Your bottom line and your sales are suffering when along comes a savior, someone with an incredible amount of sales experience and an impressive track record.
You can't afford to pay the person what he or she is really worth but good fortune has smiled upon you. The Great One will join your company for a mere pittance of what he is used to making. Before you start jumping for joy, ask yourself why.
Why would someone take a cut in pay and benefits? If you can't find a reasonable answer to that question, beware, big time. How would you feel if you were in a job that only demanded 25% of your mental or physical energies?
You'd probably get bored and slack off or you'd start filling your time with something other than what you are supposed to be doing. Or you might start feeling that you are underpaid and have the urge to slack off and take it easy, right?
Well, this is how your overqualified candidate is likely to act and feel as well. Oh, he'll do a great job for the first while. After all, it's wise to impress the boss until the probation period is over. But after that the person can start to feel hard done by and either becomes a pain in the duffis or simply leaves.
When this happens, whatever short-term gain you may have had from hiring an overqualified candidate is more then offset by the long-term pain of lost sales, angry customers, and the cost of having to go through the hiring process all over again.
When should you hire an overqualified candidate? Hire the person when you're absolutely sure that his reasons for joining your company make sense and are valid. Listen to your stomach. It will tell you what to do. It's called intuition.
What’s a boomerang? That’s someone who left your company for supposedly greener pastures but found himself standing in the same brown stuff as before and is now ready to come back. Even if the grass was greener when he or she left, times change and the grass may now be less green where the person is now.
It doesn’t hurt to call someone whom you were sorry to lose and see what the person is up to. Maybe he’s happy as a clam and maybe not. If he’s happy, be happy for him and tell him to give you a call if things change. You may or may not have a spot for him when he calls but it’s worth the try. On the other hand, if he isn't particularly happy where he is now, have a chat.
Like a boomerang, the person may come back. It's a win-win for everyone. He's happy to be back in an environment he is familiar with and you're happy to have a performer back in the fold.
If you want to find a really good salesperson, don’t run an advertisement. Use an even better resource--your experience. As you trundle up and down the road of life, keep note of the salespeople you meet that impress you. Get their cards and home telephone numbers. That way you’ll know how to reach them if they leave their current employer.
If someone impressed you, he or she is likely to impress your customers as well. Professional selling skills are very transportable and if the person was good at selling whatever it was you were buying, he or she may be able to sell your stuff as well. What better source of talent than real performance.
We’ve all heard of the customer from hell, but some of us end up hiring a salesperson from the same place. Of course, none of us sets out to hire the wrong person, but occasionally it happens that we end up with the salesperson from hell. This is the person who looked good and sounded good during the brief hiring process but ends up either not performing or wreaking havoc within the organization.
This can happen when we don’t take the time to hire smart and we try to plug a round peg into a square hole. When this type of mismatch occurs, grief follows and takes the form of:
- lost and missed opportunities
- unhappy or lost clients
- wasted time
- demoralized staff
- lawsuits
- lost money
...and more.
Many managers, in an attempt to either save time or money, have no formal hiring process in place. This is often a false economy and may result in the hiring of an unsuitable candidate.
It takes a newly hired salesperson, even a seasoned one, several months to a year to become productive. You can usually tell pretty quickly if you have a winner, but it could take upwards to a year before you decide you have a dud. That’s yet another reason to spend the time to hire smart instead of hiring quick.
Advertising isn’t the only way to find suitable job candidates. Here are some other sources worth considering:
In-house.
If the sales position in question is an entry-level one, you may have some ideal candidates right under your nose such as a customer support person or an employee who shows promise and who has expressed an interest in going into sales.
Employee recommendations.
Your current salespeople and others within the company may have friends or neighbours who would be delighted to work for your firm.
Former sales staff.
If you had someone in the past who was a performer but left for greener pastures, consider giving the individual a call. Sometimes the grass isn’t always greener, but the person might feel embarrassed about approaching you.
Other sales managers or networking groups.
Use your personal contacts with other non-competing sales managers. Ask if they’ve seen or interviewed any potential candidates that they could pass along to you.
Competition.
Don’t be afraid to approach a competitor’s salesperson.
Customer recommendations.
Talk with some of your best customers. Who do they have calling on them now who have created a good impression?
Recruitment agencies.
Agencies can be costly — 20 to 40 percent of the estimated first year’s income — but they can save a lot of time.
