How to Hire a 'Top Gun' Without Shooting Up Your Sales Team

Mark Appleby, Director, Buckmaster Hawkey 

They are the most critical people for any property or real estate business. Top performing sales people are a breed set apart; yet finding them and persuading them to join an organisation can be an art form in itself.

 
How do you go about recruiting the right sales person for your business? And once they are installed in your business, how do you ensure they stay put and keep selling?

As a Director of Melbourne property and real estate recruitment specialist, Buckmaster Hawkey, I have been recruiting high performing sales people for over a decade.  While there are plenty of logical sounding theories around, the truth is a lot less romantic than you may imagine. Cultural fit, a well-designed hiring and induction process and research are the keys.

When I first started recruiting real estate salespeople, directors used to tell me that all you had do was get the right person in the door and everything else would take care of itself. While this sounds persuasive I had my doubts right from the beginning.  It simply doesn’t take into account the effect that the arrival of a new personality has on the team, yet the shortfalls of this ‘top gun’ approach have increased substantially over the last few years.

Interestingly, the reason the ‘top gun’ approach has become riskier is due to the tight market for skilled sales people. If a business gets their incorporation of a new salesperson wrong in this environment, the effect can be to invite other team members to look around for a new position. The other drawback is that a new recruit can be left with the impression that they are so important; they can call the shots.

I still see many firms following the top gun approach and I think it’s a mistake. Real estate can be a volatile business and the turnover of staff in some agencies is high. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

A wiser approach involves assessing a sales person assessed not just on their past performance but also for their fit with the workplace culture and team dynamics. A new personality will change the both of these to some degree so the question becomes whether that change will be for the better or the worse. 

Sales people are highly individualised people by nature - they like to work on their own and are motivated by self achievement. And yes, the good ones tend to have high opinions of themselves. To ensure they fit with the rest of their team, employers need to ensure their hiring and induction process is right and they have considered workplace fit before the process commences. 

When we consult with clients, we start by ensuring the client really knows their own business first, including market share and market positioning, but also how they rate against their competitors and what their point of differences are. We then conduct a workplace assessment to give our client an objective understanding of the culture inside the office and the dynamics of their team. 

A thorough assessment therefore is an important step in ensuring a business attracts the right candidate because it allows an employer to find the person who will perform best in their workplace and brief candidates about the sort of work environment they can expect. 

When it comes to retention, employers should ensure they have the right structure in place – one which suits the team, managers and most importantly, the business. The right structure should carefully consider reporting lines, the setting of targets, relationships between team members and clearly link all of these to the business’s strategy. That strategy should, amongst other things, clearly communicate to staff what their sales targets are, what happens when targets are missed or exceeded, and the guidelines for the setting of territories. 

While some directors believe their representatives should be able to sell any property, anywhere, most agencies use territories to define each agent’s responsibility. My experience is that territories are a useful, but only truly effective when they are coupled with transparent guidelines that define which properties an agent can sell, dollar or transaction volume targets and the property types an agent should specialise in. 

Territory guidelines should also clearly articulate the processes for mediating disputes. In any sales environment disputes will arise – that’s inevitable when you’re dealing with competitive A-type personalities. In my experience, the most likely time for disputes to arise is within the first three months of new sale person joining the team. 

One of the most common and difficult disputes to resolve is where a new salesperson finds themselves competing against sales manager, or worse, a director. These disputes can degenerate into resentment if they are not handled correctly, quickly leading to a new recruit leaving the business. Another common and dangerous dispute is between the new salesperson and the office favourite, which can quickly escalate into a factionalised office. 

The underlying rules then for hiring a top gun is to ensure they are a top performer, to ensure they can fit in with the team, that the business has a well thought-business strategy and that the workplace has clear guidelines which guide sales people and help resolve any disputes.  

Most successful sales people have healthy egos, which can make getting them to work within a team occasionally difficult. The best approach an employer can take when hiring a top gun salesperson is to ensure the fit is right and the boundaries communicated up front so that everyone feels the match is right – straight from the start.

Mark Appleby is a Director of Buckmaster Hawkey, a Melbourne based property and real estate recruitment firm.