Experience is not always the key in hiring salespeople!

Finding a great salesperson is a noble quest that few get right.   Yet identifying a rockstar seller is literally a game-changer for any business.   As a buyer of products and services, each of us have worked extensively with salespeople as both a consumer and a business professional.  It is this experience set that we feel fantastically informs our hiring decision.  This is a misguided notion!  Rather, it is a crippling mindset that imbues us with unearned confidence.  Let’s digest that a bit.  How many of those salespeople that you worked with responded to your inquiry?   More importantly, how many found you?  (It is my hearty recommendation that you retain the contact information for this later group!).

According to Crunchbase, reps that don’t do cold outreach have 42% less sales growth.  However, cold calling has only a 2% success rate on average.  That is a huge dollop of rejection that few can endure over the long haul.  The revealing question, then, is what do these persistent cold callers have in common?  The answer is that it isn’t their experience, it is their “Sales DNA”.  It’s not what they learned, its who they are.

Very often as we embark on the arduous task to add or replace a seller, we invariably seek to find industry-experienced sellers with deep contacts among the buying community.  Make no mistake, this is hugely valuable.  But as you are looking to make a hire, it’s critical that one honestly explores where you need to be on the Experience – Sales DNA spectrum.  Ideally, we seek to find an individual that is strong on both measures.  However, the data does not favor that outcome.  In a famous research study of over 2,000,000 salespeople, only 6% were “elite.”  Their success had no known correlation to their industry experience.  It was their “Sales DNA”.  It was not only their ability to do the work – but their drive to do so vigorously and continuously over the long run.  So, it comes down to one clarifying question;

“How quickly and thoroughly can I teach a talented, natural seller to be successful in my business?”

Depending on the competitive advantage for your company’s products/services and your onboarding capabilities, you might have greater long-term success hiring a strong seller with no industry experience than a very experienced (and expensive) sales veteran.  These veterans tend to have great experience with decision makers who, at some point will graduate or retire out of their positions- leaving a veteran with less sway. While a tenacious seller will continually do the required activity to continue to bring new companies into your client portfolio.

Sales assessments are valuable but should only be about 25%-40% of your decision.  It is the sales hiring process that is the magic to creating an unstoppable sales force that will be the envy of your industry!

The problem with your sales team is YOU!

If you are a business owner or a sales manager and you are underwhelmed by your pipeline, conversion, average ticket, or client retention, look no further than the mirror.  it is easy to try to put a Band-Aid on your sales leakage problems with training and consultants. However, all you are doing is asking your sellers to be the type of person they are not. 

The driving force in the sales success of any company, regardless of scale, is the quality of the sales team. If you are suffering from any of these sales maladies mentioned above, it is because you allowed these individuals into your company, and you haven’t replaced them. There is a myriad of reasons that they still have a chair inside your organization, but none more compelling than that you haven’t developed a reliable system to attract, vet and recruit outstanding sellers. The long-term effects of this is a widening aperture in your sales system that is permitting the slow creep of mediocrity to infiltrate you culture.

In the spirit of “Misery loves company”, you might be gratified to learn that you are not alone.  In a study of over 2,000,000 newly minted salespeople, only 6% were considered “Elite” (defined as climbing to the top half of the sales organization within the first 6 months), 20% of that group were good, but took longer to achieve expected results. However, fully 74% of these sales hires were a colossal waste of money. 

So why do we all have such difficulty hiring salespeople? In a FORBES report, it was determined that salespeople are the second most difficult position to hire after the “C’ suite. The reason is simple. Salespeople are a crafty bunch that possess enough finesse and common sense to outsmart most assessment tools and nearly all hiring processes. 

Perhaps you believe that your seller interview questions are profoundly “telling”. The truth is that the candidate was asked those same questions by in their two previous interviews. It is fair to say that some of these questions are very revealing.  But the key to hiring great salespeople is that it is not what they say during the process, but rather what they do. The answers to your great questions will only tell you how they think. It is their pursuit of the position that will tell you what they will do when you give them that chair.