If you are not reaching your productivity, sales and revenue goals, it is time to figure out exactly why.

What Have You Done to Grow Your Business this Year?

If you are like most business owners and managers, you have tried just about everything; from new technology and software, to modifying your marketing message and efforts, to hiring teamwork consultants, to reorganization.

There are three things all of these techniques have in common. One, they cost you a lot of money. Two, they eat up a good amount of your time. And three, they rarely (if ever) work. To grow your business, it is imperative to improve the productivity of your employees. That is the reason organizations spend their time, energy and revenues on the products and services that are written about in articles, advertised in the media and introduced at seminars.

However, the typical outcome is "business as usual." Those employees who naturally performed before the costly modifications, still naturally perform. Those who failed to meet your sales, teamwork, motivation and productivity expectations, still fail and cost you time, energy and money.

Why You Need to Hire ONLY TOP Performers

Your TOP Performers produce month in and month out. So no matter how ineffective your technology, processes or managers may be, your best employees continually make you money without external support, motivation or incentive.

Studies have shown, the top performers in a position are five to eight times more productive (and profitable) than average employees. Organizations that have created recruiting and hiring standards, and more importantly follow them, have doubled or tripled their productivity, sales and revenues by doing nothing more than hiring more top performers.

At the same time, their industry counterparts have either failed to grow or gone out of business. Most of these organizations have spent a good amount of time, energy and revenues on reorganizing their marketing, sales, technology and leadership processes also.

Adding another top performing employee to your team is the only way to guarantee your success. Whether that means adding a new position to payroll or replacing a non-performer, it is an important decision that must be made if you want to grow your business.

How to Attract & Hire TOP Performers

Because it is not a matter of if, but when you come to the realization that your current staff is holding you back from your important goals, here are five ways to insure every future hire can, and will, become a top performer:

1. Don't Expect Candidates to Find You

If you are only recruiting "passively" with classified ads, general web boards and employment agencies, you are only going to find "passive" job seekers. You need to do everything in your power (network, referrals, educational partnerships, etc.) to "actively" recruit motivated top performers.

2. Believe Only 50% of the Resume

Studies have shown 95% of resumes contain exaggerations. The best thing about a resume is it tells you if the candidate (or their professional resume writer) can use grammar properly, can last more than a few months at a job and has the basic education or training required.

3. Believe Only 50% of the Interview

Your reason for having the interview is to make sure the candidate will fit your culture, team and the job you are hiring them to do. Now think about it, their reason for accepting the interview is to be who they need to be and to say what they need to say to "sell you" on hiring them.

4. Don't Always Rely on Your Instincts

Your "gut" has been proven wrong before and it will be proven wrong again. And this works both ways. You have surely passed on someone who made a bad first impression that later became a top performer for a competitor. You have also hired the energetic, friendly, punctual candidate that eventually became a drain on your time, energy and cost you a lot of money.

5. Use All of the Available Resources

According to studies, using a resume, interview, background and reference checks, employment agency recommendations and your instincts only provide you about a one in four chance of hiring a top performer. For over 15 years, most of the Fortune 500 and almost every Market Leader has kept their use of "Job Match" Assessments a secret from their competitors. The secret is now out that you can improve your Hiring Success Rate of top performers to about 75% with these tools.