Written by sales consultant Ray Reed and
edited by Kelly Johnson. This is pt.1 of 2.
Building an exceptional federal sales team starts with your hiring process. Using the same recruiting and interviewing methods as everyone else in the federal marketplace will not yield exceptional results, which is why I recommend a different (and better!) approach to sourcing and vetting high-quality candidates for your team.
First, let's look at the most typical approach to hiring to see why it's not always the best way...
The vast majority of federal sales team leaders rely on a set of very narrowly defined criteria by which to source quality salespersons. That is, they tend to look for salespeople who
a) have experience selling within the federal marketplace, and
b) will fit within the established workplace culture.
This approach often takes an unnecessarily long time and produces a small pool of frankly underwhelming candidates to choose from. And because the team leaders don't have a robust pipeline of good options, they make hiring decisions they know they'll regret in the long run. Still, open positions must be filled, even if they're not the perfect salesperson.
Early in my leadership career, I felt that same frustration from unsatisfactory hires. I knew that what I was doing wasn't working and that I needed to think differently about my approach. What changed my way of thinking was getting to work with one of the best recruiters in the business at that time: Brian Kim. Together, Brian and I re-evaluated our hiring criteria and decided to do something different; instead of continuing to utilize an industry experience-based approach, we decided to adopt a traits-based approach for assessing potential candidates. This is what we did:
We imagined our “perfect” candidate and identified the important qualities this person would possess, such as intelligence, high energy, executive presence, and, crucially, a successful track record in sales. The key difference here is that our ideal candidate could come from any industry. What they sold wasn’t important. All that mattered was that they were successful. The results of this new approach to recruiting were a game-changer for me. It’s how I know that a skilled salesperson can sell anything - if they believe in the product.
A disingenuous salesperson will never be a very successful one. Clients will pick up on such dishonesty. Remember this: Good people make great salespeople. Oh, and this goes without saying, but be sure to brief your recruiters on this new approach as well.
Recruiting great candidates, however, is only the first half of the hiring process. How you conduct interviews is equally important. So, in next week’s article, I'll teach you how to simplify your interview process and get better results from them.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you back here next week with Part 2!
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