Every salesperson who has taken any type of sales training has heard the acronym “ABC.” It means Always Be Closing.

So now you’ve “graduated” to Sales Manager. Your job description in a nutshell is “To recruit, train and motivate the sales department.”

The first part of your job description is to recruit. I would like to suggest, that just like in sales we need to always be closing (looking for how to help convert the prospect into a client), in Sales Management. we ought to always be looking for top sales talent for our teams. In other words Always Be Recruiting

"Even when you have a full staff always be recruiting for salespeople"

The time to start looking for your next salesperson is not when you're down one or two salespeople. In fact, there couldn't be a worse time to start looking.

Desperation when hiring a salesperson causes Sales Managers to say and do things in a shortsighted way. Worse, in most cases it will prevent you from building a great sales team.

Instead, the great Sales Managers set realistic recruitment goals for their team every year.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• How many new sales positions will I add?
• How many applicants will I need to reach my goal? Where will I get these applicants?
• How can I put this on "remote control," so I only spend time interviewing the best candidates?
• Now is the time to sit down and outline your Hiring System. Commit a plan to writing.

Always Be Recruiting means build yourself a “bench” of potential top performers. Or at the least, to have an ongoing recruitment process so that you’ve got a stack of resumes in your middle drawer ready to draw from.

The only way out of this economy is to sell your way out of it. Improve your sales team quality by Always Be Recruiting.