Good points. However, when determining bad hires you must also take a hard look at the ones who are making the hiring decisions, e.g., managers. Sometimes managers don’t always set the right expectations when making a hiring decision, thus a new salesperson comes on board with one set of expectations only to find to his surprise that the job wasn’t what he expected. Besides having a good structured and assessment process, I recommend that you have job seekers actually sit in on sales calls, speak freely with others on the sales team, and observe your sales operation for a while so that they can get a real sense of what they are getting themselves into. Also, sometimes “bad” hires are not always bad — it’s the company or sales department that ends up being bad when you have high turnover due to several factors, e.g., bad compensation package, unfair lead or account allocation, poor leadership, etc.

Yes, I would agree that normally after three (3) months, you will pretty much know if you made a good or bad hire. But sometimes it’s also the reverse — the newly hired employee will also know within three (3) months if he made a good decision in accepting a job offer in the first place.

In sales, it’s not a one way street- it’s a two way street. Honesty is always the best policy- regardless of whether you are doing the hiring or trying to be hired.