Recruiting your friends might sound like a great idea, but try reprimanding your best friend or having to micro-manage him. You will soon regret your decision. Recruit only if you are certain they are the right people for the job. The fastest way to lose your company secrets is to recruit the opposition. If the top seller has integrity, go with it. Again, make sure that they fit the environment – your workplace dynamics may be completely different to that of your competition.
If you see a perfect fit between business processes and their professional culture, then it might just work. Remember that you do not want to have to ‘un-train’ what they have learned to retrain them in a new environment. Plus, what will their competitors think now that they have crossed the floor?
Recruiting a newbie into the sales environment is not always such a bad idea. If you are ready to invest time and money in training your new sales star, you might just have found a perfect match. The advantage is that their professional career is blooming with opportunity – if only they choose to harness it.
Always remember, salespeople are a breed. While each may be different in character and personality, the overarching principles that drive us are success, rewards, challenges and attitude. If your team players are not driven by these same mechanisms it may be time to start looking for fresh talent.
Think of your salespeople as members of a soccer team. Those dribble the ball all the way to the post only to hand it over to one of the forwards who will strike it into the net. Those defend your position, preventing rival players from scoring against you. In the dynamic playing field, as in the sales environment and the Solutions Recruitment Agency, each player needs to do their part to ensure the cohesive running of the team – and the desired outcome. If the team wants to win, which it always does, then each player must be a winner.
More specifically, each player needs to fill an essential position that makes the best use of their strengths and potential. Therein lies the recruitment secret; fill employment gaps with the appropriate strengths of the potential candidate, do not try to fit the candidate into a position. Some companies opt to use a profiling technique to sift the good from the bad.
They identify the attributes of successful salespeople and try to replicate the same mix of traits in their prospective salesperson. Unfortunately, sales is not like baking a cake ~ and trying to fit any potential employee (not just a salesperson) into a pre-defined mould seldom yields positive results.