3 Steps to Hire Your Best Salesperson in Today’s World – Part One

For many years, some of the best salespeople were the ones who strolled downtown or hopped on planes for conferences to handshake their way to the deals. That was yesterday. When you’re hiring a salesperson in the modern world, however, do you need back-slapping Bill, or do you need a different kind of salesperson? Even more, are there ways to make sure you get it right? That’s the new reality of today.

Let’s imagine back-slapping Bill trying to stick to his old ways: Popping in to visit customers, talk the weather and the family, make a joke and take an order. For this type of salesperson, their economy is laughter and winks and shoulder-rubbing. Now, though, most business owners just can’t accommodate one more body in the office or the store—even if they had the time or saw the value in a drop-in sales call. But most don’t.

You might need an entirely different kind of salesperson (a hunter, not a farmer, like Bill)—or even an entirely new sales department to meet your customers’ needs and succeed in our new world.

Hiring the best salesperson for these times and your business needs is critical, but who is that person? It’s a big question, but one that needs to be answered if you want to be successful in making a great sales hire.

STEP 1: THE NEED

Defining your need: Who is your ideal hire?

For many organizations, knowing what you don’t want in a sales hire is easy. Knowing what you do want could take some time, but every second will pay off, and you’ll find out why.

As we help leaders hire salespeople, one of first must-do’s is defining what we call a ‘CRISP intake’.

Let’s explain what that means:

Competencies

Do you need them to be prospecting or maintaining? Do you need them to solve problems and close sales? What must they be competent at doing? Spell it all out.

Results

Can they prove they’ve sold on cold calls? (Surprise, people need to be good at the phone again). You want to see specific results for the kind of selling you do. Intention is honourable, but results matter.

Intangibles

These are the things you can’t measure but are so important: their competitive nature, grit and a self-starter attitude, are a few examples.

Skills

Do they need to be adept at presenting in video conference calls? Networking on LinkedIn? List everything that is just a must for this era. What must they be able to prove they can do?

Performance

Performance is not to be confused with results. It’s about a way of moving through the day that leads to results: managing their time, creating routines, starting early and sticking to what works. Their cadence to sales success.

You can only make a great hire when you know exactly what a great hire looks like. Once your CRISP is defined, you can communicate, and assess and measure these traits so you have a much greater chance of attracting your ideal salesperson.

Are you using the same job ad you’ve been using for years? Is it light and generic? How is that working out?

In Part Two—3 Steps to Hire Your Best Salesperson in Today’s World, we’ll share our proven approach to hiring sales people in the next two steps: the job ad and the interview.

Do you think your HR team could benefit from specialized help in hiring salespeople for your company? Get in touch so we can share how our process can guarantee your hire and set your new salesperson up for success. 1-888-966-2284