7 “Innovative” Ways Of Repelling Top-Tier Applicants From Your Company’s Business Development Vacancies

There are certain ways of attracting talented business development people and certain ways of repelling them. It seems over the years the HR departments of so many IT companies have become experts at repelling talented folks, but instead of examining their own hiring flaws, they keep hiring mediocre people and keep paying the price of sky-high attrition.

And since HR departments have never been accountable for the calibre of hired people, so they keep hiring the wrong people and the company keeps paying the price for the hiring mistakes.

Let's look at 7 of these repelling factors...

1. “We thank all applicants, but we contact only the ones we’re interested in”

This sends a loud and clear message to applicants: “Folks, we hereby promise to treat you like shit both before and after hiring you.” Technology is widely available to communicate with all candidates, and keeping them in the loop regarding how the recruitment process is going. And eventually you can announce that, “Folks, we have a winner and this message ends our recruitment process for this position. Thanks for your interest and we wish you the best of luck.”


2. “Send your cover letter and resume to hr@abc.com”

Talented people know that HR folks have no functional understanding of the positions their companies advertise, thus they can’t recognise real talent. They can match resumes against rigid job descriptions, and this is good for ordinary workers working on production belts or digging ditches. Top-notch knowledge workers are seeking for some more. First, as opposed to jobs, they’re seeking careers.


3. “We offer a highly competitive salary and bonuses”

Highly competitive salaries are for highly competitive people. That is, also rans. Exceptional people, that is, real talents, while they’re not working for money per se, expect exceptional compensation. Also, truly exceptional people are usually not competitive, except competing with themselves. They have the league of their own, so competition is unnecessary.


4. Not revealing the name of the hiring company

Recently it’s become popular for - mainly low-brow, bottomfeeder - companies to place their career ads without revealing their names. This nameless approach often screams scam, and quality applicants don’t even waste their time to apply. Eventually the company ends up with low quality applicants from the bottom of the unemployment scum barrel.

Just check Craigslist. Most of those companies that call themselves industry leaders turn out to be hopeless losers with so much notoriety that revealing their names would work against them.


5. “We pay excellent commissions”

This is obvious. Many companies don’t want to invest their own money in their growth, so they expect business development folks to work on some kind of commission structure. So, these folks take 100% of the risk and invest 100% of their time, effort, expertise and money to find new business, and then the company takes 90% of the rewards and the hard working folks get a mere 10%.

Again, only the most desperate folks apply for this position. Or the folks who are driven by money, but those are usually not the best but merely the greediest. And that’s fine if the company is hiring peddlers to sell commodities. But companies that sell unique, complex, high-ticket solutions has to think again. Also, it’s usually the seriously troubled companies that are looking for suckers who are willing to give their best and brightest for mere promises of future payment.


6. Offering full-time positions

Knowledge work is not about being full-time but rather being full engagement. It doesn’t matter how many hours I spend in an office staring at a computer screen looking busy, at the end of the day it’s up to me how engaged I am to the work I do. And the result of my work is a function of my engagement level not the function of the number of hours I appear to be busy in an office.


7. “We pay competitive hourly wages”

This is basically about treating knowledge workers as manual labourers: The most important value-creating traits of knowledge workers can’t be measured. They must be must be judged and discerned by people with significant level of expertise in the subject matter. Knowledge work is non-linear, thus can’t be subjected to the cadences and rhythms of an assembly line or a group of people shovelling manure. Knowledge work progresses by iteration and reiteration, a process of the mind.

The traditional productivity metrics of manual labour must be replaced by judgment and discernment. The problem is that judgement requires expertise but measurement only requires a measuring stick. And only experts can judge but any idiot can measure. And sadly, the world is full of idiots who are obsessed with measurement because they are too lazy or dumb to acquire the expertise that would allow them to judge. Hence, a large percentage of knowledge workers work for idiots.


Business development folks must be regarded as knowledge workers. Sadly, this is a mysterious feat 99.99% of HR professionals simply can’t comprehend because they are so hopelessly stuck in the industrial age. Besides, the best candidates know they have no chance to battle it out with HR, so unless they can connect with executives, they don’t even apply.

In a recent post at Execupundit, Michael Wade named seven reasons why candidates avoid the HR department. Later employment attorney, John Phillips elaborated on Michael’s points. Here you can read the whole article, entitled Why Employees Don’t Go to HR.

So, I suggest that if your company is still burdened by an HR department, then dissolve it and enlighten your company with people who understand talents and knowledge workers, so your company can actually attract top talents. People who know how to do things not merely people with impressive resumes.

Using Salesmanship In Print For Better Sales Force Management And Improved Sales Force Effectiveness

When they want to grow, many high-tech companies almost automatically start hiring more salespeople.

They hardly ever stop and think, "Hey, what would gives us a bigger bang for our buck? Expanding our sales force or playing salesmanship in print and hiring a copywriter?"

Many high-tech executives erroneously assume that the larger the sales force, the more they can sell. Obviously they haven't listened to the wise hooker as she explained this size dilemma to the shy sailor...

"Son, it's not the size of your instrument but how skilfully you actually use it that counts."

What usually happens is that when you add new people to your sales force in the hope of selling more, you actually end up selling less.

The overall sales volume may go up, but the generated revenue per salesperson and profit go down...

And this is the mystery we're investigating in today's article.

Now continue to the full article...

Using Salesmanship In Print For Better Sales Force Management And Improved Sales Force Effectiveness

Do Your Salespeople Need Sales Training? Probably Not!

Technology companies are busy seeking out better and better sales training programmes for their salespeople, but in my experience, this is not the kind of training salespeople need.

I truly believe in having salespeople who are cross-trained in technology and business.

This is why...

Technology training enables salespeople to interact with technical buyers who are interested in technical details. This is vital because technical buyers treat salespeople as peers if and only if they have technical credentials and industrial experience. Over my decade plus as a buyer I didn't meet many sellers, but the ones I met were fellow engineers. I met them because I knew they would understand my language... despite my strong accent.

Business training enables salespeople to have "boardroom level" strategic conversations with C-level executives.

At the Imagine Companies there is a great blog entry entitled Why Salespeople Fail, and it discusses this problem in some interesting detail.

Buyers don't want to meet hucksters and peddlers equipped with slick closing- and objection handling techniques. They want to meet peers eye to eye, and, instead of slick sales ploys, they want to have meaningful business conversations with industrial experts.

So, go an read Why Salespeople Fail.

What Causes This High Turnover Among CMOs?

Why typical CEOs last for 44 months, on the job, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are replaced every 26 months?

David Meerman Scott has a very interesting entry on his blog entitled, "Why most CMOs get fired." It seems one of the reasons is that many CMOs waste far too much time and money on image marketing and brand awareness, instead of running tried and tested direct response marketing campaigns to generate revenue by supporting the sales folks.

The other problem is that in some 50% of the cases, CMOs are hired as proverbial silver bullets to fix collapsed marketing campaigns (usually ruined by top management) but are not allowed to participate in the company's operation on a strategic level.

And what I've seen a big problem is when top management says. "We don't like it."

Then the CMO says, "But it really works and we're" not the market that buys our stuff. The market has to like it not us."

And at this point of the battle, many CMOs just get fired.

Anyway, read the article, "Why most CMOs get fired", and see what you think.

More Pictures Or More Words

There is a very interesting blog entry at Future Now about the misconception that pictures are more important than words. The blog discusses a very unique industry, in which the conventional wisdom says that pictures can do the selling work without words. Of course, that's wrong. Well, that's why it's conventional wisdom.

Check out the message, entitled "Does a 100-ton Drill Rig Need Web Copy?"

Technology Brochures From The Drawing Board To The Rubbish Bin

Check most technology companies' promotional materials and you realise that when they were designed, the focus was on creating glitz and glamour not results. The objective was pontification and self-aggrandisement not educating readers and invoking the next step leading to the sales..

These companies were kidnapped by some graphics designers and the result is just that: Nice graphics that will enrich the designer's portfolio but doesn't make a dickybird of a difference to the company's sales results.

And then salespeople spend around 30% of their time to hide all the rubbish created by the marketing department and to create some meaningful sales materials they can hand out to prospects and leave behind after meetings.

It reminds me, the former farmer, of a cattle rancher with a big hat and a fancy branding iron but no cattle. They can impress the market until potential buyers want to take a look at the beasts. Then our rancher is in deep shit...

So, in this month's article, we discuss how to put together client-centred brochures, entitled...

Technology Brochures From The Drawing Board To The Rubbish Bin

Value-Pricing At NHL Level...

Over at the Verasage Institute we talk a lot about value pricing and the elimination of timesheets. One of the Verasage Fellows, Ed Kless, has just posted a brilliant example of value pricing at the Verasage blog.

If your company is still...

• selling expertise on an hourly basis
• forces employees to fill in timesheets
• hire new employees for an hourly wage

...then you should read this post. It's pretty eye-opening, and rest assured this is how it plays out in the work of technology as well not only in ice hockey.

Actually, I've just read an interesting article about the performance of people who work for hourly wages. They were told that as soon as they complete normal eight hour's of work, they can pack up and go home for the day. On average, eight hour's of work was completed in three hours and 19 minutes, 41% of the allotted time.

What does that mean to you, the employer? It means that your people are smart. They learn the system and have become pretty good at playing to the weakness of the system. Their focus shifts from improving performance to marking time and filling hours to maximise their wages.

For many companies people relax during normal hours and then request overtime to complete the work. And you can't blame them because this is what they are motivated to do. There is a definite motivator to work slowly and inefficiently.

So, what to do? Well, you have to recognise that they are knowledge workers of the "knowledge age", as Peter Drucker defined it about a half a century ago, but most managers were so busy managing their feudalist empires that they didn't pay attention.

Then put your people on annual salary with a bonus structure, create an environment in which people are naturally inspired to do great work and leave them alone. If there is any problem, give them instant feedback and forget about the annual review. If your HR goons insist on the annual review, then throw them out of your department or, if you can, fire their arses.

Through living history, traditional HR practices have never contributed anything positive to the work environment, so there is no reason to keep old-fashioned, time-focused HR practitioners on the payroll. They have taught people how to lie on their resumes, how to doctor references and to perform consistently at sub-par level.

Anyway...

Read Ed's post at the Verasage blog and see how you could replace your time-centred organisation with a value-focused organisation.