Today, Human Resource departments must find ever more skillful sales managers in a market where the number of skilled managers is actually declining. The data supports this odd trend, made even more interesting when you consider the vast growth in online sales content and the proliferation of sales books in the last 10 years. Last fall, Dave Kurlan reached into our vast database of sales assessments and identified the trend. Read about it and view the graph in this article. You will see the trend in the declining percentage of sales people and sales managers recommended by our sales and sales management candidate assessments. We have seen reductions of 6% for sales people and 15% for sales managers.
If you missed our recent webinar on sales leadership, you won’t want to miss Part 2 of the series. You can view Part 1 here. Register for Part 2 here. It will be held on March 12th at 11:00 AM ET.
What’s driving this trend, and what can business leaders do about it? One of the most important reasons is that selling itself has changed. When we assess candidates, we are looking for those who will actually succeed and make our clients successful. While good selling skills have always been a virtue, it hasn’t always been necessary. Not that long ago, during the internet age, but prior to the explosion in availability of fine-grained detail, sales people were needed to provide information that was relevant to prospects and unavailable any other way. Today, they must reinvent their value to their prospects.
In 1995, there were 15 thousand registered domains. Today, there are 350 million. In 2000, there were 360 million internet users. Today, there are 2.4 billion. Do you think you should hire the same selling skills for 2014 as you did just 15 years ago? This is a challenge for HR.
We no longer need sales people whose primary skill is giving presentations. Prospects have quite enough information, thank you. We need sales people who are more consultative, who ask good questions, enough questions, and tough enough questions to uncover the business needs and opportunities in a meaningful way for their prospects. Salespeople who consistently hear the phrases, “I don’t know.” and “No one has asked me that before.” are doing it right.
HR owns the challenge of finding sales candidates who can do that. What must they look for?
Some of the Required Skill Sets:
- Consultative selling skills,
- Modern hunting skills,
- Lead qualification skills,
- Account management skills, and
- Business growth acumen.
Some of the More Difficult-To-Recognize Traits:
- Rejection-proof,
- Ability to listen,
- Ability to stay in the moment,
- Doesn't need to be liked,
- Beliefs support success, and
- Won’t get derailed at closing.
Some of the Near-Impossible-to-Recognize Traits:
- Strong Desire,
- Strong Commitment,
- Positive Outlook, and
- Takes Responsibility.
These are not easy to identify, but happily, there are ways to measure them. Traditional selection criteria won’t work. Most of the traits above cannot be easily discerned from an interview or a resume. Have you ever made a bad hiring decision by hiring the one person who outshined the other 20 candidates? Then you know this isn’t easy.
We’ve already learned that traditional assessment tools won’t help either. They are either based on personality or on behavioral styles. Despite the sales jargon that might be added for effect, they are ineffective at predicting sales success. We use the OMG tool which was built for sales and there is an interesting fact that emerged from a database of over 700,000 salespeople and sales management assessments. Ready? There is no such thing as a sales personality. I was on the phone today with a self-described introvert who ran a public library. He was an idea factory, full of passion for libraries and their many uses for making towns and cities wonderful places of learning and collaboration. He too was surprised to hear that there is no such thing as a sales personality.
This is a good time to think about how to build a better sales organization by using the tools available today to find salespeople who can prosper in today’s market. As we have seen, this represents a shrinking pool. HR must elevate standards and find ways to efficiently and effectively do what Tom Hanks’ character described in Saving Private Ryan as “finding a needle in a stack of needles.”
If you are interested in learning more about sales candidate selection, click here.
If you are interested in evaluating your current sales team, click here.
Image credit: grekoff / 123RF Stock Photo
