assessment

You must have a structured, world-class, sales recruiting process that features a world-class sales specific assessment to consistently identify the sales candidates that will prosper at your company.

It seems that their salespeople were great when people were spending money but now that people have stopped spending money they’re not really so great after all.  He said, “they were great at being near the phone when it rang!”

Then he said, “I tried selling cars once – I wasn’t very good at it so I quit. I went to the same training as everyone else, sold the same products as everyone else, had the same management as everyone else, but got different results.  I don’t know why I sucked, but I knew enough to get out.”

Yesterday, one of our sales development experts delivered the findings from the evaluation of a company’s sales team. We looked at their people, strategies, systems and processes.  Two of the many findings we reported to the CEO were that

Executives in small to medium sized businesses have a tendency to become ecstatic when they have the opportunity to hire someone who was with a Fortune 1000 company.  They immediately think, “Joe worked at Xerox” or “Suzie used to be at IBM” or “Phil was with Tfosorcim”.  And they think, “If they bring some of that big company magic to YSTI-YSTIB, we’ll do great!”

If you have an ordinary sales position with average compensation, it’s the 5th most difficult position to fill.  But, in my experience, if your compensation is below average ($96,000), it’s significantly more difficult to fill.