Center of Excellence
By: Mike Allred, EVP, DHR International
Recently DHR International created a Sales Recruiting Center of Excellence practice. The goal is to provide total recruiting solutions for senior sales executives. Included in this practice will be a robust database of proven sales leaders, unique recruiting strategies and techniques, effective interviewing approaches, competency models, assessments tools, succession plan ideas and best practice thoughts. We want to broaden our relationships by adding this key capability – sales leadership recruiting.
You might ask why create a separate search practice for sales leadership? The pressure has never been greater on the revenue generating sales team in any business. Chief Sales Officers (CSO) tenure has dropped to 21 months, exposing revenue stability with constant churning. Each year, CSO Insights (sales specialists) surveys the top 1275 sales leaders with up to 100 questions. In the most recent survey, some of the key trends are the following:
• The sales force population is declining at an increasing rate of 10% due to employee retirement not Internet aggregation.
• Only 57% of the sales force population is at or above quota.
• CRM adoption rates have declined to 56.8%.
• Only 16 of the Fortune 500 CEO’s have ever been directly responsible for sales. There is a disconnect between CEO’s and CSO’s.
• Hiring plans are up but most companies are just recycling the bottom 20%.
• Most company Boards have at most one person with actual sales experience.
• Customers continue to say the most important link to the companies and its products to its sales force representative.
• Universities have recognized a need by business to have a degreed sales program because 67% of college grads go into sales jobs!
What is your company doing to address these challenges? At DHR we are creating new approaches to recruiting and developing best in class talent. We have the experience, talent and best practice ideas to partner with you for effective solutions in sales recruiting. In addition to recruiting, we have worked with clients and partners on sales force structure designs, compensation plans, succession planning and Board preparation for sales leaders. Our concepts are proven with consistent success in locating the best and brightest for executive teams. We think sponsoring the Atlanta CEO Council provides on ideal venue to make this introduction of new capabilities.
