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4. Motivate your staff
Incentivise your workforce to recommend
potential recruits. Offering a financial
reward for a successful recruit can quickly
widen the net for finding good people and
can be cheaper than other methods of
advertising.
5. Be clear on key competencies
Before interviewing, be clear on the most
important competencies required for the
position. One way of doing this is to analyse
the best sales people in your company and
benchmark their skills and attributes.
6. Prepare for interviewing
Ensure that your interviewing process is
well prepared and organised to thoroughly
test candidates’ attitude and competence
and get to the heart of why they might
want to join your organisation.
A good candidate will be put off by
a disorganised and shoddy recruitment
process. Just as you require them to
impress you, a good candidate will expect
a potential employer to impress them.
You can test candidates’ attributes
through a variety of methods including
behavioural/competency-based interviewing,
role play scenarios and even psychometric
testing. It is very easy for people to tell
you what you want to hear; using the right
methodology, with detailed exploration
and testing, can help reveal a more realistic
picture.
7. Make the right impression
Ensure the interview rooms look
professional and smart. This might sound
trivial, but psychologically it can go a long
way towards making the right or wrong
first impression.
8. Market your business
Ensure your marketing literature, such as a
website or company brochure, is a positive
reflection of your company, as this is what
a potential new recruit will look at first.
Any awards or achievements should be
present to provide a more quality edge.
Retaining talent
Retention of good sales people is just as
important as the hiring process; if there is
not enough focus on employee retention
they will soon go elsewhere.
There are a number of activities and
initiatives that can go a long way towards
empowering and retaining sales people,
such as ensuring you have a robust
training mechanism to equip them with
good quality knowledge and expertise.
This will build their confidence quickly and
enable them to deliver results faster, thus
becoming a motivating factor. Ongoing
training is critical to maintaining standards
and expertise to continue the cycle of good
performance.
Making money is a key driver for all
sales people, so it is a good idea to have a
meritocratic compensation plan. A reward
structure that sales people can understand,
that rewards performance and over
achievement can be critical for attraction
and retention.
Strong leadership and management are
key, as many sales people leave companies
due to the absence of good leadership and
management practice. Lack of recognition
is a real demotivating factor that, for many
sales people, can even supersede the
OTE, potentially driving them elsewhere.
It’s important to offer career progression
opportunities; companies that do this will
inevitably have the capacity to keep their
sales people longer.
Setting challenging yet achievable
targets is another important factor: some
companies have targets that are impossible
to achieve and others have easy targets
that have no challenge and therefore
provide a limited feeling of achievement.
A balance in this area can really help to
drive sales people.
There are always other factors that can
influence the attraction and retention of
good sales people. However, if you do your
job well, then your chances of success in
these areas will be much greater.
Parin Sachedina has over 25 years’
experience in both direct sales and
developing award winning sales training.
Her 15-week training programme at Lyreco
and other sales development programmes
for companies, including Office Depot, have
resulted in measurable increases in bottom
line revenues of up to 60%. Currently
partnering with a production company,
Parin is developing a DVD-based series on
sales training particularly aimed at the SME
marketplace.
...continued
Just as you
require them
to impress
you, a good
candidate
will expect
a potential
employer to
impress them.
