It’s no secret that hiring a sales representative is a difficult task, but oftentimes the sales hiring managers make this task even harder by committing detrimental mistakes during the hiring process. Through years of experience, Kathleen Steffey, CEO of Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search, narrowed down the top 3 sales hiring mistakes she witnesses on a daily basis. Hiring a job hopper, hiri...
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Lack Luster Employee Culture? Address It Now to Impact Retention.
This post is Part 4 in a Salesjournal Series on “Making Your Business Attractive to Top Talent.” Part 1 asks “Is Your Business Attractive to Top Talent?”, Part 2 describes how to “Market Your Company and Positions to Attract Top Talent”, Part 3 outlines ways to “Cultivate Your Network to Attract Top Talent“, and Part 5 asks “Want Top Talent? Rethink Benefits“.
Whether you know it or ...
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Cultivate Your Network to Attract Top Talent
This post is Part 3 in a Salesjournal Series on “Making Your Business Attractive to Top Talent.” Part 1 asks “Is Your Business Attractive to Top Talent?” and Part 2 describes how to “Market Your Company and Positions to Attract Top Talent”, Part 4 details “Lack Luster Employee Culture? Address It Now to Impact Retention” and Part 5 asks “Want Top Talent? Rethink Benefits.”
You can’t rely...
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Market Your Company and Positions to Attract Top Talent
This post is Part 2 in a Salesjournal Series on "Making Your Business Attractive to Top Talent." Part 1 asked, "Is Your Business Attractive to Top Talent?"
Attracting top talent is a struggle for almost every company. An essential element to combating this problem is being able to market your company and your positions effectively. Appealing job descriptions, marketing your open positions...
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What employers look for in hiring salespeople
By Tom Searcy, CBS MoneyWatch
(MoneyWatch) Salespeople are hired to be fired. So when it comes time to find that next sales job, just what is the person doing the hiring looking for in a new salesperson?
Research suggests there are three key factors prospective employers look at to predict the success of an employee. If you hire salespeople, you should be looking for these factors. Shockingly, m...
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7 Hiring Mistakes and How Not to Make Them
BY S. ANTHONY IANNARINO
I am not throwing the first stone here (or the last). I have personally been guilty of half of these. But, alas, it is how one learns.
Hiring Out of Desperation
One of the fastest ways to build an underperforming sales force and burden yourself with human resources nightmares is to hire out of desperation. If you desperately need someone to fill the position, or if you are ...
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KEEP IT SIMPLE WHEN IT COMES TO SALES COMPENSATION
By Matt Smith
In an earlier blog post that cited some key data from a recent CSO Insights report on best practices in tracking sales metrics, we noted that companies that measure 4-7 key sales metrics had higher sales performance than companies that tracked 3 or fewer key sales metrics. My first reaction when I read these statistics was that if measuring sales metrics drives sales performance then...
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Will This Sales Candidate Really Fail If We Hire Him?
Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
This week I called the type of candidate that traditional HR professional love - his resume was formatted, there were no typos, his background was exactly what my client craved - but the assessment wasn't so impressed with him; he was a borderline candidate at best.
Normally ...
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Why You Must Kick the Sourcing Habit
by Lou Adler
As many of you know — I announced it at the ERE Expo in San Diego — I’ve decided to bring recruiting back to recruiting. This is my new old mission. Somehow this has been lost in the past few years when overall candidate supply exceeded demand. Hiring top talent is not the same as finding top talent. While sourcing is a step in this journey, it is only a step, and one getting easier e...
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Startups Need To Hire A Recruiter…Now
Jeff Bussgang, Seeing Both Sides
The unemployment rate in America is hovering around 9%. But if you are a competent engineer, sales executive, online marketer or general manager in Silicon Valley, NYC, Boston, or other startup hotspots, the unemployment rate is 0%.
The talent market has gotten as competitive and aggressive as I have ever seen in the last 20 years. CNN recently reported that 4...
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Sales Interview Questions from JustSell.com
Interviewing your next superstar? Looking for your next sales position?
Here’s a list of 31 interview questions in no particular order.
If you’re interviewing candidates, use what you like and improve what you don’t.
If you’re in the hunt for a new sales position, use them as a prep tool and work your way through. When you come out the other side, you’ll be completely tuned and ready for action...
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Selling a Pen (and Yourself) in an Interview: Outdated Tactic or Timeless Question?
A question was raised in one of my LinkedIn groups recently that got me and other members thinking about the tactics used by hiring managers during the interview process. The question: If you were interviewing for a sales job and the sales manager said “sell me this pen," how would you respond?
The feedback from the group was varied. Some offered recommended responses to the actual question. Ot...
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13 Reasons for Poor Sales Hires by Hard Working Sales Managers
Lance Cooper of Sales Manage Solutions invites you to imagine this picture... Turnover occurs - sometimes at an excessive rate. Sales managers work hard and struggle to find quality candidates for open sales positions. They place ads in local newspapers and get many responses. Some use Monster. Some use recruiters. However, many of their candidates come from people who cannot find a job anywhere e...
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Always Be Recruiting!
Dave Kurlan wrote an outstanding post: Bench Strength – The Key To Replacing Salespeople. He mentioned that managers must always be recruiting. It’s such a simple concept, but Dave Brock is constantly amazed at how few managers–at all levels do this.
Here’s how the cycle goes. We have a bad performer in place, we worry about firing the person because it leaves an open territory - too often we thi...
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Three Ways to Recruit Top Sales Talent. Even in Tough Times.
The Brooks Group
From what we see, the economy might be turning around. A lot of our clients are asking for our help hiring new, top-performing salespeople. It’s work we enjoy. We’re told they’re having a hard time because two things are happening:
The best salespeople have jobs and aren’t looking.
When sales managers start actively looking for candidates, they get a flood of weak ones. That ...
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Trends in Sales Hiring – 10 Questions for Kathleen Steffey
This month, Tony Smith had the opportunity to speak with Kathleen Steffey, owner and founder of Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search, a national sales and marketing recruitment firm, about trends in the sales hiring market. Kathleen also shared her insights about what it takes to make a sales hire a success. Over the last two years, Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search has been a strategi...
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