Building Championship Sales Teams:  
Five Tips for Finding and Hiring Winners

By Alec Pleet

Picture your favorite major league sporting team – one with a creative, strategic, and competitive coach who creates the most brilliant game plays.  However, if his team cannot execute these plans to their full potential, then the game is already lost. 

Now imagine your retail wireless business.  You have a brilliant marketing strategy, location, product selection, and competitive pricing.  However, all these elements are wasted if the staff members you choose to execute your game plans drop the ball.

Indeed, the success of any organization is dependent upon the employees on the frontlines.  While there are a myriad of job seekers looking for employment as a result of the recent economic downturn, you must protect your wireless retail business by finding and hiring winners to become a part of your team.  

So how do you find and hire winners?  How do you make sure that those winners stay with your organization?  There are many ways to find candidates for employment, but if you tailor your recruiting and hiring initiatives correctly, you will be able to build a high-performance organization with loyal employees.  Winning employees are waiting out in the job fields, but your organization needs to implement the right combination of techniques to find them.  Use the following five tips to find and hire winners for your championship organization.

A Multifaceted Approach  

Use a multifaceted approach to reach the winners in the job market.  In order to uncover the hidden talents that are located in your community, you need to approach the recruiting and hiring process from a variety of different angles.  

One online job advertisement on Monster or CareerBuilder does not reach the full pool of qualified candidates.  Use a combination of advertisements to reach a broad and diverse population of potential candidates.   Explore the job section on Craigslist, the online classifieds version of your local newspaper, blogs in your city, and trade association message boards.  

In addition, providing more than one way to submit a resume or application will also diversify your candidate pool.  Make provisions to accept application materials via email, fax, regular mail, and in-person submissions.  

You can take your hiring strategy one step further by accepting applications by phone.  Allowing phone applications capitalizes upon eager candidates who are enthusiastic about submitting their applications.  In your job ad, you can indicate that there are “operators standing by to take your application,” listing the phone number and specific call hours.  

A multifaceted approach to recruitment will generate interest from potential employees from all walks of life.  

Traditional Advertising

Use traditional advertising in nontraditional ways.  If you want to recruit energetic, resourceful and talented individuals for your wireless retail business, don’t waste your money on traditional advertisement.  Invest in an exciting ad packed with details about the organization, its culture and the potential earnings that are available.  These types of ads cater to a different type of readership, and they will generate a bigger response from more energetic and aggressive candidates.  Average sized communities often feature a variety of local, regional and independent publications.  Target all of these traditional venues for advertising as opposed to only the major print publications in the area.  

Online Recruiting

Use effective online recruiting initiatives.  The wireless industry is heavily dependent on an understanding of technology for success.  You can use online recruiting initiatives to search for technologically literate candidates.  Because online job boards are searchable and customizable, you can cater to candidates who are looking for specific types of employment too.  Online recruiting is especially effective if you are looking for assistant managers, managers, leaders or administrators to add to your team.  Consider limiting the recruitment for some of the higher level positions in your organization to an online program.  

Job Fairs

Use job fairs as an opportunity to gauge candidate potential and capitalize on time.  At a job fair, you will meet numerous candidates in a very short amount of time.  Since the initial meeting is face-to-face, it is often easier to assess the individual’s potential and level of interest right away.  Participants in job fairs come from a variety of different backgrounds, and they are excellent forums for diversifying and strengthening your wireless workforce.  If your organization plans effectively to participate in a job fair, it is possible to fill a number of vacancies in a very short amount of time.  

However, to take advantage of this hiring opportunity, be ready to hire at the job fair.  Make sure your booth is adequately staffed with knowledgeable and friendly representatives.   Sending “volunteers” from your company to the job fair to simply collect applications will not translate into finding the ideal candidates.  You should enlist trained staff members who have an ability to “take an applicant off the floor” to instantly conduct a full interview.  Capitalize upon job fairs and be prepared to hire, instead of simply collecting resumes.  

Follow Through on Your Investments

Use a variety of feedback and follow through techniques to capitalize on your recruiting and hiring investments.  It costs money to recruit, hire and train new employees.  This is an investment in the future of your organization, and it is important to protect that investment.  Train your human resources employees properly to conduct background and reference checks on all candidates who will be offered a position.  Administrators and executives in the organization should be directly involved with the hiring process at all times to maintain quality assurance and alignment with the company goals.  

Simultaneously, you want to create a positive, assimilation-oriented environment for your new hires.   You can invite new hires to develop rapport with the management by calling in their numbers each night.  Or consider assigning new hires a mentor who can develop a supportive relationship during their early days in the company.  By giving your new hires time and support in acclimating to your work environment, you can maximize the returns of your hiring investments.    

Keep in mind that the potential for another job offer is high during the first few weeks of employment, and you want to ensure the winning candidate stays with your organization.  Encourage and support newly hired employees, and when applicable, new employees should be recognized for excellence and their performance in the workplace.  

You can build a winning team of employees for your wireless retail business.  It all starts with looking for employees in the right places, diversifying your workforce and following through on the valuable investments that you make.  

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