• How do they think?
• How do they act?
• What motivates them?
• How do they interact with other people?

All four apply when considering how to recruit and select sales­people.

What should sales managers keep in mind when recruiting and selecting salespeople?

The most critical ingredient for the survival and growth of any organization is talented person­nel. One problem many man­agers have is they hire quickly and fire slowly, when actually managers should be slow to hire and quick to fire.

First, know what you’re looking for. Take time to develop a pro­file – a benchmark that defines the best candidate for the posi­tion. If you’re selling a big ticket item like a software sys­tem or a $1.2 million CAT scanner, you need a different salesperson than someone sell­ing shoes or office copiers. For big ticket sales, we look for discerning people who can adjust to the styles of different decision makers. Their job is to find out what the customer needs. Going for the throat aggressively is outdated. The fact is trying to change behavior is a waste of time.

Once today’s consultative salesperson establishes the customer’s needs, closing the business is just the next step in the process. A certain amount of assertiveness is required in sales, but it varies depending on the selling environment. In addition to discernment and assertiveness, we look for an achiever trait – someone who’s motivated to succeed in a com­petitive environment. Salespeople need to relate quick­ly to the prospect, empathize, and persuade.

How can you find out if some­one is persuasive?  One of the best ways is to let them show you how persuasive they are in the interview. Has the applicant persuaded you he or she is the best person for the job? Remember you’re hiring, renting, or leasing behavior. From what you learn in the interview, how will the appli­cant behave?

Can’t behavior be changed, if an applicant has other strengths? Sure, there are plenty of ways to change behavior. Psycho­therapy for about 27 years might work, or maybe a frontal loboto­my, if they’re legal where you work. You might try religious conversion, drugs, or send them to California. No, the fact is trying to change behavior is a waste of time. Sales managers ought to get out of behavior modification and into behavior selection.
 
Don’t you put any weight on what the applicant knows or is capable of learning?
You need to ask yourself these questions about a prospective salesperson:

• Can I work with this person?
• Can he or she do the job?
• What does the person know about our business?

But the knowledge can be learned. One of our clients markets sophisticated medical instruments. They told me the sales­people have to have college degrees. We looked at their 15 best sales reps. About six or seven of them had no college degree. You should be focused on who can deliver the behav­iors you need.

Another company I know raised eyebrows when they hired a guy out of a clothing store to sell mainframe computers. He knew nothing about computers, but he knew how to relate to people. He picked up the computer knowledge very quickly. First thing you know, he sold a $7.6 million order to the office of a prominent state officeholder, despite the fact that the comput­er company had supported that politician’s opponent in the last election. That’s overcoming the odds, without knowing much at all about computers.
Interviewing is something of an art. Why are so few good man­agers also good interviewers?
Most managers admit they don’t interview well, and here’s why. First, they’re not sure what they’re looking for, so they don’t ask the right questions. Get through theory to behavior. Instead of asking, “Are you assertive?” ask, “Can you give me a recent example of when you were assertive?” If the can­didate can be very specific with the example, then very likely that behavior is practiced.

Second, they’re not well pre­pared. Instead, they think of questions as they go along. Finally, they’re strong boosters of their own company, so when there’s a chance to sell the com­pany, they’re off to the races. The interviewer ends up doing all the talking. Managers have to be much more disciplined in interviewing.

How do you define what you’re looking for? It takes time. You have to estab­lish what traits are required for success in your marketplace. Then build “behavior profiles” for each position. The best way to develop a behaviors profile is to identify your top employees in any given position. Then ask: What makes him or her so good? Water runs downhill. In any organization, so does talent.
 
You mean hiring someone bet­ter than you are?
Yes, and that’s hard. You need people smarter, better, or at least as good as your best peo­ple, including yourself.

What’s the best way to find ideal job candidates?
The very best way to find can­didates is through referrals. As a guideline, 70 percent of your people should come from refer­rals, though most companies are at about 40 percent.

What are the most common mistakes sales managers make in recruiting and selecting salespeople?

First, they’re often not clear about what they’re looking for. They tend to be over-impressed with candidates who look right, dress well, and present them­selves effectively. Second, they look at resumes and make choices, when resumes are no more than balance sheets that don’t list the liabilities. Third, they’re not trained in interview­ing’ and they often end up doing most of the talking.

I know that at first glance this all looks complex and time consuming. Before you dismiss the process, consider what it costs you to hire the wrong person.

Here are some mind-sets (paradigms) that can keep you from developing the long-term, profitable relationships you desire.

1. “I know more than my customers.” Because you are an expert on what you sell, you may think you’re more knowledgeable than your customers. Caution: Although you’d never intentionally talk down to your customer, you may sound condescending. Without realizing it, you may make customers feel uncomfortable – not O.K. – and drive them away, by talking down or over their heads.

2. “My customers know more than I do.” Do you assume that customers know a lot more than you do? In fact, they think they know more, but may be very uneasy about their problems and are hoping you’ll probe with questions to help them discover the real “pains.”

3. “This account is solid.” Do you believe customers automatically turn to you? If you’ve served them well, it’s easy to expect repeat business. Caution: No account is ever safe. Don’t let competitors in the door because you take customers for granted. Your best customer is your competitors best prospect.

4. “That customer is small change.” Do you categorize customers by sales volume and not by potential? Caution: They sense how important they are to you. Don’t treat them as second class citizens.

5. “I know my customers have confidence in me.” Just because they order from you doesn’t mean they have full confidence in you. Caution: If you assume they do, you stop trying to earn their confidence. You’ll do the same level of business with them forever, because you’re not working to develop the account.

These mind-sets stem from how you perceive customers and how they interpret your actions. Being aware of how customers see you can help maximize your sales.

Successful managers today are learning to ask questions. Questions about

their business. Questions about what their customers want, and how they want it. And, they’re doing something positive with the answers they get.

Some of the simple questions they ask themselves are:

1. How can I do this faster?
2. How can I do it for less?
3. What if I don’t do it at all?
4. Are all successful companies doomed to extinction?
5. What is this work for?
6. What are we aiming at here?
7. What is the market?
8. Who is the customer?
9. How can we work better, and better, and better?

The answers often lead to a re-thinking about some of the fundamental processes you may be doing today, because “you’ve always done it that way.” We should leave behind perfectionist organizational thinking, with it’s faith in an eternal, universally right way of doing things. Instead, our thinking should be radically experimental. If we don’t like it, too bad; we have no choice. As PepsiCo’s Wayne Calloway said, “The marketplace just won’t let you stand still.”

 A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting with Shoji Shiba, a Japanese economist with a concept that the business world is made up of several fishbowls that represent markets and the fish represent companies swimming in their market fishbowls. He believes that the only way to deal with your fish in their fishbowls is to enter the fishbowl and ask your fish two questions: “What do you want and how do you want it?” That’s what “listening to the voice of the customer” is all about.

 We should abandon the management credo “Get it right, then keep going” and embrace the credo “Get it right and make it better, and better, and better.” Or even, “Make it something else.” We should exchange the abstraction of ex officio authority for the reality of existential authority. Authority is no longer vested in a place on the organization chart, but in the ability to do a job better for the customer. Too many controls and too much supervision stifle the people at the point-of-encounter with the customer, leaving them feeling restricted, intimidated, or bored.

 We must keep our old adversarial/ competitive strategy of managerial betterment with its slogan “May the best man (woman, product, company, idea) win!” We should keep it in its proper place, though. We must also learn that a supportive strategy with a belief that things get better, too, when people are allowed to make mistakes, to learn from them, and to go to their “personal best.” Everyone wants to hit home runs. Remember that when Babe Ruth was the home run king, he also led the league in strikeouts!

 If we broaden our age-old devotion to growth to include an equally old but only recently rediscovered devotion to service. In other words, “More is better” should yield to “Better is better – for the customer and for us.”

Finally, for managers, the most difficult change is to the paradox of the human will: that most often, the only way to gain control is to give it up. There is a way that giving up power is actually having it. You do it first yourself.

 Speaking of Changing. The only way to make a company change-ready is to start with this “big-picture” question: What, and who, is this business really for? Asking the question is only the first step. Answers must be found out in the real world, with customers, suppliers, partners, investors, and employees.

With that focus in mind, we work to develop a business sales training program that is customized for each client. This program, accompanied by the appropriate learned skills, is what has allowed for proven success with our clients.

We believe in the personal approach to sales training and business sales training and sales management training and frequently goes into “the field” with its clients’ sales personnel to conduct real, “live” training. We use this approach to help reinforce the classroom-style learning in an effort to ensure that each salesperson is successfully utilizing the learned techniques and applying them effectively.

Contact us so that we can begin developing a training program to energize your sales.

Our corporate structure promotes an entrepreneurial spirit thoroughout the firm, which encourages us to be innovative, flexible, practical, responsive, and totally focused on meeting our clients’ business needs.

The recession of late 2008 has created a difficult time for sales people in 2009. We have developed techniques specifically for selling in a recession—in addition to our complete sales training seminars We are a leader in consultative sales training through our interactive sales training workshops and we can help you and your sales people succeed despite the recession. Be aware that we also offer recruitment assistance designed to help you to find sales people who can and will sell, for you.

What is Total Quality Selling™?
“A structured system for selling that is founded on the principles of TQM and enables the prospective customer to accurately identify their needs and also allows the salesperson to interface with the prospect in a truly consultative manner.”

Dave Rothfeld/CS+M