Hiring the Right Sales Force for Peak Performance

Abstract

The political stability in Ghana since 1992 resulted in the liberalisation of the economy, which in turn impacted favourably on business activities.  This has resulted in escalating competition and rising buyer expectations forcing companies to focus on quality service delivery to a greater extent than ever before. These trends have increased the intensity of competition in the beer industry particularly. As a consequence, many firms in the beer industry strive to nurture or build customer trust and retention which largely depends on sales force behaviour. At the same time, hiring the right sales force to deliver on sales goals and targets for shareholder value in a competitive environment can be challenging. 

Therefore, using, a two-phase survey with managers and sales persons from the Ghanaian beer industry, this paper examined how the right sales force could be hired for peak performance.  It came out from the findings that, to think that there is a quick solution to the difficult job of recruiting sales persons can be an illusion.  What may work is for managers to collaborate closely with hiring consultants who have requisite capability in such matters. This collaboration can be in the form of managers sharing with consultants the required job related information from which to base their search.  Once the task of hiring is no more directly the responsibility of managers, they can focus on their core management duties of training, mentoring, supervision and creating an enabling work environment to get sales persons work enthusiastically at achieving satisfactory results.