Hiring errors for salespeople that cost 14,300 PLN
Every mismatched salesperson is a hole in the company budget of an average 14,300 PLN. At Market Accelerator, we calculated this based on 47 recruitments conducted for our clients from Warmia and Masuria in 2024. If you hire on gut feeling, you risk not only a salary but, above all, lost margins and time that no one will give back to you.
Why a salesperson's CV is often a fairy tale
Most candidates for sales positions can sell themselves better than your product. It's their job. We see this with every project in Olsztyn or Elbląg. In documents, everyone is a closing master and has hundreds of contacts. Reality comes out after 3 weeks when it turns out the 'star' is afraid to pick up the phone. Since September 2016, we have checked over 1,240 resumes and only 9% of them matched the candidate's actual skills.
Instead of reading about successes from five years ago, we focus on what the candidate will do here and now. At Market Accelerator, we follow a simple principle: The margin counts, not pretty fonts in a PDF file. If a salesperson can't explain exactly how they won their last 3 orders, it means they either got lucky or are being untruthful. We check facts in the field, not promises over coffee.
A salesperson's CV is marketing material, not a technical document. Treat it with the same distance as a supermarket flyer.
Where did those 14,300 PLN in losses come from?
This amount is not a number taken out of thin air. It consists of the cost of advertisements (average 2,140 PLN on three portals), the director's time spent on 12 meetings (about 28 working hours), and the base salary with overheads for the first two months. To this, we add 3,960 PLN of so-called opportunity costs. That is the margin you didn't earn because the salesperson, instead of calling customers, was learning how to use the coffee machine and pretending to analyze the market.
Our clients often say: 'Mariusz, but he seemed so concrete.' The problem is that without hard sales tests, you're buying a pig in a poke. In 2024, we saw 14 such cases where companies from Olsztyn lost a total of over 200,000 PLN due to poor personnel choices. From idea to the first invoice, the path is only short when you have people who know how to hold a phone in their hand and not buckle under a customer's difficult question.
A bad hire costs more than a year's subscription to the most expensive CRM system in your company.
The 'cold call' test during the interview
The most effective way to verify a salesperson takes exactly 4 minutes. We give the candidate a phone, describe our product in three sentences, and ask them to perform a trial call. They don't have to sell. They must show how they handle rejection. As many as 74% of candidates at this point start looking for excuses like 'I don't know the specifics of the industry' or 'I need to prepare.' That's a warning signal.
A real salesperson who is supposed to deliver results just picks up the handset. They don't need two weeks of training to ask a customer about their needs. Without any fluff—if someone is afraid to call in front of you, they will never call effectively when you close the office door behind you. At Market Accelerator, we promote action because only it generates transfers to your company's account.
Onboarding a salesperson in 14 days
It is a mistake to leave a new employee to their own devices. Many companies in the region make this mistake: they give a desk, a phone, and say 'sell.' The effective onboarding system we use takes exactly 14 business days. The first 3 days are for learning the product, the next 4 are working with the current database under a mentor's supervision, and in the second week, the salesperson must bring in at least 3 specific quote inquiries. If they don't do that, we keep looking.
The statistics are relentless. Salespeople who have not generated the first lead within 11 days of being hired, in 87% of cases, quit their jobs before the end of their probation period. Don't waste time on people who wait for things to be handed to them. We check facts in the field: either someone has a hunter's instinct, or they are just an order administrator. Your company needs the former to keep the margin at 23-30%.
If a salesperson doesn't bring an inquiry in 11 days, they probably never will.
Reference verification is not a formality
Hardly anyone in Poland actually calls previous employers. But it's a gold mine of knowledge. We ask only one question: 'Would you hire this person again?'. If there is a silence lasting longer than 2.4 seconds, we have the answer. In 2023, we saved one of our construction clients from hiring a person who, according to their CV, was a sales leader, but in reality, left in a scandal with unfinished projects.
A salesperson is a high-risk profession for your image. Such a person represents your brand to your most important contractors. One mistake during recruitment can burn bridges you've built for years. We at Market Accelerator know how to scan a candidate's past without any fluff. We focus on hard data: how many meetings they did weekly, what was their average contract value, and why they really left the previous company.
