As you go to battle each day, you know what to focus on. You know your business and your niche, and you go after it. You are focused and directed, and of course that is what made you successful in the first place. When you have a good idea, a product or service, you hit the streets and the phone as hard as you can and get those preliminary calls in and ignite the sales cycle.
As the world continues to change around us who are your advance scouts? Who can help prepare you for what is around the bend or over the hill? With your nose to the grindstone you often lose the big picture perspective you need and the effects can be devastating. It’s tantamount to having all the answers when the questions have changed.
So we use our vendors or friends in the business to keep us abreast of what changes they see coming. We use consultants and advisors because they see trends in other companies similar to ours and how they are dealing with them.
Then we have the professionals to help us with their expertise in law and finance. All of our companies have in-house financial analysts, only the very small ones wouldn’t, but they all have outside accountants that do their books and taxes and interpret new laws and their implications with whom they have ongoing relationships. As do attorneys. The big organizations have in-house council. The mid-size companies have representation on retainer, so that they know when they call they will get a return call in short order. These professionals are there to give your organization the professional guidance and therefore the competitive edge you need and want. They look down the road at the changing landscape either from a technology standpoint a legal standpoint or from the perspective of taxes and finance.
What about when it’s time to fill those hard to fill sales positions? Who is the expert in your hiring consultation? Who’s informing you about what your competitors are doing and how the industry is evolving in regards to sales expertise in the face of changes in the industry? Your human resource executive is there to protect and advise, to prevent lawsuits, but serves more of a defensive function than an offensive one that would bring a competitive advantage.
Are you working with someone who is helpful in targeting salaries for not only the reps in your industry, but the median level and top level salaries for sales professionals in your geography both entry level and experienced? Do you trust them like you trust your attorney to keep your company’s issues and challenges confidential? This is just a short list of the reasons to pick a professional recruiter (or agency) and develop a strong relationship.
A trusted advisor in these matters with which you have a preferred customer relationship is as important as an attorney or accountant in these turbulent times. The quote “people are our biggest asset” is somehow lost in the process of searching out new personnel, removing non-performers, paying a competitive compensation package, making the new hires productive, etc.
Consider launching a search for a new account executive. You might have your staff and managers on the lookout, which sometimes yields results, but most times does not. You engage a recruiter, but are suspicious to pay a retainer and try to negotiate as small a fee as possible. It’s a little like taking care of our most valuable asset, our children, but looking for the least expensive babysitter you can find.
If you think through the process of hiring a recruiter or his firm as you would when hiring one of your reps, you will quickly realize that a job order for a sales manager or a branch manager, which carries a sizeable fee will take precedence over an account executive. In effect it will take as much time, maybe more, to find an entry level rep as it will to find an executive. So, just as you would direct your reps to the accounts with the biggest payoff, so do the recruiters. Regardless of the size of the firm one recruiter or one hundred, there is always a finite capacity.
Think of the benefit of a trusted advisor that returns your calls and is available for consultation that brings new ideas and strategic thinking to the table. Consider a consultant that understands you, the culture of your organization, your strategic trajectory, and is always aware of you as a preferred client.
With the changes our industry is going through with the focus on Professional Services, Managed Services, Print Managed Services, capturing an annuity stream and 100 percent of the impressions, the profile of the sales executive has changed. Has your approach to sourcing them also changed? Has your relationship to your partner and advisor in sourcing the new profile also evolved?
Those are good questions for you and your senior staff to discuss at your next meeting. You might even consider inviting a professional recruiter to join the discussion.
