Big news! My debut book Crystal Ball Recruiting is almost here!

Jason Howes goes solo on this short episode to update listeners on the past and future of sales recruitment.  

• Why I left the corporate world in 2018:
  To solve two persistent challenges—ineffective sales training and over-reliance on industry experience in recruitment.
• The current sales talent crisis:
  • Average salesperson tenure is 18 months and falling.
  • 50% of hires fail.
  • Many companies settle for average performers instead of the top 20%.
• My mission:
   Helping leaders, HR managers, and business owners recruit smarter using science, data, and mindset shifts.

About the Book

• Crystal Ball Recruiting is more than a guide—it’s a call to action for leaders to stop guessing and start recruiting with clarity and confidence.
• Built from thousands of candidate interactions and hundreds of interviews.
• Focused on alignment, ROI, and building stronger teams.

We hope you enjoy! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome to the Sales Trajectory Podcast, where innovation meets execution in sales. I'm Jason Howes, your host, a 35-year sales veteran and lifelong student of the game. This podcast is for leaders and sales professionals with a growth mindset. You'll hear real sales stories about new products, motivating teams to prospect, and boost productivity. We dive deep into sales process, cutting-edge tech, and recruiting top sales performers. Let's get started. In 2018, I left the corporate world to solve two persistent challenges: effective sales training and over-reliance on industry experience when recruiting. Right now, we're in a sales talent shortage crisis. The average salesperson tenure is just 18 months and dropping as seasoned sales professionals look towards retirement or are losing the motivation to drive new business opportunities. Things are heading in the wrong direction, but let's just not blame the salespeople. Many sources indicate that roughly 50% of hires fail. Why do so many companies settle for average salespeople when the top 20% are out there ready to transform your results? That question became my obsession and eventually my mission. Over the years, I've worked with hundreds of leaders, HR managers, and business owners who are frustrated by hiring mistakes, underperforming teams, and the elusive nature of sales success. It's a combination of lessons I've learned, the best tools we use, and the mindset shifts that changed everything. Crystal Ball recruiting isn't just a guide, it's a call to action for leaders who want to recruit using science and data to build stronger teams. This book wouldn't exist without the thousands of candidates who apply for roles with us each year, and the hundreds we interview in search of that perfect match. Recruitment isn't just about compatibility, it's about alignment. I wanted to challenge the status quo to help leaders stop guessing and start recruiting with clarity, confidence, and purpose. I'm struck by how many stories, strategies, and lessons came together to form something bigger than I imagined. It's a movement for recruitment, building stronger teams with measurable ROI. Throughout my journey, I've worked with leaders who have shifted their hiring mindset, HR managers who have redefined their criteria, and sales professionals who've found roles that truly fit. That's the impact I hope for, and it's only just the beginning. With an investment of $200,000 per salesperson, you really want to make sure you're getting a return on investment. It will make or break you very quickly. But if you're just thinking that hiring a salesperson, they're going to turn up and fix all your problems, then you might want to think again. One of the biggest challenges that business leaders have right now is that a lot of hiring managers don't have time to recruit. Too much confidence is being put into sales leaders and hiring managers who have never been taught how to recruit. They struggle to attract quality candidates because most top quality sales professionals are not actually looking for a job right now. Potentially some of the people you hired for originally are not a good fit anymore. When you're hiring or with your existing sales team, what does success look like and how can you make sure you're making a return on investment? Chapter three, clearly defining the role. Statistics show that up to 70% of salespeople turn up and the position or the role they were successful in landing isn't clearly defined or isn't what they expected. This chapter covers a lot of key areas that we find success when we're working with our clients on how to attract the top sales talent. So you're going to need to look in your own backyard to see what it's like. On seek, what are your reviews like? Are you attracting candidates to your company? Because they're going to go and look. Chapter six, most people don't even know or understand that they have a bias when hiring. We typically hire the same types of salespeople. I remember that when I was a hiring manager, we talk about the different types of bias and how you can open up your recruitment process to bring in different types of people. It will help you with your strategy, it will help with your future opportunities for growth because you won't have the same types of people sitting at the table when you're working on this. As a leader, it's very important to have a combination of different types on your team. Chapter seven, we talk about how to select the best talent. Not only are we looking at your team, your ROI, defining your role, compensation attracting and removing bias, but we're now moving on to how to select the best talent. That's where we introduce our systems and process. We build a criteria. You can do this in-house. If you want to save money on recruitment, we can do as much or as little as you want. I read an article the other day. There's opportunities if you're using an external recruitment company because you're having trouble to attract, you could potentially reduce your recruitment fees by 50% if you learn the process on how to do star recruitment. You've now selected the best talent. Now we move on to onboarding for success. Chapter eight is one of the most important chapters that typically a lot of companies will go out looking for the unicorn, the diamond in the rough. So potentially, if you're not able to get someone to tick all your boxes, but they tick a good percentage, you can learn or utilize our onboarding process to help you ramp up these new hires much more effectively, much faster, and to get them to power through their probation period to generate new business and provide a return on investment. Chapter nine, this chapter covers off a lot of areas that you can check to make sure you're looking after your top performers. You're creating the culture that attracts top performers and retains top performers to make sure that you're paying the right money and you're offering the right incentives and career path for top performers. I'm excited for the release. We're just finalizing layouts. We are moving through to publishing. We're expecting a pre-release sale in mid-December for books available either before Christmas or just after Christmas. It's been great sharing this um this episode on the Sales Trajectory podcast. Please send me a personal message. We'd love to hear from you. I'm signing off for this episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. We wanted to share this story with you personally to update everyone on what's been happening in the backgrounds. Thank you. Got a product that's struggling or launching something new? Reach out. We're inviting guests who want to make a real impact.