No, no, no! I don’t mean the device you throw and that’s supposed to come back to you. I mean a human boomerang. What’s a human 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….
Category Archives: Hiring Tips
How NOT to Staff Your Sales Department
I don’t want to go on a rant here, but every now and then I’ll stumble over a company who has fallen on tough times and feels the need to downsize but hates to lay people off. Instead of putting them on the street, they will sometimes offer to move them into sales. My mind…
Making the Job Offer
If you have successfully narrowed the field down to one candidate, then it’s time to make an offer. If you still have two or three good candidates, offer the position to your first choice but DO NOT tell the other candidates that the job has been filled. This is important because if your number one…
Looking for Good Salespeople? Try These Unlikely Places.
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…
Keep Note of the Superstars You Meet
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 when…
Talk to Three or More References
Some people quit after doing one or, at the most, two reference checks. Not good! Only checking one reference is like only having one clock to use to determine the exact time. It might be right or it might be wrong. Two clocks (or references) may cancel each other out or be too similar. Three…
Do Your Own Reference Checks
I know it takes a lot of time to do reference checks, time that you don’t really have. But DON’T succumb to the temptation of delegating this important aspect of the hiring process to the Human Resources department. It’s not that HR professionals can’t do a good job. It’s just that, when dealing with salespeople,…
Firing Isn’t Failure
I don’t know about you but not every salesperson I’ve hired turned out to be a winner. If they were, I’d probably be spending my days at the racetrack getting rich. If by some unfortunate stroke of bad luck you happen to hire a salesperson who doesn’t work out and you have to fire the…
Stop Being the Farm Team for Your Competitors
Are you tired of having your salespeople poached by competitors or just leaving for greener pastures? If so, there are a couple of things you can do to eliminate, or at least, minimize the problem. First, you can stop the hemorrhaging by profiling your successful, long-term employees and using that criterion when hiring new people….
No References? Beware!
Although most companies, for some inexplicable reason, don’t check references, you should still ask for them. Not being able to get references can tell you volumes about the candidate. Whenever a candidate can’t provide current references because “the person left the company and I don’t know where he went”, or for a multitude of other…
