Unlocking Sales Success: Rethinking Recruitment in 2024

I attended the Sales Confidence event yesterday, and Mark Ackers reported on the State of SDR survey of 1069 SDRs. 

• 1 in 12 SDRs describe their role as unfulfilling.
• 22% ranked their main worry as being the high-performance expectations.
• 48% say they will leave within the next 12 months.

Although shocking, the results of this survey may not surprise you about the poor state of the sales industry. On some continents, there has been a revolving door of sales hiring and firing in the past 12 months. In the fast-paced realm of sales, change is the only constant, which is not always a good look! 

The numbers from B2B Sales Benchmarks H1 2023 Update; reveal that over 70% of sales professionals missed their targets. (source in comments).

Some believe the culprits are budget constraints and the heightened scrutiny from buyers. Yes, it is a grim situation, but more concerning is that this statistic has languished around the 50% mark for the past three decades. 

 The poor performance bar has not just been raised but has reached new heights.

Let's look at the contributing factors and a way forward.

1.     The New Normal: Navigating Budget Constraints and Buyer Scrutiny

Meeting targets has become a formidable challenge in a landscape where buyers are both risk and change averse. Research by Objective Management Group confirms that top sellers still manage to hit their marks even in challenging markets and economic environments. 

This prompts a crucial question:

What would this mean for our business if you could measure the competencies that create these sales-specific success criteria?

2.     The Power of the 23%: Decoding Revenue Contribution

The statistic that 23% of sellers contribute 83% of revenue (Source: B2B Sales Benchmarks | H1 2023 Update) should be a wake-up call for businesses. The implications extend beyond mere numbers. 

What would this mean in deciding the optimal size of your sales team? And, critically, what impact would it have on your sales team development process and the overall cost of operations?

3.     Predicting Success, Creating Success: The Paradigm Shift

Sales team performance has been a black hole shrouded in ambiguity for far too long. Sales leaders often found themselves in the dark, relying on traditional, one-size-fits-all methods for recruitment and development. But now, it's time to turn the spotlight on known success criteria and transform challenges into opportunities.

Supporting a New Way to Hire:

Understanding the specific competencies that drive sales success allows you to redefine your approach to hiring. Gone are the days of generic job descriptions; instead, focus on identifying and hiring individuals whose strengths align with the proven success criteria created from 2.5 million other salespeople assessed in our database. By doing so, recruitment becomes a customised strategic process geared towards bringing in talent who can adapt to evolving buyer behaviours and thrive in a dynamic market.

Considering 46% of sales hires fail within 18 months, how could you reshape your recruitment process to reduce the risk and cost of bad hires?

As you rethink recruitment, the emphasis is not solely on filling positions but on assembling a team that mirrors the proven success criteria and the blueprint for recruitment – seek individuals who demonstrate competence and qualities, ensuring a higher on-the-job predictive success and longevity within your sales operation and organisation.

Supporting a New Way to Develop Talent:

Choose a data approach to assess, coach and develop top talent against the identified success criteria. Leverage data and insights from successful performers to inform your development decisions, creating a team that meets targets and consistently exceeds them.

Clients can also tailor their benchmark to companies of similar size, geography, and industry. Benchmarking your existing sales team again the 21 success criteria of what makes the best example of on-the-job predictive performance. 

Attitude Over Aptitude: How to Build an All-Star Team

Winning sales teams blend technical skills with a growth mindset and shared values, emphasising the importance of a proven process that places significant value on sales-specific benchmarks of success and skill agility, mindset, coachability and collaboration.

The process of ensuring an excellent philosophical fit before conducting behavioural interviews is essential after the candidate meets the known success criteria. Weeding out those that do not meet proven success criteria will release management time and, ultimately, accelerate your sales team's success shaped by its collective mindset and shared values for success rather than technical skills alone.

What is Needed:

Tailor Proven Success Criteria: Understand the competencies driving sales success and tailor them to your unique business context. Recognise that what works for one might only work for some.

Strategic Recruitment Process: With the knowledge that nearly half of sales hires fail within 18 months, redefine your recruitment strategy. Seek qualities aligning with proven success criteria, reducing turnover and enhancing team performance.

Holistic Team Development: Instead of a generic approach, embrace a holistic team development process. With personalised coaching notes to help guide each sales professional to realise their potential and exceed their expectation and yours. Invest in refining the identified success criteria within your team, aligning individual strengths with the overall team and business objectives.

Predict Success to Create it.

The path to success in 2024 demands a paradigm shift. Predict success by understanding and measuring the specific criteria that drive sales excellence. These insights will transform your team and impact recruitment, development, operational costs, customer growth, and successful outcomes. The Power to predict success is the Power to create it. 

Let's step out of the sales black hole and into a future where challenges are opportunities waiting to be seized. 

Contact me to discuss how I can help you get out of the sales recruitment and development black hole to scale your sales.

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Janice B Gordon, The Customer Growth Expert, founded Scale Your Sales Podcast and Framework, which helps sellers grow revenue through customer excellence and sales—listed as LinkedIn Sales 15 Innovating Sales Influencers to Follow, 2021. Janice B Gordon is a Consultant, International Speaker, Educator and Facilitator, author of Business Evolution: Creating Growth in a Rapidly Changing World and co-author of Heels to Deals: How Women are Dominating Business to Business Sales.

4. We focus on helping you SCALE your customer opportunities by evaluating and closing the gaps in your people, process, and profits. Scale Your Sales enables you to understand what your buyers want and allows you to create the best sales environment to deliver excellent buyer experiences that will retain and build your strategic relationships and sales revenues. For more insights, check out Scale Your Sales.

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