Many entrepreneurs endure massive pain in the area of hiring salespeople before adopting best hiring practices.  If you have become tired of the addiction of hiring salespeople who require a long ramp up time just to achieve a level of mediocrity, then flat-line and never achieve anything special, this program can be your key to Sales Force Recovery and Abundance.

The 12 Step Program is essential to developing a process that consistency produces strong salespeople.   It takes approximately 12 hours to teach clients how to apply these steps to their businesses, but the following synopsis should get you well on your way.

1) Recruit Continuously
The absolute worst time to hire a salesperson is when you really need one.  Emotions and desperation will make you less likely to wait for a salesperson who will succeed and more likely to hire the first person who comes along that can allow you to get back to working on the stuff you really want to do instead.

2) Job Descriptions are NOT for Recruiting
Job descriptions should be provided AFTER the hire, not before.   First, clearly identify for yourself the obstacles that your salesperson must overcome in order to succeed.   Identify real market challenges that an individual would face.  These include items like company size, pricing compared to your competitor, number of competitors, decision maker level, length of your sales cycle, etc.  These pre-identified criteria are crucial for filling your talent pool with the right candidates.

3) The Differentiated Ad
Again, this is NOT a job description or an embellished representation of the greatness of the opportunity. Instead, simply describe the candidate you seek by describing the experiences, drawn from the list above in #2, in which the candidate has already succeeded.

4) Pump Up the Funnel
Finding a single sales superstar can require a pool of hundreds of candidates.  Most hiring managers set themselves up for failure in advance by using a pool that is way too small.   Sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com are good sources of candidates, but most companies use them incorrectly.  Effective usage can pay huge dividends in terms of both candidate volume and quality.  The Job Title field should always contain the words that candidates will use to search.  Make sure “sales” is included here. Although ads typically post for two months, reposting your ads weekly will continue the flow of resumes.  Salesladder.com is one of the best sources of high level sales candidates.  Social and business networking sites like LinkedIn also offer potential.

5) Automate the Process
Now that you’ve generated a huge funnel, it can take a lot of time to process candidates if you don’t automate.  The Rules Wizard in Microsoft Outlook can automatically identify incoming resumes, sort them into the proper Outlook folder, reply with an automated message that explains your hiring process and instructs candidates to take an assessment.  Recruiting can be time consuming.  Don’t waste valuable time talking with candidates that didn’t earn the right.

6) Resumes are Overrated                                                                                                                                Many of the best sales hunters I have ever hired are pathetic resume writers.  If you are not hiring a professional writer or designer, please do not include or reject a candidate based on a resume.  A resume contains hardly any predictive information as to whether or not a candidate will succeed in your particular sales position.  The proper way to efficiently separate the candidates that won’t succeed from those who will succeed is to assess them early in the process, before you begin to invest organizational man-hours of interview time.   Great Sales-specific assessments are available to do this properly.   These predict, with 95% accuracy, whether the candidate will succeed selling your specific product/service/solution to your decision makers in your market against your competition facing your unique challenges.

7) Phone Screen #1
Your candidate group has now been pared down to HIRABLE candidates separated by the assessment.  These represent a very small percentage of the total.  We’ll now have a 5 minute, structured conversation with these individuals.  The purpose is to learn whether they have the experience you specified in your posting and to ensure that they sound like a person you would want representing your company. 

Phone Screen #2

Candidates who passed Phone Screen#1 will then participate in a very precise 10 minute interview, where they’ll be graded and ranked. 

9) The Face-to-Face Gauntlet
Next, a face-to face interview will be conducted to challenge candidates and observe responses.   Assessment weaknesses will be probed and resume claims will be challenged.  Survivors can sell.

10) Panel Interview (optional)                                                                                                                                  If the salesperson might ultimately need to sell to groups, a highly orchestrated panel interview will be inserted here.

11) Final Interview
Now that you know those candidate(s) who can and will produce a high Sales ROI in your company, you will sell the opportunity to them.

12) 90 Day On-Boarding
A 3 month, highly-structured on-boarding program will orient your new candidate(s).  The On Boarding process is designed to teach them, train them, educate them, coach them and prepare them for exactly what it takes to succeed in your business.