Sales DNA describes a salesperson’s underlying strengths and weaknesses.  Using athletic traits as an analogy, they are comparable to good hand-eye coordination, quickness off the line, acceleration, and balance.

A salesperson’s Buy Cycle (how a salesperson purchases), the time it takes for them to Recover From Rejection, and whether they Get Emotionally Involved when selling can significantly influence selling behavior and outcomes.

Sales candidates either can sell or will sell.  The challenge is selecting the ones who will.  Effective sales recruiting requires science, the right process, patience, and excellent interviewing skills.  Unfortunately, many companies don’t approach sales recruiting holistically.  The most common, first mistake comes in identifying what they’re seeking.

Science is critical to consistently hiring “Will Sell” salespeople.  Recent data from the Objective Management Group sales candidate assessment and sales force evaluation identifies the following:

• 90% Have Unsustainable Pipelines,
• 83% Lack Written Personal Goals,
• 60% Make Excuses,
• 55% Lack Urgency,
• 45% Are Not Self-Starters, and
• 21% Have Consultative Selling Attributes.

Because prospects are more knowledgeable (due to the internet), increasingly skeptical, and empirically proven to contact salespeople much later in their buying process, hiring managers absolutely must identify a salesperson’s DNA and skill gaps very early in the recruiting process.

On Objective Management Group’s Sales Candidate Assessment Dashboard, Sales DNA is reported as a percentage.  The difficulty of the sales position drives what the minimum required score is for Sales DNA.  The candidate’s Sales DNA must correlate with the specific sales role for which they are best equipped.  For instance, salespeople who must hunt require very different attributes to be successful than those who will manage accounts.

Benchmarking, while commonplace, universally misses one critical component.  If you identify only those elements that your top salespeople have in common, the analysis is inherently flawed.  For example, in one company, executives bragged that all of their top performers were highly motivated.  That proved to be an irrelevant finding when we showed them that their bottom performers were also highly motivated.  We were able to show them that while their bottom performers had difficulty recovering from rejection, their top performers were rejection proof.  While both their top and bottom performers were committed to sales success, their top performers all scored more than 15 points higher for commitment than those of their underachieving peers.

Great data and science create a foundation for successful recruiting.  A best practices, sales-specific, recruiting process, combined with practiced, honed interviewing skills, will increase your percentage of “Will Sell” salespeople.

Join me at the EcSELL Institute Fall Summit this October in Dallas for a lively, real world discussion about the science of sales recruiting and how you can learn to attract, screen, interview, hire and onboard great salespeople.

Last week, I was at the Dallas Vistage International Conference.  When I checked into the hotel, there was a group of little girls dressed in performance dance attire.  We got onto the elevator together with several of the moms.  Now I hate to admit this, but by somewhere between the first floor and their floor, they reminded me of the shows like Dance Moms or Toddlers & Tiaras.  I was in the elevator with those kinds of moms and kids.  They weren't particularly modeling upright characters.

On Thursday morning, a dance troupe performed as a demonstration of Innovation, one of the categories for which Vistage gives annual member awards.  The Silhouettes, a Colorado dance company performing in silhouette format, was simply amazing and received a standing ovation.

That afternoon, I went back to the hotel and ran into a couple of the kids with their Silhouettes-logoed jackets.  When they turned around, I realized these were the same people from the elevator.  So which was it, those people or the nationally-recognized Silhouettes who'd performed that morning?  I made a very quick, yet strong, judgment based on no more than thirty seconds.

This isn’t surprising since research shows how quickly first impressions are formed, but it highlights one reason why sales recruiting so frequently backfires.

Judgment can work both ways.  I could have seen the girls in the elevator and thought, “What loving and committed parents. It’s wonderful seeing young girls doing something they love and having fun.”

Salespeople are successful not simply because they're presentable, articulate, engaging and people are comfortable being around them.  They're successful because they're highly-skilled listeners, ask great questions, follow a well-defined, structured process, are unburdened by sales-specific weaknesses and receive ongoing behavior-based coaching.  Most importantly, they may not be anyone like you or other successful salespeople in your company.  This is not to say that you should hire people who don’t share your vision, support the organizational culture nor interact well with employees.

The problem is that we often quickly judge sales candidates based on their presentation and posture.  Most successful salespeople are effective in these areas, but this doesn’t mean they have great hunting skills, are capable of engaging in a comprehensive business discussion and are skilled at helping people understand the complexity and importance of the challenges which they face.

Let me illustrate this by way of a question.  Have you ever hired a salesperson who had all the right stuff during the interviewing process, yet was not successful once you hired them?  The answer is almost always "yes".  Why does this so frequently happen to sales managers, executives, human resources and sales operations professionals?  My experience is that judgment is a significant factor.  Other contributors are lack of testing, using the wrong testing (data gathered in a non-sales context), following poorly-defined sales interviewing process and pressures to hire.  Hiring managers must be highly-skilled at seeing past first impressions, avoid emotional attachment with candidates and finally, practiced and trained on behavioral-based interviewing designed specifically for sales recruiting. 

How is judgment affecting your sales recruiting success?  Does your organization have the right stuff when it comes to hiring salespeople and sales leaders?

Find out how you can improve your sales recruiting.

We have seen a seismic shift in the business landscape in twenty-four months. Bailouts, debt, unemployment, and tight capital markets are the norm. Businesses are spending but very carefully. 

All of the companies we are helping to recruit great salespeople (yes, companies are hiring salespeople) have one question and one question only: “Can they find new business in our marketplace?”  Great account managers, while skilled at what they do, without hunting and closing skills may become the next horse and buggy.

So what’s important and how do you find it? 

• Can they sell in a fiercely competitive marketplace?
• Can they sell consultatively instead of presenting features, benefits and capabilities?
• Can they sell value?
• Can they hunt for new opportunities?
• Can they really work independently?
• Do they have closing urgency?

In the new sales landscape the answers to these questions are more critical then ever.

On a separate note can you or your sales managers truly mentor your existing sales force to do this? Do you really have the skills, desire, willingness and expertise needed? I save this topic for another posting.

The Express Screening peels back the onion and gives you answers. The first milestone is do they have the necessary motivation factors; second how many weaknesses do they have, third how severe are the weaknesses and then we answer the questions above.

This means it’s crucial you have an accurate, up to date client profile. If your criteria isn’t air tight, some candidates, that aren’t a great fit, may be recommended. A candidate who can sell but needs to be supervised may fail when expected to work independently. How you answered the questions two years ago doesn't matter. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects and be honest, how would you react to a salesperson selling your products or services to you. The road has changed. It’s harder, rougher, more twisted and full of blind hairpin turns. The Express Screening when used properly will help you navigate better.