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How many times have you stared into a fridge full of food and you can’t find anything to eat?  Or, how many times do you find yourself flipping through 500 HD channels to find that there is nothing on television?  Today we have access to so many options in our day to day life that it is paralyzing.  From what music we want in our ears to what kind of dairy product we want in our coffee, the decisions are endless.

If you are a hiring manager or the leader of a sales organization, you are probably experiencing the same issue in your hiring efforts.  You get into the same mindless, robotic process that delivers the same results day in and day out.   You find that you have many choices, but none are what you are looking for.  At Treeline we keep a fine tuned ear to what is happening in the market and we have been hearing a reoccurring message: “Why can’t we find any qualified sales people in a market saturated with them?”  To answer this question, let’s go back to the refrigerator for a second…

…here you stand, in front of your fridge, you’re hungry.  Your shelves are full of food and beverages, you’re overwhelmed, and yet you keep coming back every 10 minutes.  You continue with the same behavior which nets the exact same result every time.  So you chose something.  But, before you reach for the jalapeños, which you know you do not want but they are in arms reach, stop and ask yourself, “what do I really want and what is it going to take to get it?”

This is the key question which deserves a key answer.  The answer in the refrigerator case is not just “food”.  You have to identify what you want and essentially need: snack or meal, sweet or savory.  Should I have a jalapeño with that?  You get the idea.  Now apply the same questioning to the sales professional that you are seeking.

The key question needs a key answer – “What do I want?” – the answer is not “a top producing sales professional.”  That is the same as saying I am going to watch some TV for entertainment and you find yourself surfing 500 channels of nothing.  You must dig deeper and get more specific.  What is your plan?  Who do you need to hire?  Is it a junior sales person that you can mold or tenured sales professional with a book of business?  A strategic sales person with a lengthy sales cycle and a multi-million dollar quota or an activity driven sales professional with a short sales cycle and a $500k quota?  Direct industry experience or different industry experience yet selling into the same decision makers?  There are so many different species of sales professionals – it is crucial to identify what type of sales person can produce for your organization.

Just because the market has a bigger pool of sales candidates does not make it any easier to identify who is a good sales person for your company.  In fact, it makes it more difficult.  There are still the same amount of qualified candidates out there in the market but they are now much harder to find and hidden amongst the growing number of unqualified candidates that are also targeting your company’s opening.  You must be able to sustain a bandwidth that will allow you to effectively screen every resume and quickly identify the qualified from the unqualified.  The organizations that have identified resources that help them source outside of their own refrigerators are the ones that are able to effectively snatch up top talent from the market and build stronger sales teams.  They tap into less traditional resources.  They use social media and specialty boutique search firms with resources to tap into their endless network with a laser focus to find candidates that fit your criteria.  This is bad news for their competitors.  

Don’t fall victim to the paralysis of being overwhelmed by choices.  Don’t be afraid of change or to try something new.  Mix it up and build a new process and system that will force you to ask the key questions and find candidates that are outside of your norm.  If you need help, Treeline has built a system that will help you identify the right sales professionals for your organization – try it for free by clicking here. 

However you decide to build your sourcing system, if you do not ask these key questions and identify the key answers, you will find yourself staring into the fridge and eating jalapeños every time.  And every time you will be unsatisfied and find yourself right back in front of the fridge, guessing and looking at the same unsatisfying options.

By Gary Johnson

Gary has a passion for building, managing and leading successful sales teams in the B2B space. Trained well by the likes of the U.S. Navy and AT&T, he looks to share his many years of sucess and experience selling and building teams via his blog: www.sellingwisdom.blogspot.com.  

Here is a question near and dear to my heart: “As a sales leader, would you hire from the new-college-graduate ranks for your B2B sales role?”

The answer to this question really depends on a variety of factors. But I would argue, never dismiss this potential pool of candidates for any B2B sales role you are looking to fill. We all want 3-10+ years of experience of sales experience selling a similar product into similar industries, market segments etc. But I would ask, do you want 5 years of experience selling your same product to the same industry, when the experience and success has been mediocre to poor, even though during your hiring process they convinced you it was stellar, or do you want a potential pure sales pro, who will learn your sales process, product and industry quickly and go on to become a superstar? I know what my answer will be!

The BEST sales person I ever hired came directly out of college. He has now gone onto several much larger sales management roles in a very large company selling and managing to very large accounts, with much success. At the time, I was managing a B2B effort in the SMB space for a large company. Our stringent requirements were 3+ years of sales success in the B2B space, but management was open-minded and encouraged all sorts of recruiting channels. I went after the colleges, and naturally, departing military officers!

When I found “Bob”, he was graduating after having sold condo’s for two years during his summers. He absolutely loved it. I know of another college grad who found his way directly into a successful sales career after having sold cemetery plots in college! “Bob” was smart, well-educated and hungry for a career in sales. He was after money and recognition. I brought him into our company hiring process and he quickly impressed.

“Bob” quickly impressed me out in the field, too. Extremely hard worker. Incredible ethics. Learned quickly. Despite his youthfulness, his energy, enthusiasm, persistence and newly-found sales skills were used to overcome almost all of his competitors. When other sales pro’s in his group, years older and more “experienced”, were having poor months, “Bob” was always there to deliver. Time and time again.

So I learned a lesson – don’t dismiss the new-grad hiring pool. While doing so, keep in mind the following:

• Very few of us went through college aspiring to be a sales pro. When you find one, get him/her into your recruiting process!
• Be sure that your hiring process is exhaustive and demanding. My interviews for sales positions out of the military often included large-scale role plays and panel interviews.
• Look for schools and a transcript that has taught business acumen. The GPA does not matter. The best sales pro I know, who I didn’t hire, left school with a 2.5 GPA, but his school is known for teaching incredible business acumen. He just likes to party a little, not a bad thing for a sales pro!
• If s/he is hired, be prepared to devote significant coaching time to this new-hire.

You may read this and suggest, “This is fine in the SMB sector, but I’ve got large accounts.” Or, “Our sales process is too sophisticated.” In these B2B segments, we’ll often employ team-based selling. Give her/him a very junior role. S/he may lift the team to new heights!

What is better? Five years of mediocre experience selling your same product into the same industry or bringing on a potentially pure sales pro who will know nothing but success for themselves and you? Every one of us started somewhere, for someone who decided to take a chance!

Recently I sat with a great candidate to discuss his job search. We had talked about the different resources he could utilize to conduct an effective search and to my surprise I found that my candidate was not a member of LinkedIn. I suggested how he could maximize his search by creating a LinkedIn account. I was amazed to find resistance and a strong opinion to not join one of the world’s largest, most powerful networking sites. Then I realized that he was averse to joining LinkedIn due to the fact that he had a misunderstanding of what LinkedIn is.

He was under the impression that it was just another social site like Facebook. I spoke with him in depth about why he should join LinkedIn and shared with him how I utilize the site as a recruiter. It is one of the sites I use on a daily basis to find candidates and prospects and I think anyone who is not utilizing LinkedIn is doing themselves a major disservice.

In the rare occasion that I speak with someone who is not on LinkedIn, I give them the following reasons why to join:

1. Maximize your visibility. If you are a LinkedIn user then Congratulations! If not, recognize that your chance of being found and considered for opportunities has drastically dropped. Many VP’s, Directors, Managers and every good Recruiter utilize LinkedIn for many searches and in some cases LinkedIn is used to validate your resume. A professional profile on LinkedIn with a picture and references can make the difference of you being considered for a job and your resume being tossed in the trash. Nowadays, job boards are ineffective and inundated with old and irrelevant resumes. Recruiters, like myself, turn to LinkedIn to conduct a search rather than to job boards like Monster or CareerBuilder.
2. Interview Preparation. LinkedIn is stocked full of information about companies and employees that work for those companies. As part of your interview preparation you always need to research the company. The corporate website can give you basic information about the company but LinkedIn allows you to get an understanding of the inner structure of a company. Who are the executives? What type of background do they have? Search the title of the position that you’re interviewing for and look to see if there are other professionals currently in that role. What are their backgrounds? Search for the person that you’ll be interviewing with. How long have they been with the company? Where did they work before their current company? What are their personal interests? Often times you can get a feel for a hiring manager’s personality based off of their LinkedIn profile. For instance, if you know you are going to be speaking to the VP of Sales and when you look at her background you see bullet point after bullet point of success then you know you are probably talking to someone who is a hard-driver. Based on this information, you can get an idea of what type of interview you need to conduct and what type of energy you need to mirror.
3. Network. One of the things that you’ll realize after joining LinkedIn is how small the world actually is. There is a strong possibility that you may know someone who works at the company that you are interviewing at. If not, perhaps you are LinkedIn with a contact that knows someone at that company. You may find this contact to be a distant contact but it’s still an opportunity to get inside information about the company who you’re interviewing with. This type of information is invaluable. Without being an active member of LinkedIn you may not be as prepared as your competition and you may jeopardize your chances of getting the job.
4. Sales 2.0. Lastly, in October of 2009, LinkedIn passed the 50 million member mark. If you are not on LinkedIn what message are you driving about your ability to adapt to new technologies and new sales methodologies? Companies these days are actually requiring that not only should candidates be members of LinkedIn but they should have a professional network that exceeds a certain number. If you’re not on LinkedIn, there is a possibility you could be missing out on the next big sales job. I strongly recommend the use of LinkedIn as a networking and job search tool. It is not a fad and a site that is a must for all sales professionals. I hope to see you there and invite you to connect with me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianpcasey1.