Sales Recruitment 
Effective sales recruitment that identifies sales staff who deliver results is critical, but SHL also understands that successfully managing talent goes further than recruiting. Developing and retaining existing employees reduces the costs of high turnover and contributes to building a strong sales team. As we face economic uncertainty, recruiting and retaining the best sales people could be the competitive tipping point that helps your business succeed.
The challenges of sales recruitment
Finding and keeping good sales people is fundamental to successful business. According to the US DePaul Centre for Sales Leadership, average sales staff turnover per annum is 12 to 18%. However for some speciality sales areas these figures soar as high as 100%. High turnover impacts the bottom-line and staff performance and retention becomes ever more critical in times of economic downturn.
With the factors that are integral to sales effectiveness differing from industry to industry, how do you predict sales performance? When recruiting and developing sales staff the key to getting it right lies in understanding the behaviours, skills and motivators that lead to success in your organisation.
Whether “hunting” for new sales or “farming” for added revenue from existing accounts, the sales environment is more complex today than ever before. Different industries face a myriad of challenges, but wherever they work, sales executives will likely be facing some or all of the following:
- The need to adapt and work within rapidly changing regulations and legislation
- Building the skill set required to overcome an often sceptical audience
- Learning new methods to attract the attention of buyers
- Adapting to a more ‘business focused’ environment.
Read how SHL helped Vodafone recruit the right people for their sales and customer services roles
Effective sales recruitment begins with assessment
Sales people are good at selling themselves at interview so it is important for organisations to assess an individual’s strengths and development needs as they relate to potential sales performance. SHL’s Sales Model takes into account the new complexities in sales today and provides a sophisticated assessment of an individual’s personal styles in a sales context by:
- Measuring factors that are important to effectiveness in most sales situations
- Measuring aspects of motivation crucial to keeping sales people performing at their peak
- Helping to understand how an individual is likely to perform in specific sales situations.
In a study completed by SHL for an international customer, this Sales Model was able to identify high potential sales reps that sold an average of 56% more than lower performers.
Contact us about using SHL’s Sales Model in your business
Personality as a predictive measure of performance
Personality is fundamental to strong sales performance. SHL’s Occupational Personality Questionnaire measures behavioural traits such as communication and motivation against key job competencies and objectively identifies those candidates with potential.
Responses to personality questionnaires mean little without meaningful interpretation. SHL provides a Sales Report that ensures results can be understood in relation to an organisation’s particular sales environment. This is all-important information when trying to make a good person-job fit in sales recruiting.
The Sales Report is easy to use and deploy and helps reduce the staff turnover in sales teams and therefore costs by identifying:
- Top sales performers with a proven assessment tool
- Sales people that have the potential to sell more
- Development needs across existing sales teams with a simple, cost-effective development tool
- Opportunities for balancing the styles and skills of the sales team.
Find out how the OPQ Sales Report can benefit you
Download a sample Sales Report (345 KB)
Developing a world class sales team
The Motivation Questionnaire within the SHL Sales Report provides greater insight into what motivates individuals; critical information for sales development programmes.
Motivation is the force that drives an individual to deliver results. Motivated sales people will channel high amounts of energy into their jobs; understanding what drives them enables an organisation to maintain this energy and reap the results of high performance.
Read how Neiman Marcus improved sales effectiveness with SHL
Contact us for advice on how to develop high performing sales people
