39 Sure Fire Ways CEOs Can Perfect Sales Recruitment - Part 3

A CEOs job is execution. In the book, Execution, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan define it as a discipline that is integral to strategy; a major job of the business leader; and a core element of the business.

“Execution is a systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability.” ~ Execution

In our work with clients prior to implementing a new initiative or installing a new system or process, we evaluate their sales organization -- their strategies, systems, processes and people. We do it in the context of their industry, their business model, their marketplace and under their unique challenges. And we do it for the purpose of providing the company leaders with the information they need to make better decisions and become better at executing on their goals and their their vision. Every recruitment or training and development program begins with this step.

Our analysis goes deep and wide and answers the critical questions a CEO must be able to answer to drive performance at every level of the company and in every area of their sales organization, from recruitment to development, from brand promise to client retention.

It is the role of the CEO to set the vision, define the objective, and lead the execution of sales hiring initiatives -- especially those that require hiring stronger salespeople who will achieve consistent results. Far too often what we encounter is a massively disjointed hiring effort that has been handed off to a manager for implementation without CEO input or outcome consideration. What typically follows are more of the same problems -- too many salespeople underachieving, bloated pipelines, not enough new business, too much of the wrong kind of business, and pervasive cases of the Pareto Principle (80/20 effect).

If 20% of your salesforce is generating 80% of your sales revenue keep reading. It doesn't have to be like that. If you have ever hired a salesperson or someone for a sales leadership role who you thought was a great fit but failed, keep reading. If you haven't read the first two articles in the series you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Here are the next 10 surefire ways to perfect your sales hiring.

21. Find Out What's Not Working And Why

Align, align, align. Align your strategies with your vision. Align your people with your processes. Align your candidates with your role. If the bullets don't match the gun, they won't shoot properly. It doesn't matter if they're the best bullets or gun on the market. No match, no shoot.

Spend time thoroughly and objectively evaluating the moving parts of your business. Where are the disconnects? Where are the misfires? What's really going on? How should it work? What needs to change? What would be different if you could change it? What else does it impact? What are the ripples?

22. Take Decisive Action

Use the data to drive change and improve performance. Sounds simple but this is the real work of the business leader.

"In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies don't face reality very well. As we shall see, that's the basic reason they can't execute. Much has been written about Jack Welch's style of management--especially his toughness and bluntness, which some people call ruthlessness. We would argue that the core of his management legacy is that he forced realism into all of GE's management processes, making it a model of an execution culture." ~ Execution

23. Develop a Sales Hiring Process

To be effective, your hiring process must be a truly replicable process. To be valid, it must be sales, skills, and competencies centric. To be efficient, it must be automated. To be legal, it must and you must be objective. To be powerful, it must measure and provide you with accurate data about each candidate's selling skills, abilities, weaknesses, proclivities, and strategies. And to execute on the vision of your ideal sales hire, it must be customized to your sales needs, your market, your sales cycle, your selling environment, and your sales culture.

24. Make Everyone In Your Company Follow Your Sales Hiring Process

I have already said that hiring exceptional salespeople and sales leaders is challenging. And the current talent shortage makes it even more difficult to find good people. You need a process that works and you need to hold your managers accountable to following the process. No skipping steps, ever.

"Leadership without the discipline of execution is incomplete and ineffective. Without the ability to execute, all other attributes of leadership become hollow." ~ Execution

25. Pull Enough Quality Candidates Through The Funnel

The search for great talent looks a great deal like the search for great customers. Get enough ideal candidates to opt-in through the top of the funnel and work them through your process to an acceptable outcome. Any CMO knows this is much more difficult than it sounds. Promote your openings, promote your brand, work hard to screen enough of the most talented, best suited, most highly skilled people with the shortest ramp up time and the highest ROI and you'll have a robust and effective recruitment process.

Ramp up time and new hire ROI are critical factors that must be measured and addressed. I will discuss them at length in tomorrow's article.

26. Screen Each and Every Candidate in Precisely the Same Manner

Not only is this a legal and EEOC issue. It's also pragmatic. Think about your child's first grade science experiment for a moment. Add vinegar to baking soda and you get a volcano. Add water and you get paste. Similarly, if you vary the tactics and methodology you use during your screening process, you will skew your results.

You've spent time, money, and resources pulling quality candidates in to your company. Don't squander them now by guessing who should and shouldn't be invited to the next step. Be precise. Test, measure, question. No guessing.

27. Only Spend Time With High Probability Candidates

Your time is valuable. Your management team's time is valuable. Don't waste time with candidates who don't qualify. Your hiring process should include a scoring component to objectively and precisely rate candidates at each step. It is as much a process of disqualification as it is qualification.

In our process, we teach clients to speak with only those candidates who have the required sales skills, competencies, and fit for the role. The automation takes care of the everything to this point. Aside from the time it takes to set up the process and to train yourself to stop looking at useless resumes, no human time is spent until we have a high probability candidate to speak with.

At this point and before you or anyone from your company speak with the candidate, you should absolutely know the following:

• their level of selling skills (we call this their sales quotient)
• their exact ability to execute on all of the specific selling competencies you require for the role
• their self-limiting beliefs
• the weaknesses that will prevent them from executing
• the specific areas the candidate is a cultural fit for your organization
• whether or not the candidate is recommended as a sales hire

28. Only Hire Recommended Candidates

You must have a process that predicts who the successful candidates are and you must hold yourself to interviewing, vetting, and hiring only those candidates. It will likely be a small pool. Extremely small if you have a complex sales process, are an underdog, have lots of competition, or are priced higher than the competition.

You may be tempted to hire someone who has industry experience but whose skills are not sufficient or who has unsupportive beliefs, doesn't accept responsibility and is untrainable. Don't do it. Our data shows that 75% of candidates who are hired but aren't recommended end up failing within six months of our clients hiring them. Compare that to our data that shows that 92% of candidates who are recommended and hired move to the top half of our clients' sales forces within the first 12 months. And one year after being hired, the 95% of recommended candidates that are hired still work for the company and our clients consider them more effective than salespeople who were hired using other methods.

Only hire recommended candidates and you'll save time, have more fun, and make more money.

29. Hire Goal Oriented Achievers

Our data shows that out of almost 1,000,000 salespeople who have gone through our process, 100% of the top 1% are goal oriented. Compare that to only 16% of the bottom 5%.

Goal oriented people tend to be happier and tend to be far more successful than non-goal oriented people. Obviously, it takes more than goal orientation to achieve success. But people with goals are the ones to count on to achieve it.

30. Make Sure They Are Committed To Their Success

Antoine de Saint-Exupery famously said, "a goal without a plan is just a wish." Hiring people with goals is important. Hiring people committed to achieving them is paramount to successful execution. Going back to our data from the nearly 1,000,000 salespeople who have gone through our process, 99% of the top 1% have a strong commitment compared to only 33% of the bottom 5%.

There are many people who want things but very few who are willing to do whatever it takes to get them. Hire people who are willing and able and you've got the recipe for high performance sales.

Thanks for reading. Please share your thoughts and best practices for sales hiring in the comments below. Your feedback is always welcome and I look forward to connecting through conversation here or through email at [email protected]. If you would like to master the art and science of sales recruitment, reserve your seat now for my next online workshop. If you'd like to schedule a product demo,  click here.

© Copyright 2018 Cheryl Powers All Rights Reserved

Cheryl Powers is the Founder and CEO of Align Strategic. Align Strategic provides training, development, and recruiting solutions as well as answers to the most important questions mid-market CEOs need answers to in order to have high-performing sales organization.