Category Archives: Sales Hiring & Recruiting Articles

After many years of answering all sorts of sales management, recruiting and performance questions, I decided to put together an FAQ for hiring amazing sales people. These lessons have been learned from decades spent in the trenches building and managing successful sales teams as an entrepreneur and sales leader, as well as recruiting, investing and

The percentage of sales reps at quota on many sales teams implies a serious struggle with sales hiring efficiency. According to the 2013 CSO Insights Report entitled “Optimizing Hiring Effectiveness, Getting the Right Players on the Field”, the average percentage of reps making quota was 62%. When the participants in the study were asked to rate their

I heard this joke a couple of days ago and thought it was worth passing along: HR Rep: Here is a stack of resumes for your open sales position. Hiring Manager: Can you please show me the good resumes. HR Rep: Here you go. [hands over a dozen resumes] Hiring Manager:  [Takes the resumes and throws six

Ask different sales managers what inside sales means and you will get different answers. One popular definition is that inside sales is a role where the sales person receives inbound leads and attempts to close them or qualifies them and then if required makes an introduction to a more senior sales rep. Another common view is

Spend some time with high achieving sales people and it quickly becomes obvious that they share some key personality traits. Evidence of common attributes amongst top sales people comes from many high profile studies. Some of these are particularly notable in terms of the specific traits of top sales performers. Dr. Christopher Croner, Ph.D, who himself has