Dave Kurlan

Salespeople may be like children, but in training they’re more like bagels in an oven.

Using the OMG Sales Candidate Assessments in your sales recruiting process is remarkable in that you’ll almost always see the findings on the assessment come to life if you handle the phone interview and live interviews the way we teach them.

Lesson – you can’t skip any steps in the recruiting process.  When the assessment says “Not Recommended” you must consider that to be a flat-out No.  When the assessment says, “Recommended”, they must still ace both the phone interview and your face to face interviews or you can’t hire them!

That’s the magic of the phone interview we teach.  In just two minutes you can filter out the weakest of the recommended sales candidates so that you interview only the cream of the crop.

I won’t be touring in 2008 so these will be my last public appearances for a while.

I spoke to a very lively group of 130 CEO’s in Cincinnati today and the question about creating more of a sales culture came up.  There are several steps to accomplishing this:

One of the weaknesses we often identify is when salespeople become emotionally involved.  This isn’t a case of them getting too close to their prospects, customers and clients as much as it is a case of them reacting emotionally.  When salespeople become emotional, they don’t see things as objectively, react when they should respond and don’t present themselves as effectively and professionally as when they are under control.

Based on my research data of more than 300,000 salespeople, it’s evident that no more than 6% of the sales population is so motivated as to get coached, attend seminars, watch videos, read books and practice every day.