b'driven to seek new challenges, form solidboth sellers with top talent and relationships, and partner with clients tothose who are average. What establish a successful marketing strategy.difference in ROI have you seen As important as having sales managers who are innately driven to coach and de- for your company?velop top talent.RobBabin:Averagetalentwillbepro-Erik Hellum: Having a talent-based salesductive as long as you constantly train, organization is a priority for us becausecoach,andmonitortheirprogress,but growing our company is a priority for us.dontexpecttoseesustainedgrowth Being the best at helping our clients is awhenyoustepaway.Toptalentseeks priority for us. You cant achieve thosecoachingandfeedbackbecausethey goalswithouttoptalent,andwithoutare serious about their career and want recruiting, developing and retaining toptosucceed.Whenasalesmanagerin-talent. They go hand in hand. vests time with top talent, the return is far beyond that of an average performer. Gut Instinct andWhen strong innate talent is present, the revenue produced by top talent will yield Selection much greater returns and the match pe-Therealwaysseemstobeaquestionriod. As a result, they have far less client about gut instinct when it comes to se- turnover,leadnewbusinessdevelop-lection.Whilewehavecertainlydis- ment,producehappycustomers,more cussed this very topic over the years, wenew business, and contribute to the work addressed it here by asking both Erik andenvironment.Rob. Erik Hellum: (Eriks very clear take on this subject ties back to his earlier response What would you say if awhere he said:) Just like the top talent is sales manager told you theyexponentially better than average talent, greattrainingisaforcemultiplierand prefer to hire using their gutmakes great reps exponentially better.instincts?Rob Babin: Instincts are a valuable assetAt CSS our mission is to turn Talent into inleadingandrecruitingandshouldntPerformance and both Erik and Rob and be ignored. However, making hiring de- the companies they represent are excel-cisions based solely on gut instinct andlent examples of companies that without ignoring an individuals strengths and tal- a doubt share that same belief. ents, as it relates to the role, is as wrongWe are very thankful for their partner-for the individual as it is for your organi- ship and value our shared belief in talent. zation. ErikHellum:Idtellthemthatanin- Ihavetoclosebysharingsomething formed gut is much better than gut only. Rob said during our conversation on tal-ent. He said, Strong talent is the differ-ence-maker in sales teams that succeed Return On Investment year-after-year. Choose to hire right and coach them well, and your business will Think about the coaching andthrive. The perfect final words.training you have provided to 8'