Hiring sales people, whether it be Junior Account Reps or Senior Enterprise Account Executives, can often be a challenging task.  

I would like to talk about something that isn’t often discussed but can throw a wrench into your plans for building a high performance sales program.    

Ok, you’ve made the decision to bring on additional head count. Now it’s time to sit down and write the position description. Be careful as to what you write as a job “requirement”. I see it all the time where clients send us position descriptions that have a requirements section that is so specific that they are eliminating 90% of the candidates that would actually hit their sales targets if they were hired. Do they really need to be tri-lingual to be selling office products to large organisations in North America? 10 years of experience selling an IT consulting solution. Really? Would someone who has sold a similar solution for 7 years and has hit their quota on a regular basis not be of interest to you? 

Of course there are many sales jobs where it is essential for candidates to have a specific background to be successful. But sometimes it is more effective to teach an employee about your product or service than to teach them how to hit sales targets. Look at the current sales top performers at your company right now. How many of them actually meet all of your posted requirements? Few I am guessing. Where would your company be right now without them? If your goal is to build a top performing sales team I’ll I’m saying is think twice before you write those requirements. How many of those criteria are actual “must haves”? You may just be eliminating your next president’s club winner from your short list.