5

Hiring Superstars

How to Accelerate Your Growth by Using
High-Octane Talent at Every Level

If you want to build the Ultimate Sales Machine, one of the key pieces of the puzzle is to understand the personality profile of top producers. Breaking it down, you need to learn how to recruit them and keep them and then apply all that you’ve learned so far from this book. And as you’ll see, every subsequent chapter goes even deeper.

This chapter will reveal 20 years of secrets in finding, interviewing, testing, motivating, compensating, and managing superstar employees. You will learn essential insights into hiring only the best people for any department. If you are an employee, you will learn how to perform and behave in order to be a superstar.

The average bad hire costs a company $60,000, yet most hiring decisions are made from an hour-long interview—if you’re lucky. I’ve talked to CEOs of companies who estimate that a single bad hire costs them millions. In this chapter, you will learn some unique and effective methods for finding people ’s faults before you hire them. Most companies do not find out any of the problems until after people have worked for them for several months. By then it’s a painful extraction process, or worse, you leave them in the job because they know how to do it and you don’t have the time or energy to replace them.

When I was top producer every where I worked, I thought the only reason I was top producer was because companies didn’t usually hire people like me who were difficult to manage. You know the type: eager to please, always looking for more to do, always wanting more responsibility, always wanting to know more than you think they need to know. I was like that—a pain—but they’re worth every penny if you properly channel their energy. So I swore that when I got into a position of authority, I would hire this type of person.

Then I went to work for Charlie Munger and had the freedom to hire anyone I wanted. When I tried to hire nothing but superstars, I discovered that they’re an incredibly rare breed. Consequently, I spent the next 20 years studying the phenomena that make top producers and superstar employees.

One-person armies may think they are not in the position to hire anyone, especially superstars. But you’ll learn otherwise. Think of what just one top-producing salesperson could do for your business. What could you focus on and accomplish if you had someone else who was expertly handling your sales? How much faster could your business grow? I’ve shown many entrepreneurs who didn’t think they could afford salespeople how to hire a whole team of salespeople on straight commission. This is a profound breakthrough for most businesses and can reshape your entire company almost overnight. So if you think you can’t possibly hire or don’t need a superstar right now, think again. This chapter spells out how to grow any company or area faster if you’re wise enough to share the wealth.


image Exercise

For one-person armies and smaller companies: Take a moment to list three initiatives that you would love to hire someone to execute in which the reward could be great if the person did an excellent job for you. Next to each initiative write down what it could mean to your business and your bottom line—estimate its monetary value. Now list what you could afford to pay such people if they really performed. If the reward is big enough, you can always get people who will share in the reward.

For large or medium-sized companies: List up to three jobs for which you should be hiring right now even if that requires replacing someone who is not performing at the superstar level. Next to each job, write down what it would mean to your business to have a superstar in that position. Give your best estimate of the monetary value of hiring that superstar. Now list what you could afford to pay him if he performed. We’ll return to this throughout the chapter.

Example

I had a client who sold Internet Web listings to plastic surgeons. For example, if you are considering breast augmentation, you can go to www.breastimplants411.com (breast implant info) and look at hundreds of before-and-after photos and then choose a plastic surgeon in your area to talk to about it. This Web listing company was started by a top producer. When we met, he was doing all the selling himself. Since he was a superb salesperson, he resisted hiring other salespeople for a number of reasons:

  1. He didn’t want to give up the commission he could be making himself.
  2. He had no experience hiring others and wasn’t sure how to proceed or structure it.
  3. He thought hiring salespeople would cost him more money than they would be worth to him.

We did the math. If he paid just 20 percent commission to the salesperson, he would get to keep 80 percent of the revenue. Plus, if the salesperson sold as many accounts as he did each month, the salesperson could earn a six-figure income.

Based on that, we put an ad in the paper using the highest possible figure as bait. It’s amazing how so many companies put the average income a salesperson can make in their ads. That’s how you get average salespeople. Put the highest possible number that a top person can make in your ads. More on this later.

Within a few months, this entrepreneur had five salespeople working for him and it increased the company’s revenue nearly fivefold. What’s more, the owner himself went from working in the business to working on the business. He has since built a number of highly successful companies and has forever altered his thinking about hiring superstars.

What Makes a Superstar?

The type of people I’m talking about are those you can put in a bad situation with poor tools, no training, and bad resources and still, within a few months, they begin to outperform your best people or build your company in ways you never dreamed possible. Hiring someone like this is not about luck. It’s about understanding the personality characteristics that fit the job for which you are hiring and having the tools to identify the candidates that possess those characteristics.

Personality profiling is the key to finding superstars. Many companies offer tests to determine psychological profiles. Only now they don’t call it psychological profiling. The correct term is behavioral assessment or personality profiling. For the purpose of having one term, I will refer to this method of understanding a person’s psyche as a personality profile.

Just as an example, let’s focus on one of the most developed, validated, and popular methods, DISC personality profile. DISC is based on the studies done by Harvard psychologist William Moulton Marston in 1928 and has been developed and perfected by dozens of companies over the years. DISC stands for four aspects of the personality: dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance. DISC tests use word association to measure the intensity of each characteristic in the tested candidate.

Dominance is a personality trait that has to do with the strength of your ego. It is a measure of your personal power, your desire to control situations, and how well you assert yourself in every interaction. Candidates who exhibit high dominance have strong egos. Although the word ego tends to have negative connotations, it is actually a good thing in certain situations. Donald Trump has a strong ego. Do you think that’s helped him go from the $25 million his father was worth to the billions he’s worth today? Then there are others whose ego is less obvious, but it’s clearly working hard for them. Do you think that Steven Spielberg is a wallflower? No, he has a strong sense of self (ego) that has guided him to becoming one of the most powerful producer/directors on the planet.

Strong ego is crucial in sales because it means you will have the drive and personal ambition to close as many sales as possible and the armor to not take repeated and even harsh rejections personally. Such drive and ambition mean that high-dominance people are decisive in taking action and making decisions. They like control, can’t stand inaction, and thrive on challenges. Most successful CEOs are high-dominance. That’s how they get the job done! Someone who exhibits low dominance is much more cautious, consultative, and nondemanding.

Influence has to do with how you interact in social situations and how well and how much you communicate. High-influence people love people . They are naturally empathetic, easily putting themselves in other people ’s positions and understanding their points of view. They work well on teams and are fast and energetic. They are also persuasive, communicative, and verbal. Low-influence people are serious, logical, factual, and probing.

Steadiness is all about how patient, persistent, and thoughtful you are. High-steadiness people are deliberate in their actions and decisions. They work steadily and cohesively with others, but are most happy behind the scenes. They are good listeners and have the ability to gain support from others. Low-steadiness people are incessant multitaskers. They move fast and initiate action.

Compliance has to do with how you relate to structure and organization. High-compliance people always plan ahead. They are cautious in their actions and decisions and they work well alone. They like organization and structure, and they work accurately and precisely. Low-compliance people think of the big picture and are not as cautious in their actions. They will wing it more than a high-compliance person. They see gray areas and are more general and independent in their thinking.

The recipe for a superstar is not just a high level of one trait. It is a combination of different intensities of each trait. To understand how these traits work together, let’s think about sales. Top producers exhibit high influence. They are empathetic and have a psychological need to bond with others, to find something likable about every person. This is a wonderful trait to find in a salesperson. They just keep going at the client every which way, trying to find more and more ways to serve and please that client. They also see every one’s best side, which helps them make friends out of their clients.

But make no mistake; influence by itself is not enough. People who are very high influence and strongly empathetic are too understanding and they don’t close sales. However, if your candidate’s personality combines high influence with high dominance, you’ve found your sales superstar. They will bond like crazy with the buyer, but the high dominance makes them expect a sale and they will keep selling, if only for that buyer’s own good. In other words, high-dominance or ego-driven people may passionately believe that you should have their product and feel compelled to sell it to you, no matter how much you resist. This sounds pushy, but if blended with empathy, this person will close with perfection.

Further, high dominance may not be the ideal characteristic for a superstar receptionist or administrative assistant or anyone who needs to be more team-oriented. But for sales it’s a perfect fit. Only a person with an extra dose of strong ego and a psychological need to take control of every situation barrels into a client eight times after the client has said no. People with weak self-esteem and low dominance go away after only a single rejection and are likely to never actually close a sale.

About half of the salespeople I’ve worked with over the years gave up after a single rejection. They would call a client, the client would say no, and the salesperson would never call that person back. Very few, perhaps only 4 percent to 5 percent, keep trying after four rejections. Yet, as you learned in the previous chapter, I’ve found that it takes about 8.4 rejections to get a meeting. And what makes the difference between people who will face that rejection one time and quit or 40 times and never quit is determined purely by the strength of their ego.

However, since it’s difficult to find people who will face eight rejections and keep trying, I now build in procedures that require salespeople to try again and again and again. In fact, I build in 12 attempts that a salesperson will make, and I educate the salesperson in advance that the client will say no at least eight times. This sets up the expectation in the salespeople to receive rejection and not take it personally. They’re trained on the first day of the job that they are going to go after the client 12 times, even after the client has said no every time.

Yes, you can teach some people to go back again and again, which we’ll cover in Chapter Nine. But it’s great when you hire someone who, without you ever asking or training, is built that way. These people will be way more persistent to close that sale. They also have the personal ambition that drives them to continually improve every thing they do. Wouldn’t you love to hire people who innovate and expand upon and improve every single task you assign to them?

If you don’t understand the personality profile that makes top-producing salespeople, you might just turn them away after interviewing them. A high-dominance and high-influence candidate can seem overly eager in a job interview—maybe even come on too strong. Don’t let a little bravado put you off; it is the essential ingredient in every superstar. During an interview, the person is the product, so they must present themselves with confidence and assure you that they are the one for the position. This aggressive behavior will scare some employers, but it is exactly what you need in a salesperson.

Using personality profiling will enable you to single out the superstars in your applicant pool. DISC profiles and other “behavioral assessment” tests are good tools to evaluate a candidate. Coming up in a few pages, I will give you a method for profiling that you won’t find in any of these tests, and in five minutes, it will tell you if you have a person with high dominance and high influence. As I’ve said, I’m obsessed with becoming more and more accurate about hiring, especially about hiring salespeople. After taking a half-dozen “behavioral assessment” profiles and examining a half-dozen more, my staff and I have found one that is remarkably accurate—so much so that we negotiated to have this testing mechanism added to several of my Web sites. At www.chetholmes.com you’ll find a blue button that says, TEST STAFF AND NEW-HIRES W/AMAZING RESULTS.


image Exercise

Look again at your list of initiatives or jobs for which hiring a superstar could change every thing. Write down the personality profile you think would make someone succeed in each job. If you get stuck, think of someone you know or a famous person or character who would do well in the job and list the traits that you associate with that person.

Now we are ready to give you the full guidelines for how to advertise, interview, and screen the weak from the stars.

Guidelines to Hiring Superstars

Design Your Ad to Attract Top Producers

My ads begin like this:

 

SUPERSTARS ONLY $50K to $300K

Don’t even call unless you are an overachiever and can prove it. Come build an empire within our fine, progressive company. We are in the XYZ industry, but we don’t hire backgrounds. We hire top producers. If you’re average, you can earn $50K with us. If you are a star, you can earn $300K plus. Young or old, if you have the stuff, we’ll know. Contact us at…

Notice this ad does not request a résumé. It does not ask for a minimum number of years of experience. There’s no mention of computer skills or degrees or certificates required for the job. The ad is challenging people to apply only if they are the best. What kind of person does an ad like that draw? A person with a strong sense of self.

When I got a paper route as a 14-year-old, it had 26 people on it and covered one neighborhood. When I took another job and turned the route back over to the newspaper, it covered four neighborhoods and had 126 people on it. It took three kids to take over my route. The point is that I had the qualities of a top producer even at 14 years old. Hence the line “Young or old, if you have the stuff, we’ll know.” That tells young people who think they’re hot stuff, but haven’t proven it yet, that you’ll recognize their greatness. I’ve often helped companies who can’t afford to pay for top talent to look for young people with the characteristics of top producers but who may not realize yet how great they are. But I’ve also hired 70-something-year-old fellows who still had the stuff, but whom most companies would pass over because of their age.

Age and Background Are Not Relevant

It’s all about personality profile. I’ve hired 24-year-olds who have outsold 20-year veterans. One of my greatest finds came from a stereo store. Here was an awesome salesperson whom I never would have even noticed if I didn’t know about personality profiling. I saw immediately that he had the stuff of superstars, so I recruited him out of the stereo store and set him on a path that ultimately made him a millionaire. The point is to be on the lookout for those superstars every where you go. If you’re looking for them, you will find them in the oddest places and they themselves might not know they have the stuff of greatness. Another great find was a salesperson who tried to sell me a sweater in a clothing store. I snatched her right out of there and she ended up managing three divisions of a company I ran. I recently found a 73-year-old man who has the best skills I have ever seen for getting top executives on the telephone. He had been a line producer for feature films. So disregard age or background. All you really need to be concerned about are those superstar qualities, and personality profiling can help you identify them.

The Prescreen—the Method You Won’t Find in Any Human Resources Manual

Here’s how to spot flaws in salespeople before you even interview them. The first thing you do to anyone who applies for a job in your company is to reject them, telling them why you don’t think they can do the job. It’s not that you don’t want to hire the person. It’s that you’re looking for the unique personality profile that becomes more effective in the face of adversity. This is the most important lesson I can offer for hiring people. If you reject candidates and they quickly crumble and go away, you see right then and there, before you hire them, what they are made out of. A superstar will start to question your reasoning—and may even tell you that you are wrong. It’s a very powerful exercise in determining people ’s strength.

When I’m interviewing for salespeople, we call or email each person who responds to our ad. Here’s the script: “Thank you for responding to our ad. We are doing a prescreening call of all candidates who contacted us. The prescreening takes place at a set time [such as Tuesday, 5:00–6:00 PM] and in that hour we’re going to talk to people to determine whom we will bring in to interview. Would you like to be at the beginning of that hour, in the middle, or at the end? We’ll call you within 10 minutes of the time you select.” Some of these prescreening calls take two minutes, some last a little longer, and some take seconds.

When you call them, the prescreening conversation goes like this:

YOU: Okay. You read our ad and it said, “Don’t even apply unless you think you’re the best.” So tell me why you think we should interview you.

THEM: Well…uh…Can you tell me a little bit about the job?

YOU: That’s a much longer conversation. I’m happy to have that conversation if we determine that you’re someone we want to interview. So tell me, why should we interview you?

(Notice that we are testing their ego in the first 60 seconds of the conversation.)

THEM: Well…um…Let’s see. I’ve been in sales for two years. I really like it and I like interacting with people. I feel that if it’s a good product or service, I can sell it.

YOU: I’m not really hearing it.

THEM: What do you mean?

YOU: I’m not hearing superstar. I’m not really hearing top producer.

THEM: You’re not?

YOU: No.

(This rejection is intentional. It makes most HR executives cringe, but it works really well for determining, right then and there, what kind of person you have.)

THEM: Oh well…okay. Um, um…I guess you would know.

YOU: Yes, I would know.

THEM: Well…okay. Thanks very much. Bye.

Most people, particularly well-trained HR executives, will interview everyone in a loving and nurturing environment. In that kind of environment it is easy for people to present themselves well. When you put people like the person I just prescreened in the field where prospects are regularly rejecting them, they quickly give up. By using this technique in the first two minutes, you can very quickly determine who will rise to the occasion and perform in the face of adversity and who will crumble.

Here’s how the conversation should go:

YOU: Okay. You read our ad and it said, “Don’t even apply unless you think you’re the best.” So tell me why you think we should interview you.

THEM: Well…uh…Can you tell me a little bit about the job?

YOU: That’s a much longer conversation. I’m happy to have that conversation if we determine that you’re someone we want to interview. So tell me, why should we interview you?

THEM: Well let’s see…In my last job, I was the new guy and I had never sold widgets before, and, within three months, I was bringing in bigger accounts than they had ever had. In six months I was outselling people who had been there for five years.

(See how they start selling right away.)

YOU: That sounds good, but I’m not sure I’m hearing top producer.

THEM: Well, maybe you’re deaf.

It sounds funny, but I actually had a person say that to me and I hired him. The egos of the top producers will not let you tell them they can’t do the job. The ideal candidates will try to qualify you just as they would a prospective client. They will be tactful and start asking questions: “What kind of person are you looking for? What kind of a job is this?” Or they might say, “Well, what makes you say that?” Or they might start to sell you on them. They keep trying. That’s the bottom line. Their egos step in.

If you’re selling a product or service that is a one-shot sale and that’s all your people do and there’s no follow-up or bonding needed, people who have a strong ego but don’t naturally bond with or relate well to others might be ideal. They will care more about closing the sale than anything else. These people do not make good team players, but you can’t have it all. They will produce. So you have to decide what’s more important—a lot of nice team players or a lot of sales. Again, such a candidate is not ideal for sales where you need to build a bond with clients and keep them buying.

Three Steps to Interviewing Superstars

Now that you’ve narrowed down the applicant pool, you’re ready to interview the top candidates. Here’s a three-part interview structure designed to draw out the superstars: relax, probe, attack.

Relax

Once candidates talk their way in for an interview, begin by giving them every opportunity to show their best side. Help them relax. You should be friendly and be a great listener. This will throw them after you treated them so harshly in the prescreen. They come in loaded for bear, and here you are supernice right from the start. Another technique I use is to ask them to “write down five questions you want to be asked in the interview that will show your best side.”

Probe

The purpose of this portion of the interview is to get to know the person. Before you begin, you must tell prospects that they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer. Explain to them that your company hires based upon personality profile rather than background and ask them directly, “Do you agree that this is more pertinent?” When they answer yes, you say that you’d like to find out what shaped them, so you’re going to start with their childhood.

Additionally, this portion of the interview tests the level of their empathy. If they become stiff during this section, you don’t have a natural bonder. Tell them that you are going to ask questions about their mother and father as well as questions about how they grew up. If they become uncomfortable, you don’t have a superstar. Superstars like to bond with others. But this is only part of what you are probing for in this interview.

Legal notice: You have to get their permission to ask questions about their childhood and you need to explain how these questions are related to the job. The candidate must understand and agree that personality profile is more important than background. Otherwise, the interview can get you into trouble. Legally you cannot ask any question that isn’t relevant to the job (such as “Are you married?” or “Do you have children?”) because it could be the basis for discrimination. It is your responsibility to think through whether or not your questions might (even unintentionally) screen out any particular group by race, gender, or disability. For example, if you ask whether or not they have or plan to have children, an applicant may understand that this has bearing on your decision to hire them and that the question may mean discrimination. But if you establish that personality profile is what you’re after and get their permission to probe “what formed you,” then you’re probably okay asking about their childhood.

The questions I propose here are not designed to discriminate against anyone. They are designed to draw out the superstars from the applicant pool. However, the questions you ask are your responsibility, so please check with your lawyer, HR department, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (http://www.eeoc.gov ) on this point. This book is not intended to provide legal advice.

Probing the candidate’s childhood is crucial because self-confidence is often shaped very early in life, so you want to find out if the candidate’s background contributed to building up self-esteem. An encouraging parent who really believes in the child will help to develop strong self-esteem in that child at an early age. My mother was so blindly encouraging that if I’d told her, “I want to be a bank robber,” she would’ve said, “Oh son, you’d make a GREAT bank robber.” Parents who are overbearing or what I call “quick to caution the child” will raise a child who will not be effective in challenging situations.

The term quick to caution means that when children want to try something new—climb a tree, jump off the diving board, be adventurous—the parent holds them back, rather than encouraging them and being there in case they fall. My parents would have let me march into hell for a heavenly cause. That’s how I raised my children, and they are both strong and fearless about what they want and how to get it. If you find a person who has not had what I call blindly encouraging parents, then you are likely to find a person who does not have the self-esteem to withstand the rejection that comes in a sales position. Naturally some people develop self-esteem in spite of not having encouraging parents, but in my experience that is the exception, not the rule.

To determine your candidate’s background, ask the following questions:

Now you want to look for areas of accomplishment to gauge just how much of an overachiever your candidate really is. Use these prompts and questions:

Areas of achievement might include music, sports, writing, or art. Many top producers have other areas of overachievement. Sports are a big one.

Once I had a salesperson who was an absolute master at astrology. It takes discipline to develop any area of competency. This particular fellow had software programs that helped him do a chart, and he was scary accurate at telling you about yourself—a great tool for bonding. This guy had it all. He was a serious closer, too.

To test empathy and the candidate’s ability to bond with others, ask these questions:

People with weak empathy skills will give one-sentence answers to such questions. They are just not great at “sharing,” and it will be obvious. Bonders will talk your ear off. They need approval as part of their profile, and they will win you over with tales of their past.

People with a strong ego will have no problem telling you how good they are. Contrary to conventional rules of etiquette, this is actually a positive thing in a top producer and you want to give them the opportunity. Ask candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 in these areas:

Top producers will rate themselves very high in all areas. But so will dreamers, so be careful. Some people have what I call false bravado. This is a cover for a deep insecurity that will eventually make them cave in the face of adversity. So getting examples from them of why they’ve rated themselves so high is a way to go deeper and see what you really have. I hired a sales rep who came on so strong, I thought, “This guy is either truly great or completely full of it.”

On his first day in the job, all that bravado worked well for him. He got three sales. He was on cloud nine. The second day, he hit nothing but no’s. On the third day, I noticed he was writing a lot of letters. That was it. I pushed him with every thing I could, and he just avoided the telephone after that day. My philosophy with salespeople is to keep the pressure on constantly. One of two things will happen: they will cave under the pressure or rise to the occasion.

I had a client who did all hiring through group interviews. The “team” members all had to agree before they would hire any new salesperson. The results? They hired a lot of nice people who could not sell. One superstar in that environment stirred up the entire place. He started outselling even the veterans within just a few months. That superstar got that job because I rammed him down the throat of that particular CEO. I convinced him that he needed to put some heat in the kitchen. He listened, and after that star salesperson started selling like crazy, several of the weaker people quit.

My philosophy is that the sales environment should be structured where the strong survive and thrive and the weak go do something else. This is a race and you need champions. Put the people who aren’t sales superstars in customer service.

Next you want to find out how candidates measure themselves against the best of the best. Ask them who is the best salesperson they have ever met. If a candidate names himself as the best, offer him the job. Most likely your instincts will tell you to do the opposite. If they name someone else, ask them what differentiates them from the person they named. This is another way to force candidates to self-evaluate and for you to make judgments about them as they do so.

The best of the best are always seeking to be better, so another area to explore with them is how dedicated they are to self-improvement. Ask them what was the last self-help book they read or CD they listened to or DVD they watched. When I was a sales rep, I studied every one. Name a few top sales trainers; I had their CDs and was listening to them in my car or reading their books. I also constantly sought out self-help gurus. Some of their books and tapes—Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, in particular—changed my life. I read that book six times cover to cover.

This method of probing candidates’ personal lives and experiences from childhood opens them up in many ways. You will get a true sense of how people think and feel.

Now that they are more honest and unguarded, go through their résumé with them. Ask them the following questions:

The point here is to determine how they think and if they have good judgment. Recently, I was sitting in on an interview when a candidate gave this reply: “One time I had to get a boss fired because he was ruining the business.” After the interview, the sales manager told me that he wouldn’t hire that candidate because he feared the candidate might do the same to him. What would you do?

I asked him for all the details and I have to admit I thought the candidate did the right thing. His boss was a jerk and needed to be fired. We’ve all had bad bosses. But instead of just complaining, this guy stood up for the good of the company. Still, this is a difficult admission to handle as an interviewer because it may also indicate that the candidate is a troublemaker. Keep in mind that if you react negatively to anything candidates say, they’ll clam up or adapt what they are saying to what they think you want to hear. On the other hand, if you react positively, candidates are likely to expand on their comments. So be like an open book in this phase of the interview.

It’s easy to make mistakes in hiring; you will find that the “probe” approach reduces the number of bad hires. I start with their childhood and then go over their business background last. You’ll get more truthful answers that way. After you’ve bonded over their childhood, you’re more likely to get the straight story on every thing else.

Attack

Now we are at the end of the interview. You’re probed deeply. You may sense that you’ve found a high achiever, but you’ll often be surprised at what happens when you “attack.” Try saying something such as, “You seem like a nice person, but I only have one opening. I need a real superstar. While I’m sure you would do well in many endeavors, this is a very competitive industry and I doubt your particular skills and personality will hold up in this position. To be truthful, I don’t get the impression you’re really a superstar.”

Be tactful, but don’t be soft. You’ve be amazed at how many people crumble. Here you thought you had the perfect candidate. But when you tell them you don’t think they have the stuff, suddenly they agree and thank you for your time. Let that person go. Superstars never crumble. They have tremendous faith in themselves, and nothing can convince them they can’t do any job. When you tell them you don’t think they have the stuff, be prepared that they may think otherwise and may even be thinking, “Screw you, you jerk.” So sometimes you have to prompt them to come back. Simply say, “How do you feel about what I just said?”

Be careful to use a strong rejection instead of a weak attack like, “You haven’t convinced me yet.” This is an easy invite for candidates to keep selling. When you use the attack, there must be a moment where they really believe you think they don’t have the stuff.

Rewarding Your Superstar

The last aspect of hiring top talent is to create a performance-based relationship with little or no base pay. There are countless ways to do this. Let me give you an example. I had a client who paid $9 per hour plus commission. He was even putting this in his ads for new salespeople. This base pay is not much—certainly not enough of a reward to attract superstars—but his commission structure was so good that his top producer was earning $92,000 per year. He could definitely find a superstar in his industry who would work for that amount of money. But to get top producers, he had to be clear on how he would reward them. I put it to him this way: “Do you want to attract the kind of person who will be like your top producer or do you want to attract $9-per-hour-type talent?” We put, “Can earn as high as $100K if you are a star,” right in his ad. This dramatically changed the type of person he started to attract.

You must reward top producers handsomely. Years ago I walked into my boss’s office to quit and he—the CEO of the company—jumped up on his desk and pointed down at me and said, “This is God talking and you are not leaving my company.” I laughed out loud. He then called the bookkeeper and wrote me a $5,000 check to stay. That was probably a $1 million check he wrote to himself. I brought in another million. He made me feel great and I stayed.

I have all my clients put together what I call a “recruiting document,” where they flesh out the most money a person can make, maybe even over several years. I have a client who sells apartment buildings. I had him put together a compensation plan that showed that after four years a salesperson could be earning $330,000. Using this recruiting document, we then went after recent college grads. He only pays a base of $2,000 per month, so we had to give new hires the incentive to work for that little money while they got up to speed. Picture your kid coming home with a sheet of paper in her hand showing how she would be earning $330K in four years. (See sample on next page.) Do you think you might help your kid get that job—maybe even subsidize her income or let her live at home longer if the payoff looked like that?

Another client of mine was in the insurance business. It takes an insurance salesperson a lot of time to build up income, but the rewards are fantastic if you get a big book of business. And the ongoing clients provide residual income. But the salespeople were always given incentives to get new business. We reduced the percentage that the rep could make from residual business each year. So for the first year, salespeople earn 30 percent commission on all business. For the second year, they continue to earn 30 percent on new business but earn only 20 percent on the ongoing business from the client’s firm the previous year. The third year and thereafter, new business is still 30 percent but ongoing business drops down to 10 percent. The new business is where the bucks are, so reps have a powerful incentive to get new business all the time.

image

How Even One-Person Armies Can Hire Top Talent

In the audience at a seminar I gave, there was a graphic designer who had never had salespeople. He was the salesperson, so his life was feast-to-famine on a regular basis. When he had no business, he’d chase to get some. Then he’d get business and would have to deliver the service, so no one would be working on getting more business. When the project was over, he’d have to chase to get more. Here’s our dialogue:

ME: What’s a dream project for you?

HIM: An identity package for an emerging and well-funded start-up or growing company.

ME: How much would a gig like that get you?

HIM: The right project, $25,000.

ME: And how much of that are you willing to give away every day to get a project like that?

HIM: I could give 20 percent and still be happy.

ME: That’s $5,000.

HIM: Right.

ME: And how many of those could you handle per month?

HIM: Probably four per month.

ME: So $5,000 times four projects per month is $20,000. Put that in the newspaper and see what kind of talent you pull.

Here’s how the graphic designer could get someone to work full time at getting him more business and keep the projects going. Later, we’ll show you how to get a constant stream of new and big clients no matter what business you’re in. But let’s play with this for a moment.

Say you’re a chiropractor and you’re seeing 100 patients per week now. Hire a person who gets 20 percent of every thing above that number and put her out there to form relationships all over your community—in gyms, community groups, companies, and so on. No matter what kind of company you have, there are ways to get more business flowing than you can handle if you follow all the advice in this book. So far, we’ve only covered the high-level, more strategic aspects. Subsequent chapters get down into the nitty-gritty of getting you more buyers than you can handle.

As long as you’re willing to pay, even just on performance, you might be shocked to learn that there’s someone perfect who will build your company for you as long as you share the wealth as she does so.

How to Manage a Superstar

Once you’ve hired a superstar, you need to be very strategic in order to keep that person in your organization. Top producers share a number of traits that easily translate into restlessness in most companies. They are original, intelligent, and sure of themselves. They are generally frustrated in most organizations and usually end up starting their own companies.

The key to keeping superstars is to never say no to them. Instead, redirect their energy or give them a few hurdles to jump in order to get what they want. Here’s an example of how to respond to a superstar.

SUPERSTAR: Hey, boss! If we had better communication between departments, I believe our sales would increase. Could I put together a program for that?

YOU: Great idea! Tell you what. You get me three more sales per month for the next three months and I’ll let you run with that idea.

While many people are turned off or get offended by a little ego, you need to be grateful for your superstar’s ego and let go of your own for a minute. Here’s how to handle a superstar who is criticizing something you created.

SUPERSTAR: This promo piece is terrible. We should have a better one.

YOU: I designed the one you’re criticizing, but great! Let’s see what you can come up with.

There is no need to react or get defensive. Just direct their energy, challenge them, and see what they create. Great managers know just how to capitalize on a big ego.

SUPERSTAR: I could definitely increase sales.

YOU: I’ll believe it when I see it. Talk is cheap.

The more you challenge superstars, the more you encourage them to overachieve. But don’t forget to compliment them when they meet and exceed your challenge.

A Note on All Hires

This chapter focuses primarily on sales talent, as they are the driver s in most organizations and a critical component of your success. But much of what is outlined here can be customized to fit other departments. For any position you are looking to fill, break it down into all the different skill areas needed to do that job and have the candidates rate themselves in those skill areas. The relax-probe-attack method is a great interview tool, but go soft on the attack when not looking for salespeople. Say things like, “I wish I had more than one position because I really like you. But I’ve only got the one position and I’m wondering if you’re really the right fit.” Make all candidates sell themselves at least a little for every position. This is really just a test of how people meet adversity, whether it’s a receptionist who must handle 100 calls per hour or a finance executive. A little attack is very telling of what type of person you are interviewing.

In fact, every thing said here about hiring superstars also applies to nonsales positions, including how you reward them. For example, one of my clients owned a massive framing business (framing paintings and prints). I suggested that the company structure its compensation plan for the framers based upon how many frames per day they could build with no mistakes. We based the performance around the best framer and made it so every one could earn more money if they performed like him. Can you structure income around performance, no matter what the position? Today, it’s all about performance.


image Exercise

Now look again at your list of initiatives or jobs that need superstars. These are things you’d like to do to help your company or department grow or improve that someone else could do for you and a superstar could do better than you. Read over what you wrote about what these would mean for your organization and what their value would be in terms of your bottom line. Write a great job description of what those people would be expected to do. Then think about how much they would earn. If it’s a sales job, as previously mentioned, how much of what they bring in can you give to them? For other positions, can you change the incentive to be about performance rather than hours?

Now, take out an ad in a newspaper or online that says, “Can earn as high as [insert number here] if you are a star.” Follow the steps above to attract a superstar.

To make it easier for you, here’s a complete ad we ran to get top talent for a client.

SALES SUPERSTAR WANTED $50K TO $300K

Don’t even call unless you are the best and can prove it. Earn $50K if you’re average, $150K if you’re good, and $300K plus if you’re great. This is in the [type of industry here], but we hire star performers, not backgrounds. Young or old—if you have the stuff, we’ll know. Will train someone who has every thing we want. Small base, but huge performance rewards to get you to $300K and beyond each year. Must be awesome at opening doors and getting appointments from a cold start. Must be highly self-motivated, a terrific presenter and communicator, and a barracuda closer. Come and build your own empire within our fine, progressive company. We have a superb reputation and need real stars to bring in the best accounts. Email résumé to:

Think about that ad. That ad is the dream for any top-producing salesperson.

 

Conclusion

If you want to have the Ultimate Sales Machine, you need to have the ultimate salespeople. Use the blueprint in this chapter to set your company’s or department’s procedures for hiring. But don’t forget to add your own pigheaded discipline and determination to the mix. It takes time and persistence to create a superstar team. Resist feeling put off if your first hire or even your first few hires don’t work out. At my old company, we went through eight new salespeople for every one who worked out. We knew this was going to happen, so we even had a procedure for speeding that process up and getting rid of the ones who weren’t going to get the job done. If they weren’t great, they’d burn out fast.

Workshops can help you create procedures that are tailored to your individual company or department. Keep at it. I’ve doubled the sales of many companies with this simple strategy to identify, hire, and keep superstars. Put some top-producing talent in the company and watch it grow.