My article this month focuses on the customer-facing manager, that person responsible for building the company’s business by hiring salespeople. It’s harder than it sounds!

It is only in the world of sales that anyone from an accounting clerk to the CEO can tell exactly how your team is doing simply by looking at the numbers. In other departments, managers can hire what would later be considered “dead wood,” in a mistake that could go undetected for years. This is not true in the world of sales. You’ve got to be right-on with your hiring process or everyone will know of your mistake.

While many life sciences sales people have a technical upbringing, their decision making process bears little similarity to that of the scientist or the engineer. To recruit them in the same way that you would attract your company’s technical staff would be courting disaster. The reason for this lies in the nature of the successful salesperson, and in the change of approach that this necessitates for your recruitment process.

What Makes Sales Recruitment So Different
It is this decision-making process that makes sales recruitment so unique. Sit down with a successful salesperson over a beer or a cup of Java and ask her how she happened to make her last career decision. We do this all the time, and it is illuminating.

Scientists rely on an analytical process. When a company is recruiting a scientist, the hiring manager has to respect the candidate’s need to get all the data — and then give him or her the thinking room they need to make an intelligent decision. But salespeople are often emotional decision-makers, and this makes the recruitment process much more of a roller-coaster ride.

These people trust their gut feelings. A good salesperson has a personal history with success that has come by tapping into some kind of inner reserve of intuition. And when approaching them, you simply can’t lay all the facts on the table and assume that they will analyze them and want to work for you. You’ve got to know what the emotional elements are that will trigger their interest. In other words, you have to know a heck of a lot more about what makes them “tick” than you do in any other type of professional recruitment!

Understanding Emotional Decision “Triggers”
Good questioning is your only tool here. In order to understand your recruiting “hook,” review the typical reasons why salespeople are receptive to a recruiting call:

“I want to make more money” — Contrary to sales management lore, it is usually not the best salesperson who feels this way. We get very uncomfortable when in the first thirty seconds a contact asks us over the phone, “What does this job pay?” Obviously, earnings are very far up the ladder in any good salesperson’s list of priorities, but when it emerges as #1, it is usually a sign of trouble later on in the process.

“I don’t like my current boss.” — What does the salesperson need to do his or her current job? It may say something about how much hand-holding this individual will require from a future supervisor — how easy or difficult this person will be to work with. It will also clue you into the factors that this candidate will be using to determine whether the new boss fits his working style.

“The timing is right — I’ve hit my year’s numbers and the challenge is gone” — This is a glossy reason that sounds good but may have underlying issues behind it. Although every successful salesperson has this feeling at some point following a good year, this response is often a cover for some other reason entirely. Keep digging.

“I’m looking for an opportunity to move up into sales management” — This is also one of those responses that candidates sometimes throw out in order to sound like an attractive catch. Quite often, employers are looking for people who can remain satisfied with a hands-on sales career. If there aren’t management positions available soon, than it is better to clarify this as opposed to filling the position again in 10 or 12 months.

“The travel is getting to me” — This is a fairly straightforward comment and one that is easy to satisfy if you truly offer a more compact territory. It can also indicate that there could be family issues working behind the scenes — not always issues that will go away when the travel time is reduced.

“The sale is not challenging enough — I would like to get into a more sophisticated technology” — Often a candidate who has a science degree and an interest in technology will get bored if their sales process consists of opening up a catalog for the customer. This is a great emotional “hook” for the company who is recruiting for a more consultative, technology-oriented business.

Other reasons to be open for the headhunter’s call — If the company has been acquired, the commission program has been changed, or the field sales force has been downsized, you can bet that your call will be returned promptly.

Honor Your Commitments
It may seem like common sense to state that honoring your commitments throughout the recruitment process will increase your chances of landing the best candidates. And yet, it is one of the most common mistakes made by hiring managers. During the recruitment process, candidates are ultra-conscious of each and every comment made to them. I am reminded of a recent situation in which we lost our prime candidate because two or three phone meetings with the prospective new boss had to be rescheduled.
Here are some examples of what I mean by keeping commitments:

• “We’ll be getting back to you in the next few days” is a common interview closure. When that period of time goes to two or three weeks, it is a serious issue of credibility that negatively influences the better candidates. The best salespeople will be attracted to situations in which communication is direct instead of vague.
• Handshake deals only lead to misinterpretations later; ensure your written offer matches exactly what you’ve discussed. Give strong consideration to using a “letter of agreement” instead of a typical offer letter. Get a verbal agreement and then firm it up with all the facts on paper. This insures less waiting time for decisions — and can often stop the “offer letter as counter-offer bait” phenomenon.

Develop a Mutual Respect
Developing a mutual respect with your candidates is critical. The process of recruitment is a lot like a romance. . . both parties should feel this mutual respect from day one.

• Don’t use a “recruiter feeding frenzy” approach to filling your sales positions. Fostering respect with the best candidates is far easier when they don’t have four or five calls about the same position within the first week.
• Build respect by setting up specific appointment times for your phone interviews and keeping them. Then, agree to specific follow-up points after the initial discussion and keep those as well. Give your candidate a follow-up point of their own and see how they handle it, “Do a little homework and find out how we are perceived out in your territory, and give me a call to follow up. I’d be happy to keep the discussion going, and will be available next Tuesday at Noon. Would that work for you?” Watch your clock on Tuesday and learn a great deal about how that salesperson feels about professional follow-up.

Don’t Stop Recruiting Until the Salesperson Starts
There are too many open positions that get filled and then re-filled; too many “sure things” that don’t end up coming to fruition. Your strategy needs to include more than a Plan A and a Plan B.

• Because you are dealing with sales professionals, it will be very easy for candidates to sell you and your H/R department on their interest level in the position. It happens all the time that companies don’t find out until the last minute what the real interest level was.
• When recruiting salespeople, keep three conversations going at different levels of dialogue, with three separate candidates. A single backup candidate is often too risky. This “rule of three” has been proven over and over again in the recruitment industry, so much so that it has become ingrained into new recruiter training: “Three candidates equals a placement, anything less equals a headache.”

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David G. Jensen
Contributing Editor

David G. Jensen is Managing Director of Kincannon & Reed Executive Search (www.krsearch.com), a leading retained search firm in the biosciences. You can reach Dave at (928) 274-2266 or via [email protected].