Jack Welch says, “. . . hiring people is brutally hard.  New managers are lucky to get it right half the time. And even executives with decades of experience will tell you that they make the right calls 75% of the time at best.”

Are you satisfied with 50/50 odds, similar to flipping a coin?  What steps do you take to improve your odds that your next sales person is above average?  What would you need to do to reach beyond ”average?”  Are you satisfied with “average” or do you really want a sales superstar!

Four simple steps to hire technology sales talent:

1)  Systematize your sourcing strategy.  Move towards a ”proactive” solution rather than a “reactive” solution.

2)  Define success factors.  Be razor sharp on what you want your sales person to do and set clear benchmark goals.

3)  Assess sales candidates.  Use an assessment that identifies if the candidate is “capable” of doing the job.  The assessment should not only identify behavioral style, but also equates these behaviors to relevant competencies to the sales role.  (Recommendation: Devine Inventory.)

4) Evaluate sales candidates.  Use a well-defined behavioral interview process that clearly identifies the candidates “willingness” to do the job based on the job parameters.

Making a bad sales hire is the technology world, can be a costly mistake.  Wouldn’t you rather know before you hire a technology sales professional that they can or can not sell, rather than 6 months later when your time, money and energy have been depleted?