Why New Sales Hires Might Fail
As a sales manager, there are few things more frustrating than recruiting and training a new sales professional only to have him or her quit or get fired within a year. You invested a lot of time and resources only to have to start the recruitment process all over again. However, in most cases the fault doesn’t lie with the departed professional but with the sales manager. Here’s why new sales hires might fail:
They Were Recruited Poorly
Clearly there was a poor fit between the new hire and your team or company. That is something that should have come out during the recruiting process. If you are vetting candidates based on their culture fit and not just their professional aptitude, you can get a much better sense of whether they will succeed over the long term.
They Did Not Receive Enough Training
It can be tempting to avoid or abridge the training process, particularly when you feel confident about your hiring decision, but this is almost always a mistake. If a new hire starts to interact with current or potential customers before they are ready, they are likely to make frustrating and embarrassing mistakes that are hard to recover from. And unless they get the training they are missing, they run the risk of repeating their mistakes over and over.
They Lacked Input from Supervisors
Communication breakdowns are a major cause of new hires flaming out. If someone is given inaccurate or unclear information, and feels like they have nowhere to turn when they need questions answered and details clarified, it’s inevitable that they will make mistakes. And if they blame those mistakes on poor communication between themselves and their supervisor, they will soon get restless.
They Had Their Boundaries Shifted
Another circumstance that is very unsettling for new hires is being brought on to fill one role and then being quickly asked to fill another. You want your team members to be adaptable, but if a person’s job description changes overnight, it is obviously going to create some problems. That can quickly cause new hires to feel bitter, to conclude that they have been tricked by the company, and to start investigating other options.
Look back over this list and it’s clear how important recruiting is to finding long-term hires. If you pick the right person for your organization, they can get by with less training, figure things out when communication is not clear, and evolve at the same pace as your company. The biggest change you need to make is in the way you locate and vet candidates. Discover a better, more reliable way of doing things by contacting Artemis Consultants. 
