Hiring a salesperson is perhaps the most difficult task for any organization. Your salespeople are on the front lines, representing your company and its products and services EVERY day. Making a hiring mistake cannot only be costly to your image, but also to your pocketbook.
There are many elements that go into making sure your salespeople are successful, but the starting point is making sure you’ve made a good hire to begin with. Go-To-Market Strategies is called upon regularly to recruit salespeople for our clients and over time have discovered these tips for finding the RIGHT sales representative for your team:
Before posting the position, clearly define the role. The first step is to take some time defining the role. Too often companies try to make the sales position cover all areas—from the prospecting of opportunities to the servicing of accounts. The reality is, it is RARE to find a hunter and a farmer in one person.
The Hunter, of course, is the person who gets their sales energy off of the “hunt” for the new opportunity. They are the consultative sales people who can innately find and assess an opportunity (even when there doesn’t appear to be one) within a prospect, and find a solution to meet their needs. The Farmer is the salesperson who builds and cultivates relationships and opportunities, typically within existing accounts. Farmers are the sales people who turn a customer from good to great by the nature of their relationship and the loyalty they gain from their efforts. Every company needs both.
Make sure you determine the priority of this position and define the role and job description to accommodate that priority.
Before interviewing, profile the top candidates’ personalities. We are often asked, "Isn't the main criteria for a successful salesperson their personality?" This comes from the general feeling that to be good at sales, you either have "it" or you don't. The truth is, successful sales is not ALL about personality (experience, skills, subject matter knowledge, and process also play important roles) but it is a contributing factor.
And, when looking at personality there is more than just the "it" factor to consider. The better determination, as to whether you have the right person in a sales role, is matching the right PERSONALITY with the right ROLE.
If the personality/value make-up of the candidate doesn’t meet both the needs of the position and the demands of your company culture you need not waste anyone’s time. We recommend you personality profile each candidate prior to taking the next step and interviewing. If your company does not already have a hiring personality test they use, contact Go-To-Market Strategies for further help in this area. When we recruit for clients, we use a great tool that takes only 10-mintues to complete and provides you a quick and highly accurate picture of that candidate’s personality tendencies.
We hope these helpful tips will get you a bit closer to ensuring you make the right choice on your next sales hire. And remember, based on the priority of your specific company business development goals (customer acquisition or customer loyalty), you will want to make sure you have the right balance of BOTH Hunters and Farmers.
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Over 60 sales and marketing templates (DOC, XLS, PPT, and PDFs)
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Loads of "how-to" articles and examples
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8 Training sessions (MP3 audio files) for your computer or iPod
