A whopping 65 percent of sales hires fail when there is no systematic process in place to guarantee results. Even with process, sales teams with more than 40 percent of reps below target are the norm. (CSO Insights, 2007).

The costs of this performance gap are high; estimates of the annual costs of each bad sales hire range from 75 to 150 percent of the rep’s annual quota. 

For most companies, that’s serious money!  Even if the poor reps represent only a small portion of the team, that can be a potentially fatal problem to a company with cash flow issues.

Why is that? What can you do to stack the odds in your favour?  Here are ten tips to get you started…

1.    Most salespeople know how to sell.

Challenge: Salespeople are used to putting the best spin on their accomplishments.

Solution: Implement in-depth screening and cross-referencing to separate truth from fiction.

2.    Does “Mr. Personality” have the right personality?

Challenge: DNA or personality traits (for instance the need for achievement, or optimism) are the most critical factor in sales success, but are far more difficult for the untrained interviewer to assess than experience or even skills, leading to leaps of faith in order to select the right candidate.

Solution: Use behavioural assessments and interviews performed by trained interviewers.  Gear these to the role as much as possible.  Look at sales-specific and even role-specific tests where possible.

3.    What am I looking for?

Challenge: The hiring manager may not have benchmarked the profile of the top performers currently on the team, and can’t properly characterize what they are looking for.

Solution: Define the experience, skills and personality traits that are critical for the hire to be successful, and then have the discipline to stick with it.

4.     Setting the bar too low

Challenge: A high percentage of active job seekers have poor sales records, which conditions the hiring manager to lower the benchmark for hiring.

Solution: The hiring manager needs discipline to not settle.

5.    Sometimes the best candidates bring out the worst (screening) behaviours

Challenge: The best candidates are gainfully employed and are not likely to respond to your job ad, and if you are lucky enough to get to them they may not be inclined to let you make a full objective assessment.

Solution: You need to perform the same interview process on every single candidate so you can compare apples to apples when selecting the candidate to be hired. That means you need to be able to “sell” the opportunity to the passive candidate, to encourage them to engage in the process.

6.    The sales “halo” effect

Challenge: Many sales managers are extroverts and are naturally attracted to other outgoing people regardless of qualifications.

Solution: This is a twist on the “halo effect,” where welldressed or likable candidates appear more qualified to the interviewer. Recognize it as a potential problem, and you are half way to avoiding it.

7.    Is this candidate who I think they are?

Challenge: Performing reference checks on someone who is employed is challenging due to confidentiality.

Solution: There are always managerial contacts that can be approached, although you may have to be creative in your approach.

8.    Money is the easy part

Challenge: Verifying income is easy, but verifying performance is tricky.

Solution: Rigorous behavioural interviewing, asking questions like “What did you do?” “Can you tell me about a time…?”, and similarly detailed background checks are critical.

9.    Am I qualified to make this decision?

Challenge: Sales managers are trained to be sales managers, not interviewers. HR screeners are experts in interviewing, but not in sales.

Solution: Anyone hiring for this critical position needs to get trained or engage experts to assist in the identification and selection of the best and right hires.

10.    Quota (today) versus quality (tomorrow)

Challenge: The pressure of the clock counting down on a quarterly target forces the sales manager to settle on the best candidate available rather than the right candidate.

Solution: From personal experience and reams of data, hiring the wrong sales team members is far more costly than investing the time necessary to do this right. 

The bottom line: When making a hiring decision that is this important, invest in a proven process, and have the discipline to stick to it.