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What To Look For in Business Development Candidates

Summer is over and people are hiring. I've had a few conversations this week with creative firm principals looking to hire new business development personnel, so I promised to post some advice on the subject here.

Next month David C. Baker from ReCourses will be my guest expert in the webcast Managing Business Development Personnel, but if you need to hire one first, here's some guidance on what to look for in good candidates and where to find them.

Vertical Expertise

If your firm is vertically specialized then this is priority #1: you want to look for people who know the space. Ideally they have experience selling into it at a high level, but don't fret if their experience in the vertical is not sales or even marketing. Job 1 is knowledge of the vertical.

Sales Experience

Sales experience is valuable, but there are a few traps to watch out for here. Proven sales success in a related area (large ticket consultative sales to senior decision makers) is great when you can find it, but success in a more transactional sale does not necessarily translate. Someone who succeeded in printing, cars or whole life insurance isn't necessarily going to succeed in selling creative or advisory services. Large, complex technical sales are most closely related to agency sales in terms of the make-ups of the people who succeed.

A lot of assessments are pretty good at predicting sales success (not on their own, but in conjuction with more subjective assessments of candidates' basic skills) so sales experience isn't something that's high on my requirements list. There are some great salespeople out there who have never previously sold for a living. You probably know some.

I usually add a line to the wanted ad that says, "Even if you have no previous sales experience but you think you can do the job, we'd like to hear from you."

Dealing With Senior Decision Makers

Through assessment tools you can objectively measure someone's willingness to pick up the phone and call people they don't know, but you won't learn of their comfort level in dealing with the C-suite. Experience dealing with CEOs, CMOs and other senior leaders is a significant asset.

Agency Experience

Not important. In fact, if I'm looking at two resumes of similar quality and one candidate has agency business development experience and the other does not, I'll lean to the one without agency experience. The bad habits of agency business development get ingrained quickly. The longer someone has been at it, the more deprogramming required. Experience working with an agency on the client side however is valuable.

Many firms are tempted to look at their most admired competitors and try to lure their business development person, whom they assume is responsible for that firm's success. But the best business development people (who really are largely responsible for their firm's success) are well paid and do not move easily. Most such moves end up being expensive mistakes.

In my experience, the best business development hires come from within the firm or from outside the agency world altogether.

Deep Rolodex

Hiring for the Rolodex is usually a mistake. If your canddiate meets all the other important criteria and happens to be uber-connected, consider it a bonus. But don't let someone's connections blind you to their ability or motivational make-up. I see this mistake made all the time, particularly with advertising agencies. Knowing people and getting business out of them are two entirely different, and for some people, completely unrelated, things.

Age, Gender and Education

Be careful about excluding anyone for any of these three attributes, and not just for legal reasons. Gender is a non-issue; age is only relevant if someone is too inexperienced; and while completed university degrees of any kind demonstrate an ability to persevere, the world is filled with successful salespeople who didn't finish high school.

Cast a Wide Net

Your ad should list all of the above relevant skills, experiences or attributes as "an asset" with few actual requirements. Cast a wide net, being sure to advertise with any publications or websites that target the verticals you do, and see what you get. Better to create the work of sifting through a large pile than to accidentally eliminate possible superstars because of wrong or overly-restrictive criteria.