FEATURE
PAPER
Selection
of Sales Personnel: Love at First Sight
The
following paper was presented at the 2007 Allied Academies
International Conference - Jacksonville. It was written
by Charles R Emery and
Kevin S. Handell of Erskine College.
Abstract
Today’s
sales businesses are facing a new type of hiring crisis – a
crisis of hiring the right person for the job and the organization.
Hiring the right salesperson,
however, might be as simple
and economical as trusting our adaptive unconscious or thin-slicing.
Previous research has
indicated that strangers can often predict personality characteristics
from mere glimpses of targets.
If one can accurately predict personality characteristics from
thin-slices, then perhaps one can
accurately predict the success or failure of job performance
(e.g., sales). This study examines that
proposition using car sales personnel. The findings indicate
that judges are better at selecting the“
worst” salesperson and that the ability to correctly
determine the “best” and “worst” salesperson
is positively correlated with age (older) and gender (female).
Lastly, there was no significant
evidence that training improved a person’s ability to
correctly identify the “best” and “worst” salesperson.
Introduction
Today’s businesses are facing a new type
of hiring crisis – a crisis of hiring the right person
for the job and the organization. The first year cost of a
bad hire typically runs 2.5 times the
person’s salary, not counting the intangible costs and
damage to organizational productivity and
morale (Kruger, 2004). In Collin’s (2001) best selling
book, Good to Great, he suggests that the
single most important thing that makes a company great is to “get
the right people on the bus.” Similarly, Thomas Wolfe’s
book The Right Stuff (1979) suggested that the selection process
is
crucial to job performance and as such, should be a sophisticated
evaluation of many factors. As
such, organizations have been developing long, detailed, and
often expensive, selection techniques.
This thought process fits well with our culture that is innately
suspicious of rapid cognition or quick
judgments. Malcolm Gladwell (2005) notes in his best selling
book Blink, that: “Our culture
suggests haste makes waste, look before you leap, stop and
think, and don’t judge a book by its
cover. In short, we believe that we are always better off gathering
as much information as possible
and spending as much time as possible in deliberation.”
Hiring
the right salesperson, however, might be as simple and economical
as trusting our
adaptive unconscious—using a paradigm of love at first
sight. For example, Timothy D. Wilson
(2002) writes in his book Strangers to Ourselves: “The
mind operates most efficiently by relegating
a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious.
Similarly, Ambady and
Rosenthal (1992) indicate that people are unexpectedly accurate
in forming impressions of others
from mere glimpses or thin slices of expressive behavior. Their
study of teacher effectiveness demonstrated that students,
unfamiliar with the teacher, had no trouble in accurately predicting
teaching performance based on three, silent, five second videos
(1993). These provocative findings
suggest several applications in the area of personnel selection;
particularly in the hiring of sales
personnel.
The
purpose of this study is four-fold: (1) determine whether
strangers can accurately predict
the performance of sales personnel from thin slices of selling
behaviors, (2) determine whether some
people are consistently better predictors than others, (3)
determine those non-verbal cues used for
accurately predicting sales performance, and (4) determine
whether people can be trained to
accurately predict sales performance.
Read
the Entire Paper...
TIP
OF THE WEEK
Energy
Consumption
• The energy costs individual
small business vary greatly. Ten (10) percent of small
employers claim that energy costs are
the largest single cost they have while 8 percent claim that
they have no direct energy expenses.
• Small-business
energy costs (closely related to consumption) are primarily
linked to vehicles (38%), heating and cooling of occupied
space (33%), operating equipment or processes (21%) and
lighting (6%).
• Of the 84 percent who
use vehicles in their business operations, 49 percent did not change
much of anything in the last year to counteract
the higher price of gasoline and/or diesel. The most frequent
step of those who did was: 18 percent rescheduled or changed routing;
16 percent
used fewer vehicles or used them less frequently; and 11
percent purchased or leased more energy-efficient vehicles.
• Fifty-seven percent
own the building in which their business is primarily located. Seventy-one
percent of those who lease directly
pay the heating and cooling bill, meaning that 85 to 90
percent have an immediate incentive to reduce energy costs in the space
they occupy.
• 20% of those who directly
pay heating and/or cooling bills remodeled their building or substantial
parts of it in the last three years in a
way that achieves notable energy cost savings, and non-mutually
21 percent plan to do in the coming three years.
• 11% of small business
occupy space in addition to that in their primary location. Just over
half (56%) occupy one facility; the remainder
occupy more. About half own those locations. 24% lease
them resulting in about 62% with a direct incentive to conserve in these
structures.
• Fluorescent lighting
is now the standard in small businesses. 73% us it; 65% in lamps and
8 percent in compact bulbs. Just 12% still
employ incandescent lighting and 6% halogen.
• Two-thirds (67%) of
small business have outdoor lighting. The primary purpose of outdoor
lighting in over 80 percent of cases is safety
and/or security. Most of the remainder use it primarily
for advertising and/or awareness.
• Twenty-six percent
report that they use equipment and/pr processes that require large amounts
of energy like ovens, refrigeration units,
or dying machines.
• Within the last three
years, 43 percent have taken steps to reduce the amount of energy their
businesses consume. The most prominent steps
were operational such as changing to more efficient lighting,
changing the thermostat, rearranging or rescheduling processes, and
switching off
lights or equipment when not in use. The most frequent
investments were new and more energy-efficient equipment, adding insulation,
new windows
and/or doors, and installed/improved heat recycling systems.
Just 27% of those who had taken at least one step could name a second
step they
had taken.
William
J. Dennis. Jr. NFIB Natoinal Small Business Poll. Energy
Consumption - Volume 6, Issue 3.
2006. pg.1.
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CONFERENCES
MEI
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MEI
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The
3rd International Symposium on Management, Engineering
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Orlando,
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July 8-11, 2007 |
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Governance for Families in Business
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Freeport, Maine, USA |
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June 19-22, 2007 |
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Association
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Nineteenth International Conference
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10th
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2007
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USASBE
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United
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The
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Allied
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International
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Reno,
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October
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Small
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Handlery
Hotel – San Diego, CA |
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Feb.
14-16, 2008 |
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