The Sales Archaeologist

If you are reading the title to this posting and thinking "wait a minute, I don't think it is easy at all" that is probably a good thing. The facts tell us that HR Directors, Sales VP's and CEO's are all frustrated by what happens when attempting to hire sales people.

• They look good and sound good but don't perform.
• Their resume and experience seems to match but they fail.
• They have an insight to our industry but they can't sell.
• They have a rolodex of contacts but nothing gets leveraged into sales.
• They say they value realtionships but they alienate your clients.
• They turn into high maintenance employees or cancerous employees.

And these are just a few of the symptoms. Can you name any more?

After spending the weekend at the OMG international sales conference it became clear to me that business leaders all over the world need help finding the right people almost more than anything else. This is a really hot issue the world over - I thought it was just in the Northeast.

The good news is that we can make the process so much easier and we have made it easier for so many companies. I just received an email from an HR Director at a technology company letting me know that the new process has pretty much changed her world - "this is so easy". That is always nice to hear.

We can help anyone improve the way they hire sales people but that involves changing things. You simply cannot hire sales people the same way you hire everyone else at your company. Take a minute and tally the cost of hiring mistakes here and then maybe you will realize you probably need to change the following.

• Who you target
• How you advertise
• The skills you require them to posess
• The way you interview
• The way you compensate
• The way you on board

Hiring the wrong people has always been easy - maybe it's time to try hiring the right people?