New Sales Hire Selection Criteria Debate – Experience Level

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The next hire you make for your sales team will be a critical one. This new person needs to be productive, fit in the culture, and stay. You need the performance boost and you can’t afford to invest in another “B” or “C” player. 

This time you plan to involve the whole sales and marketing team in the hiring decision. But the debate on selection criteria continues…should the new hire be experienced or relatively inexperienced? For the sales team that has been indoctrinated in value selling training, the question is relevant. In which hire is there greater value? 

We are told there’s a trade-off. Each sales team will have to decide what would suit them best. In general:

  • An experienced salesperson should be more productive faster.  But their hiring costs and expectations will be greater.  
  • An inexperienced sales rep will likely fit into the existing culture more easily but take longer to contribute.  They will also need more training, coaching and support from their sales manager. 
  • The advantage of experience is that they will be able to add value to clients more quickly, but they may be more difficult to manage and could resist the way you want your team to sell and position the company if it is different than their previously successful sales practices. 
  • A plus on the side of inexperience is that they are usually more malleable, hungrier and more eager to learn.  Additionally, if they don’t stay with the company, the cost of losing them will be less.

The bottom line? You pay for experience in dollars but experience typically pays for itself. For the non-experienced, you have to invest more onboarding, development and management time, but they often return that investment in greater loyalty and faster adaptation to the value selling methodologies and unique high performing sales culture that you are trying to create. Which is best for you?

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/solution-selling-training

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