How to Hire Sales People

Assigned with the task of building a new division for mass market sales. 

His new team would focus on the grocery store marketplace, mostly paperback novels for adults and activity books for children. To build his expert team quickly, he assumed he would have to hire sales people from in-house first. After all, people who know a lot about books are the best book sales people, right? When he compared the interviews from outside applicants with those of in-house applicants, there were some surprising results.

Experience didn’t always equal aptitude. Mr. Collins found that some of the in-house applicants with years of bookselling experience weren’t more than average sales performers. Top performance would be essential to his team’s ability to meet their sales targets. In order to find the best sales people possible, he was going to have to change his sales hire approach.

Building the A-list Sales Team

What makes a good salesperson is a combination of traits and abilities, not just their previous experience. A woman who raised children for 20 years might be a great asset to your sales team even though she doesn’t look as good on paper as the Ivy League graduate. There are great ways to determine the skill and instinct a sales hire applicant could bring to the table. There are also common interview practices that are useless and need to be retired.

How to Hire Sales People – The DO List:

·         Do conduct more than one interview. Go deeper with interview questions for each one, based on specific disc assessment and interview modules. Disc assessment is a behavioral module created to analyze an applicant’s behavior in certain situations and environments. For more information about interview questions, check out the AHS Sales Hiring Course interview modules available to all course members.

·         Do ask applicants to complete a pre-employment assessment test. Job candidates are analyzed for top-performance instincts, values and traits that the interviews alone might not bring to the surface.

·         Do follow the same interview scripts for each applicant. Hire sales people based on an even playing field, no matter the previous experience they have.

How to Hire Sales People – The DON’T List:

·         Don’t hire an applicant based on how their resume looks. Anyone can ask a professional resume writer to add spit and polish to an applicant’s experience. Treat the resume as a reference document only, not the key to which candidate is best.

·         Don’t assume you know what makes a good salesperson just because you’ve always been one. Being a sales person and knowing how to hire sales people are two different roles and mindsets. Study up on the latest sales hire techniques in the internet age, if you don’t know them already.

·         Don’t try to beat the odds by betting on a sales hire that doesn’t have important values that top-performance sales reps typically own. You can change someone’s experience and skill level, but it’s much harder to change an employee’s motivation. The AHS Sales Hiring Course explains these values in detail.

Mr. Collins built his team in record time and only a third of his sales hires were selected from current or previous company employees. Follow his lead by changing your old sales hiring patterns and preconceived notions in order to recruit great sales people today.