Why checking References is a waste of your time (and what you can do instead)
Here are five common mis-hires anyone who has been a part of a B2B sales team should be able to recognize immediately. Every sales hiring manager has had to deal with a scenario where she or he was expecting to land a top performer, and instead ended up with one of these individuals. Most of these individuals, with the probable exception of Sales Type #5, are wonderful people who in all likelihood make great team members at happy hour, but almost never become top sales performers.
Sales hiring managers are often too busy to headhunt their own talent, though they may be best equipped experientially and intuitively to recognize top performers, and many have deep networks of reliable connections that they can leverage.