As Brian Fantana said in Anchorman: “60% of the time, it works ALL the time!"
Recruiting and hiring top tier sales professionals is hard for so many reasons. Sooo many professional interviewers out there, less than truthful resumes (clutches pearls) poor job fit and inexperience all lend a hand to the difficulty. So what works? How do we hire ”the right one?” I'M ASKING YOU!
Here’s the problem. We’re busy sales executives with massive responsibilities and multi-million dollar quotas. When we get in front of a candidate, we WANT them to the the right one…we NEED them to be the right one. We don’t have time to pour over resumes and schedule back to back interviews. So we immediately end up saying “Oh yah baby! They’re gonna be a first year presidents club achiever” and 2 months in you’re thinking you’ll be lucky if they earn their base.
According to estimates from PeopleKeep, a bad sales hire costs between 50-75% of the hire’s annual salary. That means an employee who makes $50,000 annually costs between $25,000 and $37,500 to replace. There’s also lost base and ramp-up salary to consider. A bad hire who stays on for a year might earn $50,000 in base salary. Since bad hires usually don’t earn commission, your company won’t be out any commission money, but the base salary alone can be significant. (Closer IQ)
Ever made a bad hire decision on YOUR sales team? You don't have to answer that out loud. We ALL have. But there is help. Science-based pre-hire selection assessments can provide the insights and clarity you need to make the right hire the first time, doing service to the candidates you decide to pass on, while increasing the odds of success for the ones you hire.
Behavioral based, and pre-hire selection assessments are just one tool you can use to determine if a sales candidate is a good potential fit. They measure things you can’t teach. Like need for approval, willingness to talk about money, emotional IQ, cognitive abilities, personality and even integrity. Are they perfect? Mmmmm no. But they can take some of the emotion out of the hiring process. (It’s like when we see that shiny new car we just have to have even though it might not be the most practical or reliable.) Many assessments even take into account distortion. Meaning a candidate can’t answer the way they think they are supposed to. This is important. They're sales people! They can SELL us in an interview. But scientifically valid assessments are hard to deceive.
At velocity we have over 25 years of experience assessing top talent. To learn if assessment strategy should be part of your pre-hire selection process visit velocity-sales.com today and set aside time to talk about it!
Comments