By Karl Graf
Benchmarking your new employees against current employees is a common practice. But, what if your current team isn’t performing at a level that will take your company to the next stage? Hiring an “A” team is the most important thing business owners and managers do, after all, a good team can make even the laziest of coaches win a championship.
How well your team performs determines how much money your company makes, how many goals the company reaches and how much you as the manager must work to overcompensate for an incompetent sales team. Arguably, a company’s sales force is one of the most important assets to the company. The time, money and energy you spend developing your team will be rewarded ten times over when the team performs at heights that take the company to the next level.
There are many ways to benchmark your team but some of the key areas are: how well do they accept and respond to challenges, growth and change; what is their self awareness; do they have the ambition and drive to succeed as a commission based sales person; are they individuals that take control of situations or do they let situations control them; how well do they address conflict. These are a few of the areas that company’s can look to assess a potential employee.
Using tools that benchmark prospective employees does not have to be an expensive or drawn out process. Companies near the Springfield area that specialize in this are: Devine, DISC, and Sandler Training. These companies and many others specialize in helping companies weigh through the headache of picking which candidates to interview and hire. Having a benchmarking tool before a candidate steps into your office for the first time can be a huge asset, it helps you know how to shape the interview, what questions to ask and filters out those that are good candidate’s verses good interviewers.
I often hear stories from business owners and sales managers that come into my office and tell the story of the guy with the great interview. The story is always the same. His interview was stellar. He walked in with a nice Brook’s Brother’s suit, impressive resume, graduated top of his class from a semi-prestigious university, eloquent speaker, complimented the interviewer, and knew pertinent information about the company. The candidate seemed too good to be true. As the story goes, he usually is. Six months after hiring him we find out he is unable to close new business, has a fear of cold calling, doesn’t follow-through on tasks and has zero process orientation but, he was a good interviewer. Unfortunately, this type of scenario happens all too often in the sales profession and many others. The only way to filter through the chaos of the interview process is to be a step ahead of the candidate. Before any decent candidate comes through your office door they have researched you, why haven’t you researched them?
Using a benchmarking tool is much like online dating. You can see if the person is a match before you ever go on the first date. A benchmarking tool will help to get only those candidates who align with your companies needs and wants in the door for the interview process, you can then weed out potential employees from the best of the best and those that match what you are truly looking for.
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