Hiring Top Sales PerformersWorkforce Management
Advanced Hiring System™ and client Renda Broadcasting featured in Workforce Management article.
http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/24/36/39/index.html
Hiring Top Sales Performers
Building a team of successful “hunters” and “farmers” requires knowing
the differences between the two roles and matching the candidates
effectively.
By Leslie Stevens-Huffman
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he assumption that "sales is sales" and that previous experience, a clean
résumé and a great appearance are the primary predictors of success often leads
to recruiting mistakes that can cause high turnover and ineffective sales teams.
"What we know is that the traditional process results in failure three out of
four times, and nobody likes it," says Alan Fendrich, president of Advanced Hiring System™s, a sales selection consulting firm based in Norfolk, Virginia.
"There are lots of people who look and act like salespeople, but they don’t sell
because money doesn’t motivate them."
Herb Greenberg, president and CEO of Caliper, a human capital consulting firm
based in Princeton, New Jersey, says that interviewing alone will not expose
experienced candidates who continue to be ill-suited for jobs in sales. Nor will
it uncover the prospective rising star who has no previous experience.
"You can’t assess sales people by asking questions during an interview that
produce socially acceptable answers and then figure out what this crazy,
neurotic human being is all about," Greenberg says.
Fendrich says that the key to success starts not with a review of experience,
but with a look at the motivation and the psychological makeup of the candidate.
Hire for Behaviors
There are numerous providers of behavioral profiles that measure traits such as
ego drive, empathy, confidence, sociability, helpfulness, thoroughness and
problem solving, all of which are personality traits that are required in
varying degrees based upon the sales position and the company.
Greenberg, a former psychology professor, says that several methodologies are
used to develop a behavioral profile customized for each company and position.
The assessment is administered to sales staff who are exceeding, meeting or
performing below expectations. The scores produce the necessary data to build a
behavioral-traits profile that correlates to performance.
Once the traits of the top performers are gathered, Greenberg suggests job
shadowing sales reps as well as interviewing sales managers and human resources
staff to build consensus as to the actual job description, the performance
requirements and the best personality match for the position. This step provides
additional validation as to the traits and behaviors that are required to
complete the job duties successfully.
"Oftentimes we interview three different people in the same organization and get
three different descriptions of the job and the responsibilities. Some of the
people doing the interviewing don’t know the difference between a ‘hunter’ and a
‘farmer,’ " Greenberg says.
He adds that a job requiring more new-business development, or "hunting," will
generally require a candidate with less patience and higher scores in the areas
that measure confidence, ego strength and ego drive. A "farmer" is usually a
representative that maintains customer relationships and increases the sales
volume of each customer rather than opening new doors. "Farmers" will be less
aggressive, according to Greenberg, but will score higher in empathy and have a
greater desire to please as well as a strong service motivation. Learning Through Experience
Early in his HR career, John Beattie accepted an assignment requiring him to
hire more than 250 office equipment sales representatives for an emerging
national firm. He thought that he had "struck gold" when he received a large
influx of applicants from a major international competitor. The company
compensated on straight commission, and most of the sales reps he hired from the
competition didn’t work out.
In retrospect, he realized that the competition’s reps did not have the same job
responsibilities, such as opening new accounts in cold territories, and so they
possessed a different set of personality traits.
"They were merely order takers," Beattie says.
That experience has proved to be invaluable in his current role as chief HR
officer for the personal-lines insurance division of GMAC based in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He supports two different sales groups. One is
decentralized, independent and out on the road in a very competitive
environment. The other group works in a highly structured inbound call center,
where the goal is to convert prospects who are responding to direct-mail
solicitations into policyholders.
Beattie says he uses the behavioral assessment in his initial candidate
selection and then adapts his interviewing process for the different work
environments. He measures the success of his program by both a reduction in
turnover and an increase in the new customer conversion rates in the call
center. Build a Pipeline
Alan Fendrich advises clients to use the assessments before they proceed with
any interviews. That process reduces the number of qualified candidates by as
much as 85 percent. He then suggests conducting three or four interviews, with
each meeting having a unique purpose, structure and a script to uncover new
information about the candidate.
"The first interview is a throwaway. You are seeing a highly prepared and
coached candidate who only provides anecdotal evidence of their behavior. By the
third interview, you are getting high-quality information about the candidate.
Having a defined hiring process also positions the company as a high-quality
employer," Fendrich says.
Judy Reich, vice president of sales for Renda Broadcasting in Pittsburgh, is
responsible for the hiring and performance of more than 200 advertising sales
representatives who work in the firm’s 25 radio stations. In addition to a
three- or four-stage scripted interviewing process, she requires candidates to
make a final presentation to the sales manager and general manager of the
station in order to assess their communication skills before extending an offer
and then conducting background checks and drug screens.
"In order to be successful with this process we have to recruit every day, not
just when we have a vacancy," Reich says. "If we find a great candidate we will
proactively hire them because other factors influence turnover, which is just a
natural part of sales," she says.
She requires her managers to submit a weekly report showing the number of
candidates that have taken the assessments in order to assure that the pipeline
remains full.
While no hiring process eliminates turnover, Alan Fendrich says that the real
goal is to improve sales productivity.
"There are people out there with sales experience that should never have gotten
into sales in the first place," Fendrich says.
Hiring strictly from experience can filter that type of candidate into a
process; hiring for the right psychological match opens the doors to a greater
number of candidates and, potentially, brand-new top performers.
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