42 Selection Case Study Hire Talent and Win! W e have compelling research that proves you will have stronger perfor- mance when you hire sales people who have more natural sales talent. The data is undeniable. You can’t hire someone who does not have natural sales talent and hope that with 10,000 hours of practice they will become super- stars. With 10,000 hours of practice, they will be- come better. Maybe even pretty good, but not elite. If you have been in a sales leadership role for any amount of time, this doesn’t surprise you. When we first created our Online Sales Talent Interview (OSTI), we conducted a benchmark study to identify the key innate behaviors that separate sales superstars from those who strug- gle in sales. The research from this benchmark study shows a clear connection between talent and performance. Those sellers who scored at the “recommend” level were 115.9% to goal and the Not Recommended salespeople were 82.1% to goal. That’s a BIG difference! Imagine the difference in your career trajecto- ry as a sales leader if you consistently deliver 82.1% of budget vs. 115.9% of budget. It’s the difference between getting fired and becom- ing the Chief Revenue Officer. The research from this benchmark study is indisputable, but we love when new clients see the connection for themselves, based on their own experienc- es. We have a recent example with a new cli- ent that is just too good to keep to ourselves. This client started using the OSTI to hire better talent, so they could get better performance. They were immediately curious about the most recent hires they had made, before they had ac- cess to the OSTI. Would they have hired these people if they saw their OSTI score prior to hire? They took the four most recent hires and here’s what they found. The OSTI cut-off to be recommended is 39.8. One hire who was really struggling scored a 29.6. This person had only closed one new account in a year and were not showing any motivation or drive—and it turns out they scored very low on “Drives & Values.” Another hire who had been there 5 months, had not closed even one account. This AE scored a 32.4 and had an extremely low Responsibility score, which made sense because everything was “someone else’s fault.” In the same time period of the two AEs noted above, they had hired two other new sellers. These two sellers scored a 56.5 and 61.1! Huge scores on the OSTI. And, one of those AEs had closed $2.5 million in new direct business and the other $4.1 million. Wow what a difference talent makes. Hire talent and win! John Henley Managing Partner The Center for Sales Strategy