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Sales Recruiting Without Tears
Recruiting sales people can be fraught with problems – especially for business owners with no previous sales recruitment experience. A common pitfall of sales recruiting is the often exaggerated claims of some applicants. Just because an applicant looks and sounds like a sales person does not mean that they will succeed in the role they are being recruited for. Even experienced sales recruiters get it wrong. One way to reduce the risk of making costly mistakes is to subject candidates to a sales assessment test prior to interview.
Sales recruiting is something of a minefield to business owners, even for those with a background in sales. The cost of making a recruitment mistake can be extremely high. There are the costs for sales recruitment agencies or job adverts. Then there are the sales person’s costs in the first few months until they start paying their way. Then there are the opportunity costs of what you could have sold if you got the right sales person in the first place. The answer is to bring some objectivity into the sales recruitment process and to use a sales assessment test. Recruiting sales people without a sales assessment test can be a false economy. The cost of a sales assessment test is more than offset by the benefits of getting the recruitment right and avoiding the cost of getting it wrong.
Anyone familiar with recruiting sales people will have a story to tell about applicants making extravagant claims on their CV – ranging from minor exaggerations through to outright lies. It is so easy for even an average sales person to dazzle the interviewer and put on a good show. We assume that if someone looks and sounds like a sales person that they can sell and, more importantly, they can succeed in the role being recruited for. My experience tells me otherwise and the only sure way to weed out any such candidates is to test them first. Having the analysis from the sales assessment test prior to a meeting will mean that you go into the interview knowing that the person in front of you can do the job and also make you aware of any flaws they may have. Indeed, you would only bother interviewing sales people that match your profile. Why waste time with people that are not up to the job?
In my experience, it is still necessary to conduct a sales assessment test even when recruiting through an agency. Many sales recruitment agencies these days do little more than advertise a job on the internet, collect the CVs and then conduct a brief telephone interview. Unless you are working with an agency that does a formal and credible sales assessment test for your particular sales role then you are still taking a big gamble.
Sales recruiting is worth getting right. Employing a sales person who is costing you money is worse than having no sales person at all. Take an objective approach to recruiting sales people and you can avoid all the tears for good!
Richard White is a business development consultant for Pro Excellence and specialises in advising business owners on how to build and manage effective sales teams. Richard is able to advise on the recruiting of sales people and how to build objectivity into the sales recruitment process. For more information email rwhite@pro-excellence.com.
www.pro-excellence.com
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