“How did it work out with the Sales Manager you hired earlier in the year?”
I was playing golf with George, a 6 handicap, friend and business owner back in September.
“Not so good Jeff, unfortunately, we just ended up letting him go last week.”
“Really, what happened George, you were so high on him?”
“Jeff, pretty simple, he couldn’t sell.”
“What do you mean George? When we last met, you had just hired him. You talked about his successful track record of selling. If I remember correctly, you dug pretty deeply into his sales process and methodology and you were quite happy.”
“Yes Jeff, but he wasn’t able to get meetings with channel partners in his territory which typically leads to about 2/3 of our new business. He has no idea how to hunt for new partners let alone win them over to our offer.”
“Were you aware of that before you hired him George?”
“I was aware of his limited channel expertise but didn’t think it was that big a deal, I thought the other areas where he excelled would compensate for his channel partner weakness.”
“How did he score on the channel partner area when you measured him?
I drew a blank look from George.
“Let’s change topics for a moment George, do you know your golf handicap?”
“Of course Jeff, you know it’s a 6, you’re lucky I let you play with me,” George laughed.
“How about, average # of putts, driving distance, and how many rounds you played this year?” I responded, shrugging off the comment about my golf game.
George was just about to answer when I ended with, “those questions were rhetorical George. I know from previous conversations that you know all those stats about your golf game and more.”
George nodded in agreement.
“Here’s another question George that’s not rhetorical, what’s more important, your golf game or your business and, in particular, hiring great sales managers?”
“Of course my business, it is the key to taking care of my family, but, how do I measure hiring a sales manager, it’s an art not science.”
“It is George, but you can make sure to measure the important aspects of the role like hunting, domain and industry expertise, sales process and…”
“Channel partner expertise,” George jumped in.
“Exactly George, and then you can weigh each attribute which will force you to figure out which areas are more important than others and also to compare sales manager candidates.”
“You know what Jeff, if you had mentioned this in our last conversation, you might have saved me a whole lot of time and money.”
“There’s always the next hire George, it’s all about getting better every week,” I replied as George hit his wedge to five feet from the cup and my wedge ended up in the bunker.
Maybe you should take your own advice Jeff and start measuring your golf performance.
“It’s just not that important to me,” I thought to myself as we each grabbed our separate clubs for our next shots.
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