What are the Different Considerations When Hiring Sales People?

Hiring the best sales professionals for your company is not a one sitting task that anyone can administer. What most executives don’t know is that hiring salespeople can be expensive considering that they have to be trained first before they can be deployed in the field. Companies typically spend more on hiring in sales than they do anywhere else in their business. So how do you improve the returns on this investment? Developing criteria of what you are looking for, such as experience, industry contacts, and knowledge of your product and the market will help you dissect the eligibility of a prospect sales professional. Ideally, this person would be good at building a sales force, so they should be a player-coach as well. If you are ready to hire a professional salesperson, you need to develop criteria and a list of questions to ask. In this post, we will give you different tips on how you can start hiring a sales professional. Here are a few considerations: — Visible Sales Professional Experience – One good way of knowing if one is legitimately appropriate at being a sales professional in your company is with their experience in this field. Your recruitment team should develop a process wherein sales experience will be readily seen and evaluated during application; casual questions that uncover their level of sales expertise during the initial interview and written exams that have actual sales situations that can show how effective they are in making sales decisions are just ones of the techniques that you can integrate. — Clear Understanding of Sales Process – Once you’ve determined if their previous sales experiences is sufficient enough to match your company needs, it is now the time to know if they have proper knowledge about the intricacies sales process. You may ask during the interview the methods they go through when engaging a potential customer, such as:
  • Do they use a database of contacts and write to prospects and then follow up with a phone call?
  • How many calls do they believe it takes before they get a meeting, and how many sessions until they get a sale?
Another way to gauge the capability of a budding salesperson to close sales is to give them an object or concept and see if they can get you to buy. — Thorough Personality Assessment – It might be complicated to assess the personality of an individual at the first interview. But, if your company keeps up with the ever-growing profiling of professional salespeople in the business industry, assessing will be an easy task for you. Research based upon thousands of exit interviews shows that a primary cause of poor performance and turnover is poor job fit. People, especially salespeople with a variable pay component, become frustrated when they hire for tasks that are a poor fit with their skills and preferences. That is why nowadays, assessing first the personality of an individual plays a huge part in how they are capable of handling the position as a part of your sales team. — Search for Growth Potential – If your goal in recruiting sales staff is to build a high calibre sales team, you need individuals who are equipped to scale the career ladder. These individuals will fill leadership roles on your sales team and eventually work their way to positions in sales management and beyond. The sales industry is continuously adapting with different techniques that most consumers prefer when closing a deal, so it is only wise to hire an individual that is willing to grow with you as a company that provides great service and experience to its customers. Contact KONA Customised Training and Consulting today and let us help you assemble of professional salespeople that deliver results for your company through our Sales and Management Training. Contact us today to learn more about our services.