If you recruit for salespeople, did you know that the
“evidence from more than 100 years of research indicates that conscientiousness is the most potent non-cognitive construct for occupational performance?”
Yes, that’s right - conscientiousness! This is how Dr. Wilmot, an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist at the University of Toronto and Dr. Ones, Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota begin their 2019 quantitative analysis of 2,500 studies and 1.1 million participants.
So ask yourself if you’re as sales leader or business owner, do you want salespeople who:
Of course you do! You want your children, grandchildren and friends to behave in this way. You also want your salespeople to work hard and remain honest with their words and actions and to make a great impression on customers to protect your brand.
You want to trust your sales reps. You want ones who can sell what you sell, at the right levels and in the right way.
But how do you do this? How do you recruit character first as Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great, recommends after 20 men and women found after 5 years of research on the best companies in the world?
It starts with a streamlined set of traits for conscientiousness:
And, you need to understand what describes the opposite. Those who attended our Recruit the Best!™ Certified Expert Training described people who are not conscientious in these ways:
With this knowledge, put into place a rigorous recruiting and selection system with steps within a screening stage, an assessment stage and an interviewing stage. Look at these three stages of a recruitment funnel to discover conscientiousness, general mental ability and the personality to sell. Select for conscientiousness or character first!
For example, one screening step could include sending sales candidates an email requesting a response to the following questions:
Look for answers to these questions that show motivation, a value for working hard, responsibility and maturity. Listen to what they consider important and talk about. Dig further for the truth and for role models in their life
You could also design an “interview application,” better than the typical HR ones and ask questions like those above that get candidates revealing what they value, what they want and their level of ambition for achievement. Then, with their resume, application and email screen responses, call them and give them a phone screen while you continue to check for honesty, evidence of a hard work ethic, responsibility and motivation.
Remember, that you are witnessing “work samples” as they handle your requests. Are they on time? Are they real, authentic and honest? Do you trust them?
Some of candidate you will weed out fast because you sense you cannot work with them. They are not a good fit for your culture. Others will continue on to taking sales and general mental ability assessments and then to in-depth and structured interviews.
You can get better at recruiting character and conscientiousness first. As your culture contains more of these salespeople, it will as Drs. Wilmot and Ones tell us
“promote a disciplined striving for achievement in the workplace, (and) increase the likelihood that (sales) goals will be achieved.”
Your people will avoid the distractions that will undermine their performance. You and they will win not only in the near-term but in the well-being everyone wants in their lives.
]]>What does finding salespeople today, who can sell, have to do with Rudy?
In the movie, Rudy, a true and inspiring tory about Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a boy hears from most everyone, including those who love him, that he is too small to play college football. Yet, he has a dream, an ambition to graduate and play for Notre Dame, one of the most heralded colleges in the country. And, despite his lack of size, strength, speed and ability he does.
As we watch, one of the “gifted” players, Jamie O’Hara, complains about Rudy and his toughness and tenacity and his will-not-quit attitude during practice - a day of drills in which despite being pushed around and run over, Rudy keeps getting knocked down and only to get back up again and make the starters keep giving their best. Here’s how the conversation goes between Jamie and Notre Dame’s coach Ara Parseghian.
Jaime O'Hara: It's the last practice of the season and this asshole thinks it's the Super Bowl!
Ara Parseghian: You just summed up your entire sorry career here in one sentence! If you had a tenth of the heart of Ruettiger, you'd have made All-American by now! As it is, you just went from third team to the scout team! Go on get out of here!
The scene help us see how we miss an important factor when making hiring selections today - The Rudy Factor. When someone has “it,” conscientiousness with passion and motivation toward what they do, they can over-achieve.
Think about this. Do you want the talented and lazy person to work for you and represent your brand? Or, would you rather have someone with less upside but with heart and tenacity. Someone who will put in the extra hours. Someone who will not quit. Someone who is coachable, responsible and a hard worker. Someone clients trust.
In today’s high-employment economy, the best hiring managers are looking for any tool or strategy to find and select people who can sell. But most of the good salespeople are already selling for someone. As a result, recruiters are faced with lots of candidates who have a low to moderate personality match when compared with studies of higher performing salespeople. Their personalities, when tested by a validated profile, show that they will be stressed in doing some of the sales tasks required of strong and consistent beyond quota achievers (like cold-calling or prospecting).
That’s why a validated personality assessment should be used as only one determining factor when selecting someone for a sales position. The best profiles have a validity coefficient between .20 and .40. What this means to hiring managers is that there are other factors like conscientiousness (industriousness, passion and motivation to reach goals) which determine success when selling. The bell-shaped curve of candidates produced from testing compared to the bell-shaped curve of a sales team (low to high producers) may have mid-level or top performers on it who have the Rudy Factor and who score low or moderate on a sales assessment and yet still perform at high levels.
With today’s tough recruiting environment, many candidate pools contain people not quite gifted with personalities that match top performing salespeople. Because of this it’s important not to discard someone who can win a place on the team.
You may ask, “How do you find the Rudy Factor?” Here are five ways:
Using these types of tools, uncovers valid reasons to give a candidate a chance to stand out even if a sales assessment measures his personality as having a low or moderate compatibility.
Finally, remember this. Don’t hire people just because they test high in compatibility testing for a sales personality. That’s because the character traits above are non-negotiable. Some people are dishonest, selfish or do not want to work to achieve goals. Personality testing, while important, does not tell the whole story about someone.
Rudy will always make less mature, less conscientious and unmotivated candidates look like bad choices, and sometimes he can out hustle even the best you’ve got and win a place on the team.
]]>From Ulysses to Gandhi to Wonder Woman to Joan of Arc, these historic figures were known for legendary strength, leadership and courage. Each of them led the resistance or the battles against the enemy of their people. We admire the nobility of their cause. Whether mythological or real historical figures, we remember their stories as virtuous and worthy of honor. Most of them suffered. Some of them died young. In years past and in hushed and sacred tones, we told our children about them in our schools and in our homes.
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Today, we have lost some of our traditions and remembrance of a life well lived in service to others. Warriors are diminished when they return from the fight. Knights of a round table are made fun of and left in dusty tomes and unread stores of Camelot. The Lion loses his courage, the Tin Man loses his heart and no one appreciates Dorothy’s victory in the Wizard of Oz.
Schools are “safe zones.” Hardship and distress isn’t allowed. George Washington and Valley Forge are minimized and the concentration camps are forgotten. At home, the accounts of years of struggle by great, great grandparents are lost in divorce and separation. This makes it difficult to understand the definition of nobility or service to family and country. We cannot appreciate why moms lost their sons in the European lands of World War II to stop someone thousands of miles away.
Enron in the past and Wells Fargo in the present teach us that we may not recruit “noble” sales leaders. Without years of internal guidance and cultural teachings, the normal day-to-day chaos and turbulence of cash flow and stock prices create commanders who want to win at any cost to the consumer and for their own selfish gain. Private information is shared, customers are lied to and school admissions are bought.
…………
Today, I still see heroes and heroines in sales. A young entrepreneur runs a 10 million dollar construction company and loses money on a job because he tells his workers to do the job over when we inspects their work. A CEO fires a director and his salespeople for accumulating sensitive customer data on Google Sheets.
A young woman starts a trust company and makes sure that she discloses to clients how she is paid by her vendors. She does not want her clients to think her advice is tainted by how she receives income from what she recommends. A lady tells her wireless customers that they will pay more to do business with her, but that the value of her service and response will be worth it. And, when they test her, they find out she IS worth it.
We hear a lot about high NPS (customer satisfaction) scores and how they return greater profits. For example, a young lady has previous customers waiting on her in a retail store because they want her and not someone else to handle them and their repeat purchases. A residential painter, who shows up on time and does excellent work while sober and professional, receives referrals to other new customers looking for “honest” labor and “good” work.
The Legendary Service of Great Salespeople
I know that the best salespeople show up to discover and fill the needs of people. They solve problems. They deliver what people purchased. They do quality work. They leave their client’s home, business or personal effects in better shape than they found them.
When customers think about the money they pay them, they often find that the best sales reps under promised and over delivered. Over the years, many of their customers become their friends. People buy from them again and again and again. These outstanding reps ask for and receive referrals during the many moments of customer satisfaction.
The best are heroes and heroines - with noble aims fulfilled in service to others. They sacrifice the “easy” way and avoid the “easy button.”
They work hard to give their best for the benefit of the people in their care. The late and beloved Zig Ziglar once said, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough people get what they want.” And, in another way, Jesus once said, “The greatest among you will be your servant.”
Think about your business. Do you want people with a concern for others or do you want selfish people? Do you want irresponsible sales reps or salespeople who show up on time and fulfill responsibilities? Do you want those who work hard and who will admit when they are wrong or do you want lazy people who hide their mistakes?
I know the answers and so do you. Recruit character first - people who are conscientious in their work. Recruit sales reps who are heroes and heroines. Tell stories of their exploits in your company. This will pay off today and in the future and it will create a lasting brand.
]]>Yesterday we turned over big rocks on my farm. As they flipped, I watched my grandsons react to the worms and other creatures found in the dirt behind them. As I predicted, Max grabbed the creepy crawlers while Weston watched from behind his father’s leg where he had retreated.
It was easy to decide who would be the first to grab the slimy worms and save them in a cup to feed the fish in the pond. Max the adventurer, the risk taker and the more directive one. Weston, the thinker, held back to analyze what happened to his brother and the new animals.
……………
Our brains are wired differently. Because of this wiring, some of us are better at accounting than sales, better at chess than listening to the pain of someone suffering in a hospital. Some of us have the risk-taking characteristics of entrepreneurs and others of us are better at organizing files and doing spreadsheets.
If we observe our children and watch their strengths, not their weaknesses, we can see predispositions to certain types of behaviors. Do we see them being social? Do we see them organizing? Do we see them task-focused? Do we see verbal skills?
My bride is diplomatic and does not like chaos. I AM chaos! My oldest son from an early age could put a 400 piece space ship together by just looking at the finished picture. I needed the directions and I was still lost.
Which brings us to sales.
The following skills describe the competencies of high-activity sales professionals:
The brains of the best are wired with a sense of urgency, social ability, assertiveness, an independent spirit, enough compassion to listen and to remain task-focused and a big-picture focus.
The best do not move at a slow pace or seek to be alone. They do not over analyze or have a pessimistic outlook. They seek to control the sales process and want to reach results at the end of the month. They are deadline-oriented in reaching their goals.
With the answers to a valid set of questions which have been tested against high, moderate and low performing sales reps and their sales levels, we can predict if someone matches up with the typical profile of a best performing salesperson.
By looking at the scores, we can predict their stress points and a low, moderate or high match to that of high performers.
You can use a validated assessment to predict if someone “can sell at the best level.” It can add 20-40% of the information you need to make a good choice. As you continue your recruitment system, ask structured questions to uncover character traits or conscientiousness and give a math/verbal test to understand their learning style, you can further increase the predictability of finding someone who can sell at the right level and in the right way.
These days, to help out, I’m sitting down with the daughters and sons of my friends when they reach their junior year in high school. I have given them a personality test and we go over the results while I ask questions about their likes, dislikes and dreams for a career. Many of them along with their parents have told me that this consultation was one of the most impactful times in their life.
You see, just like Max and Weston,
we are bent early in life toward the things our brains are fired up to do. We are prone to be engineers or nurses or salespeople.
We show early evidence of athletic ability or directing those around us. As Weston leaned away from the risk in front of him, we lean into what we’re made to do, and if we study others, if we listen to them, if we think about what great salespeople do, we can develop scientific approaches that predict with a high accuracy.
That’s what it means to use a “validated assessment.” That’s what it means to use “structured questions” in an interview. That’s what it means to look for character, learning ability and personality traits that match up with the high-activity salesperson who sell at the best levels for you.
]]>This What Happens When Character Multiplies Genetics!
For tremendous rewards in sales performance, which sales candidate do you want to hire from the three below?
We would like to hire someone with all three - intelligence, good with words and driven to succeed and serve others. But let’s face it, from the candidate pools we recruit from, there are very few 10s in all three.
How do we make the best choice? Let me help with a couple of facts.
So, let’s say personality + smarts = better performance. Research papers and common sense point to this truth. But, there’s still a problem. What if a person is dishonest and lazy and irresponsible and doesn’t care about how they serve people? What if a person is not motivated to achieve goals? To sum it up, what if they are not a trustable, coachable or conscientious person - a person with low character?
In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins says that the greatest companies, the ones with the most sustained fiscal performance, recruited character first. They recruited people they could train to do the job - the coachable ones, the ones that worked hard to meet expectations, to achieve, and the ones that were a pleasure with which to work.
Dr. David McClellan, an American psychologist, became famous for developing a Achievement Motivation theory. He is the fifteenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He demonstrated the importance of understanding how people thought and feel and then acted.
How does a top performing sales rep think and feel? What do they value and how do they feel and then act when those values are in conflict?
When at work, the best sales performers work hard, and are dutiful to the task sequence that helps them meet their sales objectives (which they monitor progress towards). Whether behind or ahead, they keep themselves directed at achievement. For salespeople, many studies show that the conscientiousness trait, a person ordering themselves to an achievement mindset, contributes to high sales performance. If we add this knowledge to the work by Jim Collins,
we find that character, the accumulation of honesty, hard work, responsibility, a concern for others and achievement motivation, may have a multiplying effect on the genetic gifts we are born with … the “Rudy” (the movie) complex.
So, here’s a formula:
Character x (Social Skills + Intelligence) - A perfect score is 10 x (10 + 10) = 200
Who do you want to hire out of these next ones:
Of course, the intelligence and social skills of someone may not be high enough for you to take a chance on them. But, all things considered, character should be non-negotiable plus you can lift social skills in training with people who work hard and have a concern for others.
Yes, character helps you get the most out of yourself and provides more to work with in a new recruit - one who will help and not harm your brand. And, that’s what happens when you recruit character first. You get a honest hard-working, coachable person who want to do what it takes to achieve goals.
We can test for the personality traits that predict social sills in sales and that measure general mental ability. But, how can we measure character as defined above?
We can do that by using structured and character based anchor question and then dig further with layered questions for the truth. For two in-depth interviews, conducted by different people for greater predictability, we have written 12 questions to test for character. Here are a couple of examples from our Recruit the Best!™ Field Manual.
HONESTY
If I was your sales manager, would you stretch the truth in order to make a sale? (If they say yes, skip to the next character question.) If they say no ask, ”What if it wouldn’t hurt anyone but would increase sales? (Award 5 points only if the candidate continues to say “No.” Award 0 if they hedge or qualify their answer.)
Hard Work Ethic
When we call them, what will your past two bosses or supervisors say about your work ethic? What will your previous co-workers say? What examples will they give us? (Award 5 points only if the candidate can give reasonable examples of a hard work ethic. Award 0 points if they cannot give them.)
MOTIVATION
What is the minimum amount of money you need to earn if you come to work with us? What happens if you do not make this? What if you make 1-2 thousand less – what difference would it make? (How does their answer relate to the minimum amount for this position? Do they talk in terms of minimums just to pay bills (to survive), or a minimum amount above and beyond their bills to pay for a certain lifestyle: children’s education? How strong and certain is their motivation tied to what they talk about?)
These are typical character and motivational questions. When asked, we check out their answers with 1-2 layered questions like; “Why is that important to you” or, When you say _______ what do you mean?”
We train interviewers to start with 12 character-based questions - to explore a candidate's answers for golden moments of truth. That’s because, as mentioned above, character-based conscientiousness drives a person’s ability to get the most out of themselves for you and your customers.
Just like the greatest companies in the world, you can learn to recruit character first. You can take the longer view toward sustained performance and brand management by realizing that character multiplies genetic gifts in homes, boardrooms, playing fields and sales teams.
]]>There are lots of simple and easy to administer assessments on the market. but very few of them are validated for high-activity sales professionals. In addition, they are not customized for both recruiting and coaching. In other words, they are not helpful for the broader needs of creating sales cultures that win. While scientifically validated assessments do bring greater predictability to making good hiring decisions, please pay attention to these feature and benefits when purchasing them.
The assessments you choose for selecting sales professionals should:
The CTS SalesProfile meets the 13 criteria in this article, but make sure to use a validated assessment as only part of a best practice recruiting system for salespeople and not as a sole justification for hiring. Be sure to check for Character (conscientiousness), Attitudes (toward the sales role and your products) and Motivation (competition or income) with screening and structured interviews.
Place the profile you choose as the second phase of a recruiting funnel after initial screening steps and before structured interviews. When you do this, you will be screen out applicants before assessment testing and better prepare yourself with objective information for a candidate's interview. Screening, assessment testing and interviewing increase the predictability of a better selection process and help you improve retention and ramp up time to minimum production standards per recruit.
Recruit the Best!™ With awesome hires, exciting on-boarding and remarkable coaching create a great sales culture.
]]>Today, companies experience a complex economy with multiple product features and benefits to the customer. In this new age space, an essential part of sales success is the ability to learn fast and then to translate knowledge into an effective consultation. This leads to profitable sales and loyal customers who make smarter buying choices.
General mental ability (GMA) or cognitive testing has been around since 1904 when Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon developed the first modern intelligence test. It shows whether or not people can engage in complex tasks and how fast they can absorb information and use it to put together solutions that work.
But, what does the research show? Does testing candidates in this way predict their ability to sell for you at acceptable levels?
Research Facts
Knowing the mental ability of a person does help you select higher performing salespeople, if you combine this knowledge with other selection factors. Highly intelligent salespeople do create higher profits and a stronger brand and they can do it faster. But, you must consider “the entire person.” As Bertua, Anderson, and Salgado argue in their research, "In the case of sales occupations, additional moderators may impact on the validity of GMA tests.”
The Whole Person
Some intelligent people do not get along with others. They do not have the necessary social skills to help them listen with empathy and understand a customer’s situation. They cannot portray the nonverbal cues that show they hear what’s a person says. Because of this, they cannot present a customized solution that builds customer trust in the outcome.
Research shows that intelligent salespeople on some sales team have lower sales if the do not have the social competence required for relationship building with various customer personalities. Researchers, Casciaro and Lobo (2005), label these salespeople as “competent jerks.”
High GMA candidates may also have low achievement drive (goal-orientation) or a less than conscientious approach to getting results. In some high-activity and fast sales cycles, some do not have the sense of urgency to keep sales activity at an acceptable level.
……………….
Research shows the GMA is an important predictor of sales performance. Make sure you know how fast they will learn as compared to a general occupation or as compared to the best performers in your industry. Finally, remember to test and interview for conscientiousness, a concern for others and social competence before making a hiring decision.
]]>When young baseball players are 12 and under, they will eat dirt if you tell them it will help them hit the ball. When they reach 13, it’s as if the “easy switch” turns on and they begin to look for the lazy way out of practice.
To be excellent at anything requires a conscientious effort to learn the best system to high competence.
This means at home or on the job. Most have heard that it takes at least 10,000 hours to develop a high proficiency in most any expertise.
You would think that a small business owner, a sales manager or a recruiter would want to be great at recruiting salespeople to avoid all the profit loss and negative effect of turnover and of hiring people who run customers off and destroy brands (Well Fargo). But, few do. They do not:
But, worse than all of these - they do not first hire for character: conscientiousness and a concern for others - thus creating poor work cultures and insincere, untruthful and non-caring behaviors toward potential and current customers.
On the other hand, those who realize the complexity of a world class recruiting system, and the demands of prospecting for and selecting talent, train their people within a codified and proven system. Those responsible for recruiting salespeople become certified and accountable to their system as experts at:
When this happens, companies flourish. Companies enjoy top performing reps within a culture in which people love to work (provided leadership coaches well and also espouses the values they recruit)
I know you will not look for the easy and quick solution to anything as complex as selecting the right human being for a sales position. You know this will not lead to superior results.
Invest the time it takes to learn the processes, tools and skills for hiring great salespeople. Keep pressing for excellence and as you do this new sales reps will get off to a faster start, affect the rest of the culture in a positive way and stay employed with you as they become a catalyst for higher and consistent team performance.
]]>Hey Top Sales Leaders! Here are the five essential areas (with an acronym of CAMPS™) you can ‘target’ to help you improve your ability to recruit the best high-activity sales professionals for your market.
The first is by paying attention to something that affects you and your children and even your brand and it's, as my business partner would say, related to saying no to “crazy or lazy!" That's Character - a sales candidate's level of honesty, hard work ethic, personal responsibility and a concern for others.
The next way you can make an excellent hiring decision for sales is by finding out about the Attitudes the candidate has toward sales as a career and toward your company's services or products. Questions structured to find out this information will tell you if someone will enjoy what they do which is one important factor if being a top rep for you and your company. And, knowing how they feel about selling or toward your products will tell you how focused they will be on learning sales process skills or product benefits.
A third way to make an excellent sales hire is by discovering their strength of Motivation. For example, in our research, 25% of top reps are competitive and the other 75% want to earn a specific amount of money for a specific reason. Some have a high ego-drive and others do not. Because intrinsic motivation is so important, using well-designed interview questions in that area will give you another critical piece of knowledge about them. Are they motivated to sell at the right levels?
The next way you can make an excellent and predictive hiring decision is by assessing their Personality traits to see if they are aligned with those of other high-activity sales professionals, or if they are more related to those of an accountant, an engineer or a retail clerk, etc.
The final way you can make an excellent hiring decision for sales is by knowing the Skills of a high-activity sales professional - find prospects, maintain high-activity, handle rejection, set appointments and sell face-to-face. With a laser focus on these critical sales skills, you can assess their personalties for social skills, urgency to act, optimism and assertiveness and predict how quickly they can become competent and how stressful this will be for them.
By the way, there’s no way that my son, the nuclear engineer will sell for you - no way. And, you may like the people that interview with a good amount of social grace, but Can They Sell?
That brings me to the end of these thoughts on recruiting the best salespeople. Remember CAMPS™,
]]>recruit character first and make sure you have a conscientious person who will work hard, enjoy sales and your products, and will want to achieve. That’s better than the alternative - a lot better!
A reputation can be a good thing…if you have one for being the life of the party.
It’s not so good when it’s for stretching the truth. In fact, it can be a future sales destroyer.
That’s why if you hire people without integrity, you’re going to want to listen up.
While insincere employees may not seem like a big deal, it can be symptomatic of larger personality disorders in the organization - like low work ethic and irresponsibility. Those whose internal compasses do not point themselves toward the truth tend not to work hard, own what they do (responsibly) or treat others well.
On its own this would be bad enough, but the news gets worse.
While embellishing beyond the truth may not be a big deal to some in sales, it's a symptom of a rep missing a special trait that the Harvard Business School insists is present in high-performing salespeople - humility (91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility). Its deficiency, closely connected to selfishness and pride, tends to cause people not to develop the ability to form long-term relationships with customers, losing their repeat sales and referrals. And, as a lack of integrity spreads throughout an organization, a brand's reputation and value decreases.
Recently, on a phone call with a CEO, COO and Recruiting Director, I learned that this lack of integrity was prevalent in their entire market segment causing a transactional culture that turned employees over and caused them to speak negatively about a career in the industry. This caused those responsible for recruiting to devalue their value-focused company and to “sell the career” to potential new sales candidates. They felt they had to fight against marketplace negativity to hire “good” employees.
Fortunately, there’s a solution that will help you fight this and develop a better company.
Don’t ignore your lack of repeat business and high customer ratings any longer—the lack of truth displayed by your organization could eat away profits and viability against economic downturn over the long-term while returning short-term profits today. Think NOT the news we've seen about Wells Fargo or Enron.
Instead, decide to recruit character (truth) first by designing and learning to use work samples and structured interview questions that screen out job candidates with negative traits and keep those with outstanding ones.
]]>A reputation can be a good thing…if you have one for being the life of the party.
It’s not so good when it’s for stretching the truth. In fact, it can be a future sales destroyer.
That’s why if you hire people without integrity, you’re going to want to listen up.
While insincere employees may not seem like a big deal, it can be symptomatic of larger personality disorders in the organization - like low work ethic and irresponsibility. Those whose internal compasses do not point themselves toward the truth tend not to work hard, own what they do (responsibly) or treat others well.
On its own this would be bad enough, but the news gets worse.
While embellishing beyond the truth may not be a big deal to some in sales, it's a symptom of a rep missing a special trait that the Harvard Business School insists is present in high-performing salespeople - humility (91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility). Its deficiency, closely connected to selfishness and pride, tends to cause people not to develop the ability to form long-term relationships with customers, losing their repeat sales and referrals. And, as a lack of integrity spreads throughout an organization, a brand's reputation and value decreases.
Recently, on a phone call with a CEO, COO and Recruiting Director, I learned that this lack of integrity was prevalent in their entire market segment causing a transactional culture that turned employees over and caused them to speak negatively about a career in the industry. This caused those responsible for recruiting to devalue their value-focused company and to “sell the career” to potential new sales candidates. They felt they had to fight against marketplace negativity to hire “good” employees.
Fortunately, there’s a solution that will help you fight this and develop a better company.
Don’t ignore your lack of repeat business and high customer ratings any longer—the lack of truth displayed by your organization could eat away profits and viability against economic downturn over the long-term while returning short-term profits today. Think NOT the news we've seen about Wells Fargo or Enron.
Instead, decide to recruit character (truth) first by designing and learning to use work samples and structured interview questions that screen out job candidates with negative traits and keep those with outstanding ones.
]]>Where do you find people who can sell - who can sell what you sell and in a way that people buy again and again? The number one frustration we hear from recruiting professionals is, “I can’t find enough people! Or, where do I find enough good people - people who can sell?”
Thousands of young sales leaders, managers, insurance agents and entrepreneurs wake up each morning looking for people to add to their sale teams. It’s important for them to find people who can prospect, sell and serve customers. They want their salespeople to find enough selling opportunities, sales and create repeat customers in order to grow their profits and brand reputation. Instead of low sales and high turnover, they want to build a high retention sales force with a tradition of amazing performance.
In today’s competitive and economic realities, to recruit the best salespeople we must overcome two major problems in order of priority. These are how to:
What Does It Mean to Source for Candidates
Prospecting and setting appointments is the hardest work activity in professional selling because it requires a salesperson to move toward people they do not know - to go out into the community and find new business. These activities do not exist in ninety-five percent of retail selling, because the reps wait for new and interested prospects to walk into a location. In nice comfortable stores, advertising and waiting until a potential customer appears becomes a habit.
Great recruiters prospect, like great salespeople, especially in today’s economy, because the best salespeople are working!
They move toward lead sources and where typical prospects work and visit, and toward centers of influence who can help them. They network. They go where they receive the highest quality leads and referrals. They move into the world and search for new candidates, and like a prospector does for gold, they search in areas most likely to produce results for them. They do not wait for and depend on good candidates to come to them.
Have you ever panned for gold or watched a miner pan for gold? With focused work, the swishing of the pan and the water caused the rocks to shift and the heavier gold settled in the pan. Some areas produced better than others. The ones that provided a nugget for the work did so like a coin flipped. At times gold appeared often, and at other times long hours crawled by between pieces. The miners that panned more hours than others, and in the right places, found the most gold.
Prospecting! It’s the same for those who recruit as it is for salespeople.
The search for good candidates never ends. It may slow down, but it should never end. With common interview to selection ratios of 6:1, it’s important to work a funnel of potential recruits. And, it’s important go into the marketplace, develop networks and centers of influence, look for referral sources and candidates and build recruitment (prospect) files. And remember, the ones who can sell are already working!
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You hide under a counter with your teacher. Someone shoots some of your friends in another part of the school. You are so scared and afterwards you will never forget. In the outside world, people lose their jobs and terrorists drive trucks through crowds of people walking to a live concert. Anxiety travels with you as your move toward independence and your first sales position.
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Imagine growing up with financial ruin, student massacres, rumblings of war, bullying and the #metoo movement, and all of this shouting at you through the glaring signage of Facebook and social media. This picture is woven into the growing up experience of 17 million Generation Z workers just entering the work force (with another 60 million right behind them: see Wall Street Journal article here).
These new American workers looking for their first job do not want student debt, a risky environment or unstable employment.
They will work hard and sacrifice sex and sleep for a ‘sensible’ and financially stable life - one that is free of interpersonal stress and is technology driven.
They are less driven to own businesses and have grown up relating to others thought their digital devices. They will need help understanding how to develop face-to-face relationships with people and how to handle interpersonal conflict. They would rather run or hide than face someone whom is critical or angry.
What does this mean for recruiting new salespeople out of college or high school? It means that:
Generation Z does want to get rich and they will work overtime to do it, but they do not make good decisions about how to use their time and what strategies to employ to get them to financial security. Think of their coaching as a mentorship to financial security. This means helping them see the future, learn to earn the income and how to invest for progess toward their financial dreams
Think like an educator. Think like a college professor, a mentor, the head of a family and a life trainer and you will help these hard-working young people find inspiration on your company’s campus. Do this or they will quit in a short amount of time for someone who will.
]]>A proverb sometimes hits you in the gut. Like this one,
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”
But some people just don’t know what they don’t know and they keep repeating the same mistake over and over. They ask ‘pet’ questions, ones they like, without structuring interviews to look for the character, attitudes, motivation, and the personality and skills to sell at the right levels and in the right way. And over and over they experience new recruits who:
As we were screening and interviewing candidates for a VP of Sales position, the CEO of an IT staffing firm told me, “I’ve never focused on the character (honesty, hard work ethic, personal responsibility) of a candidate. I’ve never looked at their level of concern for others or if they were responsible and committed toward specific objectives. I’ve only tried to discover whether they could present well and sell, and I’ve been disappointed many times by their on-the-job behaviors and results.
Thousands of years ago, a wise king named Solomon said,
“Like an archer who wounds at random is he who hires a fool or passer-by.”
Yep, this excellent proverb helps us see the hurtful effect or hiring poor character or hiring without structured intentionality.
Solomon tells us to change how we recruit so that we do not hurt the person we hire, the people with whom they work or the customers they serve. Identify what’s important in a candidate’s character to perform well in your culture. Develop questions to test their honesty. Find out if they have a hard work ethic and if it shows up in their past life. Discover if they will accept responsibility for their actions and treat customers and fellow co-workers with respect. Do they like sales? Do they like your products? Do they have a competitive motivation or a reasons to earn an income that’s produced by a sales level above your minimum expectations?
Get scientific. After developing structured screening and interviewing guides for character attitudes and motivation, make sure you give candidates validated personality assessments with a greater than 20% validity coefficient. Then you can determine how closely their personality traits match up with those of high-activity sales professionals. When you do this remember that the power within their character, attitudes and motivational levels will help them access their innate ability to sell. What this means is that highly driven and responsible people will fight to achieve and will perform better than some individuals, who though naturally gifted, are lazy, irresponsible, dishonest and without a intrinsic reason to perform.
You will win when you use a Recruit the Best!™ system designed to help you hire with intention and an arrow rightly drawn at a clear target. You will not hurt customers or other employees and you will go home at night with the confidence necessary to sleep well. Your sales reps will sell what you sell at the levels you need and in a manner that customer love.
]]>The headlines read:
“Jobs Go Unfilled as the Economy Expands,” and “Help Wanted, Without a Degree,” and “Companies Better Shape Up to Keep People!”
It’s wonderful to see so many people working."According to the Wall Street Journal, “Job openings climbed to 6.7 million last quarter, the highest level since 2001." Businesses are expanding operations and the amount of buyers in the marketplace are increasing. People want new homes and the gadgets to accessorize them. The things people dream of they are purchasing.
It’s all good, right? No, not if you’re recruiting salespeople.
Here are three recruiting problems created by a good economy.
What to do?
Prospect for sales candidates. Join networking groups, attend Chamber of Commerce functions, create centers of influence and recruit on LinkedIn. Go find employed sales reps and look for those who do not like their cultures and who have unfilled expectations. You will find them.
Be sure to screen for emotional intelligence and important character attributes (see my last post) like honesty and hard work ethic to guard against a poor hire. Develop screening steps and structures interviews that look for these traits and for personal responsibility and a concern for others. Make sure that the persons you recruit have a motivating reason to sell at the levels you desire. Do they have income needs or a competitive drive that will cause them to sell at or above your minimum standards.
Make sure your culture wants a salesperson to succeed. What does this mean? It means that leaders focus on training and developing salespeople to achieve the income levels necessary for their lives. The leaders dive into and help mentor the motivations and skills required for doing well and having a positive life impact. They also create career path specifics and reward progress. Mentors, mastery and future development are important to the young recruits available for hire. Build a culture that pays personal attention to them. They will notice the difference fast!
We like seeing people employed and doing well. We want to be a part of a growing economy with all its possibilities for dream fulfillment. But, it’s time to recruit with aggression and culture build with intention and attention. As today’s leaders, you can see this challenge and meet it. Plan to prospect employed salespeople. Recruit character first. Build a better culture. In these ways, you solve the hiring problems created by a good culture. Learn to do these important strategic objectives and find and keep good salespeople.
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