Every spring, my wife gets the urge.
On the chicken front that is. She makes it her mission to replenish the stock of chickens and ducks that we have. Not that we don’t have enough, we do, plenty. At last count we have 12 ducks and 15 chickens, enough to keep me in eggs for as long as I can hope for.
But still my wife replenishes the stock. Eggs get shoved under mother hens rather than my breakfast and fertilised eggs from breeders are stuffed into incubators. The result is a deluge of tiny chicks.
Why does she do it every year? Because we lose hens and chickens each year. Foxes takes a large number of them as they are let out during the day and fox has her own cubs to feed. Illness and old age take their toll as well, so my wife replenishing the stock each year just keeps the status quo.
Ask any farmer and they’d agree
And ask any decent Sales Manager and they’d agree too.
You have to keep replenishing your stock. Constantly be looking to recruit, always be advertising for new hires, deliberately be keeping your eye out for good new people and have regular referral programmes from your existing sales teams.
Don’t wait until you lose someone before recruiting as it takes time to bring people on. In the same way it takes time to hatch an egg and rear it ready for the chicken coop, likewise it takes time to interview, test, induct and allow a new person to gain the experience.
I wonder what the equivalent of fox is in the Sales Management role? Head-hunters maybe.
