Business managers, particularly entrepreneurs and small business owners, have a downright awful track record when it comes to hiring sales talent.  When you hire the right sales resource, you see instant results and amazing things begin to happen.  On the other hand, when you hire a mediocre (or worse) salesperson, you shell out paycheck after paycheck and begin to feel like you’re  running a corporate welfare program.

In this post, first in a series on hiring strategies for sales roles, I’ll layout the reasons why hiring for sales positions is so hard to get right.  Most of the issues that come up during the hiring process are due to one of the following:

Great salespeople are always in demand. Problem is, there are so darn few of them.  That means that for you, the hiring manager, the market for the most productive biz dev resources is always tight.  Even in the midst of the current global economic slowdown, with millions of layoffs across the planet, the top sales people are virtually downsize-proof for obvious reasons.

This supply-side constraint forces you as a manager to do make one of two choices.  Your first choice is to up your recruiting and interviewing game to be able to locate and hire the top dogs away from your competitors.  Your second choice is to fish in the pond stocked with mediocre sales talent because that’s who’s on the market and easy to pick off.  If you’re reading this and feel like Choice #2 is somewhat autobiographical, then you’re reading the right article.  Help is on the way.

Mediocre salespeople are A-Players when it comes to selling themselves. If only they sold your products and services as well as they sold themselves in that interview, right?  Most sales candidates are fairly adept at talking about the act of selling - what to do, what to say, how to act, and the other common tools of the trade.  But did they actually do any of it?  If they haven’t made plan for the past three years, I don’t care what they tell me.  They didn’t cut the mustard.

The beautiful thing about judging sales performance is that all you have to do is look at the scoreboard.  Did they make the number?  Have they consistently made the number?  Can they prove it?  All the yammering in the world won’t change their prior results.  Don’t be taken by smooth-talking sales candidates who proclaim to move mountains.  Check the math.

Great salespeople are a product of environment. A recent study found that when salespeople classified as “top performers” by their employers left their position to work at another firm, they were classified as “top performers” by their new employers less than 50% of the time.    The study went on to show that the reasons for sales success have as much to do with environment as their sales ability.  You need both to be successful.

Take Bob Superstar, who’s worked at Acme Inc for the last 5 years, and was their top producer for the last 3 years.  Acme has an outstanding marketing department and is a wildly profitable company.  It’s managed well, and customers love them.  Bob is wooed by Amalgamated Inc and leaves his job for a new gig that pays twice as much base salary.  Amalgamated has no marketing department to speak of, has client delivery issues, and is a much less profitable firm.  Bob struggles mightily at Amalgamated and quits after 18 months of beating his head against the wall.

Is Bob a bad salesperson?  The point is this:  you could hire the best salesperson in the universe, but if you have bad process, weak support, and unreferenceable customers, then no amount of sales talent is going to get you where you need to be.

We’re desperate! “We need a new salesperson, NOW!  Just find me someone!  Anyone!  No, I don’t have time to actually write a detailed Job Profile that explains what results  they’ll actually be accountable for…just find me someone!”

You might as well carry around a mirror in your back pocket and screen sales candidates using the Fog Test.  That’s what your doing when you blow through the pre-hiring process of analyzing and deciding what you really need.  The solution isn’t to hurry, the solution is to plan ahead so you don’t keep finding yourself in the same jam.

In How to Hire Salespeople Part 2, we’ll talk about reading resumes and looking at the fine print.  Stay tuned!