Too many organizations continually miss the target when they hire new team members. To be an effective sales leader, you must be intentional about growing your team: fill up your pipeline with great reps just like you would with great clients. In that way, hiring is like sales.
On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Matt Doyon of Rock Content reminds us we should hire a sales team the same way we generate good customers because hiring is like sales.
As the VP of content marketing company Rock Content, Matt views the world around him in the context of sales. He warned that companies that don’t emphasize talent acquisition will always operate from a place of desperation.
Be proactive.
When your team is short a sales rep or you don’t have enough team members, you won’t have enough opportunities in your pipeline to hit your numbers as a rep.
When you’re desperate for team members and scrambling to find someone, you may inadvertently poison the sales team by hiring the wrong person. You may end up filling the seat without adding a quality team member.
Matt confronted this problem frequently in the early days of his sales career. He needed a way to combat the problem.
Fill your funnel.
Sales professionals don’t just want a lot of customers; they want a lot of good customers.
Matt discovered the need to keep his funnel rich with great talent using four main channels.
1. Referrals
Many companies have referral programs that pay great employees for referring other great employees that can make it through the hiring process. If you aren’t actively pushing the program, it will likely just sit there.
Instead, remind your employees of your desire for other great employees. Never miss an opportunity to push the referral program.
2. Inbound
Since Matt works at a content marketing company, he used the tools at his disposal to attract new talent. He blogged, promoted the company, celebrated accomplishments, and used Instagram to share things.
Everything led to links to apply for employment.
3. Outbound
Matt uses Sales Navigator on LinkedIn to find team members the same way he uses it to find new customers. He looks for people who match the profiles of current successful team members.
The secret, he says, is that really successful people will have to be lured away from their current jobs because if they’re good, they’ll likely already be working.
4. Interns
Interns offer companies a paid trial: they are low risk and pretty hungry, and companies can gamble with them. They aren’t really working with the clients, but you have an opportunity to see how they actually work.
Skim the best.
Competitive colleges like Harvard and MIT don’t deal in student acquisition; they deal in acceptance rates.
When you build your sales team, your acceptance rate should be small: a sign that you’re only accepting the best of the candidates who apply.
Matt’s company now hires one out of every five candidates who apply. Being able to be picky elevates the level of talent you can attract.
When you make hiring mistakes, and you will because the interview process is flawed, understand that it’s probably a case of fit. Different organizations seek different things and different people. You’re seeking a good fit.
Even as a great sales leader, you can only do so much to change human behavior. You must start with great raw material.
“Hiring is Like Sales” episode resources
You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn, or on Rock Content’s website. You can also email him, though he said he’s slow to respond to email.
Check out his blog at mattsdoyon.com.
Salespeople can be leaders instead of being subservient. Our friends at Wiley have provided a free excerpt of the book Stop Selling & Start Leading which provides a blueprint to help sales professionals lead in the way that customers prefer. Read an excerpt of the book here.
Check out the Video Jungle podcast, your source for marketing and selling your brand using video. Plan, create and share your way to better content and strategy.
The podcast is part of our newly-launched Sales Podcast Network, designed to provide specialized sales content for sellers of all levels and all industries. To learn more, email us at SPN for more information.
Tell others you know about our podcast, and subscribe if you haven’t already. Leave us a review wherever you consume this content so it will be easier for others to find us as well.
Audio provided by Free SFX.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS