As we head into the fourth quarter you should have a pretty clear line of sight on how things are trending across your sales organization, and salesperson by salesperson. As you look at what's in the forecast between now and the end of the year you should know where you are year-to-date. How strong is your forecast going into the fourth quarter? Who on your sales team will hit their numbers, and who's going to fall short?
One of the things we tell CEO's to emphasize is that high performing sales managers should be constantly searching for sales talent. They should continually be building their virtual bench of high performing salespeople so they can make better decisions about who to hold accountable, and how to make changes when necessary.
As we are already a couple weeks into the fourth quarter, you only have about 4 to 6 weeks left. If you don't already have activities underway to build, and maintain a virtual bench of high performing sales people, there's time if you act right now. You've got about five (5) weeks before you get into the holiday malaise where candidates become much more scarce. Once you get into the week of Thanksgiving and beyond, through the holidays and the end of the year, it's much more difficult to engage high performing salespeople. They're inwardly focused on their families. They're more focused on finishing their year strong. Typically, sales people who are on the annual calendar year are going to stay where they are until they get their year-end bonus. If you want to recruit high performing salespeople, if you want a sales manager who's constantly looking for sales talent now is the time to act. Now is the time to begin building your virtual bench, so you can start those conversations before the holidays, and move quickly when you hit the next great wave of salespeople switching jobs.
If you start those conversations in the middle of January, or beginning of February you may miss out on the high performers who have already engaged in a conversation with somebody else. Act now.
We recommend implementing our Sales Talent Acquisition Routine. It's a sales hiring system designed specifically for attracting, selecting, and onboarding high performing sales people. Once it's set up you can screen, and recruit candidates almost automatically. You need to invest time in setting it up right, but once it's setup you can just let it run automatically. Your sales managers can continue to focus on the activities they need to focus on: coaching your team, holding people accountable, and working on deals to bring in by end of the year.
If you need information or would like to talk about how to turn on a system like our Sales Talent Acquisition Routine, please contact me. Don't wait. You only have about five (5) weeks to start building that strong pipeline of high performing sales candidates. In January if you need to make decisions about switching people out, or getting rid of some under-performing salespeople (you know who they are already), start building your virtual bench today.