Choosing Quality Over Quantity

“Make decisions on people your top priority. Spend more time on these decisions so that you will not have to ‘repent at leisure.’” — Peter Drucker
I recently noticed a disturbing trend in our industry: Companies are rewarding managers based on the number of sales people hired. The problem with this approach concerns hiring quantity over quality. Granted, there is a smaller pool of sales talent from which to recruit but managers who are just hiring “bodies” will ultimately pay for poor decisions in very costly terms including lack of sales performance, high turnover and inability to super-service the customer. In my opinion, it is better to spend more time and effort upfront identifying candidates who possess natural sales talent and then training those individuals. Hiring chronic underperformers sells everyone — the company and the customer — short.