every Time.