A Good Sales Recruiter is Worth Its Weight In Gold.

Often times we come across companies that are looking to hire sales people but don't recognize the value of an outside sales recruiting service. The reason is because they are experienced hiring managers. Certainly most sales managers, one of their key capabilities is to hire good people, but getting to those people is half the battle. This is where a good recruiting company can help. A good head hunter knows how to go in and access the best talent, where ever it may be, including companies which you could not approach directly and can make the difference between hiring B and C players for your company, those who are out looking for a job, and hiring A players, those who typically aren't out looking for a job.

The results between hiring a B or C player and hiring an A player can be truly astounding. Particularly in the sales arena, a top produce is one who can produce several times the amount of sales as a B or C player. Getting to those people is no easy task and that's where seeking outside assistance can make a real difference. What's the bottom line impact? Sometimes it can be worth several million dollars of incremental sales for your company per year. Can you afford not to hire the best in your business? If you really are trying to grow and take your company to the next level, it's important that you don’t settle for less than the best. This is why a head hunter is so critical to bringing you the talent that you need in order to grow your company.

recruiting
career search

Focus Your Career Search

If you are a top sales and marketing producer at the executive, mid-level, or frontline, and looking for a new job, make sure that you have a laser focus in your resume on what your career objective is. Spell out exactly the ideal job you are looking for at the front of your resume in succinct terms so that anybody who sees your resume understands exactly what you're looking for, why you would fit the opportunity that they are screening for, and how they can help you find what you want.

A good career objective includes the following elements: position, title, size of company, industry focus, duties and responsibilities, and overall cultural fit. By spelling out these elements, in clear, succinct, short sentences, you'll be doing yourself a great favor. Most recruiters and people who are looking for talent are really trying to figure out who lines up exactly with their requirements. They are trying to do a quick screen and a job match. By giving people a precise idea of what your career objective is and how it lines up with your experience; you will be setting yourself apart from most resumes which define their skills in very broad terms. Likewise, by doing this you'll also be able to get much better help from your colleagues and associates when you are out networking, looking for that next job and looking for referrals to that next job.

Why? Because people who you meet with to network are usually happy to help, but they need to know exactly what you are looking for, and you need to paint a picture for them in their mind that gives them a precise idea of the ideal situation that you'd be looking for in a new company. If you do that, and when you do that right, well connected people who are trying to help you will immediately know who to send you on to who might be able to help you land the job of your dream. Make sure your career objective is very well focused on your resume and that it covers the essential elements of your ideal job scenario. If you do this well, what are the chances that you'll get that ideal job? Well, a lot better than if you don't do this right.

recruiting
career search

Online Tool For Recruiting Sales People

I understand that a lot of companies out there don't feel that they need to use outside recruiters, even if they specialize in sales and marketing or other types of outside support resources. If your company is planning on going it alone with the regard to hiring new sales people, consider using an outside sales profiling tool such as the one that we use at Objective Management. The express screen tool is a very helpful tool that will help you to determine whether or not a particular candidate can and will sell for your company and whether or not their selling style and experience is aligned with the profile of what it is that you are looking for in a top sales person. This tool, while not providing the only information that you need for the hiring process, will give you yet another set of inputs and data which will make it extremely helpful for you as you make your hiring decision.

All of us have blind spots when it comes to hiring sales people. Often times, we bond with the candidates and we tend to hire people that we like or have the same style as we do, yet a lot of miss-hires come from this exact flaw. This is why it is so important to get an objective, outside read as to whether or not a candidate is really suitable for your company's need before you make an offer.

An online sales profiling tool should be used as a compliment as opposed to a substitute for other parts of your interviewing process. Those interviewing processes should include behavioral interviewing, team interviewing, and sales achievement tracking to name a few, but by using this outside tool, it will greatly reduce your risk of a miss-hire when it comes to hiring sales people. I suggest that if you're not using an outside tool such as this as a part and partial of your sales hiring process, you're missing an opportunity to adopt a widely recognized best practice when it comes to hiring sales people. So, even when you don't want to use a recruiter, consider getting outside support and looking at the tools that are available on the internet today.

recruiting

Candidates: Focus Your Message

If you're a sales and marketing executive, you've probably spent a good portion of your career developing and refining specific positioning and messaging that you've used for the companies that you've worked with with your customers, right? Well, all I'm saying here is, before you go out to market yourself, make sure that you're properly packaged, just like any company would be properly packaged in its marketplace. What that means is that you've got to make sure that your marketing message is clear, concise, and lines up perfectly with what you want to be doing.
This is where a lot of executives fall down. They say, "Well, I'll be happy to take anything in sales and marketing, I'll do just about anything." Again, that's not good enough.

If you're passion is working in manufacturing automation software, focus on that. If you are looking for a VP of business development position, make sure that's part of your message. If you're looking for that kind of an opportunity in a start-up or emerging growth company, make sure that's part of your career objective as well. Instead of saying I'd take anything, approach you’re networking with, "I'm looking for a VP of business development position with a start up or emerging growth Software Company in the manufacturing automation sector." That kind of career objective is something I can get my arms around and start helping somebody along the way to find the opportunity they're looking for. So, make sure if you’re a sales or marketing executive to eat your own dog food when it comes to honing your own message before you get out on the search beat.

recruiting
career search