Sales

Make Your Sales Recruiting Systematic and Scientific to Scale Effectively

Finding good salespeople is hard but it is much harder if you don’t have a process to make your hiring systematic and scientific. While some of the hiring can be an art, a lot of it can also be a science too.

 

Key Steps:

  1. First create a good Sales Org design – this “design” must precede your recruiting because whom you recruit depends on that design.
  2. Then you need to make a Scorecard for what you’re looking for – it should include: traits/characteristics, capabilities, and skills
  3. Align on the process with all the stakeholders who will be recruiting and interviewing

 

Key Personality Traits / Characteristics / Attributes:

  • Drive / Ambition / Desire to Win / Healthy Competition
  • Hard Work
  • Conscientious / Dedicated / Gets the Job Done
  • Optimism / Grit / Resilience / Thick Skin / Tenacity / Confidence
  • Coachable / Adaptable / Flexible / Open to Feedback / Learner Mentality
  • Intelligent / Analytical / Reasoning Skills
  • Empathetic / EQ / People Skills
  • Passion (any: a sales career, or your company, or your industry, etc.

 

Key Capabilities:

  • Prior Successes
  • Time Management
  • Conflict Management & Resolution
  • Continuous Learning & Improvement
  • Resourceful / Problem Solver / Has Critical Thinking Abilities

 

Key Selling Skills: (if you’re hiring an experienced salesperson)

  • Time Management
  • Active Listening
  • Rapport / Relationship Building
  • Value-Creation
  • Prospecting
  • Discovery
  • Qualification
  • Positioning
  • Demoing
  • Storytelling
  • Objections
  • Closing
  • Deal Negotiations
  • Pipeline Management
  • Forecasting
  • Excel skills

When in doubt, the Most Basic Formula is: Intelligence/Capability + Energy/Hard Work + Character.

And generally, look for people with drive, smarts, coachability – you can build an army based on these attributes and recruit athletes who will take to training and coaching.  Look for outstanding people in a group of outstanding people and find people who can look at themselves objectively.

If you would like a Scorecard with Interview Questions relating to each specific criteria above – please contact me and happy to share with you the one I’ve put together over the years and have used successfully.