My youngest is now 16, so its been a long time since I’ve read children’s stories to anyone.

One of my four kid’s favorite stories was about the wise man who was approached by the Roman Emperor with a deal. Teach the Emperor all of wisdom while he stood on one leg and he would be allowed to live, if not “off with his head.” The wise man quickly said, “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is simply commentary.”

In successful sales hiring there are also simple “truths.” You can learn them while standing on one leg.

The simple truth is that the more applicants you really review in the initial stages of the search, the more likely you’ll pick a good one. You must glean your list of applicants down to the best three applicants and interview each of them intensively.

Most sales hirers make a serious strategic error in the very beginning when applicants start applying.

We get overwhelmed with resumes -- especially in today’s environment where it is so easy to submit a resume. So we quickly flip through resumes, looking for previous sales experience or, even better, previous sales experience in our industry.  Huge mistake.

A much better way is to go through your applicants looking for indications of personal values and personality characteristics sales winners exhibit.

Your best applicants exhibit these personality characteristics:

• highly practical values,
• stick-to-it-iveness,
• follow through,
• ability to overcome adversity and
• ability to manage their internal state.

To find these qualities more accurately and quickly, use technology tools founded in validated personality profiles. These tools  have been refined to a high degree of accuracy today and have an amazingly high ROI in the 2000% range and more!