The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Selecting the right talent has never been more important or more complex. Candidates expect clarity, efficiency, culture alignment, and authentic human connection. That’s why our Talent Magazine highlights the most impactful facts and trends shaping today’s selection process.

Below is a breakdown of key insights, each with contextual guidance, to help leaders improve accuracy, fairness, and overall hiring outcomes.

Sales leaders are constantly asking: “Are we hiring the right people?” and “Are we coaching them to reach their full potential?” The answer to both begins with using the right sales talent assessment. In this post, we’ll explore how a validated, role-specific assessment can help you hire smarter, coach better, and build a high-performing sales team.

Both questions are essential to long-term success, and both can be answered more confidently with the help of a validated talent assessment.

Ask a sales manager about the most important decisions they make, and you will probably hear about exceeding budget, growing market share, or achieving year-over-year growth. While those decisions are critically important aspects of the job, and they require a great deal of attention, none of them can be accomplished without an even more important decision being made first.   

The most important decision you will ever make as a manager is the decision of who to hire. If you don’t have great people working in the sales department, you can’t accomplish the rest. 

Think of the very best salesperson you have working for you. Not the highest biller or the person that has been there the longest. I want you to think about the best seller. Imagine if you had an entire sales department of people just like that. Would sales go up? Of course. 

If you want to accomplish more, there is something you can do about it. 

A bad hire can cost your organization more than just money—it can drain resources, damage morale, and hinder growth. 

If you have ever coached a seller who struggled to adapt to changing situations and circumstances and just kept doing the same thing over and over because they’ve always done it that way, you likely understand the importance of hiring people with adaptability.

It can make or break a salesperson’s success.

An adaptable salesperson has the ability to adjust and thrive in various situations and environments, making them a valuable asset to any sales team.

As the new fiscal year approaches, sales managers should evaluate and leverage their teams' unique strengths. Recognizing and nurturing individual sellers' talents can lead to improved performance and better results.

Our strengths are hard-wired in us from a very early age, and people notice and appreciate them when they are strong. To develop these talents over time, we need to practice using them.

Many of us learned the value of practice through sports, dance, music, or academics, realizing that we got better with consistent effort. The same principle applies to developing strengths in a professional setting.

You want to hire great people, but it’s harder than it sounds. I get it! How are you supposed to know whether your candidate is right for the job?”

Let’s start with how you are screening your candidates. What are you looking at to determine whether they may be right for the job? Even if you don’t have a formal screener, you are currently using something to screen candidates.

Most likely you gather intel from a few different sources, but I bet you lean pretty heavily on their resume. Great start, but be careful. Resumes are notoriously biased, only showing the candidate’s assets.

It won’t help you understand their limitations or weaknesses at all. Also, today’s resumes are built using AI, graphic templates, and professional services, all of which can make even a bad candidate look like a superstar.

You have found the perfect candidate with the right blend of talents, skills, and experience. You have reviewed their assessment with a talent analyst and know what to expect.

It’s time to have them hired and jumping right in, right?

Not so fast. Now it’s the time to take those talents and create an onboarding plan customized to your new hire.

Succession planning isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the cornerstone of survival. Identifying and developing future sales leaders ensures an organization's long-term health.

Remember, effective succession planning is not just about filling positions but also about fostering a culture of growth and preparedness that aligns with the company’s long-term strategy and goals. It’s a strategic process that ensures leadership continuity, preserves organizational knowledge, and contributes to overall business resilience.

Unfortunately, succession planning is also often set aside or even forgotten. Makes sense. It’s easy to get caught up in the here and now and fail to put plans in place for the future when your leaders leave. But it’s a big mistake!

Electronics come with user manuals, food packaging comes with cooking instructions, furniture comes with assembly instructions, and clothing comes with care instructions. People are much more complex than the items you buy, yet people don’t come with instructions on how to get the best out of them.

What if you knew how a person was wired before hiring or coaching them?

We know that top-performing salespeople are extremely driven to meet and exceed their goals. With that drive also comes the desire to continue to move up the ladder.

As a leader, it’s natural to have these salespeople “next on this list” to move up when a position becomes available. But are all top-performing salespeople destined to become top-performing managers?