By Bert Sadtler
Compensation and Hiring
They go together like cookies-milk, scotch-soda and business-performance .
Regardless of the technical complexity of your business’s product or service, the most important and complex part of all businesses are the human beings who work there. There’s nothing more important than attracting and hiring the right people to work in your business.
What does compensation have to do with hiring the right people? A great deal.
To address that question, let’s use two compensation details of a hiring process.
1) Can’t emphasize enough that compensation needs to be stated.
Position descriptions vary in their level of detail. Some are very brief while others are thorough and informative. What does the position description reveal about the employer and what does it say to a qualified candidate? What it is the message to prospective candidates when the position description states for salary to “Submit your salary requirements” or “Commensurate with experience”?
– As the employer, shouldn’t your organization have taken the necessary time to define the need you have when hiring?
– As the employer, shouldn’t you also know your company’s pay scale?
– Isn’t it the employer’s responsibility to have some idea of the compensation for the role while defining the responsibilities of the role?
– Best Practice Hiring should filter out the candidates who are not qualified and filter in the ones who are. A candidate who currently earns way more than your company can afford is not a qualified candidate.
– Hiring is about attracting the right talent. When candidates are told to submit their salary requirements, they may be hearing that your organization really has no idea what compensation to pay and may also have no idea what the role is or how to run an effective organization.
– Perhaps the employer clearly knows the compensation range but does not want to make it public. While that makes sense, it leaves prospective candidates with doubts about your company. They may not even be comfortable applying. Is the trade-off worth that?
2) Why does it matter that salary only compensation isn’t enough?
While members of today’s workforce are looking for stability and earnings assurances, times have changed from the days of Salary Only compensation. In my experience, a Salary Only comp plan is unfavorable to both the employer and to the employee.
– There are many examples in today’s workplace of companies that should make quick, financial adjustments. One of the areas to control expenses is payroll. Companies looking to cut their payroll will look at cutting the biggest payroll costs. If the newly hired employee is receiving a large base salary, they can find themselves quickly on the chopping block. This is a major loss to the business that will never find out what the new employee could have become. It is devastating to the employee who now has a very short employment cycle in their work history and must find another job.
– Salary Only comp plans offer little or no ability to measure and reward for performance. Shouldn’t the employees who exceed their performance goals be rewarded?
– Let’s look at professional athletes. Their total compensation consists of guaranteed earnings along with specific incentives. Examples can include number of innings pitched during a season or number of touchdowns scored, etc. Isn’t their success measured by their performance? Shouldn’t great performance be highly rewarded? Can’t do that with a Salary Only plan.
– Business professionals are like professional athletes. Business professionals should be compensated with a combination of base salary plus performance bonus. The bonus delivers a higher reward to the employee who has exceeded the performance goals. Click here for an example of Performance Compensation.
The bottom line.
In summary, businesses invest a lot of time and money hiring the right talent. The compensation aspect of hiring deserves the same amount of time. Compensation has a lot to do with hiring. The wrong approach to compensation can turn-off top prospective candidates before they ever consider expressing an interest in the role.
As a business owner / business leader, how is your organization addressing compensation when you need to hire critical talent? Is it time to revisit this sometimes overlooked detail?
Happy Hunting (for talent).
Click here to contact Boxwood Strategies
Sarawut Aiemsinsuk/Shutterstock
By Bert Sadtler
Employee Engagement has become a business of it’s own.
Employee engagement is key to the successful performance of your team. Without engagement, new employees can be less interested, less involved, and less effective and have a shorter “life span” in your organization. Employee engagement has become an industry and for good reason. Employee efficiency, productivity, effectiveness and performance are aspects of employee engagement.
From the viewpoint of a professional recruiter who pursues critical talent, the question is: How engaged are your employees OR how open are they to leaving your company for another job?
An engaged or a disengaged employee can look and act the same. They are professionals who are committed to doing their job well. They are not complainers or whiners,; they are doers. Obviously, these are some of the reasons that would make them attractive candidates.
However, the difference between being loose or engaged is how they respond to an appealing job opportunity. The engaged ones simply say “Thank you but no thank, I have no interest in changing my job”. The loose ones say “Tell me more”.
What happens to make an employee loosely connected?
A loose employee has lost some of their focus. Here are the top reasons for an employee to be loose:
#1) Poor or non-existent recognition/reward program.
a) The most common reward program comes in the form of bonus compensation. Too many bonus compensation plans have been developed to pay the employee a bonus when the business reaches or exceeds its financial goal. Most employees have little or no direct impact on the business hitting its goal. This type of reward seems arbitrary to many employees.
b) For companies that implement a bonus/reward plan, their employees become loose and disenchanted when the employer does not pay the agreed to bonus due to a “technicality” or the employer pays it months after the bonus has been earned or the employer pays the bonus using fuzzy math intended to pay out a much lower amount.
#2) Change of control.
a) The most common form of a change of control occurs during a merger or an acquisition. From the employee’s viewpoint, the new company is not the same company that the employee once joined.
b) Change of control for the employee also occurs when leadership/management has changed. When an employee has a new manager, it serves as a form of change of control and can become a time when the employee is loosely connected.
#3) Change in company direction
a) Companies are in business to grow. Not all companies grow the same way. Sometimes it requires a change of direction and an unsettling experience for an employee.
b) Companies not doing well have to make tough decisions including downsizing. This generates uncertainty and makes employees loosely connected.
#4) Personal issues
a) Personal issues can range from a divorce to an illness to an ill family member to substance abuse.
b) The same issue applies when the manager of an employee faces the personal issues mentioned above.
Do loose employees leave?
Employees go through their normal work life facing success and failure. With each success and failure, there is an impact of being glued or loose. Once a loose employee has really started the thought process that they could be better off working somewhere else, many times they will leave. In many instances, it could have been avoided by the employer.
As the CEO or business leader, there is the responsibility to articulate and implement a business direction while insuring that your leadership team reinforces the company’s focus. Some managers do this better than others.
What is the Key to Employee Engagement?
An engaged employee is an interactive employee. Remember, business does not occur in a vacuum. The leadership of a business is responsible to set the tone and the direction. Good engagement involves the establishment of specific employee goals and a dialogue between employees and leadership about the completion of the defined goals. This interaction should offer insight or a reveal of the employee’s attitude about their work and their job.
In other words, the aligned business that has defined measurable goals and measurable rewards for each employee is engaging it’s employees.
Ask yourself
It is a natural aspect for employee’s to go through phases of being loose or engaged.
· As a CEO or business leader, are you aware of the triggers that can make your employee loosely connected to your business?
· Are you measuring and rewarding your employees based upon their responsibilities?
Good hunting.
Beauty Pageant or Hiring Process? Define your hiring.
Does your business have a proven hiring process or are your running a beauty pageant? Hiring the right talent today is more critical than ever. It seems like there is a new business popping up weekly to promote their quick hiring methods so your business can hire quickly. Shouldn’t your business focus on the hiring process designed to get it right instead of get it right now?
Today’s resources provide many options to help the business leader through the hiring process. For example, there is a vast array of assessment tools, there are the scripted interview questions, there are background checks as well as financial background checks and much more.
For the business leader or CEO to hire the right talent, they need to identify the right criteria or qualifications. Essentially, the business leader must define the challenge or business problem that the person hired will need to solve.
With too much focus on quick and not enough focus on getting it right, there can be a jump-ahead to listing the criteria or qualifications before defining the business challenge. The criteria being used to identify and evaluate candidates can be the wrong criteria.
Of course your business wants to quickly hire very intelligent and highly qualified people. People with the highest IQ’s might be likened to participants in a beauty pageant. It is fairly easy to identify the smartest ones in the room just like it is fairly easy to identify the most attractive people. Magazines frequently publish lists of the top ten best looking men or women.
Highest IQ is not a Hiring Process.
The common mistake made by business leaders is to conclude that the person with the highest IQ is therefore the best one to hire. It would be the same analogy to the best player would therefore make the best coach or the top sales producer would necessarily make the best sales manager.
If it were only that easy !
Hiring the “Right One” means that person fits the culture and the chemistry of your business so they can interact within your organization and deliver a valuable outcome.The Beauty Pageant does not measure for cultural fit.
Most business leaders would agree that the most complex part of their business is the human beings who work in their business. As a result, it is better to get it right then make a hire right now.
What if the best player on the field does not have the interest or the aptitude to relate from a coach’s perspective? What if the candidate with the highest IQ ends up being disliked by his or her co-workers?
You will get the right talent with the right hiring process.
We are back to the wrong criteria being used to get it right. So, what is the right criteria that will get the right talent?
– First, it involves taking the time to define and declare the business challenge that the new hire will need to solve.
– The right criteria is not about the beauty pageant. It is about a hiring process
– The right criteria is simply stating, “Here is our business challenge, now talk to us about how you would address solving it.”
– At the core of this issue is chemistry or cultural fit incorporated into the hiring process.
– It requires investing time in a dialogue and really working to determine if the candidate is a great cultural fit for your business.
– If you are looking to hire the smartest or the most attractive, you may be missing the one that fits the culture of your business.
– In a word, it is “likability”. I have never met a business leader who hired someone they disliked. But, they may have liked them for the wrong reasons.
– The complexity of the human being makes hiring both an art and a science.
– Remember, hiring needs to be approached through a thoroughly proven and tested hiring process.
As a CEO or business leader, ask yourself, “Is your hiring process a beauty pageant?” If you aren’t paying enough attention to likability, chemistry and cultural fit, maybe it is time to make changes to how your business is acquiring critical talent.
Good hunting.
Want your process to be #1, click to contact Boxwood Strategies
by Bert Sadtler
The Business of Hiring with Trump as President
While the election of Donald Trump was a political event, it was also an event that has impact on small businesses and this is a business conversation. As a CEO or hiring manager, how does your small business conduct hiring with Trump as President? If small businesses find themselves needing to add critical talent during the Trump Administration, they will need to give consideration to the current economic factors of the supply and demand of talent as well as the implementation a best practice retention – recruiting process.
On January 19, 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported “A dozen major companies have touted the creation of about 130,000 U.S. jobs since Donald Trump was elected President, vowing to keep jobs in America.” The Wall Street Journal went on to say “Recent high-profile announcements have also yielded expectations for some $64 billion in investment.” During his inauguration speech Trump spoke about “…rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.”
During the first week of the Trump Administration in office, meetings were held with US automative manufactures and manufacturers in other U.S. sectors. During the same first week of the Trump Administration, the DOW closed above 20,000 for the first time ever.
This news alone does not significantly move the U.S. jobs needle. However, it may be the start of a significant economic shift within the U.S. and it may be the start of business growth momentum.
The momentum of a rising tide raises all ships. If your small business is facing the momentum for growth, what you are doing about it?
Supply and Demand for Critical Talent
Many American business sectors have been shrinking their workforces during the past years. A 2000 report from The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that manufacturing jobs have declined from about 17 million to about 12 million in 2016. In my experience, recent company downsizing focused more on the higher paid, more senior worker and ideally the more expensive worker. As the fifty plus year old worker was unable to find new employment, many settled for an early retirement and are now out of the workforce.
The same highly experienced worker who departed from the workforce prematurely, could be a leader or manager today and positioned to participate in hiring with Trump as President.
With trends suggesting a demand for experienced workers and the data suggesting that there may be a limited supply, we could be headed for the perfect storm in a war for critical talent.
When companies need to hire with Trump as President, where will growing small businesses go to find critical, senior level talent and how will they do it?
– Some companies will be able to promote their mid level managers from within to become their senior level leaders.
– Some companies will hire back senior level workers who had previously been part of w workforce reduction.
Both of the above options are more of a band-aid then a scalable solution. With the demand likely to outstrip the supply for senior level talent, your small business may become a target for your competitors to seek your talent while other business will become targets for you to identify and attract qualified employees.
Hiring with Trump as President will require that small businesses need to pay attention to retaining top talent while also focusing on attracting additional senior level people.
What is the Answer?
The long term solution is for small business leaders to recognize that:
– Today’s hiring processes are mostly outdated or broken.
– Changes are needed.
– The answer is to define and implement an up-to-date Best Practice Retention and Recruiting Hiring Process.
The suggested steps include:
– Develop a reward program that incentivizes good managers and senior level employees to achieve the desired goals of the company. Simply paying employees when the company makes money is not a structured performance based reward program. Paying an arbitrary bonus in January following 12 months of an employee’s dedicated focus is wasted money without the development of pre-defined structured goals and specific rewards. Neither of the above models will retain your top talent. Retention requires investing in the implementation of a formal performance based program that will reward and retain top producers. Click here for an example of a Performance Based Plan.
– Audit and evaluate your current hiring efforts for areas that require improvement. Please see Boxwood Recruiting Audit column.
– Determine the critical challenges your business is facing and define the business challenge that you need a senior level talent to solve when hired.
– Launch a hiring campaign for the purpose of solving your company’s business challenge. Worth noting: Best Practice Hiring should not be a casual event. It is a highly prioritized dedicated effort.
– Best Practice Hiring processes need to be interactive and thorough. Hiring short cuts can lead to short time hires.
– Best Practice Hiring acknowledges that the marketplace is changing. The ways a business once hired talent may no longer work.
In summary, the Trump Administration is driving change from a political perspective and also from a business perspective. Success for a small business today requires nimbleness and agility.
What is your small business doing to grow while hiring with Trump as President?
Good hunting.
About Boxwood Strategies
Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies and is a thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.
Boxwood Strategies is a management, consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. As a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers, Boxwood develops strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance, as well as the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.
To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers, a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities, clearly defining it’s challenges, and deliver cost-effective solutions by using experienced, professional consultants instead of hiring full time employees. Market sectors include: SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications and Technology.
Bert can be reached at:
[email protected] and at BoxwoodSearch.com
by Bert Sadtler
Tricky Interview Questions for CEO’s to use.
As a CEO or business leader, are you reading this article expecting to find the great secrets for tricky interview questions from the viewpoint of a professional recruiter? Are you looking forward to uncovering the best tricky interview questions for CEO’s to use and the magical ways to get them to work? Is the headline itself a trick? As a CEO, would you feel angry or disappointed to learn that this column will not be offering any great tricky interview questions? Would you feel misled? Will I have lost some of your trust?
Please step back and think about your response. None of us enjoys being tricked. Why would anyone being interviewed enjoy being tricked?
Tricky interview questions ARE NOT a best practice in recruiting
Tricky Interview Questions Send the Wrong Message
– They demonstrate that the hiring manager may be a weak or insecure leader if they need to resort to tricky interview questions.
– If the hiring manager has delegated tricky questions to be asked by an administrator it may also suggest weak leadership.
– If a hiring manager asks tricky interview questions during the hiring process, what will the hiring manager be like to work with if you are hired? Things can only be expected to get worse, not better.
– Tricky questions suggest the need for the hiring manager to establish a dominant position over the candidate. Highly qualified talented professionals do not want to join companies with that type of a toxic environment.
Best Practices
Best practice hiring is about attracting and hiring the best talent. Poor hiring processes quickly turn off highly talented candidates. Our changing society is a more transparent society. Simply Google “Interview Tricky Questions” to have access to all of the “Greatest” ones.
Here are two examples:
What would you do if you won $5 million tomorrow
Can you name three of your strengths and weaknesses?
These types of questions fall under the larger category of being totally useless hiring questions that can be practiced and rehearsed by candidates. In the dark ages, there was a place for them when hiring managers would share their secret handbook of hiring questions and dinosaurs were roaming the earth. It is easy to Google for the interview tricky questions, it is just as easy to Google the ideal responses to the tricky questions. In doing so, candidates can demonstrate their ability to polish answers to predicted questions.
Does someone who has well rehearsed and polished answers to predicted interview questions make a great hire? Hell No!
The purpose of hiring critical talent should be to solve a critical business challenge. Responding to tricky questions or predicted questions has nothing to do with demonstrating the necessary qualifications for solving a critical business challenge. Many hiring efforts have lost their way when they resort to using predictable, stale questions. Best practice hiring takes effort and works to get it right. Tricky interview questions and predictable interview questions require zero imagination and very little effort.
Tricky interview questions contribute to the currently broken hiring practice model.
Where should we be going?
The purpose of hiring is to solve a critical business challenge. The format should be a business discussion vs. an interrogatory. The conversation should focus on discussing in more detail the business challenge. Have a candidate discuss their original thoughts and ideas to solve the critical business challenge.
Change is a constant component of business. We have arrived at the place where it is time to retire the worn-out weak interview questions and move forward with a fresher and more relevant approach?
Good hunting.
About Boxwood Strategies
Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies. A thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation, and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.
Boxwood Strategies is a management consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. Bert is a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers. Boxwood develops strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance and the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.
To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers. AIM is a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities. Clearly defining those challenges the group delivers cost-effective solutions. Instead of hiring full-time employees to create sustainable solutions, use experienced, professional consultants. Market sectors include SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications, and Technology.
Bert can be reached at:
[email protected] or use this contact form.
By Bert Sadtler
December 2016
I am frequently asked, “When is the best time of the year to recruit?”
My answer is: the best time to add talent to your organization is when you need to hire someone to solve a critical business challenge. The answer is not based on any specific time of year. Hiring should be based on the timing of a critical need.
As 2016 comes to an end, many businesses regard the new year as the scheduled time to add new talent to their organization. This can make the start of a new year to be a somewhat frenetic hiring period. However, with planning and implementing a processed approach, the frenetic part of hiring can be a thing of the past.
My suggestion is for business leaders and hiring managers to spend some time prior to the new year evaluating to improve your company’s hiring process.
The first step is to audit the current recruiting/hiring efforts.
Here are three key considerations to conducting a hiring audit:
1) Has your company clearly defined the business challenge and how the newly hired professional will solve the challenge? “I know it when I see it” is not a best practices approach for acquiring critical talent. How can you hire the right fit if you can’t clearly explain what the business challenge is that needs attention?
2) Do your hiring efforts result in some highly desirable candidates saying; “No Thank You”? Hiring critical talent is more of an active sales related pursuit than it is about passively posting on web based job boards. The focus needs to be on attracting highly talented professionals who have the abilities to make your company better. Ideally, these professionals have good jobs today and are delivering measurable value to their employer. Some of the professionals you may be targeting in your hiring campaign will have an interest in your job opportunity, others will say; “No Thank You”. If you aren’t hearing “No Thank You” occasionally and instead are only hearing “Yes, I am interested”, your recruiting efforts are aiming too low.
3) As a business leader, are you directly involved in your company’s hiring process and are you measuring for success? The most complex aspect of every business is the human being. Adding the right talent can deliver great rewards. Getting it wrong is expensive and painful.
As the hiring manager/business leader, have you walked through your hiring process as if you are a candidate? Do you have a first hand understanding? Does the process provide an enjoyable candidate experience? If not, it should for every professional considered. Your business’s reputation is at stake with every candidate considered. You never know what may eventually come from a candidate who was not immediately hired. A straightforward and enjoyable experience sets the foundation for potential candidate referrals and a favorable word of mouth reputation that will make desirable professionals more interested in joining your company. For example, keeping a candidate warm by telling them they are being considered only to keep them on the hook while another candidate is receiving an offer does not make an enjoyable experience for the candidate. There are better ways to conduct recruiting.
Is your current hiring process being easily implemented and administered by the hiring manager? Your hiring process is an extension of your overall business. Follow-ups to candidates should be prompt, meetings with candidates should be on-time and a tone should be set that your company is efficient and well run. Since the hiring manager will benefit the most from acquiring the right talent, the hiring manager needs to take an active role in the process and not simply hand it off.
Do you ask candidates for their comments about the hiring process they are involved in? This is a great way to uncover areas to improve your process.
Since today’s business demands have little room for failed hires, does your hiring process include the development of a “path for success” with a performance based bonus compensation? This would include clearly defined and mutually developed objectives that the new hire would be ready to tackle on their first day of employment.
Happy Holidays, Happy New Year and Happy Hunting!
About Boxwood Strategies
Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies and is a thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.
Boxwood Strategies is a management, consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. As a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers, Boxwood develops strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance, as well as the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.
To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers, a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities, clearly defining it’s challenges, and deliver cost-effective solutions by using experienced, professional consultants instead of hiring full time employees. Market sectors include: SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications and Technology.
Bert can be reached at: [email protected] and at BoxwoodSearch.com
This is not a fishing tale but it does have to do with fish.
Fish use sonar to sound out sound waves in order to hear the sound that is coming back. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the word sonar is derived from the phrase “sound navigation and ranging.” Sonar uses sound waves to detect and determine the location, size, and relative motion of underwater objects.
To put it into a business application, the fish care much more about the reflected sound that comes back than they care about the original sound made.
The return sound could define a harmless underwater rock. The return sound could also define a menacing, underwater creature.
Now to the part that ties fish together with sales. Business people are always reminded to be a good listener. We have two ears and one mouth and should listen twice as much as we talk. While businesses have folks who are dedicated to selling, every member of a business is representing their company and selling in one form or another.
So, what does sonar have to do with selling?
There is basic listening versus really being able to read someone’s verbal and non-verbal communication.
If you were able to drive a conversation topic, then you would be able to focus you attention on the nuances of just the response. Have a similar conversation with several different people and the variable is simply how they individually respond.
Just like the fish, business sonar is not about the sound you are making and all about reading the sounds you are hearing.
For example, the sales professional is trying to identify prospective customers to spend more time with and also trying to filter out the prospective customers who are not going to buy. The business manager is engaging team members in similar conversations and then measuring the individual responses to determine which team member really gets it and which ones don’t. Smart hiring managers will make the same comment to several candidates in order to measure each one by the sounds they make that defines their response.
Today’s talented professionals can no longer just be good listeners. Sonar is the level above listening. Business sonar is reading the responses and interpreting the answer.
Key Take-a-ways:
• Today, business is constantly changing. Every advantage matters.
• Competition is fierce and a slight competitive advantage can make a big difference.
• As a business leader, are you focused on having talented professionals with “business sonar”, not just good listening skills?
• Are you hiring using business sonar to identify the best fit?
Happy Fishing !
By Bert Sadtler
As a CEO or business leader: for your business to recruit the talent who has integrity, you need to recruit with integrity.
Since there is nothing more important to any business than hiring the right talent, focusing on getting it right includes focusing on candidates with integrity. After all, would you intentionally hire professionals who lack integrity?
While there are tools and interviewing techniques that are designed to evaluate candidates, during the interviewing and hiring effort, integrity is best recognized when it is being demonstrated. If your business is seeking people who show they have integrity, then your business needs to be hiring them by showing your integrity.
Getting it right requires interesting and then attracting the type of people who you would want to join your organization. Here are five priorities that businesses should consider in order to demonstrate their core integrity?
1) Make communications a top priority: Candidates involved with interviewing will tell you their biggest complaint is the lack of communication. Establishing integrity and establishing trust with candidates starts with communications. Candidates should be responded to when they respond to a job posting or express an interest in joining your business.
2) Always be on time: It is expected that candidates should be on time for phone calls, video calls and in-person meetings and interviews. As the employer seeking to hire the right talent, have you made it a priority to always be on time for meetings?
3) Use a process with the hiring manager in the lead: Best practice recruiting involves the implementation of a process to bring in the right people. Cultural fit is a critical part of successful recruiting. The hiring manager will benefit more than anyone else with the right hire and suffer when the wrong hire is made.
4) Clearly define the business challenge: Pre-hiring preparation must include defining the problem or challenge that needs to be solved by the newly hired talent. In my opinion, this should also include defining the total on-target compensation range.
5) Establish and then manage expectations with candidates: Establishing expectations when hiring means providing clear information about the next steps.
About Boxwood Strategies
Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies and is a thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.
Boxwood Strategies is a management, consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. As a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers, Boxwood develops strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance, as well as the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.
To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers, a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities, clearly defining it’s challenges, and deliver cost-effective solutions by using experienced, professional consultants instead of hiring full time employees. Market sectors include: SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications and Technology.
Bert can be reached at: [email protected] and at BoxwoodSearch.com
By Bert Sadtler
Is there anything more critical to sustaining or growing a business than revenue? It has been said that “sales solves sins” meaning that businesses that can generate meaningful, repetitive sales revenue can be a success while making mistakes along the way.
One of the hardest things to accomplish in business is the final step of selling. It includes obtaining the payment for products sold or services rendered. The easy part of selling is that is it very easy to measure. Either there was an exchange of money for product or services or there was not. The hard thing about selling is that lot’s of people talk about doing it while only a few have what it takes to deliver meaningful sales revenue over and over.
Where does the artistry of selling fit into to feeding the revenue-business-beast?
For the activity of selling to occur, first the business foundation must be laid which can include a validated service or product, market research, an identified target audience, fees for the service or product and a sales compensation model.
The field of sales is a wide one that ranges from “sales people” at the basic level to “sales professionals” at a more advanced level to “sales artists” at the most advance level.
Think about it. Some fully embrace every aspect of selling. Others just carry a sales title and make enough to live a comfortable life. While there are technical and scientific factors that make selling possible, the X-Factor of selling involves art. The very best sales producers study and embrace the “artistry of sales”.
The art of selling requires the ability to adapt to the changes in the marketplace while recognizing that customers are more sophisticated and more informed then ever.
A few decades ago, the art of selling took an A-B-C approach or Always-Be-Closing. The sales person was aggressively focused or PUSHED to get the order signed. Then, there was the predictable challenge of keeping the order on the books as some customers would experience a strong case of buyer’s remorse and cancel.
While the demand has never been greater for businesses to generate sales revenue, how has the artistry of sales been redefined in today’s marketplace? Here are five insights about today’s marketplace:
1. The sales approach of simply telling the customer that your product or service is what they need, no longer works. Today you must provide poof of value.
2. Today’s decision makers have more demands on their time than ever. They live by the Top Ten Rule, which is to focus their attention on only their top ten priorities. Today’s “sales artist” must be engaging, direct, brief and able to deliver a perceived immediate value.
3. Getting on decision maker’s Top Ten List (top ten priorities) is what today’s highly productive “sales artists” do well.
4. Attributes of today’s sales artists include:
– Earning the trust of decision makers.
– Establishing the credibility to deliver a solution for a top ten business problem.
– Developing the type of dialogue where the decision maker is asking the sales artist about their product or services.
5. For today’s “sales artists”, the closing aspect is when the decision maker is the one who wants to make the purchase versus being pressured to make the purchase.
The adjustments from a few decades ago are both subtle and extreme, whether it’s strategic business development, transactional sales or consultative sales.
Three insights on how this relates to your business today as a leader:
1. Have you built your sales team so you are only hiring true “sales artists”? Does your sales team focus on PUSHING or PULLING sales revenue? (Are you hiring the best in order for your business to be the best?)
2. Has your sales compensation model evolved to compensate and reward your top achieving “sales artists” while providing a clear path of success for the producers who could be generating more?
3. Are you evaluating your sales producers and asking if they have the capabilities to grow your business to where you are heading?
Are you, the business leader and your business able to make the changes needed to adapt to today’s artistry of selling?
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About Boxwood Strategies
Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies and is a thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.
Boxwood Strategies is a management, consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. As a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers, Boxwood develops strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance, as well as the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.
To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers, a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities, clearly defining it’s challenges, and deliver cost-effective solutions by using experienced, professional consultants instead of hiring full time employees. Market sectors include: SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications and Technology.
Bert can be reached at: [email protected] and at BoxwoodSearch.com
The most complicated aspect of every business is the human being. Every business needs talented people to participate and contribute toward the success of the business.
We all live in a changing business environment and continue to make adjustments to maintain a competitive edge and to deliver value to our customers.
Recruiting and hiring talented professionals is one of those unique areas that remains different in a business’s growth. Purchasing products or services for your business can be fairly evaluated and negotiated. However, the complex factors of human beings makes the hiring of talent very different than most any other investment in business growth and business improvement.
Technology offers employers access to a limitless number of resumes through search words and other short cuts. Technology offers candidates the access to rehearse and prepare for the predicted interview questions.
All of these efforts move us further away from direct interaction between humans. As a result, employers continue to struggle to repeatedly hire with a successful outcome and candidates continue to be frustrated as they participate in a hiring event.
Is it time pull out from the closet your current hiring model, blow off the dust and determine if your hiring model is broken?
Indicator #1: A reference to “Purple Squirrel” by anyone involved in your company’s hiring. This term was outdated the first time it was used. A business needing to acquire talent first needs to determine the business problem they need the newly hired talent to solve. It should include realistic requirements matched by a realistic compensation plan.Suggestion: Think about hiring from a problem solving perspective, not in terms of something that does not exist.
Indicator #2: Starting off a hiring effort with the specific name of a person targeted to be hired. Too many times, businesses start their hiring efforts with naming a specific person they would like to hire. Best Practices hiring needs to start with defining and declaring the business problem that needs to be solved. With deeper reflection on defining the problem, it is possible that the solution is not about hiring someone but instead requires something else. Suggestion: Recruiting and hiring is a process that must start with defining what is to be accomplished.
Indicator #3: The use of the word “Database”. A database is like a cinder block with only inside the box thinking. Today’s business world is in constant change. Best Practice hiring is about solving a business problem and exploring an unlimited number of avenues and options to determine the right talent and the right fit. By using a database of candidates, your hiring efforts have closed the door to many possible options.Suggestion: If the key is to solving a business problem, then shouldn’t the focus be on targeting problem solving professionals?
Indicator #4: “Keeping a candidate WARM”. If your business really wants to acquire the best talent, then your focus must be to treat the talent well. Keeping a candidate warm is insulting and disrespectful to the very professional who has been considered for a critical role. The candidate has taken an interest in your business. Suggestion: Communicate to the candidate that they are either in consideration or not in consideration. They should clearly know .
In summary, what got your business to this level may not be what you need to get it to the next level. Changes are constant. As a business leader or hiring manger, have you gone through your current hiring process as a candidate? Have you seen it from the candidate’s view? Have you asked candidates to describe their experience interviewing within your company? Do you feel the current process is delivering the right talent, consistently?
Is your model for hiring in need of changing with the times?
What are you doing to remain nimble and agile in growing your business?