Rocket Readings: A Do-It-Yourself Process to Hire ‘A’ Player Sales Reps

A Do-It-Yourself Process to Hire ‘A’ Player Sales Reps:from Sales Force Effectiveness Blog by Ryan Tognazzini
Hiring great talent is an inhibitor to delivering revenue growth. It’s not easy finding ‘A’ players. Small businesses (<$50M), in particular, need to nail this or risk revenue disruption. This post is for small business CEOs struggling to hire top sales talent.
One simple way to improve your hiring process is to use a job tryout. Download the Job Tryout Scenario Guide here to help. In it, you'll get:

A mock job scenario for candidates
Role play guidance for participants
A simple scoring tool to assess the candidate

I have the privilege of speaking at ACETECH’s CEO symposium in Whistler, Canada this week. ACETECH is a non-profit organization helping train and mentor CEOs of technology companies. ~75 CEOs will convene to network and learn best practices to evolve their businesses.
I’m conducting a workshop on SBI’s Topgrading for Sales methodology. The goal is to help CEOs find better sales people. Topgrading for Sales takes the guesswork out of hiring. It teaches you:

How to interview systematically for A-level talent
How to coach B-level reps to turn them into A-players
How to weed out C-players before they do too much damage

ACETECH asking SBI to this conference speaks to the challenges of sales talent management. It validates our research that finding top sales talent is priority #1 for CEOs. If you can’t identify, hire and develop ‘A’ players, it can also be challenge #1.

So What’s the Fix?

Below are the 5 phases of SBI’s talent management methodology. Inside the phases are 16 modules. This is the roadmap for hiring and developing ‘A’ player sales talent. Today’s post focuses on phases 1-3.

SBI Talent Management Process resized 600

Note: If you’re a large company with multiple sales roles, this approach isn’t for you. Your talent management program needs a high degree of customization. If you’re a small business with 1 sales role, this is the fix. This is how you can source, interview and develop top sales talent.

1. Talent Definition

This phase is about defining ‘A’ player sales talent. Begin by calculating your recent cost of sales mis-hires. Why? It is a critical step. You’re likely to find a sales mis-hire costs you 6-7x that person’s compensation. It highlights why investing in the next 4 phases is so important. Hiring fast is very costly. You can learn how to do this on page 16 of Topgrading.
This week’s workshop is focused on developing ‘A’ player scorecards for sales talent. This is about defining what ‘great’ looks like for a rep at your company. You can learn how to develop an ‘A’ player scorecard in Appendix A of the book.

2. Talent Acquisition

There are 4 modules for Talent Acquisition:

Search
Sourcing
Career History Form
Phone Screen

For items 1 & 2, leverage a resource like LinkedIn. There are 200 million worldwide members. There is no greater tool for sourcing great sales talent. Especially once you’ve defined an ‘A’ player.
Once you source candidates, you’ll need a way to quickly narrow your options. The Career History form is designed to do this. It can be found in Appendix B of Topgrading. Resumes can be deceptive. The CHF forces candidates to be specific about:

Sales achievements
Year-over-year earnings
Managerial references with contact information
Reasons for leaving/taking specific roles

The phone screen can be found on page 30. The goal of this is to help you narrow the field. In 30 minutes or less, the phone screen will weed out the pretenders.

3. Talent Evaluation

You’re down to a small group. Talent Evaluation focuses on interviewing to the specific competencies required of the sales rep. You can find competency interview examples in Appendix C of the book.
Sales reps know how to interview. They can answer many of the questions you ask with ease. The best practice is to put candidates through a controlled scenario tryout. This puts candidates through a real-life scenario from your organization.
It’s the equivalent of an actor doing an audition. A football player on the pre-season roster. A baseball player seeing action during spring training.
Tools for this are not in the book. To see an example of how to do this, download the Job Tryout Scenario Guide.
By conducting job scenario tryouts, you’re moving towards best-in-class hiring practices. Your competitors are rushing to make sales hires. The urge to fill roles quickly will make their cost of mis-hires soar. You’re increasing your chances of hiring ‘A’ player talent by doing this. Take advantage of the resource guide to help you.
You’re on the path to building an ‘A’ player talent management process. Phases 1-3 of SBI’s Talent Management methodology focus on:

Defining ‘A’ player sales talent for your company
Acquiring and narrowing down a list of candidates
Evaluating top candidates through competencies and a scenario-based job tryout

Stay tuned for phases 4-5 in future posts:

How to select the best candidate
How to onboard, develop and retain your top sales talent

If you’re having a difficult time hiring top sales talent, there is a fix. Use these best practices to get your sales talent management process back on track.