Yesterday I read a White Paper about structuring sales forces and it got my blood boiling. It wasn’t that it was a study about sales forces, and it wasn’t that it was a study using large companies. I got upset because of the conclusion – that you should structure your sales force like the big companies.

Objective Management Group has evaluated nearly 10,000 sales forces. Each time, we must ignore titles and focus on roles of each individual in the evaluation. After all, a sales manager without salespeople reporting to him is really a salesperson. A VP without sales managers reporting to her is really a sales manager.

Selling has changed more in the past 5 years than ever before.

With all that, shouldn’t the quality of sales, sales management and sales leadership candidates be on the rise?  Yes, it should.

But there’s a problem.  The quality has not risen.  It seems to have worsened!

Well, are you?

I’ll bet you are. You can probably spot an energetic, motivated, likable, memorable, polished, polite and attractive salesperson from a handshake away. Aren’t those the ones you like best? Aren’t those, especially when they have industry background, the ones you hire? And don’t they all perform just swell?

When a great salesperson is recommended by Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment, and this star has a great track record, and great references, should we expect this person to succeed?

One of the first emails I came across this morning was a LinkedIn update telling me that 16% of my network had started new jobs.  16%. That’s one of every 6.25 people I am connected to.

That brings us to this question.  Who’s in a LinkedIn network?

Clients frequently ask about the percentage of candidates recommended by Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment and why it is so low. When clients are feeling the urgency to hire salespeople and too many candidates are not getting recommended, their knee-jerk reaction is to change the customized criteria on the role configuration so that more candidates can be recommended.

Got you on that title, didn’t I?

Did you ever find yourself in a position where you needed to hire salespeople? Of course you did.

There are many keys to making the the sales hiring process work effectively yet most companies fail to get these keys right. Some of them are obvious, while some are more subtle. And most of all, the integrity, or in this case, the outcome of the process is only as strong as the weakest link. Ignore or fail to complete any one step the way it is designed and the entire outcome will be in jeopardy, as in, another salesperson that fails to launch, doesn’t meet expectations, or succeeds at being utterly mediocre.

When you coach a salesperson, which words should you hear that would tell you the session was effective?
Not “Thanks” or “OK”.