Top Sales Manager Blog

Although the mutual fund industry repeatedly tells you that “past success is no indication of future success” when investing in mutual funds, I far prefer to put my retirement savings in 5 star funds instead of 1 star ones, don’t you?

Likewise when screening a new sales hire, the presence of recurring, frequent past accolades in a sales candidate are about the closest thing you can get to guaranteeing future sales success with any new sales hire.

When screening a sales resume for accolades, you must keep three things in mind:

1. Where are the accolades?

As we discussed in previous blog posts, accolades do in fact, rule the day. When screening a resume the big thing to look for is not only do they have some, but almost as importantly is, where are they placed in the resume? Are they at the bottom of each paragraph? Are they at the top?

The real key is the higher they are, the more important they are to the candidate. As a sales manager, this is a very important point when screening sales candidates: the higher they are under the category for each job they have had, the more important they are to the candidate.

You want a candidate that has an overabundance of “drive to succeed” – a person like this lists their achievements first, not last. However, if a candidate does not have any accolades, then knock them out immediately. Bottom line: the higher on the resume the better, the higher and more prominent they are in the text, the more important the accolades are to the candidate.

2. Are the accolades consistent in each job they have had?

You need someone to produce consistent results. Anyone can catch “lightning in a bottle” once and have one really good year. But can they perform at a consistently high level for you year in and year out?

“One warm day in April does not make a summer”…and likewise,  one lone Pinnacle Award from 1998 does not make a great salesperson!

You want consistency – so look for strings of accolades at every sales job they had. Look for national rankings, regional rankings and local rankings, all three are important. The more there are on multiple years, the better.

3. Compared to what?

Do the accolades have a “…out of 165 sales reps” qualifier that tells you truly where they were ranked versus their peers?

It’s one thing to be “#2 in the country”, but if there are 3 reps in the country, its not quite as meaningful. Obviously, the sales rep who was “#2 in the country out of a sales force of 303” is a little bit more impressive of a statistic. Check for documentation of these rankings when you interview them, if you think it looks fishy.

But always, look for these qualifiers to get a better sense of where they truly stand versus their peers. The higher the ranking out of the more peer sales people group, obviously the better.

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Post a comment below and tell me your insights on accolades. Do you think they’re as important as we state here? We welcome your comments.

Filed under: Hiring by ralphburns