- January 12, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Earlier today we (Objective Management Group) held our annual Rockefeller Habits strategy meeting. At one point the management team was reviewing year over year growth to pinpoint where last year’s growth came from. The segment of our business that survived the recession was our Sales Force Evaluation. Companies that had money they could part with wanted to work on sales and we own the Sales Force Evaluation market. The segment of our business that was hit hardest by the recession was our Sales Candidate Assessment License. There isn’t much need for a license if a company isn’t going to hire anyone new!
We knew that with the significant improvement in the economy, the license business should have been up and we learned that OMG’s Registrations were active and in use to hire for more than 5,000 active sales job (custom) configurations. That’s not 5,000 salespeople being hired, it’s 5,000 job descriptions where each company could be hiring anywhere from 1 – 100 salespeople or more.
At the same time, it has suddenly become far more difficult to find quality candidates. Fewer resumes are flowing through to hiring managers and a higher percentage are from candidates that simply don’t have what it takes. How do I know? The percentage of recommended candidates compared to those who aren’t recommended has changed dramatically in the past 4 months.
The good news is that companies are extremely optimistic right now, they are hiring salespeople in large numbers and they should be!
The bad news is that it will take longer, be more difficult to find the right people, and if you don’t use OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessments early in the process you will waste a tremendous amount of time and money interviewing and hiring imposters. If you don’t get started hiring salespeople now the pickings will be even slimmer as spring approaches.
OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessment was named the Gold Medal winner for Top Sales Assessment Tool of 2011. Would you like to experience the tool yourself? Take advantage of our 72-hour free trial by clicking here.
