SECRETS TO FINDING SALES SUPERSTARS: If you know precisely what to look for and how, the chances are excellent that you will experience few hiring emergencies and will be in a great position to discover genuine sales superstars.

In the article below, "Good Help Is Hard to Find - Especially When Managers Aren't Looking," Matthew Neuberger, President and Chairman of Neuberger and Company, Inc. shows step by step how to prepare and execute a winning strategy for recruiting sales superstars.

Neuberger and Company, Inc., is an authorized licensee of the Sandler Sales Institute. The firm is recognized for its leadership role in training "executional" leadership, sales and sales management training and sales technology integration across a multitude of industries.

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Good Help Is Hard to Find - Especially When Managers Aren't Looking

By Matthew Neuberger, President and Chairman, Neuberger and Company, Inc.

Sales managers love it when they find a sales superstar. And why not? These people are the ones who come in, take minimal time and effort to get up to speed, and begin bringing in profitable business right away. Who doesn't want a rainmaker?

The primary reason such individuals are so coveted is because they are so rare. If a talented sales professional came on board every day, it wouldn't be nearly as exciting. Clients are always quick to tell me when they've hired a superstar. I usually ask the manager a series of questions to find out the level of credibility behind that high opinion.

The biggest factor is the manager's strategy for recruiting. If there is not one, or it is spotty, I rarely put much faith in their accolades. They love the new hire because they need a new hire. They probably are over looking several faults because they want to believe the new candidate will succeed.

Finding Talented Sales People Takes Commitment and Effort

Sales superstars almost never fall into your lap. The most common complaint I receive from sales managers is that they wish their people would prospect more. They are always quick to point out that more opportunities and a full pipeline can't hurt, which, of course, is true. However, recruiting and hiring is the sales manager version of a sales person's prospecting.

It is the thing they should always be doing but never get around to. Like a sales person who finds no opportunities in their pipeline, a sales manger scrambles to find a candidate when they lose a staff member or find performance is in desperate need of a boost. This is where pseudo sales superstars are born.

While sales people fill their pipeline with unqualified opportunities, a sales manager fills spots with necessary sales candidates. The result is the same. One lucky candidate is hired and is acclimated to the company. Unfortunately, when the recruiting process is rushed, many candidates never start making the impact that seemed so inevitable. They flounder and typically quit or are dismissed within a year.

Recruiting Sales Superstars Should Be an Ongoing Effort

Just like sales prospecting, recruiting for sales is an ongoing effort and can't be done effectively when the manager desperately needs someone. Of course, companies can't always be placing ads and actively looking for staff when there isn't a position to fill. It also creates a sense of paranoia in the current staff if they always see the manager looking for new people.

However, the manager is personally responsible for always looking for new sales recruits. Sooner or later a staff member will leave. If the manager is doing a good job, the staff will grow. Recognize that these things are inevitable and be ready. How can you do that?

First, define what a successful sales person looks like in your company or industry. What skills or qualities should you be looking for and what are some techniques for uncovering those qualities in a sales candidate? When it's time to see candidates, the biggest stumbling block is an unclear idea of who you're looking for.

Another tactic is to keep your ears and eyes open. Most sales managers interact with sales people outside the company. If someone strikes you as a potential superstar, it's not a bad idea to keep their contact information around. You don't need to plunder other companies or competitors' staff, but it never hurts to know how to reach people and vice versa if things change.

Plan Execution Before Actively Beginning Recruiting

Finally, it is a good strategy to know how you will execute when you are ready to actively recruit:

How will you advertise the position?

How and who will interview candidates?

How much time is acceptable to find the very best candidate?

If you don't find a great fit quickly, can an interim solution be instituted to allow the staff to function without rushing to a decision?

Boil it down and prepare a well thought out recruiting strategy. Know precisely what to look for and how. If you are always prepared with a winning recruiting strategy, chances are you will find few hiring emergencies and will be in an optimal position to bring on true sales superstars.

For more information about Neuberger and Company, Inc., a Baltimore-based management consulting, sales force development and training firm, please contact our Managing Director Philip Niedermair at 443-501-3557 or via e-mail at Philip@Neubergerco.com.

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RECOMMENDED READING: Information Overload: Is It Time for a Data Diet?

The August 25, 2008 issue of Computerworld included an article by Mary Brandel that examines today's general information overload, concluding that the condition is not going to go away, and that organizations need to find ways to deal with it, particularly when it comes to determining which sources are considered reliable:

Today, ideas and discussions are broadcast not at a prescribed time on a specific channel via a single medium, but all the time, on millions of forums, discussion groups, blogs and social networks. thanks to RSS feeds, Twitter messages, mailing list and newsletter subscriptions, instant messaging, e-mail and Web surfing. It's gotten to the point where information - which should be useful - has in some cases become a distraction. Here are two low-cost but high-impact approaches:

Smarten up the tools. Help your users learn to drill down into the intelligent features in sites like Digg and Delicious.

Pull, don't push. Allow employees to opt into information. Rather than sending out reports by e-mail, a company should enable users to choose which reports they want to receive through an RSS feed. Not only would this save bandwidth and disk space, but it also would free up people's minds."