You Can’t Hire Enough Stars (And What To Do About It)

You can’t hire enough star performers. What is required to succeed in sales has changed too much.

Not only do salespeople need to the old sales acumen skills like prospecting, storytelling, closing, diagnosing, differentiating, and negotiation, they also require newer sales skills like business acumen, change management, and leadership skills. Your clients are going to hold you accountable for results, and these newer skill are necessary to producing them.

There are enough salespeople who can create Level Four Value. So what to do?

Build Them

If you can’t hire enough star performers, then you have to build them yourself.

You have to ensure that they have the old school skills; they’re still completely necessary. But you also need to give them training, coaching, and development necessary to give them the new skills they need. You also need to give salespeople a series of significant experiences that allow them to learn and develop these skills.

You hire for attributes and train for these skills.

Give Them Time

You need to give new salespeople the time to develop those skills. You can’t expect them to have all of the skills they need. And you can’t expect them to develop quickly. The experiences that make salespeople valuable to their clients take time to acquire.

You can’t expect too much from new salespeople too soon. You can only expect progress along that path.

Just because someone isn’t a star performer when you hire them doesn’t mean that they won’t ever be. But not giving them the time and development opportunities does ensure that they won’t ever be star performers.

Questions

What skills are necessary to succeed in sales now?

Why do so few salespeople have all of these skills?

How much time does it take to really develop the skills necessary to really create value for your clients?

What responsibility do you have for developing these skills in yourself?

What responsibility do you have for developing these skills in your salesforce?