Techniques for Hiring Effective Salespeople

     Many businesses struggle with the task of hiring good salespeople. Despite extensive interviews, resume reviews, and testing, many businesses still feel that finding the right person is a matter of luck. This can lead to relying on gut feelings rather than on focused, objective selection criteria.

     In reality, hiring for sales positions is among the most challenging tasks facing a business. Unfortunately, despite their good intentions, many businesses are so focused on filling the position that they fail to consider who is actually the best fit for the organization. Not every skilled salesperson is a good fit for every sales job. Yes, in almost all cases they need to be able to sell. There are a number of effective tests and structured interviews that can determine whether one is inclined to be good at selling. However, this is not the end of the story. You need to determine what makes a good fit, and to do this you first need to understand what your business's priorities and needs in its sales positions are.

     Priorities vary from business to business. Furthermore, they change from time to time within a business based on the current climate and goals of the organization. When hiring for sales, examine the business priorities. What are these people selling? A product? A service? A relationship? Administrative quality? The best product? The best price? The best service? Once you've determined this, then you need to hire people with the right focus and ability. This requires you to understand:

1. The person's capacity to learn what is necessary to sell your products and services. How complex or unique is the information required to sell your products and services? Does your product base change frequently or is it more constant? Some people are flexible in what kinds of information they can learn quickly. You want to make sure someone is quick enough to keep up with the knowledge required to do a good sales job.
2. How capable that person is of putting the priorities where you want them. Someone who manufactures concrete can sell a product (concrete) or a service (home improvement). You need to find a salesperson that will put the sales focus where you want it.
3. How well they deal with the customer contacts. In this case, you need to know who your salespeople deal with. Do they typically meet with high level executive or line supervisors? A salesperson who is comfortable with engineers may not perform as well with divisional vice-presidents. Your selection process should evaluate how comfortable the job candidate is likely to be with your customer contacts.
4. What other factors and interests might influence performance in this position. If someone is motivated by money, are you delivering to that source of motivation? Are you using new technology that requires specific knowledge or interest to help salespeople in the field? What kind of performance evaluation and reward system have you set up?

     Armed with this information, you can objectively and subjectively evaluate someone's candidacy to determine job fit. We recommend that you measure job-related skills, abilities, and personality characteristics through structured interviews and testing services.

     Structuring the interview helps you to focus on the characteristics and skills of importance (i.e., ones that match your business' priorities). Furthermore, these types of interviews prevent a typically verbal salesperson from taking charge of the interview and flooding you with irrelevant information.

     Another powerful technique used in hiring salespeople is role play. Set up a situation in which the candidate pretends to sell you a predetermined product or service. This gives you a firsthand look at their knowledge and approach to sales. You can see how they manage objections and respond to resistance. With practice, interviews can become a very effective component of the selection process.

     Finally, many studies have clearly demonstrated that one of the best predictors of success is intellectual ability. Using a testing service that emphasizes cognitive abilities in the test battery will add objective input to the hiring process. Testing services can also break beneath the positive exterior many salespeople are skilled at using during interviews to get a clearer, more direct picture of who they are in relation to your business needs. Sales styles, interpersonal skills, and work habits can all be reliably and validly examined through a test battery compiled and interpreted by trained professionals.

     Although nothing is foolproof, the extra efforts and time taken to design and implement a comprehensive selection system for hiring salespeople should noticeably improve your hiring hit rate.

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