Beat The Sales Hiring Odds
Successful Sales Recruitment Starts With a Rock Solid Sales Profile
Believe it or not, writing a sales profile is an absolute must if you want to successfully recruit for your sales force. If you don’t draft a well thought out sales profile, you are leaving your sales recruitment efforts to chance, and that’s just downright crazy. The most important part of your sales recruitment process is the creation, development and documentation of the sales profile. Never underestimate the importance of this step in the recruitment process. Often, this piece of the sales hiring puzzle is overlooked, ignored and haphazardly thrown together with a hodgepodge of random if not arbitrary requirements.
I cannot overemphasize the fact that setting the sales hiring profile for your recruitment efforts is one of the most important parts of the sales recruitment process. It is the recipe, the guide, the vision and the major key in building a repeatable and successful sales recruitment formula. A solid profile will work hard to keep you on target, focused and drastically reduce sales hiring risk. WARNING: You should also know that if you get the profile wrong, it is likely that your next sales hire will be a flop.
Three Reasons Why You Must Develop a Sales Profile
Sales Profile Benefit #1: Achieve consensus ---Getting all parties involved when setting the sales profile not only helps build consensus, but reduces the total time spent on sales recruiting. If all decision makers and influencers who participate in the sales hiring process are on the same page, little time will be wasted meeting with salespeople who will never ultimately be hired. When hiring preferences are discussed and agreed upon up-front, everyone saves buckets of time.
Sales Profile Benefit #2: Foster clarity, lucidity, certainty--A well outlined profile not only build consensus, but helps formulate the objectives of the position, the expectations of the new hire and the skills necessary to get the results desired. Clarity helps set the tone and starts the sales interview process with an organized approach. Clarity increases the likelihood of sales hiring success and establishes a vision for the type of salesperson you are looking to bring on board. Recruiting with clarity also helps separate your organization from others that come across as ambiguous in their expectations, requirements and sales hiring objectives. Clarity will not only help you attract stronger sales performers, it will also increase your ability to captivate the right candidate and help your company put its best foot forward.
Sales Profile Benefit #3: Benchmark sales hiring success--Having a written profile will help you learn from past hiring experiences. The profile will remind you of former expectations, emphasized skill sets and the results you were set on achieving. A written profile will increase the odds that you will accurately adjust your sales hiring strategy, improve necessary requirements and refine critical objectives the next time you step in the sales hiring ring. If you take the time to put your sales profile to pen and paper, you will be able to quickly refine it, measure your hiring progress against your initial expectations and have it in your back pocket for future assessment.
The majority of entrepreneurial and smaller technology companies tend to bypass the critical step of writing a sales profile because they don’t see the value in the process. Larger companies are more likely to partake in the exercise; however their process is usually several degrees removed from the person who is ultimately accountable for real sales results. Give your company an edge: drastically reduce sales hiring risk and accelerate the sales recruitment process by taking the time to create and document your sales hiring profile. Explore what your new sales hire must achieve, outline their objectives and take the time needed to clearly define your new sales hire’s “must haves.”
Copyright © Optimal Sales Search. Optimal Sales Search recruits sales professionals at the mid, senior and executive levels for ambitious Technology and Service firms. Visit our website at www.OptimalSalesSearch.com for sales hiring tips, articles and checklists that can help you hire better sales talent, faster.
