Successful hiring requires organization, order

Team Reil stepped way out of its comfort zone when it hired new sales people this Spring. The Union-based playground sales and construction rep firm had long followed industry practice by hiring retired parks and playground people, and teaching them how to sell; this time, Team Reil, Inc., hired two sales professionals and is teaching them about parks and playgrounds.

"It was a 180-degree turn for us," says Sales Vice President Mike Cederlund. "Now we have people who didn't even know there was a playground sales business."

The change came in part because Team Reil had hit a sales plateau. "We decided to risk some extra money" to bring an outside sales recruiter on board, Cederlund says. The fee, which typically runs about one-third of a hire's first-year salary, "may make you hesitate, but we decided that if everyone else was going in one direction, we should try something else."

The something else was someone else - Russ Riendeau, senior partner at Barrington's The East Wing Group. Riendeau is a head hunter, but he seems to be one who brings an uncommon organization and order to the recruiting process.

The umbrella goal, Riendeau says, is to "reduce the number of bad hires" at the smaller and mid-size businesses - ones with annual revenues between $10 million and $40 million - East Wing works with. "They don't have an HR staff; there's no available talent pool, and typically no one has interview training."

Riendeau's basic tools: Templates and talk.

"I bring templates - make clients fill out a job description, the four or five things the new person must accomplish the first year," Riendeau says. But, assuming a sales position is to be filled, Riendeau also discusses measurements.

"I ask how we will measure sales success," he says. "By the number of calls (the new sales person makes)? By how many proposals are written? How many face-to-face presentations are made?"

Using a fictitious company with $10 million in sales and a hope to bring in a new salesperson who will grow sales 10 percent, Riendeau - rounding numbers to keep the math simple - notes that the extra $1 million in sales is $100,000 a month. If the average sale is $20,000, that's five more sales per month - or a little more than one a week.

The issue, Riendeau says, fairly quickly becomes what must be done to help the newcomer meet objectives. "What are the action steps we can take? Do we check the files and find buried customers (forgotten former or current customers)? Can we create internal efficiency by turning customers over to customer service to free up the new sales person?"

It's still early, but Team Reil's Cederlund is happy with the process. "The amount of leads generated is up," he says. "The support staff is excited, and in our internal sales meetings you can see the light bulbs come on: 'I never thought of that.'"

E-mail questions, comments to Jim Kendall, JKendall@121MarketingResources.com.

© 2008 121 Marketing Resources, Inc.