sales recruiting
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Case History – Achieve Lowest Turnover in the Entire Sales Force
- May 27, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Why would an enterprise (that has standardized on OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessment, had OMG customize it for every sales role in the company, and has terrific data from its first year of use) have one department with significantly lower turnover than all the others?
Could it be any of the following 10 Reasons?
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Finding the Right Sales and Sales Management Candidates
- May 22, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Seven years ago, a company may have wanted sales managers who were task masters, holding salespeople accountable to top of the funnel metrics. While that could still be true today, a company should be looking for a sales manager who is an extremely effective sales coach, who spends 50% of the available time coaching and developing salespeople.
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Top 5 Reasons You Don’t Get More Strong Sales Candidates
- March 10, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Clients frequently ask about the percentage of candidates recommended by Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment and why it is so low. When clients are feeling the urgency to hire salespeople and too many candidates are not getting recommended, their knee-jerk reaction is to change the customized criteria on the role configuration so that more candidates can be recommended. In this case, “more” would mean more like the ones they already have instead of more like the stronger ones they said they wanted to hire…
There are many possible reasons why a large percentage of candidates are not being recommended. Here are some to consider:
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Are You Any Good at Evaluating Sales Talent?
- February 11, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You can probably spot an energetic, motivated, likable, memorable, polished, polite and attractive salesperson from a handshake away. Aren’t those the ones you like best? Aren’t those, especially when they have industry background, the ones you hire? And don’t they all perform just swell?
No? Why not? After all, they met all of your criteria, didn’t they?
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Global Warming, Social Selling and The Sales Force of Tomorrow
- January 8, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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Are Sales and Sales Management Candidates Getting Worse?
- September 10, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are more sales experts, self-professed and otherwise, than ever before. There is more free content on sales and selling than anyone could have imagined. There are probably twice as many books on the subject than just 10 years ago. There are categories of sales tools and CRM applications where none existed a few years ago. Companies are spending more money on sales force evaluations, sales training, consulting, sales leadership development, sales process, infrastructure and sales recruiting services than 5 years ago. And selling has changed more in the past 5 years than ever before.
With all that, shouldn’t the quality of sales, sales management and sales leadership candidates be on the rise? Yes, it should.
But there’s a problem. The quality has not risen. It seems to have worsened!
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Get Sales Compensation Right to Recruit Winning Salespeople
- August 13, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales candidates, especially good ones, are exponentially more difficult to attract than they were just two years ago. We regularly observe clients struggling when it comes to getting resumes from quality candidates. One of the reasons is compensation.
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When are Salespeople Too Old to Sell Effectively? 10 Conditions
- June 27, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When it’s time to recruit salespeople, clients have often told me that they want a “less mature, more energetic, and fit” salesperson – code for “younger”.
Like the Beach Boys, who can still pull it off with ease, salespeople can still pull it off with ease as they age, well into their 70’s, as long as the following ten conditions exist:
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How Many Sales Candidate Assessments Does it Take?
- February 9, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Why wouldn’t you just wait until the end of the process to assess the candidates? Three reasons:
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10 Reasons – Don’t Worry When Sales Candidates Don’t Take the Test
- January 19, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Recent statistics show that only 34% of the candidates are taking the assessment without additional prompts. Isn’t that awful?
Maybe – let’s explore it further.