Hiring the Wrong Person Costs You Three Times Their Annual Salary

Throughout my recent posts, my message has been: hire the wrong person and it’s going to cost you money…Heaps! Simple really.

The old chestnut ‘Hire attitude and then train’, in this brave new world of data and measurements, is an old belief.

Don’t get me wrong, a good attitude makes a difference, but traits or behaviours are key, in my view.

These were our main trait preferences:

  • Able to work on their own
  • Good prospector
  • Motivated by the Challenge
  • Understood what we did and how to sell it- then got on with it
  • Good people person
  • Curious
  • And many more.

How did we know:

We put all our people through the hoops that we talked about in previous posts. Then, after searching high and low, discovered an assessment to find those traits. FREE REPORT

This product provided us with a comprehensive objective assessment of a potential salesperson’s core character traits, and how they relate to success in a competitive sales position.

Simply put, it assessed how natural a fit to a sales career would be for this person.

Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com

 

Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media.  He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED”  TRY ME!

The Big Three That Will Make Or Break Your Sales Recruitment

What not to do when Hiring Salespeople.

Hire in your own likeness- A potential salesperson comes in to meet with you, and within a short time you have hit it off, you may have even shared some key rapport-building facts about each other.

Of all the applicants that you have spoken with, this one is the one that you like the most. Your gut feels great, you like him, he reminds you of a younger you. You hire you.

Now you might be the best salesperson in your business, but if you want to grow, you better make sure that you do more than just hire on your gut.

It’s a good feeling to have, but there are other factors that come into play.

 Fill a hole, find a salesperson.

This is a big mistake that I see all the time. Hiring under stress. As the saying goes “Hire slowly Fire quickly.”  As a business owner, we do feel the pressure of getting a position filled.

Maybe, as a sales manager, you may feel the pressure to fill the quota and get the sales back on track. It’s natural that you push them through quickly. I have been guilty of this myself until I learned that hiring to fill a hole is a recipe for failure. How do you learn? Watching that money flush down the “you know what”!

No one can sell as well as you do”

This one is a beauty. You are afraid to hire because they might just not be as good as you. I remember taking on a position of Sales Manager in a company, to find that the amazing sales manager I replaced had all the top clients, held onto them, and starved the team of success.

No one could sell like him I was told. Well, guess what? When I gave some of his clients to the other members of the team, the business never looked back.

If your business is going well and you want to grow, this attitude will stop you in your tracks.

Growth only comes in a business if you are prepared to hire more ‘how’ people that can free you up to help you make better decisions around what you are good at.

I can pretty much guarantee my clients a foolproof way to multiply their business tenfold. Hire more people to do the how and you do what you get excited about.

Those are the big three mistakes that business owners make when it comes to hiring salespeople.

Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com

 

Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media.  He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED”  TRY ME!

How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake You Can Make when Hiring a Salesperson

How to hire a Superstar Salesperson each and every time

Today, I released my free report on How to Hire a Superstar Salesperson each and every time.

To coincide with releasing this free report, I wanted to share some of my thoughts around how I have hired salespeople and some key takeaways I have learned, through good and bad hires.

Who is this for?

It’s for any business owner, Sales Manager, or a startup who needs to hire a salesperson who is rewarded by a salary and performance-based performance-based

If you’ve ever hired any salespeople, like I have, you’ve usually made or have made one of these mistakes.

Just so you know, I’m fully qualified to be writing about this stuff – I’ve hired, fired, coached, or managed hundreds of salespeople, over too many years to remember,  in many different countries and languages.

It’s fair to say that I’ve been through the school of hard knocks.

I hired magnificent salespeople beginning with one wonderful amazing woman, a single mum, who through sheer hard work and effort exceeded her targets in her job as a sales manager in a small media company in New Zealand.

With my main business, I was lucky to find two brothers for my U.S. operation who brought in millions of dollars.

These two superstars have certain traits, talents, and habits, that we knew would leverage our sales systems worldwide, if we could duplicate their process…. which we did.

As a result, I noticed traits in these people, secrets that I always look for. I think I know by now, what they are.

Before I go into that, let’s talk about two of the mistakes that we often make, when we go to hire salespeople.

What not to do

What’s the cost of Hiring Badly?

Think about these stats for a moment. According to a Harvard Business review article, the cost of replacing a salesperson that was hired badly ranges from $75,000 to $90,000, while other sales positions can cost a company as much as $300,000.

These figures don’t reflect the lost sales while a replacement is found and trained.

One of my good friends who owns a telecommunication company has told me a bad hire for him costs a least $1 million over time.

That’s horrendous. This may not change as we enter this new world of communication. As a company or small business, you simply cannot afford to hire on gut alone.

Is Fit Important? Maybe.

A culture fit in any business is important, there’s no doubt about that, but what you need to discover firstly is “Does this person have the ability/talent to do the job?”

That is the underlying question that needs to be asked by you as an employer of salespeople.

In the next blog, I am going to cover off some of the common mistakes that we made when we hired a salesperson for our business.

Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com

 

Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media.  He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED”  TRY ME!