A bad hire is one of the most costly and time-consuming mistakes that a business can make. According to data provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, a bad hire will cost 30 percent of that position’s five-year earnings. For strategic positions like salespeople, the costs can climb to as much as five times the position’s annual salary.
Where do these losses come from? Each week the position is vacant, and during the initial learning period of the new hire, revenue is lost. There are outlay costs in the form of unemployment compensation, severance, temporary employees, COBRA costs, advertising the job opening, and more. Additionally, your team will rack up man hours when it comes to the recruiting tasks associated with covering the position from sorting through resumes, screenings, interviews, payroll processing, training and orientation, etc. Additionally, a bad hire has a ripple effect throughout the organization, affecting the morale and thus the productivity of the team members who suffer because of a poor decision.
So how can you diminish this risk when hiring your salespeople?
Develop a Clear, Consistent Hiring Process
It can be easy to cut corners in the hiring process when your HR team or core managers are already overworked and overstressed. If you develop a process for hiring and a structure for interviews – and you stick to those processes and structures – it will reduce the chances that you’ll make a hasty and potentially poor decision.
Understand Precisely Who and What You’re Looking For
For each open sales position, you must know exactly what skills, experience, and qualifications you need from your next hire. It can help to take a look back and see what worked and what didn’t work with the person who held the job previously. Make a list of those qualifications and be sure to know which ones are absolutely necessary, and which can be overlooked, if supplemented with others.
Don’t Ignore Soft Skills
Salespeople don’t work in a bubble. While they are responsible for their own revenue generation, they must be able to work in teams, and they must be able to get along well with their managers, as well. That means you have to screen for soft skills, just as you would for sales skills and qualifications. Utilize behavioral interviewing techniques to see how candidates handle conflict, how they deal with success and failure, etc.
Onboard. Onboard. Onboard.
Many salespeople leave jobs quickly because of a lack of training and onboarding. While it may seem as though salespeople should be able to thrive on their own, they will still need to learn the ins and outs of your products. They must be able to use your internal software efficiently, they must be comfortable with expense reports, they will need to know how to handle their monthly projections and reporting, and more. Don’t just toss them into the deep end to see if they sink or swim. Devote time, energy, and money into comprehensive training, mentoring, and onboarding for your new hires to increase their chance of success.
Do You Have Time To Devote to This?
Most companies simply don’t have the time to properly plan and implement a hiring process to ensure they make strong decisions. The answer is simple – working with a strategic staffing partner that assumes the responsibly for building up your enterprise software sales force. From hiring and recruiting through retention, these partners can help you diminish your hiring risk.
Discover the difference a partner can make. Contact Strategic Search Solutions today to learn more about our proven process for attracting, hiring, and retaining a strong core of enterprise software sales professionals.