Every person who works in sports tends to loves sports and most think they can be a general manager. They read the sports pages and talk around the cooler about how lousy of a job the local team’s general manager is doing.
Think further about this. If you are a hiring manager, aren’t you, in essence doing the same job as a sports general manager? You are managing a roster of people who have a common task to achieve, right? Haven’t you made that “can’t miss” hire who interviewed well but didn’t deliver on the (sales) floor? And if you have a stingy HR department that is over processed, you may as well be working with contracted employees since you can’t move on the bad ones. Seems like you might be stuck with the roster that you drafted (hired). You’re doing the same job just in a different function, look at it that way and it’s not so easy to be a general anymore huh?
If you can avoid the Jamarcus Russell picks while assembling a mix of superstars along with some role players, you’ll be set. Just like any GM would. There are some tips to help avoid these pitfalls, read below.
Grow Your Own Talent: Major League Baseball has MiLB, the NBA has the Development League. Talent can and should be grown internally rather than taking a gamble from an outside source. If you don’t have a sales training program, you are behind the times. Having a sales training program is affordable, produces much needed revenue, and will allow you to interview a candidate while he is actually doing the job. It’s a prolonged interview before you commit long term. However, if you can’t grow your own talent, you must take to other methods.
Talent Based Hiring: This is the most overlooked area of hiring. Take a look at each of your positions and what skills they need to succeed. Each one is different. Outside Sales needs a certain set of qualities, customer service needs a certain set of qualities, inside sales needs a different set of qualities, and so on. Design a set of interview questions to uncover the skills specific to the position that you’re hiring. Point of interest here, just because the person doesn’t have experience, doesn’t mean he can’t do the job if provided the correct training. Often times candidates are overlooked because of a lack of experience when, in most cases, experience brings in bad habits and a sense of entitlement. Meaning that the experienced person has experience but not the right skill sets for the job.
Which leads me to my next point.
Experience May Be Overrated: Ever find yourself drooling over the old vet who put up big numbers in another city? Yea, lots of GM’s have done the same and most of them got stuck with a large contract and an injured player. Now, in sales, we don’t have to worry about an old vet being physically injured, but we do have to worry about them being mentally incapable of producing. Remember, old vets in a new city still have to reestablish themselves and often times, are stuck in their ways. They have been out of the gambit of generating new sales through cold calls and restarting their networking careers. These vets feel they have already proven themselves and shouldn’t be held to the same effort standards of others sales representatives, which leads to failure most times than not.
References Are a Must: This one should go without saying, however, most candidates have 2-3 great references that will give them a recommendation. Have the candidate bring three (3) references with him to the interview, then unexpectedly ask him for three (3) additional ones. Call them right away before he has had time to prep them. That will give you a good indication of what the candidate is really like.
Take the above approach to lessen the likelihood that you will draft (hire) a dud.
Sales Advice 