An article in the Harvard Business Review pointed out that 43% of hiring decisions are made within the first 4.8 minutes of the interview. Talk about the importance of a candidate creating a good first impression!
If this is the case, why bother interviewing people for more than 5 minutes? The answer is because hasty hiring decisions can be incredibly costly when they don’t work out.
What’s the cost to hire and train a salesperson these days? $100 grand? More? Probably.
Can you imagine the consequences of a plant manager purchasing a $100,000 piece of capital equipment based on a 4.8 minute interview with the salesperson? It would be more like a 4.8 month serious deliberation with a committee before such a purchase would be made.
Hiring haste doesn’t only make waste; it can be a disaster for your bottom line. I’m certainly not advocating that you take 4.8 months to make a hiring decision, but 4.8 hours of serious consideration might be something to shoot for.
If you want to keep the hiring process short, consider using mandatory hiring criteria and a sales assessment to help filter out the obvious misfits.
| Brian Jeffrey is the creator of the Sales Temperament Assessment. For over 20 years, companies have used this tool to assess thousands of salespeople and make even better hiring decisions. Brian has spent over four decades in sales as a salesperson, sales manager, consultant, sales trainer, professional speaker, and writer. Brian is the author of over 100 articles on sales and sales management. |
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I couldn’t agree more, I have made too many of those decisions
Aaron, haven’t we all. The old saying, “haste makse waste” has given way to “haste makes grief” when it comes to hiring salespeople.