How to Define Your Ideal Salesperson and Avoid Making a Hiring Mistake

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Your ideal salesperson is out there, somewhere, waiting to be found and hired and onboarded. Ready to become a sales superstar for your organization! Out there. Somewhere. Waiting. Your ideal salesperson.

You know this. And you have faith that this top sales performer can be recruited to join your sales team. So, you post the position on Web job boards and maybe even in the newspaper. The postings work, too, because you receive a flurry of resumes. You dig in, assess this slush pile and identify a handful of potentially good prospects for your sales organization. Interviews begin. Your hopes are high. But then reality sets in. Interview after interview, you realize these sales position candidates are missing something. They’re okay, but hardly stellar. Your ideal salesperson is still out there. Somewhere. Waiting.

But where? And why didn’t the postings attract this ideal salesperson?

If you’re like most sales executives, you probably worked hard to make sure the job description was detailed and up-to-date. You compared base pay for the sales position against your competitors. You even fine-tuned your company’s sales compensation plan, paying particular attention to commissions and sales performance incentives. But still, after all that preparation, you decide you’ll settle for a lesser candidate. “I guess this person will work out,” you say. “Has the skills and experience we said we were looking for,” you say. “Probably the best we can do,” you say.

Stop right there! If all you really desired in your new salesperson was a definable set of knowledge, talent and sales background, you should be satisfied. But something is clearly missing.

Let’s call it…chemistry.

To make it more likely that chemistry is present when you finally hire your new salesperson, you must go beyond functional basics. You must consider and truly understand the interpersonal dynamics of your overall corporate culture, the organizational personality of your Sales department, and the buying characteristics and personality traits of your customers. From that baseline, you can finally picture your ideal salesperson not solely in terms of written-in-stone qualifications, but also based on his or her personality, behavioral style and professional demeanor.

Ask yourself this: “What kind of person – what kind of personality – will succeed as a valued contributor to our sales team AND as a trusted sales resource in the markets we serve?”

Answer the question and use that mental image to craft your recruiting methods and materials, and especially your interview questions. In other words, use the interview session less as a tool to verify qualifications and more to determine whether the sales position candidate will be a good fit for the necessary interpersonal connections. Admittedly, you’ll still need to factor in what your “gut” tells you and use your intuition, but if you prepare for this critical element as diligently as you do for more traditional and quantifiable qualifications, you’ll be much more likely to discover your ideal salesperson. Your next sales superstar!

If you’re not comfortable or confident in how to embark upon this type of salesperson selection, take the time to learn and apply the principles of DiSC®, MBTI® from Myers-Briggs, or similar personality and psychometric assessment systems. Or you can contact a Sales Xceleration Advisor today to discuss your sales team chemistry as well as your recruiting and hiring challenges. Or simply contact us today at 844.874.7253. We’re here to help you find and manage your ideal salesperson and your entire sales team.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]