| Let's talk about the importance of using good recruiting | | | | competition is by recruiting away top sales and |
| practices to hire top performing sales and marketing | | | | marketing people from your competitor. How do you |
| professionals in today's economy. It's not a secret that | | | | go about finding a good recruiting firm for this? Well, |
| the economy is on a sustained growth path for the | | | | start by isolating on recruiting companies that really |
| last several years. What that has caused is much | | | | specialize is sales and marketing and the recruiting of |
| higher employment. We're down to almost 5 % in | | | | those types of functions within companies. There's a |
| Oregon, but even nation wide the number is even less | | | | lot of generic recruiting and headhunting firms out there |
| than that. And if you look at the unemployment figure, | | | | that claim to be experts at sales and marketing but |
| that includes all of the structural unemployment. So, the | | | | when you dig deeper you'll find out they usually don't |
| fact is, most really talented people, particularly top | | | | have nearly as much in-depth expertise for doing sales |
| producers in top companies in the sales and marketing | | | | and marketing recruiting as you might suspect. |
| fields, are all fully employed. That means it's going to be | | | | Why is it important to seek a specialized recurring |
| very difficult for you to hire top A-type producers in | | | | company for this purpose? Hiring sales and marketing |
| sales and marketing from placing ads strictly on the | | | | people is completely different that hiring engineering |
| job instead of just or Career builder or other such job | | | | talent, IT professionals or other operations or finance |
| boards. It's just not possible to find the best candidates | | | | types of positions. It's very easy to be fooled when it |
| and get them to come to work for your company | | | | comes to hiring sales people. Most sales people do a |
| though such tactics anymore. | | | | good job of selling themselves through the interview |
| In order to find really top sales and marketing talent, | | | | process and as a result, for the untrained eye, it's really |
| whether it be VP, director level, marketing manager, | | | | easy to make a hiring mistake because, even though |
| sales manager, down to entry level telesales personnel, | | | | they sell themselves well through the interview |
| you're going to have to go into your competition and | | | | process, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to |
| find those people and extract them and get them to | | | | sell well for your company. So this is one of the |
| work for your company. This is why using a recruiter | | | | reasons why you want to focus on getting a recruiting |
| can really be of value. If you don't have the | | | | company that has a specialized practice in hiring sales |
| wherewithall, the time, or perhaps the desire to go | | | | and marketing talent. They go well beyond asking the |
| calling blinding into your competition it makes really | | | | typical questions and use advanced behavior |
| good sense to bring on a professional headhunting or | | | | interviewing and screening techniques, as well as sales |
| recruiting firm that can actually perform that activity for | | | | aptitude and marketing aptitude profiling techniques, to |
| you. Headhunters aren't needed, on the other hand, for | | | | separate the A players; in other words, the real top |
| finding really easy to find or easy to fill positions. But | | | | producers, from the rest of the field. So if you're going |
| unfortunately, in sales and marketing, it's always a | | | | to go out and try to recruit sales and marking talent in |
| challenge because the top producers are always | | | | a full economy such as what were experiencing now, |
| working. Those people who get results in sales are | | | | you should strongly consider using a recruiting firm that |
| very hard to come by. Companies covet them and | | | | has special skills in this area. |
| they pay them well and they want to keep them and | | | | Once you find that firm, really scrutinize their process |
| retain them. So as economy heats up, employee | | | | to make sure that it's rigorous and it includes such |
| retention is a key element to most company's strategy | | | | things as sales aptitude profiling and testing. Profiling the |
| to growth. | | | | actual sales person's achievement history over the last |
| If you're trying to grow your business and trying to add | | | | several years to show how well the person has |
| additional top sales and marketing talent, you're going | | | | actually performed against quota and also performing |
| to need to find a way to find and locate those top | | | | in depth background checks in interviews to really |
| sales and marketing producers from other companies | | | | ascertain whether or not the person is capable at the |
| and convince them to come to work for you. That's | | | | levels that they claim to. |
| the fastest way to take market share from your | | | | |