By Peter Gilbert the managing director of HR Chally SA, a sales recruitment and training company identifying talented young salespeople, places them, trains and coaches them with guaranteed results. (www.chally.com)

Interviews with tens of thousands of executives have yielded valuable insights into the expectations that customers have of truly professional B-2-B salespeople and, incidentally, there are precious few of them around. Hiring sales talent is a critical business issue, below are some key insights to guide you.

1: “Be personally accountable for our desired results”.

The best salespeople, winning most of the business, take personal responsibility for the customer’s results. These salespeople neither do all of the work that is required themselves, nor are they directly employed by their customers. But they do act as the single point of contact for the customer and they ensure that customers buy the best solutions and achieve the value they expected.

2: “Understand our business”

This rule flows logically from the first: in order to personally manage a customer account, salespeople must understand the customer’s business. This means understanding how the customers’ business works--its competencies, business strategies and organizational culture. It means understanding the customer’s customer. It means seeing the customer’s business as its CEO sees the business.

3: “Be on our side”

Although customers have little or no control over what happens to their purchases within the seller’s company, the seller’s internal processes can have a tremendous impact on the results they obtain. For this reason, customers expect salespeople to be their representatives within the seller’s organization. The best salespeople ensure that the solutions that their customers have purchased move through their own companies as required and promised. When necessary, they manipulate their own company’s systems to see that the customer is properly served.

4: “Bring us applications”.

Customers want outcome-focused salespeople. They want to know how to use products and services to achieve their goals, and they want to be sure the solutions they buy can be properly implemented in their unique environment. That’s why the best salespeople act as consultants, focused on delivering business value.

5: “Be easily accessible”.

The expansion of corporate boundaries has been accompanied by corresponding growth in customer demand for local, accessible sales representation. Today’s best salespeople are travelers spanning geographic, political, and cultural boundaries to instantly relieve customers’ stress.

6: “Solve our problems”.

Once the closing of the sale marked the end of the sales engagement and the salesperson’s responsibilities. Today, the closing of the sale simply marks the end of the beginning. Customers expect salespeople to solve their problems throughout the full term of the business relationship. The best salespeople act as troubleshooters, realizing the inevitability of problems and, instead of hiding from them, commit to solving them quickly and effectively.

7: “Be innovative in responding to our needs”.

Because change is the only constant, your customers expect you to respond with proactive, continuous innovation to their spoken and unspoken needs. To meet this demand, the best sales professionals adopt the role of innovator, acting as the point person in this effort and, as the closest customer contact, being the first to recognize and react to new business opportunities.

These are the rules and roles representing your customers’ definitions of world-class selling in business-to-business markets. They are also the quickest route to the only direct source of sales success—the customer’s decision to buy.