Too Hire or Not to Hire?

Every day, thousands of companies in the UK are exposing themselves to significant risk, open ended litigation and a downright poor return on their investment by making the wrong hiring choice.

Successfully bringing someone new into your talent pool requires part intuition, part investigation and a robust recruitment process which majors on in-depth honesty, not just from the potential recruit, but crucially from the employer itself.

If you’ve ever experienced being ‘sold’ a job that bore little reality to what you found when you walked in the door, you’ll know exactly what risks – and potential consequences I’m talking about. Like buying a house or a new car, when job hunting, we tend to focus on the things we like. We all have ‘hot buttons’ and skilled salespeople (and I’m definitely including internal and external recruiters here) know exactly how to press them.

These buttons can be aspects of the role that the potential employer likes to focus on (package, development, promotion opportunities) and the general all round greener grass that we might want to seem very appealing. Even more so when we’ve decided that we really want the person to work for us! But what are the dangers of selling a role, or only certain aspects of a role to a wide-eyed keen but green candidate?

Some time ago I was doing some training for a technology company that had recently hired a highly skilled person to work in their enterprise sales team. He was a bright and personable guy, who had an impressive track record and was excited about his new role. But unbeknown to him and his shiny new employer, he was also being set up to fail.

Why? For these three fundamental reasons; firstly because whilst he’d come from another technology company, he was used to making a few very high value sales a year, that relied on a fairly significant but now unavailable pre and post sales support infrastructure to help him achieve his results. Secondly, his tried and trusted approach required far more research, value creation and proof of concept testing than his new ‘shoot from the hip’ employers needed or wanted. And thirdly and most importantly, the sales processes, resources and cultures of his new and former employers were fundamentally different.

But at the interview stage, the employers were dazzled by his sales numbers and the companies that he had sold to - companies that were on their ‘hot list’ to acquire as clients. The candidate was dazzled by the more entrepreneurial culture, which on the surface was a refreshing change, but in reality was “you can do what you like but you do it yourself!” Tempting share options were added to the mix, a high status car and a grandiose job title, cooked up by the MD to seduce but actually causing resentment among the established sales team.

What neither party had discussed or properly understood, was the reality of the operating environment and the differences in both culture, resources and collateral, that can make someone very successful and productive in one company, struggle or be completely unable to replicate their success in another.

It took 6 months before both parties fully realised their mistake and the MD was finally able to admit to his colleagues that he had made a wrong hire. For the sales person, a dent on his CV and a bruised ego that took him back to the bosom of his former employer. For the employer, 6 months pay (with a 3 month OTE guarantee) car costs, expenses, management and training time and the recruiters fee added up to a substantial investment. And to recoup this expenditure, significant additional sales would have to be made by the remaining glib but slightly disenfranchised sales team.

And the value of contracts signed by this new hire during his tenure? Zero.

Another client we worked with who had similar problems in the past has now evolved a completely different recruitment approach. As well as the traditional two interview process, they have added a telephone screening interview, a social element (the prospective manager takes them out to dinner as client entertaining is part of the role) an assessment centre, (so they can be observed in situ with other candidates testing social, communication and influencing skills) as well a some carefully selected psychometric profiling.

The interviewers have all been trained by us in effective interview techniques and if anything, now over-emphasise the less glamorous aspects of the role. As a result, their new hire attrition rate has plummeted and a modest but carefully thought out investment at the front end of the hiring process has saved a considerable amount at the back end.

And with a lot less bruised egos to suit!

Avoiding the Magic Bullet - Part Two

In-house or external?

Most failings of in-house training are obvious to outsiders. Training departments have to rely generally on in-house analysis of skills and therefore it can be difficult to see how skills remain competitive in the market as a whole. In-house politics comes in to the frame too. Often a best practice from one division isn’t shared through the organisation via the training department because of silent competition between the other divisions.

Every sales leader wants to be at the head of the most successful team and wants the spotlight on them. Sharing the golden nuggets defeats that competitive edge.

There is a common thread that runs through all sales staff issues – “it takes one to know one”. This may indeed be wholly fallable, but it is common perception. Often sales training in-house is undertaken by non-sales specific trainers who have acquired the knowledge but may not be practitioners of the skills they encourage.

Often the decider of course content is the sales leader, which can be limiting – it assumes that the leader is aware of what is available in the market and that they are best placed to undertake that skills analysis. But perceptions are inevitably biased and the importance of benchmarking against similar industries is ignored.

So taking an external training company is the best option? It depends. The same issues could be said for external training if it is a cover-all packaged solution. Anything learned is ultimately valuable but is it best value for money? To answer that, we need to consider the non-learning aspects of training.

Practice makes perfect

It is important that training is directly relevant to the sales persons task. If that is covered by a packaged off the shelf course then it’s the best option. But its often quoted that for training to be effective it needs to be used and practiced within 72 hours of being learnt. Providing the best opportunity for this to happen is one of the keys to making a training course best value for money.

That impacts on several areas. Firstly, it calls for a clear understanding of where there is a skills gap. Secondly it assumes that delegates are prepared and ready to take the lessons on board. Then it depends on the course content, presentation and delivery and lastly that the training can be easily assimilated and become normal working practice – long term

Best Value

Many companies appreciate the first step. Many completely forget the second. Briefing and debriefing from courses is often time poorly spent. The delegate needs to know up front why they have been chosen, what is expected of them and what they can hope to achieve. The line manager must be aware of what has been learned to be able to monitor, encourage and ultimately endorse the training messages. Managers should be briefed themselves on how to adjust their style to take into account the new focus of their team.

Changing the team without changing the leader is a common way that old practices slip back in and assimilation of training becomes less effective. The content of the course should be specific, interactive and most importantly relevant. To have best chance of implementation it should take your sales processes and sales model into account. Bespoke training is often more expensive but there is a reason. It relies on more investigation of your sales issues and client strategies. The benefit is that by using your own process, delegates emerge already practiced on the “home patch”.

They have already started that assimilation well within the 72-hour frame. In most cases, being different means honouring your own corporate and product offering differences in training.

Remember that course?

The majority of training undertaken involves training new employees or new people into the role. Development of staff through training programmes is often cited but rarely occurs. Training needs to be reinforced regularly to keep skills allied to the experience of the team member. When we achieve “unconscious competence” – the “I can do this with my eyes shut” stage – we want to grow further. Otherwise we become unchallenged, demotivated and ultimately bored. Building on that competence will often raise the sales game with a corresponding impact on revenue attainment.

Egg the pudding

Training programmes are often expensive and there are fears in releasing staff and the corresponding loss of “on the road” time. But by considering training in context with your needs, processes and sales model and by time over the other non-course related aspects, you can make the optimum use of your investment. Training is rarely a magic bullet but with focus can considerably improve your chances of hitting those all-important targets.

© Cambridge Business Training

Avoiding the Magic Bullet - Part One

In times of challenging market conditions companies look to pull more value from their existing resources. It is a time to regroup, to re-engineer and to make sure that the cogs of the organisation all move smoothly. The ability of the sales team to bring in new business or maximise opportunities from existing relationships becomes more prominent and skill lacks and deficiencies in customer engagement come sharply to the fore.

Inevitably sales training becomes more important as those gaps emerge.

So, how can you make the most of sales training whilst keeping the focus of the business squarely on productivity? What should you expect? Why does sales training often fail to become the ‘magic bullet’ your declining revenues is hoping for? By examining some of the background aspects and reasons for organising training programmes the answers become a lot clearer.

Why train?

Simple, because people need to learn. In reality this is not the objective from training – it is a symptom of a larger need to create revenue or deepen relationships. Training is often seen in isolation as an instant remedy to all ills. We all know that training by itself is not enough – it is the application of the lessons and the practice of the skills learnt that is key.

After all you would not expect someone to win Le Mans the day after passing their driving test! So preparing people and making sure that the training has the best chance of being used is important too. But then the training itself must be clearly relevant – if you are an HGV driver it may well help to learn how to drive an automatic car, but its not going to give you the best chance of doing a good job on day one in a juggernaut.

Train me please!

And who should you train? Curiously, much training is allocated to ‘under-performing’ staff with the tacit intention that training will suddenly make them super sellers. Training will help in some situations but using it to avoid confronting deeper management issues is often flawed. Frankly its money badly spent. There may well be an implicit training need, but until the salesperson is committed and facing the right way, there is little chance of a wonder cure.

Conversely the top performers receive less training. Of course, they have less need – or do they? Markets are continually changing and as a sales leader can you afford not to have the best skills with the most enthusiastic and able people in the team?

And no matter how good they are – if you don’t invest in them, someone else will want to.

The worry of course is the “time off the road” argument. Like the man who always took the long walk home because he didn’t have time to see whether the winding lane was actually a short cut, many business get somewhat nervous about releasing staff in case they lose the all-important deal. The fact that the course may energise them and educate them to produce significantly in the future goes largely unnoticed.

A common failing of training is the mix of delegates put through it. Inevitably your team will be of differing sales abilities and experience but the trainer has to pitch the training to the slowest learners or least experienced. Often this means that those with greater skills (and better ability to bring in greater revenue) learn less. In small teams this is best addressed by looking carefully at coaching and mentoring programmes within the company. For larger teams, take a step back in analysing skill needs and consider what each delegate needs to learn before signing off a training programme.

What should they learn?

To be different you have to train differently. Doing the same old thing may have worked well in the past but part of the reason for even thinking about training is to engage your clients better now. Buyer’s sophistication levels have changed massively over the last few years. They expect more from sales people. They seek not only an answer to today’s problems but suggestions on how they can use your products and services in the future to drive their business.

Many training courses are already out of date. Putting your team through an in-house training programme designed some years ago may offer some help but it’s probably not the best you can do.

Please click on part two