Virtual Sales 3.0 Conference March 20th - 21st 

 

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Tips for Hiring Great Sales Talent

By Selling Power Editors

For sales leaders, the war for top talent is a continual struggle; however, some sales leaders are better than others at attracting, developing, engaging, and retaining deeply talented sales professionals.

So what’s their secret?

First, you must take stock of your current people practices and see if they align with your culture and strategy. Hint: if your turnover rate is off the charts, there’s probably a disconnect between your sales strategy, culture, and talent.

“If too many people are staying or too many are going, that’s a red flag,” says Tristam Brown, chairman and CEO of LSA Global. “One of our clients came to us with a 35 percent attrition rate for new hires in the inside sales force two years in a row. That’s the same attrition rate the Afghanistan army has for new recruits. That data certainly did not align at all with their strategy to keep new hires for at least three years or cultural aspirations to develop top sales talent in the industry.”

Brown sees at least three levels in hiring sales talent.

Level 1: Default

The first is the lowest and most basic level, which simply involves hiring whoever comes along and treating talent reactively, based upon day-to-day situations.

“This is the default mode, in which you’re just hiring people who are available to fill open positions and promoting or giving raises only when people threaten to leave,” Brown says. “This, obviously, is not the smart way to approach talent management.”

Level 2: Best Practices

The second level is a bit more advanced. At this stage, sales leaders focus on what leading companies, including their competitors, are doing to recruit, train, motivate, and keep top talent.

“By approaching talent this way, you can pick up some good ideas and start to benchmark what works,” Brown says. He adds that the problem with copying others, however, is that it incorrectly assumes that talent contributes in the same way to company success in every organization. In fact, talent contributes differently to every strategy and for each culture.

“To have your talent create a competitive advantage, you want to do what [Oakland A’s general manager] Billy Beane did. He identified and valued talent that would create the most wins for his small-market budget, unique organizational culture, and business model. If you want to distance yourself from the competition, it makes more sense to follow your own path and figure out what will work for you. As a result of Beane’s efforts to differentiate talent, the Oakland A’s have the best record in baseball over the last two years and one of the lowest payrolls.”

Level 3: Differentiated

The third level is the optimal state, in which your talent strategy creates a unique advantage while being totally aligned with your business strategy and organizational culture. “If you’re operating in a high-driving, win-at-all-costs culture, for instance, then you want to search for people who will succeed in that particular environment,” says Brown. “In general, you want to treat different people and jobs differently within the context of your unique strategy and culture.”

Bear in mind that, in order to achieve any level of hiring effectiveness, your strategy and culture must first be tightly aligned.

“If you don’t have a sales strategy that is understood, believable, and implementable, all other moves you make will get diluted,” says Brown. “Once your strategy is clear and you have shaped and aligned your high-performance culture with your strategy, you’ll be in a better position to win top sales talent.”