PORTSMOUTH, RI--(Marketwire - Aug 23, 2011) - In her latest book titled The Perfect Hire: A Tactical Guide to Hiring, Developing, and Retaining Top Sales Talent, expert sales and leadership strategist Kathi Graham-Leviss shows executives, HR professionals, business owners, and sales managers how to stop the revolving door of sales hires by arming them with five steps to make the perfect hire. Published August 15, 2011 by Entrepreneur Press, the book addresses the chief reasons sales positions have one of the highest turnover rates, regardless of economic landscape: poor hiring decisions and failing to properly utilize and challenge these employees.
"Almost all sales managers have experienced hiring sales people for their technical skills and ultimately fire them for a bad attitude," commented Graham-Leviss. "The lessons learned include that experience and technical skills simply aren't enough. Be it time, money, or opportunities lost, the cost of finding and hiring a new sales person is significant."
Kathi Graham-Leviss is the president and founder of XB Consulting. Following years of leadership coaching and business consulting, she pioneered a state-of-the-art multidimensional approach to help companies hire, manage, and retain their most valuable talent. Working with a team of scientists and organizational psychologists, she created XC InSight, the industry's best competency-based selection and development solution for measuring and predicting human performance potential.
The Perfect Hire: A Tactical Guide to Hiring, Developing, and Retaining Top Sales Talent is Graham-Leviss' second book, following on the heels of High-Maintenance Employees: Why Your Best People Will Also Be Your Most Difficult...and What You Can Do About It. In her latest book, she helps readers simplify the sales hiring process by following a five-step formula that promotes increased revenues by hiring, developing, and retaining top sales talent. These steps are supported by research in competencies, cognitive attributes, core values and behaviors for top sales talent, performance drivers, and employee retention.
"The Perfect Hire is a comprehensive guide detailing how to actively hire and cultivate the most effective sales force by using meaningful assessments that capture employees' competency, critical thinking, and core values," said Troy Vincent, vice president, Player Engagement, National Football League. "The book employs Graham-Leviss' 25 years of experience and research findings to ensure employers are capable of developing the best sales talent possible."
Graham-Leviss concluded, "By following our five-step program, sales managers can learn how to apply proven best practices to all aspects of the sales hiring and managing process, including customizing benchmarks for each position to ensure quality candidates. Assessing 'the three Cs' -- competency, critical thinking and core values -- predicts on-the-job success and also enables managers to create development plans that help sales talent thrive."
The Perfect Hire: A Tactical Guide to Hiring, Developing, And Retaining Top Sales Talent is available now. The book retails for $19.95 and can be purchased through www.amazon.com and www.bn.com.
More about XB Consulting and XC Insight
XB Consulting is an industry leading executive coaching and business consulting firm that makes companies more profitable by optimizing employee development, productivity, and selection. The company couples years of sales and leadership expertise with its proprietary technology-based assessment solution, XC Insight, to improve hiring practices and provide insight for developing and maintaining high performance workforces. The best in measuring human performance potential, XC Insight brings clarity, specificity, and predictability to hiring and development processes and is statistically proven to increase productivity, produce higher quality work, make effective use of training time, and increase job satisfaction and retention. Built and validated by nationally known scientists and industrial and organizational psychologists, XC InSight is fully compliant with APA Standards, SIOP Principles, and EEOC Guidelines. More information can be accessed here.