By Percy Chong, 7th May 2015
Most candidates who enter into sales generally are not 100% certain that the sales position is their choice profession. They take an “experimental” approach and play the role of the lab “rat” to experience working in the job, and hopefully identify a job fit.
Candidates would therefore move from positions to positions, ever hopefully that they will find their dream job! They typically don’t know what they want, but they do know what they don’t want.
So this “process” of elimination not only add to the hiring company’s cost (ie. selection & recruitment, administration, training & development, to losing and replacing them), but also the candidates’ most valuable resource…time!
With the high cost involve, knowing how to make the right choice becomes important for both.
ASG noticed that candidates with options or are open to exploration, generally don’t perform very well in sales. In fact, they rarely stay long in the position. And because they adopt a “see” before commitment attitude, they don’t usually give their all during their exploratory or probationary period. This lack of commitment will only result in them not seeing, experiencing and benefiting from the fullness that the position brings. They mostly experience the “pain” and the rudimentary aspect of the job, but never the rewards; because they just don’t stay long enough or had not paid enough dues to experience them.
Therefore, choice has often become the bane for many. The “illusion” that choice liberates and empowers us to find our dream job, is pretty much a series of “misadventure” unless it helps us score the right one. Many spend a whole lifetime in trials and errors, never coming close to their dream career.
So let ASG give it up straight, “there is no such thing as a dream job!”
For the organisation still searching for the right candidate and the intrepid candidate roving between organisations and roles, experience have suggested that candidates with the best fit and the greatest possible chance of becoming a sales producers, are usually those who came in knowing what to expect (ie. focus on a sales career only); or those who don’t have any other job option. So stop searching in the wrong place.
The only rule of thumb for the searching the ideal career or candidate lies not in sophisticated profiling science, but simply in a generic fit for the position offered (ie. education, personality and expectation); and the rest in the determination to make things work.
Article contributed by Percy Chong (through Asian Sales Guru)
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