Just add water. It鈥檚 a great formula when baking a cake or rehydrating instant mashed potatoes. On the other hand, it鈥檚 not such a great recipe when hiring outside salespeople. Yet this has been a common practice in our industry for decades.
The manager who is searching for a replacement salesperson or merely interested in expanding the sales force starts by seeking candidates from competing organizations. They hire with the belief that sales results achieved in the past will be duplicated in the future. Moreover, the expectation is that the veteran hire will bring a book of business along as a bonus prize.
Two things are likely true that should dissuade the manager from acting on these assumptions. First, the achievement of results by a salesperson is not always an indicator of competence. Second, history has proven time and time again that the promise of a captured book of business almost always fails.
On the first point, it is common for many salespeople in our industry to manage large volumes of business they did not create. Consider the many manufacturer sales reps who inherit a large territory with a well-established sales volume. Even when the salesperson is ineffective, they still enjoy the rewards of a dependable eight-figure book of business simply because their client resellers are wholly committed to the product lines. At the dealer level, abundant cases exist of veteran salespeople merely outlasting other salespeople in tenure only to inherit the accounts that produce a substantial volume of business.
On the second point, consider if you agree that many salespeople grow their book of business by inheriting accounts. If this is true, then it proves that customers are typically more loyal to the dealer from whom they buy than to the salesperson. This strongly indicates that it is unreasonable to expect a salesperson to bring a large book of business over with a few simple strokes of a pen.
In short, the fruitful recruitment of successful salespeople must be more than hiring a veteran and merely waiting for exceptional results. It鈥檚 not that hiring veteran salespeople is wrong; it鈥檚 more that expecting instant results is passive leadership when the hiring fails to include proper assimilation into a culture and validation of skills after the hire has been made.
All that being said, I believe you should exercise restraint when hiring veteran salespeople, and even more when they come from outside our industry.
I used to believe, like many, that you can teach a salesperson products, but you can鈥檛 teach them how to sell. I now believe that our industry is so complex that it is better to bring sales recruits up through the ranks. Consider the abundant product offerings, computer processes, and logistics of fulfilling orders. Add to that the challenge of understanding third party apps, scheduling challenges, and learning the nuances of builder expectations. It鈥檚 a lot!
Hiring salespeople means finding performers with the right DNA for success, specifically the hunger for more business and a willingness to prospect. As noted, many veteran salespeople are not particularly great at (or interested in) prospecting. This is a flaw that is nearly impossible to overcome in an experienced salesperson with a track record of not prospecting. The lack of a desire to prospect leads to service representatives waiting for accounts to be assigned.
In addition to prospecting drive, salespeople with the right DNA are also those who never stop learning. If you have a salesperson who feels they are as skilled as they ever need to be, you have a challenge on your hands. The best salespeople I鈥檝e met are those who consistently see their career as a never-ending evolution. Thus, when hiring salespeople, experience and the expectation for instant results rarely is a formula for success. The only way to recruit sales talent is with a vision to find candidates with a promise or proof of interest in prospecting and a thirst for long term growth.
While you鈥檙e at it, skip the instant mashed potatoes. It鈥檚 a little more work to make them from scratch but the outcome is significantly more gratifying, kind of like hiring salespeople.
