Secret Tips for Hiring Better Salespeople Part 1

After providing consulting services for more than 12,300 sales hires over the last twelve years, we sat down and wrote this list.

You could eliminate hiring “sales slugs” if you started taking this advice to heart when you hire salespeople. Every week, we will write a weekly memo on one of the ideas below. Here’s your list:

• Start to look for sales candidates before you lose a salesperson because desperate Sales Managers, like desperate salespeople, never put their best foot forward.

• Resist the urge to grant face-to-face interviews to any applicants for the sales position in the first round of recruiting. Yeah, we know... “But this candidate is so good at getting through the screener and they sound great,” you say. We say you should stick to your system.

• Have a written recruitment and hiring system. Without a written system you don’t have a system. Great companies have a Hiring System. 

• Avoid using the strategy of recruiting away from your competition -– unless your company’s product is so much better than your competitor's.

• Use a scientifically validated personality profile as a screening tool. It will eliminate 50% of the hiring mistakes you make! That means you’ll increase your hiring success by at least 200%

• Only hire salespeople that “love” money and “like” people. It’s a cruel, but true fact. Great salespeople love money and the things it can buy them and the people they love.

Although hiring a salesperson can be a lot of work, the reward, in terms of revenue to your company, is huge. Hiring right is worth the time you invest.

Become the best sales manager you can become. The best salesperson does not usually make the best sales manager.

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