PE M&A Activity ↑12.4%│ Industrial EBITDA Multiples 7.2×│ B2B Buyer Trust Index ↓31%│ SEO Click-Through Rate ↓44%│ LMM Deal Volume ↑8.1%│ Sales Hire Failure Rate 67%│ Organic Growth Gap 2.3× plan│ PE Dry Powder $2.59T│ PE M&A Activity ↑12.4%│ Industrial EBITDA Multiples 7.2×│ B2B Buyer Trust Index ↓31%│ SEO Click-Through Rate ↓44%│ LMM Deal Volume ↑8.1%│ Sales Hire Failure Rate 67%│ Organic Growth Gap 2.3× plan│ PE Dry Powder $2.59T│

Ed Marsh Consulting · Sales Recruiting & Hiring

Industrial Sales Hiring Is a Process.
Most Companies Run It on a Gut Call.

Hiring a sales rep shouldn't be a crap shoot. But for most industrial manufacturers, it is.

Ed brings process engineering to recruiting, hiring, and onboarding (the same rigor your plant floor already runs on) so the right hire becomes repeatable instead of lucky.

Book a Call

OMG Recruiting Process Grader →

<20%

Interviews and resumes are each under 20% predictive of sales success, yet they're how most hiring decisions get made.

The Cost of the Current Way

Four mistakes turn sales hiring into a gamble, and most companies make all four.

None of this is a talent shortage. It's a process gap. Name the pattern and it stops being inevitable.

How industrial sales hiring usually runs

Recruit reactively. Decide on instinct. Onboard thin. Manage passively.

Recruit only when the seat is empty

Hiring starts when a territory is already vacant: under time pressure, from the wrong pool, with no bench.

Hire on gut feel

The decision rests on interviews and resumes, each under 20% predictive of whether someone can actually sell.

Onboard with a laptop and a credit card

Only 12% of employees believe their company onboarded them well. New reps are left to figure it out.

Then manage sales passively

Minimal informal training and coaching, no performance metrics tracked, and changes made far too late.

The System

A structured recruiting process: five stages, each one engineered, none left to chance.

Click any stage to see what happens inside it. This is the same process Ed will either train your team to run, or run for you.

Stage 01 · Job Posting

Write a posting that attracts the right pool

Most industrial job postings describe the company and the product, and attract whoever happens to be looking. An effective posting is built to draw the candidates you actually want, and to filter out the ones you don't, before a single conversation happens.

Stage 02 · Sourcing

Source better candidates, including the ones others miss

Ed specializes in industrial capital equipment and is not a traditional headhunter. The process surfaces strong candidates a conventional industrial recruiter would screen out, and it can run alongside your existing recruiters or replace your reliance on them.

Stage 03 · Predictive Screening

Process candidates efficiently, on predicted performance

This is where the Sales Candidate Assessment does its work: the OMG Sales Assessment, with independently confirmed 91% predictive validity, applied to every candidate. It screens on who can actually sell, not on names, dates, or resumes.

Stage 04 · Hiring

Make a better hiring decision

With a structured process behind it, the hiring decision rests on evidence instead of instinct, and on a defined picture of what capital-equipment sales actually requires today, rather than the role as it was a decade ago.

Stage 05 · Onboarding Roadmap

Turn the assessment into a faster ramp

The assessment produces detailed feedback on each new hire. That feedback becomes the onboarding and coaching plan, so development is focused where it has the biggest impact, instead of handing a new rep a laptop and a credit card and hoping.

The raw material of sales effectiveness is great talent: 1 to 3 standard deviations from most. A process that can reliably find it is worth more than any single hire.

Ed Marsh · The operating principle behind the process

Built on the OMG STAR recruiting process

The Predictive Engine

The screening stage works because it measures the right thing, and ignores the rest.

Predicted sales performance, not credentials. This is what separates the process from a better-organized version of the old way.

Predictive Validity

How well each method predicts actual sales success.

A resume ~18%

An interview <20%

OMG Sales Assessment 91%

Resume figure: Andy Miller, 'The Science of Hiring Quota Busting Sales Teams.' OMG validity independently confirmed.

It screens on predicted performance, not names, dates, or resumes.

The assessment evaluates whether someone can sell in your environment. It does not weigh the things a resume puts front and center: where someone worked, when, or what their title was.

The mechanism is the safeguard: by measuring predicted performance directly, the screen surfaces candidates a credential-first process would have filtered out, and passes over candidates who interview well but can't sell.

OMG · Objective Management Group: a proven, sales-specific assessment engine in continuous use since 1992. Ed is an OMG-certified STAR. The OMG Sales Assessment covers reps, sales managers, and VPs.

Component

The Sales Candidate Assessment is the predictive engine inside this recruiting service, named here as a stage of the process, not a separate offer. It's what makes Stage 03 work.

Two Ways to Run It

The same process, delivered two ways, depending on whether you need the capability or the hire.

This is a real decision. Most companies start with one and move to the other.

Option A

Train Your Team

Ed coaches your team to run the structured recruiting process themselves, so the capability stays in-house, permanently.

Best when

You hire often enough that owning the process pays off, and you want it to outlast any one search.

What Ed does

Trains your team across all five stages (posting, sourcing, screening, hiring, onboarding) and stays on as a coach.

Works with

Your existing industrial sales recruiters: the process makes them more effective rather than replacing them outright.

Book a Call

Option B

Done For You

Ed runs the recruiting process on your behalf, sourcing and screening candidates, to prove the model before you take it in-house.

Best when

You need a strong hire now, and you want proof the system works before committing your team to it.

What Ed does

Runs the process directly: Ed specializes in industrial capital equipment and is not a traditional headhunter.

The outcome

A proven model and candidates you can hire, and the process typically reduces your reliance on outside recruiters.

Book a Call

Why Industrial Sales Hiring Fails

The deeper read: why it keeps happening, even at companies that should know better.

Ed's field guide on why it keeps happening, and what fixes it. Ungated PDF.

Why Your Industrial Sales Hiring Keeps Failing

Ed's field guide on why resume and interview driven hiring keeps producing inconsistent sellers, what a sales specific assessment changes, and why the CEO, not HR, should own the sales hiring strategy.

Download the Field Guide

Ungated. No form, no follow up sequence. Download it, or send it to whoever owns hiring.

Ed Marsh Consulting Field Guide · PDF · Ungated

Proof

Two leaders who replaced gut-feel hiring with the process, and the numbers behind why it works.

Named and verifiable.

<20%

Predictive value of an interview, on its own

~18%

Predictive value of a resume, on its own

91%

Independently confirmed validity of the OMG Sales Assessment

12%

Of employees believe their company onboarded them well

“

A traditional, conservative manufacturer took a hard look at what capital-equipment sales actually requires today, and had Ed run his recruiting model on their behalf, surfacing candidates they wouldn't previously have considered.

Chuck Kerwin

General Manager

“

After churning through salespeople they'd thought were superstars, reps who consumed management time but couldn't really sell, Ed's coaching and process upgraded the team, with a real revenue impact.

Kyle Gorman

Co-Founder & Partner

Ed Marsh, industrial revenue growth consultant, arms crossed in a navy blazer

Three decades inside industrial. Now he engineers how you hire.

Consultant · OMG-Certified STAR · Industrial Capital Equipment

Ed has spent his career inside industrial manufacturing, and the recruiting, screening, and onboarding process on this page is IP he built from watching the same hiring mistakes play out at companies that should have known better.

He is an OMG-certified STAR, specializes in industrial capital equipment, and works as a coach to teams running the process, not as a traditional headhunter.

Johns Hopkins Airborne Ranger Qualified OMG-Certified STAR NACD Governance Fellow PDA Certified

Full Bio → Back to the Sales Pillar →

Primary CTA · No Pitch · No Sequence

Talk to Ed About Your Sales Team

Sharp diagnostic questions. An honest read on whether Ed can help, and if he can't, who can.

An honest read on your sales team.

No pitch deck. No proposal cycle. No follow-up automation. Ed asks sharp diagnostic questions about your organic growth challenge and gives you an honest read on what's actually happening.

A clear next step, a better referral, or a few things you can do this week
Ed's read on whether your sales problem is people, process, or strategy
If Ed isn't the right fit, he'll tell you who is

Ed Marsh

Consultant · Speaker · Director · Author · Veteran

✉ Prefer to leave Ed a message instead? No calendar, no obligation. Ed reads every message personally. ▼

Ed reads every message personally and usually responds within 24 hours.