b'SELECTION TAKEAWAYSWhat you need to know about Selection to turn talent into performance.Hiring decisions are perhaps the most critical decisions a company ever makes because talent is directly connected to performance. While other factors contribute to sales performance as well (training, pricing, marketing, etc.), the best managers know that selecting the right people for the company is job one! As Peter Drucker said, If I have put a person in a job and he or she does not perform, I have made a mistake. I have no business blaming that person, no business complaining. I have made a mistake. While Talent is the essential ingredient for selection, you need more than that for performance. You need to be sure the talent fits the job to be done and you need to invest in the person. We use a formula to unpack this concept. We call it our Growth Formula: (Talent + Fit) x Investment = Growth.Selecting the right people to an organization is the key to company growth. However, many leaders struggle to identify who is actually the best candidate for a given posi-tion. This may have to do with the fact that they rely too heavily on knowledge, skills, and experience while the key to selection may rest with understanding (identifying and measuring) talent, which leads to strong validity and a lack of discrimination.Studies of the best new business developers demonstrated that there are 6 specific behaviors great sales hunters had in common. When hiring a hunter, managers should keep their eyes peeled for these behaviors and with practice, will become better at spotting them.Most industry experts agree that the cost of turnover is about 1times annual salary, especially for salespeople who you have trained, coached, and supported with a guar-antee in the first year. You can avoid that costly mistake with the use of a Job Analysis and Spec Sheet that will help you think through the key variables of the role and deter-mine the talents, skills, and experiences necessary for success in the role.As a manager, you will be faced with many decisions. The most important decisions are attached to people. Be sure to spend time thinking about fit the next time you are adding a seller to the team. Remember, talent is meaningless without FIT.Todays war for talent has created a job market in which candidates can be more selective than ever before about the positions they pursue. Highly focused on becom-ing part of something they find purposeful, todays job seekers are intentional about researching the mission, values, and people of a company before that company even knows they are out there.66'