Before we answer the question, let’s start with a few facts:

1)
No matter what prediction financial economists are giving regarding the
length of this recession, your business can gain a big advantage over
your competition now and in the coming recovery with only a single
leadership addition or change.

2) As the economy shows signs of
recovery, the attraction and identification of talented people to fill
your key positions will become even more difficult.

3) Even
during this recession, it is still hard to find that right individual
for your business to fill a key leadership role or one-of-a-kind
position.

In recent months, many businesses have been making cuts
in expenses, programs and even, people. Few, if any, are prepared to
reverse this trend and instead make new hires in the anticipation of a
recovery. However, most companies and organizations currently have at
least one critical need which can be filled by hiring, or replacing, a
key leadership position.

For many businesses, this leadership
void was recognized when times got tougher. In other cases, the void
was spotted during more favorable times, but the company was simply
unable to find the right talent for the role. A common statement at
your company may have included \"If only we could find someone with
___________ experience, we could take our company to the next level\"

How
did you fill in the blank? Did you seek more sales capability,
technical or operational expertise, how about financial acumen, or
possibly someone to start a new territory or initiative? The need
varied but the bottom line is the company was limited in reaching their
full potential because they could not find the right person for a key
role, or they delayed the decision to upgrade from a B player to an A
player.

Carl J. Taylor & Co. was recently approached by a
company that bucked this trend. The company President and Vice
President of Sales wanted Carl J. Taylor & Co. to help them add
several new Sales Directors for some new regions they were planning to
add. They also identified one territory which required the need to
upgrade the quality of the Sales Director.

The recession hit and
the company had to implement many cost cutting measures in its
operations, and they knew that the recruiting and compensation of these
new sales people would have a significant impact on the company’s short
term cash flow. Nevertheless, they moved forward with these hires.

The
VP of Sales had this to say about the decision to work with Carl J.
Taylor & Co. to add these new hires and the results. Her comments
included:

\"These are difficult roles to fill, and we did a
thorough search in each market to find the right person for our
organization. We have added some outstanding people that we may not
have been able to entice at another time.

We have taken full
advantage of this difficult time to let these people learn our
sophisticated products and services and to integrate them into our
company and culture.

The new Directors are developing important
relationships with our current customers, and they are identifying and
contacting a large number of new customer targets.

The visibility
of our competition is noticeably reduced, or absent, in some of these
markets, and customers recognize our presence is increasing.

Sales are hard to close, but we are selling more during this time because of these new people.

We
are ideally positioned to take advantage of the recovery, and we won’t
lose sales or market share because we have to delay our efforts to find
the right people\"

At a time like this the adding of any new hires
(especially for key leadership positions) can create a strain on the
company budget, but it’s important to remember that delaying that one
key hire or upgrade can cost you far more in terms of lost sales,
delayed initiatives, reduced market share, negative customer relations
and/or missed opportunities to improve operations.

Something
else to think about is what is your competition doing or planning to
do? Are they investing in top talent now to take advantage of the
current environment and to position themselves for the recovery?

The
economy will recover and as it does your competition and numerous other
businesses will realize their leadership voids and seek people to fill
these key leadership positions. At that time it will be even harder to
find and attract the top talent and as a result many companies will
make hasty decisions which will lead to bad hires.

And, no company can afford to make a bad hire no matter what the economy is doing.

Carl
J. Taylor & Co. is an executive search firm based in Dallas. For
over 20 years, the firm has successfully completed challenging search
assignments for clients of all sizes in Texas and around the country.

If
you would like more information about this or other executive search
related topics, please call Carl Taylor at 972 490-7697 or email him at
ctaylor@carltaylorco.com. The company website is http://www.carltaylorco.com.