Selecting Sales Winners

Which sales professional is best for an organization?

Requirements listing industry experience, established relationships and a database of relevant contacts, abound. These expressed needs are frequently used as a first-pass screen and bin-out of sales professionals.

While industry contacts, relationships and experience can be useful in opening doors and understanding relevant macro level business issues, does this constitute the basis for best-fit salesperson?

A typical selection process including preparation, identifying, screening, interviewing, and selection takes effort and time. A selection process resulting in hiring mistakes is very expensive. Consider the recruiting cost, fully burdened salary, training cost, management time loss, cost of mistakes on the job and lost opportunities.

Selecting a sales winner begins with a definition of each of the selection process steps and their purpose. For example, an interview can be defined as a conversation with a person in order to predict whether or not they will be successful in the job (i.e. – predict success). Success is determined by evaluating behavior (an action or reaction) in a specific situation with a known result. A sales job requires a series of tasks in a number of situations with corresponding behavior characteristics to match. In order to predict success, identify and solicit past behavior to determine future behavior.

Selecting Sales Winners mandates a process that takes the time to prepare the critical quantitative and qualitative job requirements that identify the “must have” qualities and characteristics necessary to meet expectations. Once this profile is established, Sales Winners can be screened in (not out) for interviews based upon accomplishments, trends and patterns.

An effective set of questions will provide information that will help predict success. Quantify behavior through the use of questions that ask about results achieved, actions taken, and examples that demonstrate. The most effective questions are those that require an answer with a specific fact, that requires the person to describe past behavior and that provide examples of specific situations that are similar to those on the new job.

Selecting Sales Winners is a process that requires you to know what you’re looking for (must-haves) up front, preparation in advance, use of effective questions and requires active listening. All too often, chasing the “best-fit” candidate can prove challenging…to say the least. In the end, the final hiring decision is made based upon a winner that meets or exceeds requirements.

What do you think it takes to select the best?