![\"Non](\"https:\/\/media.peaksalesrecruiting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/6125719778_6085f74613_o-608x608.jpg?strip=all&resize=261%2C261\" "\\"Need-to-Haves")
Prospective\u00a0clients often come to us with a typical problem: many of the salespeople they hired seemed great during the interview process, but under-performed once they were hired.<\/p>\nProspective\u00a0clients often come to us with a typical problem: many of the salespeople they hired seemed great during the interview process, but under-performed once they were hired.<\/p>\n
When a new sales hire doesn\u2019t work out, the loss is huge. Poor-performing salespeople can cost thousands in lost opportunities and revenue, and worse yet\u2014damage a company\u2019s reputation and credibility.<\/p>\n
As part of Peak\u2019s 5 step process for recruiting top sales talent<\/a>, we help our customers clarify their hiring requirements so we can focus our search on finding candidates with the specific characteristics and traits that will make them successful in our customer\u2019s unique selling environment.<\/p>\n Oftentimes we find that companies use job descriptions when hiring salespeople that require candidates to have certain qualifications. Over the years we have found\u00a0that the typical hiring requirements of most firms have little to do with sales success. In fact, some of these \u201cneed to have\u201d conditions adversely limit the pool of candidates and create great costs for the business.<\/p>\n Sometimes these requirements are carried over from previous job descriptions or tossed in to fill out a job description. The bottom line is that they detract from the focus on what really matters.<\/p>\n Why Many Need to Have\u2019s are Not Really Need to Haves:<\/em><\/p>\n Many of the typical hiring requirements that employers use in job descriptions are neither necessary nor sufficient for sales success. Here\u2019s the top 3 \u201cNeed-to-Have\u201d requirements most often listed in job descriptions and\u00a0why your company doesn\u2019t actually require them.<\/p>\n 1. Why salespeople don\u2019t \u201cneed-to-have\u201d university degrees:<\/strong><\/p>\n Steve Martin<\/a> writes in the Harvard Business Review that more often than not, top sales people are born, not made. Martin administered personality tests to over 1000 top salespeople and estimated that:<\/p>\n \u201cOver 70% of the top salespeople are born with \u2018natural\u2019 instincts that play a crucial role in determining their sales success.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Dave Kurlan, the author of Baseline Selling, too points out that \u201csalespeople don\u2019t succeed because of their education.\u201d As Kurlan points out, many top companies like Google who carefully study their recruitment efforts, have arrived at the conclusion\u00a0that there is no correlation between higher education and success.<\/p>\n What Kurlan and Martin are pointing to is that selling prowess is not determined by a piece of paper or four years of tuition. Too many companies require their salespeople to have university\u00a0degrees\u2014when such a requirement has nothing to do with sales success.<\/p>\n The question then arises: what determines success in the sales world?<\/em><\/p>\n Our experience has taught us that top sales achievers have certain innate qualities, traits and attributes\u2014what Martin called \u201cnatural instincts.\u201d We call these traits the\u00a0Sales DNA<\/a>. A candidate\u2019s Sales DNA is the most importance factor in determining sales success.<\/p>\n Selling is something that comes naturally to the best salespeople. It\u2019s something a university\u00a0education cannot teach. This is why it makes little sense to require a university\u00a0degree for a sales job.<\/p>\n What is this Sales DNA? Gallup<\/a> has researched these traits of top sales achievers for over 30 years and concluded that the Sales DNA includes traits like \u201cmotivation, ability to influence and build relationships; creativity, innovation and problem-solving abilities; and natural tendency to derive joy from their work.\u201d<\/p>\n Our experience<\/a> over the years has confirmed this too. More often than not, the top sales earners are successful NOT because they have a college degree, but because they have characteristics such as ambition, drive, confidence, optimism, goal-orientation, persistence, competitiveness and curiosity. That\u2019s why our recruiting process includes not only strict, behavioural based interviewing by our seasoned interview team, but third party, psychometric testing that spells out not only what drives an individual, but how they can be managed to produce optimal sales results.<\/p>\n 2. Why salespeople don\u2019t \u201cneed-to-have\u201d experience:<\/strong><\/p>\n Many sales job descriptions stipulate that the candidates \u201cneed to have\u201d X years of experience.<\/p>\n But, like education, past experience too is a poor determinant of sales success. It matters not where someone worked, but how they behaved in a relevant and similar sales environment and whether they demonstrated the behaviours required to be successful.<\/p>\n Gallup conducted a massive study<\/a> of over 250,000 sales reps in over two dozen industries which\u00a0revealed that \u201csales is primarily a talent-driven occupation.\u201d Top salespeople have innate talents or tendencies that are \u201cextremely difficult or even impossible to teach.\u201d Thus, experience, like education, has little impact on sales success, or in Gallup\u2019s not-so-subtle words, \u201ctraditional reliance on experience, education, and skills or competencies is a grossly inadequate and often misleading way of building your best team.\u201d<\/p>\n In all our years of work with top companies around the world, we too have found that experience cannot predict future sales success.<\/p>\n There are several dangers with relying on past experience as the key to recruiting.<\/em><\/p>\n Experience doesn\u2019t protect an employer from mediocre salespeople who just happened to work in a fast growing company. The candidates\u2019 sales numbers may look pretty on paper but they might be extremely poor when looking across the industry or even at their colleagues. Sometimes top salespeople are the product of their environment, and may not be able to duplicate their past success in their new environment.<\/p>\n Experience may even be a detriment to selling in certain situations. As people\u2019s buying habits and methods change, sales tactics learned years ago can seem obsolete and harsh today. Experienced salespeople might need to unlearn their past habits, costing money and time for a new employer.<\/p>\n Top sales people keep up with changing times and are flexible enough to sell to today\u2019s buyers. However mandatory hiring requirements often stand in the way of spotting real sales talent. Many salespeople with great sales DNA, yet only have 5-7 years of experience, are often disregarded by companies that make it mandatory for candidates to have 9+ years of experience. Maturity may play a role in ensuring that a seller can relate to a potential buyer, but if a sales candidate has demonstrated that they can perform the job successfully, does it really matter if they have less years of service than the job description requires?<\/p>\n Experience is not a holy grail when it comes to recruiting, nor should it be dismissed, especially if it is in the same industry or niche. It can be a useful tool but should not become a hard-fast rule while screening sales hires.<\/p>\n \u201cResearch<\/a> by Leadership IQ confirms that 46% of all new hires fail within 18 months of being hired, chiefly due to \u2018attitudinal factors\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 3. Why Salespeople don\u2019t \u201cneed to have\u201d sold X product previously:<\/strong><\/p>\n Experience in selling a similar product is perhaps the most desired requirement in recruiting. Experience tells us, however, that if a candidate has been successfully selling the same kind of products, this experience can be a good indicator as to whether they will be able to contribute to your bottom line from day one. To sum it up, if a candidate has sold similar products to similar industries and worked in familiar environments, then their contacts, innate understanding of the vertical, and past selling habits might come in handy at your company.<\/p>\n But as with the other two requirements, this requirement isn\u2019t overly necessary.<\/p>\n Working for the competition in the past is no guarantee that they will excel at your company nor an indicator that the sales person will fit with your organization and culture<\/a>. In fact, working for the competition may be a detriment if it means they think and do things considerably different than what your company requires. Their specific product or niche experience should be viewed through the lens of your own organizational needs.<\/p>\n Remember that it is not necessary that only salespeople who have worked for direct competitors will be able to succeed at your company. In fact, many employers\u00a0overvalue sector experience so much that they miss out on other great sales hires and stellar candidates who may not have worked in that sector before, but have worked in environments with a similar offering, selling process, buyer, and prices and would be rewarding hires nonetheless.<\/p>\n Each selling role and environment is unique\u2014even within the same sector. A Hunter\u2019s DNA will push them to succeed even if they don\u2019t have sector experience. It is a great sales attitude and work ethic that creates great sales results.<\/p>\n As we have said before, sales recruiters should expand their pool of candidates by recruiting across a variety of industries. Often, the industries may differ, but the sales approaches, product features and selling tactics can be the same.<\/p>\n Searching within a broader candidate pool, might help you find great salespeople in a more cost-efficient manner than if you restrict your search for people within specific industries. The larger the pool of candidates the more leverage an empolyer will have in hiring the ideal person at the right price.<\/p>\n Companies can unknowingly limit their candidate pool if they continue looking at these meaningless requirements when filling their sales jobs. When the starting pool is weak and screened based on unnecessary metrics, well-meaning companies lose out on star sales professionals who can boost revenues.<\/p>\n Hiring people with top-notch sales DNA\u2014personality and behavioral traits\u2014 will lead your organization\u00a0towards A-players and radically lessen chances of attrition or failure.<\/p>\n Like what you\u2019ve read? Check out our eBooks here<\/a>!<\/p>\n References\u2014 Photo Credit: george.bremer via Compfight cc<\/p>\n relpost-thumb-wrapper <\/p>\n\n
\n
\nRally the Troops<\/a>\u2014Gallup Business Journal
\nHiring for Attitude\u2014Research & Tools to Skyrocket your Success Rate<\/a>\u2014Leadership IQ
\nWhat Google Might Know About Hiring Salespeople\u2014Customer Think
\nAre Top Salespeople Born or Made?<\/a>\u2014Harvard Business Review<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media.peaksalesrecruiting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1cfb2152f763e6118839d97c16339339s80ampdmmamprg.png?strip=all\")
<\/div>\n