Recruiting – 4th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions

  • November 16, 2009
  • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
  • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

This is the 4th in my series of the Top 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions.

#4 – RECRUITING

The most important things to understand about consistently recruiting strong, successful salespeople are:

    1. You must have a process – not just any process, but a world class, effective process that consistently yields great hires.  Watch this video where I discuss the sales recruiting process. 

    1. You must use an assessment – not just any assessment, but a world class, sales specific, predictive, customized assessment that will consistently identify people that will be top performers for you, in your business, calling into your market, with your pricing model and competition. Watch this video where I discuss the use of assessments when hiring salespeople. 

    1. You must be able to attract a large enough pool of quality candidates.  The best assessment in the world is only as good as the candidates being assessed.
    2. You must know how to screen and interview salespeople – it’s not the same as interviewing for non-sales positions. Watch this video where I give a preview of how to interview salespeople. 

  1. You must have an effective orientation – a 90 day program to on board and ramp up your new salespeople
  2. Sales Management must be effective at coaching, motivating and accountability.
  3. Always Recruit – not just when you need someone.
  4. Each hire must be stronger than your best salespeople.
  5. Make no exceptions to this process.
  6. Have realistic expectations about how long it should take before you receive consistent results from a new salesperson.

Of course I have written about this before. This was my take on the top 10 steps to recruit strong salespeople about 18 months ago.

Here is a link to request and download my famous White Paper on the Science of Salesperson Selection.

Here is how recruiters react to the use of our assessments in the process.

These are the fact based reasons why new salespeople fail.

Here are my 10 Tips for Getting More Hirable Salespeople.

Here is my article on the comparison of sales hiring to baseball expansion.