Topgrading –How to Doublethe Number

of Your Top Performers

Mark Faust

Interview with Jim Hunter – people prediction expert

Ok, you already know that people are your most important asset, right? People are the only ones who can take care of customers, innovate new ideas, make sales calls and ultimately make your company either a winner or loser.

But not all people are exactly alike, are they? We know you have both great performers and not-so-great performers, which usually cause you the most frustration. Pop Quiz: What if you took your best performer inside your company and replicated him or her throughout your entire team? In a sales environment, would that double or triple your revenues? Probably.

In our experience, we show most companies have only about 25% of their people they would rank as high performers. What about the other 75%? It’s time to change this and we’ll show you how. We asked Jim Hunter, founder of strategic partner to Echelon Management for recruiting,hiring and topgrading employees with clients; what were some of his top keys to ‘cracking the code’ of success inside people and companies:

7Keys to Cracking the Topgrading Code

  1. Understand what makes your ‘A’ players – ‘A’ players. Define the exact behaviors, competencies, backgrounds, skills that separate them from everyone else? Use tools (we can help you here) or profiling tools that can construct a Topgrading profile for anyone in your company, especially your Sales people.
  2. Analyze the rest of your (sales) team, classifying them into ‘B’s and ‘C’s based on performance, ability, coach-ability or other factors specific to your company, like skills or certifications to nail down who are your keepers . . . and who are not.
  3. Analyze your past mis-hires, and estimate the cost of mishires, to fully understand how expensive it is not to topgrade as well as establish a start point to measure improvement.
  4. If you need to hire, already have your ‘virtual bench’ identified. That is your list of great candidates to call next time you need someone. Payingrecruiters gets expensive. We see managers ONLY hiring when they are desperate. Don’t do it. Identify great candidates now!
  5. Now that you have all your people noted as A-B-C’s, make sure you develop specific and accountable plans (activity, specific projects, number of calls or sales) for each person. Remember that not everyone is created equal in performance so ensure you are coaching, stretching and motivating each person based on their uniqueness’s. In baseball, not everyone plays at the same position. Discover and coach each person as THEY need help.
  6. Stretch ‘em. Ask what they feel they can achieve in their own performance. You’ll be amazed at what people will sign up for if it is THEIR idea.
  7. Capture, Analyze, Predict. If you have captured the ‘A-B-C’ player profile information, hiring scores, performance numbers and analyze the trends you should see why some people are performing higher than others. This is an area we really emphasize by using some sophisticated tools, but you can start to predict future outcomes pretty simply just by looking at some basic data.

Inside your company there exists a powerful force; a force that can do more deals, win more customers, be more loyal and innovative new opportunities….the answer is found inside your best people. Get more of them!

Jim Hunter

Profiling & People Predictor Expert

Mark Faust at 513.621.8000