How's that one, Joe?
I have three 'real time' things that I want to write about.
- A tweet that a friend sent me as blog fodder.
- A question about hiring new grads to sell to smart engineers.
- How to hire the wrong guy correctly.
When a salesperson completes the OMG sales evaluation, they get a 30-ish page assessment of their sales effectiveness with a lot of data, interpretation and explanation. Their manager or coach also gets a copy, but they also get a coaching dashboard that is three pages of just the data. A coach or manager can use these three pages to instantly diagnose why a call went sideways, why a rep has call reluctance, why a rep insists that discounting is necessary or a gazillion other things that keep a rep from being successful.
Now, specifically, look at this portion of a dashboard.
Isn't this pretty? Red is bad. Green is good. Circle graphs. Bar charts. And... this is only half of one of those three pages.
I'm gonna give you three reasons why this is the wrong guy and you shouldn't hire him.
I'll give you one reason why you should consider it.
I'll give you one reason (off camera) that you should want him (and probably why he got hired).
and I'll tell you how to hire him right.
Top right corner. See that big red 5%? He's in the 5th percentile of all the nearly 2 million salespeople that we've evaluated. 95% of them are more capable than he is. Look closer. He's in the 30th percentile of having the will to sell. So, 70% of all salespeople want to succeed more than he does, but 99% of them are stronger than he is and 91% are more skilled than he is. Let's face it. He's not the strongest salesperson out there.
Top left corner. See that big green 83%. He really wants it, but he doesn't know what to do or how to get there. He needs a path, benchmarks and A LOT of hand-holding. Also, look to the right again. 100% coachable. The right coach could make him awesome.
The off camera thing... We have this finding called "intangibles". This guy happens to have experience in a field that the company needs. They should want him.
So, how do you hire this guy?
Don't pay him $110K. Pay him $60-$90K. Tell him that he has to get rid of the red. Hire a coach that will do 5-10 role plays/week and relate each role play back to his evaluation and competencies. At the end of 3-6 months evaluate him again. If he's green, the coach is done, give the rep a raise. (Obviously, if you can find a candidate in the 90th percentile, you'll save yourself the work of upgrading this rep, but if you need a body, this is how.)
BTW, have you seen this page about the competencies?
If you have a question, send it.