Mar 12, 2014 By Gabe Larsen

How to Hire Sales Stars from the Movie Moneyball

in Featured, Sales

sales hiring

Google believes this data will predict employee performance, according to an article published in The New York Times.

Calling GPAs worthless for hiring may sound harsh. But we’ve all known this for years, but now that Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google believes it, the world of HR is changing.

Do your hiring tactics still work?

For years, hiring managers have used ridiculous criteria and believed they can intuitively determine the character of salespeople and predict top performers. From the moment they walk through the door for an interview, managers trust their impressions and gut feelings to make hiring decisions.

I love the movie Moneyball. It’s a must-see for every businessperson. In one scene from the movie, the general manager and his talent scouts discuss which minor-leaguer to call up. One scout says, “I like Perez.” Another scout retorts, “Perez has an ugly girlfriend. An ugly girlfriend means no confidence.”

We laugh at such silly examples, but how often, when discussing applicants to employ, have company managers and their hiring teams based their views on gut feelings, intuitions or crazy criteria?

Here is the cold, hard truth about hiring salespeople: Data trumps intuition. Facts trump feelings. Reliable predictive statistics trump the attractiveness of a candidate’s girlfriend. I can’t believe I even have to say that.

It’s difficult to objectify the hiring process and to discover what reliably predicts performance for top salespeople, but it can be done.

Consider for a moment the best salesperson you’ve ever known. What made him or her exceptional? Was it the degree from an Ivy League school? The 10 years of experience? Employment at a Fortune 500 company?

I have posed this very question to hundreds of sales managers and leaders. If you responded like most, then you probably didn’t identify one of the criteria listed above.

In fact, you probably picked one or more of these:

Endlessly resilient
Hunger to earn
Understands people
Desire to be the best

It’s intuitive and it’s what Google has now proved with data. Everybody knows this list is what makes the best salespeople, yet the entire system on which our hiring decisions are made is based on old-school thinking that no longer makes sense.

However, these characteristics are difficult to measure and packaged in order to be effectively utilized in the hiring process. That’s where Moneyball Hiring comes in.

Join us as we explore “Moneyball Hiring” and how to use sabermetrics to make better hiring decisions at the Sales Acceleration Summit on Thursday, March 13. This online summit features more than 80 top sales experts, and registration is free.

Sign up for the Sales Acceleration Summit now at the button below.