Leah Rust, editor of EyesOnSales, interviewed me for another Podcast, this one on the similarities between baseball and sales. It runs for only 7:23.
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Leah Rust, Editor at EyesOnSales.com, interviewed me about Turnover on the Sales Force back on August 18. The podcast highlights strategies that executives can actually use to solve their turnover problems. For those of you who are time challenged, this interviews runs less than 8 minutes!
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I was forwarded an email that originated with from a colleague's client that read, Why do you think that is?
- Recruiters don't believe in them?
- Recruiters think they add an unnecessary step to the process?
- Recruiters think they are smarter and can provide better insights than an assessment?
- Recruiters feel threatened that they don't have total control when presenting the candidates?
- Recruiters don't understand the assessments and don't want to be in a position where they must defend a finding?
You could probably make a case for any or all of those potential reasons but the real issue is this:
Most recruiters are in the business of selling sales candidates, presenting those candidates in the best possible light and hoping a client chooses one of their candidates. OK so far. But if their superstar candidate has to take a sales assessment, especially if it's Objective Management Group's Assessment, the candidate will be exposed and the candidate's ability or lack thereof to perform in that company will be revealed. Take into account that in general, about half of the candidates screened by our assessment are not recommended for the position for which they applied. For more senior sales positions, as many as 75% may not be recommended.That may help you understand the recruiter's reluctance to allow their candidate to the assessment. After all, who is the recruiter looking out for - the client or the candidate? Well, neither. The recruiter looks out for number one.
I'll get a lot of flack over this article. People will say that I'm unfairly characterizing recruiters as dealers of human flesh and that there are recruiters who not only use and pay for assessments themselves, but who guarantee the performance of the salespeople they place. I agree. If you must use a recruiter, use one of them!
(c) Copyright 2008 Dave Kurlan
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We saw it coming. It happened last summer, the tell tale tip off that hinted at how bad the economy had become. One of our most popular services, something we call Express Screen Licenses, showed a dramatic drop off.
Express Screens are what we call our world-class sales candidate assessments. Licenses allow clients to use them on an unlimited basis for a year. The drop off could only indicate three possible scenarios:
- clients had stopped hiring salespeople
- clients were cutting back on their spending
- clients were dissatisfied with our service
Even though we were extremely certain that scenario #3 was not in play, we explored the option thoroughly and concluded that dissatisfaction was as far from the real reason as the age difference between McCain and Obama.
Our research into the drop off also revealed that clients had stopped hiring salespeople for two reasons:
- the salespeople they hired using our assessments were succeeding and they didn't need to hire any more.
- their plans to hire additional salespeople were placed on hold because they were being conservative and cutting back on their spending.
Today's article isn't about being more aggressive in the current economy, although I'm certain to cover that topic in an upcoming post. Today's article is about this week. The dog days of August during an uncertain economy.
We saw it again. It happened this summer, the tell tale tip off that things are turning around, that CEO's are feeling confident enough to resume hiring salespeople. Express Screens Licenses have shown a significant upswing and there are suddenly many more in the pipeline.
While Express Screen Licenses are a fairly small part of our company's revenue, they are a huge factor in our client's hiring successes and a major indicator of economic health. If what we saw in the middle of this summer is as predictive as what we saw in the middle of last summer, the economy will begin to improve within 12 months and should be humming again sometime after that.
(c) Copyright 2008 Dave Kurlan
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