It’s safe to say nearly every sales manager regrets at least one of their new hires. Resumes, interviews, and even references can sometimes conceal the truth that the only thing a salesperson knows how to sell is themself.
Without a deeper dive into a candidate’s personality, drive, sales skills, and strengths, it’s really hard to know if they’ll be a good fit for your organization. There’s one blunder in particular many sales leaders make: only interviewing candidates from your industry.
This post dives into how to avoid that common sales hiring mistake and to get the right people in the right seats.
The Biggest Sales Hiring Mistake
Having worked with millions of salespeople over the past 45 years, we’ve discovered that direct industry experience is not critical for success.
It makes sense that you’d want to hire someone with expertise in your market, familiarity with your customers and competitors, and maybe even an existing book of business to tap into.
But be warned! Tenured salespeople from your industry are likely interviewing with you because they’re burned out at their current company and wrongly assume they can escape their frustrations by joining your team.
It’s more likely you’ll discover that their problems will follow them or that they’ll find new issues to complain about.
Hiring managers should also be cautious of salespeople who are changing jobs with too little experience in an industry. This may indicate they haven’t yet proven their ability—or desire—to succeed long-term.
How to Hire the Best Sales Candidate
Instead of narrowing your search to industry salespeople, look to hire from an aligned vertical. An aligned industry sells products or services that complement yours and are sold to a similar target audience.
For example, if you sell garage doors, then the window industry is aligned. If you sell network management services, then the security/alarm systems industry is aligned.
Your distributors are another source of potential new hires. Your distributors may not exclusively sell to your industry, but they know your industry—and that’s key.
The objective is to find people who have dealt with your customers or your type of decision-makers and who see their new role as career advancement and not as a lateral move.
Look for Cultural Fit
Another important consideration is the environment a salesperson is coming from. Hiring a top performer away from a competitor may sound enticing, but that person might not be able to handle the job you need them to do.
A salesperson who works for a well-known industry player with a large market share will rely more heavily on their company’s reputation and brand to close sales. That same high performer may struggle at a smaller company where brand recognition is weaker and where stronger selling skills are needed to demonstrate value.
In a similar vein, if a salesperson has an account management background, then they may have a hard time transitioning into the daily grind of selling new business—even if they initially acquired those accounts.
Avoiding the Cost of a Bad Hire
There’s plenty of data to support the claim that a bad hire costs a company more than that person’s salary. Bad hires can monopolize managers’ time, hurt your company’s reputation, and demotivate entire teams—making the true impact hard to quantify. Not to mention the time and effort lost to hiring a replacement. We’ve seen estimates ranging from 25% all the way to 125 times the bad hire’s base salary.
The point? Waiting to find the right salesperson is better than making a rushed decision and hiring the wrong one. Managers tend to hire the “wrong” salesperson when they have the “anybody is better than nobody” mindset.
This thinking, however, elevates a short-term staffing problem over long-term strategic needs and goals. No hire is better than the wrong hire. You may end up losing business today that the right person could win tomorrow.
Working with a Mis-Hire
But with tight budgets, hiring freezes, and the average sales turnover rate at 30%, sometimes you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.
Many sales organizations realize understanding their current talent is just as important as hiring new sellers. The people you already have may represent untapped potential waiting to be unlocked.
If that’s the position you find yourself in, there are several things you can do to get your mis-hire on track.
Make sure your mis-hire has fundamental sales skills and adheres to a consistent sales process. Be sure to establish clear performance metrics. Proper sales training and sales coaching might be just what a struggling salesperson needs to turn things around.
Remember that most companies tend to hire too quickly and fire too slowly. When you see an issue that you’ve tried to fix and you can’t, it might be time to make a change.
Why Sales Assessments Are the Hiring Manager’s Secret Weapon
Hiring is hard when a person is good at selling themself and you rely on resumes, references, interviews, and gut instincts. If that’s your hiring process, a sales assessment can be extremely helpful.
Sales assessments such as The Brooks Talent Index®, which includes the DISC profile, reveal core personality drivers, selling styles, and success factors of new hires, current sales professionals, and entire teams.
The assessment helps managers understand the behavior, competencies, acumen, and driving forces of candidates. When compared to a job benchmark, it quickly shows whether someone has the skills and temperament to succeed in the role.
As one client put it, “We hire people because of what they’ve done and fire them because of who they are.”
You can avoid the most common sales hiring mistakes. Find out how The Brooks Group’s sales assessments can help you find, hire, and keep the best salespeople for your organization.
