Winner’s Circle CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
By Troy Harrison
“I CAN’T FIND ANY
GOOD CANDIDATES!” One common refrain that I hear whenever I discuss sales hiring, whether at a seminar or in a sales strategy review call, is that the other person: “Just can’t find the good sales candidates! There aren’t any good people out there to hire,” they moan! I always tell them the same thing: “Yes, they are out there. If you’re not getting good candidates, it’s something you’re doing or not doing.” It’s true. I’ve been helping clients hire salespeople for 15 years now. Hiring salespeople is always the same—it’s a needle in a haystack proposition, no matter what the job market is like as a whole. There are needles in every hiring process. The only difference is the size of the haystack. There are no magic pools of candidates, no matter what a headhunter might tell you. With that in mind, let’s talk about how you can find the right sales candidates for your job. First, your job has to be attractive and marketable. That means that you have to have a pleasant workplace, a good company culture, a reasonable work/performance expectation (if you’re expecting salespeople to work a 60-hour week, you’ve lost before you start) and a compensation plan that appropriately rewards salespeople at the level of career, experience and performance that you desire. If you’re missing any of those things, you’re not going to get the candidates you should. A word about compensation: Straight commission is dead. MARCH 2020
1099 contractor sales are even deader! When you attempt to hire salespeople on one of these plans, you immediately lose half of your applicant pool—and most likely, those are the half that you would like to have, because they have options and are themselves marketable as salespeople. The best comp packages today have three components: First, they have a salary. Not a draw, a salary. The salary should cover the basic necessities of living. I never wanted my salespeople to be worried about paying rent or putting food on the table—that creates demotivators, not motivators. Second, the package should have a commission. The commission should cover the lifestyle. Yes, you can eat on the salary, but if you want to eat steak, you’d better sell something. Finally, the package should include a bonus for overperformance. In my opinion, overperformance starts at 120% of quota and above. If your pay package isn’t right, you’re handicapping yourself in the competition for talent. Second, you must approach recruiting as a marketing project, not a human resources project. As a marketer, you want as many people to know about your job opening as you possibly can, and you want them to be absolutely dying to work for you right up until you tell them no. It’s easy to just have the HR department slap up the job description on some job boards, but job descriptions don’t get applicants. Think like a marketer. Your ad (and yes, you should advertise) should have the following components:
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