How to Avoid Sales Hiring Mistakes

Have you ever made what you thought was a great sales hiring decision and later realized that it was a mistake?This article will provide you with information about how you can avoid sales hiring mistakes by measuring the person, not the experience.Whether you're an executive, a manager or a team leader, the following information will be beneficial to you.

You are bursting with pride at your most recent hire in the sales department.You lured the guy with a high sales quota from his job at Giant Company to work with your small, entrepreneurial startup and told him you wanted him to work the same magic for you that he worked there.You believe he can do it or you wouldn't have gone after him.He believes he can do it or he wouldn't have left his job there to come to work for you.

He arrives wearing his best suit and carrying his updated Rolodex.You put him in a great spot and wait for superior sales figures.And wait.And wait some more.The sales figures you expected never materialize, even though he's always on the phone and seems to be rattling lots of doorknobs.You try to analyze the situation and can't put your finger on the problem.The gears just never seem to mesh.He's always out of step with your expectations and never quite reaches the level of performance you see in your sales leaders.Or he reached a certain level and never went beyond that.Now he is marching in place.

Such disastrous hiring doesn't have to happen, yet it often does.Why?It's linked to a belief that excellent salespeople are born, not made, and that sales success in one place easily translates to sales success anywhere.These beliefs ignore the fact that a great part of the top salesperson's success at his previous company was linked to that company's culture.Oh yes, a previously successful salesperson can be successful in your company too.But success in your company will depend on you redefining his role, training him well, and both of you thinking about selling for your company in a different way.In short, you can't import his previous success without key changes.

Prior sales success is often the sole criterion that hiring managers look at when considering a candidate for this crucial position.After all, that star by the quota line is a quantitative measurement.You don't get to count the notches in the belt of most other employees.So why is a previous track record a bad thing to look at?

It's not, unless it's the only thing you are looking at.Don't let your search end there.Look within as much as you do without.Study your own company and customers, and think about what you want sales excellence to look like.Only when you have discerned what your company's culture requires can you begin to develop a profile for what your top salespersons should look like.

Doing this is not terribly hard if you are willing to look at people in your company who are already tops in sales and still growing, achieving ever-higher quotas and building on their successes.They will provide you with the standards you need to hire future top salespeople.

Failures at sales are mostly due to a person's underdeveloped skills and to selling the wrong thing.You can put someone with good skills in a nice suit and give her lots of contacts, and she still won't be able to sell if she doesn't have the right attitude, vision, skills and training that you provide.

Also consider that good salespeople are not necessarily born.Some make it look so easy that it seems like native ability, but just like any job done well, a talent for selling takes training, practice and commitment.Yes, there's an art to attaining superior sales, but art is not magic.If you combine the right characteristics that assessments can help you discern with the right training, hiring top salespeople is a science that enhances the art.

About the Author

Jim Sirbasku is co-founder and CEO of Profiles International, a leading provider of human resource management solutions and employment assessments for businesses worldwide.

For more information about how you can avoid sales hiring mistakes, visit our website.

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How to Enjoy More Entrepreneurial Success by Increasing Your Know-How with Practical Learning

Many people would like to start their own businesses and prosper.Unfortunately, few people are properly prepared to succeed as entrepreneurs.Before starting a new business, gaining any practical knowledge they lack, learning what would pay off in producing better growth, profits, and cash flow, would help new leaders to succeed.

To understand what kind of education new business leaders need, let's consider how successful new ventures were once directed.With little to guide them other than the stars and moon, early Polynesians traveled thousands of miles from island to island for trade or to find better places to live.As preparation it's hard to imagine they learned much general theory about celestial navigation.Instead, the training was probably aimed at being sure that a boat could get from island A to island B.

In mapping the western United States, surveyors relied on Native American guides to lead them safely through trackless expanses of wilderness.Those guides, too, relied on practical learning about how to traverse the continent.

Such pathfinders knew to pay attention to their surroundings and how to interpret what they saw to direct their efforts.They often learned by traveling with older, wiser people and trying out their new knowledge under the careful guidance of those experienced people.

Let's look at a modern-day example of gaining and applying such practical learning to building a business.Dr.Tane Caesar helps companies deal with the perils of the ocean while constructing oil-and-gas platforms and pipelines under the sea.This modern day activity connects Dr.Caesar to his Maori ancestors who settled New Zealand after long, arduous journeys in small boats across the Pacific.

This modern-day voyager found that the right kind of learning can give him important business advantages.His philosophy of gaining new knowledge is practical: Any learning he does should directly put money in his pockets.That view reflects his deep suspicion of the formal education industry and his family's non-academic heritage.

This practical approach first served him well in recovering from some initial setbacks in life.Dr.Caesar left home at age 16 and had to earn a living on his own ...or he would suffer.By age 24, he had an importing business in Australia and was recently married, but a year later, the outlook was bleak.He was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the couple had to move to a trailer park, find jobs, and pay back their creditors.After Dr.Caesar discovered a talent for being a croupier, the Caesars succeeded in getting out of their financial hole.

Looking around for a better career alternative, Dr.Caesar discovered that being a deep-sea diver could provide a greater income and many thrills.Developing skill in this work, Dr.Caesar became a supervisor of diving teams.Building on that experience, he now provides health, safety, and environmental management consulting for diving-support vessels working on deep-water construction projects.

Obviously, he didn't learn how to do all of this on his own.Dr.Caesar supplemented his on-the-job experience with reading selected to help him with exactly what he needed to apply in his work.He prospered as a result of this practical learning.
Where does practical learning fit into his success?From his early family life and these work experiences, Dr.Caesar identified these five principles as critical to a leading a successful life:

1.

Build spiritual strength (a perspective he gained from his mother)

2.

Live according to your standards of personal integrity (a viewpoint he learned from his father)

3.

Invest in your family and yourself through continual education to raise perceived self worth and earning capacity (as he has done)

4.

Be self employed (as his parents were and he is now)

5.

Invest in assets that provide positive cash flow that can be continually reinvested (as he has done by purchasing rental properties)

What's the most important goal in Dr.

Caesar's life?"Whether I die materially rich or poor, it will be the legacy of love and devotion to my family that will remain as my greatest accomplishment." That goal is worth remembering because many business owners find that their businesses receive more love and devotion than the owners' families do.

Dr.Caesar's search for valuable, practical learning led him to explore online schools.He selected Rushmore University and earned an MBA degree in risk administration, a subject of immense value to his consulting clients whose costly construction projects can flounder when management mistakes occur.

Reflecting on that practical learning experience, Dr.Caesar made a second educational investment, earning a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree in risk management from Rushmore.Here is how he described the decision to seek a doctorate when he began his studies:

"Working as an independent consultant, my skills are sold for the highest agreed rate.

Limits do exist to what I can charge my clients; further academic achievement would allow my clients to justify paying me higher rates.Obtaining a doctorate and continuing to consult on oil-and-gas projects will maximize the earning potential for my company into the future."

He chose Rushmore for both degrees because "much of academia remains focused on the exam as the end result, rather than comprehension and individual ability to solve real problems.

"

While earning his DBA degree, Doctor Caesar was able to double his daily consulting fees because clients recognized the added value of his practical learning.

Since graduating with his DBA, his firm's earnings have almost tripled.

That successful profit-building experience increased Dr.Caesar's appreciation for the value of practical, applied learning.Here is what he had to say recently about his learning plans:

"Personally, I continue to hunger for knowledge and would like to continue with further degree programs focused on psychology.

As per the saying -- the more I learn, the more I understand how little I know."

With that open-minded attitude, it's hard to imagine that Dr.

Caesar's learning ...or the benefits he gains from learning ...will ever end.

Do you want to lead and profitably expand your own successful business?Here are some questions to help you make faster, surer progress:

--What are you doing to add practical learning that can be applied to increase the success of your business and your income?

--What more practical learning could you add?

--How can you gain this learning in ways that will disrupt your business activities as little as possible?

About the Author

Donald W.

Mitchell is a professor of entrepreneurship at Rushmore University, an online school, where he teaches how to create flexible strategies for businesses and nonprofit organizations.For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit

http://www.

rushmore.edu

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Patients Are Dying For Attention

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Every year, multiple personal injury claims are brought against the National Health Service because of medical negligence cases that have either led to the death or serious injury of a patient.

The NHS has held an enviable reputation over the years as an institution dedicated to the health of the nation.It has been funded by the government and by tax payers money and, although it has experienced its ups and downs within its management, by and large it has been a worthwhile organisation that has saved the lives of millions of people through diagnosis and treatment.

However, the money that is ploughed into a system that Britain was so proud of, has tailed off.The investment from the government is not what it once was and with the growing population and the fact that people are now living longer, there is an ever-increasing strain on the NHS.

Because of this, drugs are not uniformly available to everyone, hospitals are having to use contractors for cleaning and cooking - something that would once have been done by hospital staff trained in absolute cleanliness - and there is a severe shortage of staff with the few available working unacceptably long hours and under performing in their duties.

This leads to untold difficulties.Human error is a part of life but when it comes to having peoples lives in your hands, standards have to be that much higher.Because they are not, mistakes are made, people suffer personal injury at a time when they have no choice other than to put their full trust in a failing system and they have to trust their lives to the doctors and nurses who are, themselves, suffering unbearable pressures.

Personal injury from medical negligence is something that is occurring more and more frequently.Doctors are tired after working double shifts and attention to detail unfortunately comes at the expense of patient's lives.Just this week, a twenty nine year old social worker lost her life to medical negligence after a hospital stay saw her have an operation to remove gall stones.

Normally a relatively straight forward procedure, there is a risk of internal bleeding afterwards and despite the woman's cries for help, doctors were too busy to attend to her.Her family were at her bedside and repeatedly asked the doctors to help her but they insisted she didn't need a review.

Vital signs were not regularly checked and many of the basic checks that would normally have been carried out, were missed.The woman bled to death in extreme pain.

It seems unbelievable in the modern day, with all our modern equipment and the amount of tax money that we all pay, that this could possibly happen.We are not talking about some third world shack style hospital with the local witch doctor performing rudimentary operations, this is modern day Britain with all its high-tech, well-researched, well tested and proven medical practices.

It seems ironic that we are losing people in these types of surroundings when it just seems so unnecessary.

Because of this, families are often desperate for answers and are just as often met with a wall of silence from hospital staff.This is immensely frustrating for those left behind.Their loved one goes for what should be a routine operation and never comes home due to something as simple as a lack of attention.

When hospital managers are not forthcoming with answers, families will often seek the assistance of a personal injury lawyer.When the hospital finds it has a law suit on its hands, they will then sit up and take notice.Compensation is often paid out in high amounts in these cases, and rightly so.

Yet for the families, it is more about finding out what went wrong and also for someone to be held accountable.Death of a loved one is one of the most difficult things to come to terms with but in this day and age, without explanation, it can be even harder.

About the Author

Shaun Parker is a leading legal expert with many years of experience in the compensation industry.

Find out more about personal injury at http://www.stewartslaw.co.uk

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