How does any small business owner set about recruiting a sales manager?
Recruiting anybody is a risk. No matter how carefully candidates are interviewed and references checked, there?s always the question of whether there?ll be a clash of cultures.
It?s doubly difficult with sales people. They spend a lot of time on their own with the business? most precious resource ? the customers. They can do a lot of damage, before anybody knows about it.
It?s even worse with sales managers. ?In any small business the sales manager is a top dog, not necessarily the boss of course, but certainly in a position to cause real problems. ?And sales managers are the kind of people who won?t shrink from confrontation. They need to be opinionated, straight talking, and demanding. That personality is almost a prerequisite for success in the job.
Choosing somebody who will add value without risking the delicate balance of relationships is vital. But its hard to test that before the job is offered.
On the other side of the coin, its hard to get successful sales managers to consider a position with a small company. Leaving a secure position in a big business, with the support structure and compensation usually provided by such organisations isn?t attractive.
That means most candidates applying for the job aren?t successful sales managers. ?They might be inexperienced. They might be ineffective. They might be downright disasters.
The business owner, in order to get the right person, will need to sell the job as well as test the applicants. That?s going to take an exciting vision backed up with a pragmatic understanding of what it takes to build and run a sales operation.
Our article How To Hire A Sales Manager?offers some solid advice on how to look for, attract, and select the best person available. ?It suggests places to look, risks to be careful of, questions to ask, and answers to look for.
It can be equally interesting for anybody wanting to get a sales management job with a small business, as will the articles you?ll find here in our Sales Manager category. There?s lots of comment about the challenges of the job and advice on how to overcome them.
Why doesn?t the traditional approach to selling and sales management work so well any more? What can the modern sales professional do to stay relevant in today?s customer driven markets? Check out our eBook Reengineering Sales Management?for ideas on how to embrace the new order of customer driven buyer/seller relationships.
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Steve Reeves at Google+
Source: http://frontofficebox.com/2012/12/07/recruiting-sales-managers-for-small-business/
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