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Quote Our sales process has definitely begun to change since we started working with you and so far the results are encouraging. Thanks! As the sales process proves to be effective, I really see that our ability to meet our goals will be based on our execution of sales behaviors that drive the needed number of prospect meetings. It's been extremely helpful to work through those metrics with you, so that we know what it will take to meet our goals. Quote

Phil Daniels Senior Investment Advisor Brand Asset Management Group

The ABC’s of Underperformance

A lot of underperforming salespeople will be let go in St. Louis today. In the next few months, many of those same salespeople will be interviewed and hired by someone else. And they will most likely continue to underperform for the same reasons they were let go before.

They were either just not doing enough of what successful salespeople need to do every day – prospect and make sales calls – or they weren’t doing it with enough basic competency to close sales. Or it could be that they were never a fit for the job and nothing would salvage them. That would be an alignment issue.

There are way too many bad acronyms out there, but this one’s a natural…most salespeople fail because of the ABC’s of underperformance: bad Alignment, not enough Behavior, and too little Competency.

The Expensive Trap

Most bad salespeople really are good people on a personal level. They can come across very well in the hiring interview, present an impressive, polished resume, and provide references who speak well of them.

Those candidates come on board with enthusiasm and good intentions and then – usually after 12-18 months of disappointing performance – the cycle ends and starts over again with another new hire. That cycle is a killer. The latest numbers conservatively peg the average cost of a bad sales hire at about $500k, for someone making about $100k a year.

Cutting through all the “false positives” that can dominate a poor hiring process takes focused effort. Too often, interviews, resumes and references just don’t go deep enough to identify the core weaknesses that almost always ultimately assure a weak salesperson’s failure.

The Real Problem

While most managers complain that they just can’t find good salespeople, the real problem most often is that they just don’t know what a true top-level salesperson looks like. Either they haven’t built a good model of their ideal salesperson, or they have lived with sales mediocrity for so long that it’s embedded in their organization. They not only tolerate mediocrity, they endorse it…and too often pay big salaries and commissions for it.

With a bar set that low, even a sales candidate that is just a little less mediocre than the rest looks good. What really is an opportunity to step up and improve the overall quality of the sales team ends up being no more than another hire that embeds mediocrity and underperformance even deeper.

The bar can only be raised when sales candidates are compared to a standard that incorporates all of the traits and competencies of the ideal A-Player salesperson.

Hiring your next salesperson could be the most important, most risky and costliest decision you can make.

Improve your odds. Remember the ABC’s. Look for a candidate who: is aligned with your model of a top performer; has a track record of consistently doing the behaviors that are required to succeed; and has the level of professional competency needed to close business. Most importantly: raise the bar. And make a personal, unconditional commitment…No Compromise.