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Hiring Rock Star Salespeople: A Five-Step Plan

9/21/2018

14 Comments

 

 
When we at BusinesStaff talk to our clients about their challenges, “hiring good salespeople” always jumps to the top of the list. With over 20 years of hiring, placement, and recruiting experience, we’ve developed a five-step sales hiring plan that we use internally; we’ll share it with you here, and we guarantee that it will eliminate many of your sales hiring headaches. Hiring rock star salespeople may seem like a gamble, but it’s not—you just have to know what you’re looking for, and not hire until you find it!
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Step 1: You can’t teach hustle
Many companies fall into the trap of prioritizing skills over hustle. They see that a candidate knows how to use a certain CRM tool, or worked for a big-name company in their target industry, and they assume that the person will produce results for them. That’s the wrong way to go about it: you can teach someone how to use software, but you can’t teach someone to be ambitious and competitive if they’re not. So instead of focusing on the candidate’s quantifiable skills, look for a track record of ambition and results. Ask your candidates what they do when they’re not working: do they pursue achievement-oriented hobbies like playing on a sports team or in an orchestra? Did they play on a Division 1 college team?


Step 2: Look for people who like to win
Winners win across all areas of life. A salesperson who is passionate about being the best at everything they do is a person you want on your team. Like learning to shoot a three-pointer or kick a field goal, sales involves a lot of repetitive grunt work: lots of cold calls, lots of introductory e-mails, lots of time working leads that may or may not pan out. The person who refuses to lose is the one you want to snag. Ask your candidates to talk about what winning at work means to them: are they the first one in the office and the last one to leave? Do they continually challenge themselves to beat their own records? That’s when you hire!
 
Step 3: Look for closers
Sadly, lots of salespeople are only good at beginnings. Making the first contact with a new client is the exciting part. But working warm leads and—especially—closing the deal is where the rubber really meets the road. Ask your candidates how they prioritize new leads, warm leads, and closing deals. They’ll answer the “are you a closer?” question for you.


Step 4: Sort for positive energy
We all know that salespeople must be positive, but too often, we think that “positive” means that the person is bubbly and overflowing with optimism at all times. And they might be! But here’s what we’re getting at: when we say “positive,” we mean that when faced with roadblocks, successful salespeople act like water that meets a rock in a river. They find a way to get around the obstacle. And they know that when something goes wrong, it’s on them to figure it out. Ask your candidates to talk about a time they faced a challenge or failed. And listen carefully to the answer. Is it, “The marketing folks just weren’t funneling enough leads to me,” or is it “I got complacent and didn’t do enough follow-up. That only happened once—now I’ll never make that mistake again.”


Step 5: Check for a thick skin
The hard truth of sales is that sales is hard. Lots of rejections, lots of missed appointments, lots of unreturned calls and e-mails. But a salesperson who is confident in their abilities and the value of what they’re selling won’t give up. You need salespeople who don’t take it personally when they’re criticized or outright rejected. Try this: actively challenge your candidates during the interview. Say something negative about them: “I’m impressed with your technical background, but to be honest, I don’t know if you’re assertive enough for what we’re looking for. Convince me.” Does the candidate crumble, or rise to the challenge?
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At BusinesStaff, we know that hiring salespeople is one of the most crucial, and the most challenging tasks that you face. We hope these tips will help you identify what you’re looking for, and we’re here to help when you need great recruiting results you can count on.

14 Comments
Ronert Bluestein link
7/15/2017 06:52:28 pm

Fantastic and well written piece. Thanks for sharing. Please read my blogs on my linkedin page. I am a VP at Probitsystems and I am also an industry expert on Cyber-Security. All the best, Robert

Reply
Terri Scott
7/18/2017 03:03:07 pm

Great article, you hit on all of the most important aspects Hiring Managers should consider before hiring anyone for a sales position, no matter how senior that candidate might be. Anyone looking for a career in sales should read and carefully consider the points you make...

Terri Scott
Business Development Manager
Trustforte Capital LLC

Reply
Doug Rudolph
8/1/2017 08:20:09 am

When it comes to hustle and finding closers, I also look for people that have on going personal financial obligations such as new house and kids going to college. Hungry = Hustle

Reply
David Kay (Business Development Manager) link
8/2/2017 11:04:07 am

Great! Absolutely Wonderful! I have no negative feedback to offer. Great article.

Reply
Brent Maxinoski link
8/3/2017 11:38:38 am

Before founding my company I spent over 10 years in various sales, sales management, and sales trainer positions. This article is spot on. Particularly the bit about not being able to teach hustle. You can motivate anyone if you're good at that sort of thing, sure, but that is always temporary and turns into an uphill battle. "Rockstar" salespeople are a certain breed and this article does a nice job of explaining how to spot them.

Reply
Anonymous
8/4/2017 05:38:37 pm

Thanks for reaching out and sharing the post - It's a good write-up and you make some great points!

As a military history buff I've always found it interesting how the right weapon in the right situation can make all the difference. The same goes for sales. To stick with the military analogy, sales people can be separated in a few distinct groups:

Machine gun: This is the sales person that isn't incredibly accurate, maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but can HUSTLE to make up for it. These are your high volume, transactional sales people.

Semi-Auto: The semi-auto is great for mid-market sales and is usually born out of a successful machine gunner. They have the smarts to advance and are a great player to have on a team.

Sniper rifle: These are your most strategic sales people. You give them the most difficult, highest profile targets and they go out and make things happen.

Grenade: There are a lot of "grenade" sales people out there. These are the sort of reps that, as you alluded in your article, may have high profile companies on their resume but lack any sort of career trajectory. These are the career sales development reps.

Each of these reps can provide immense value and will flourish when properly leveraged by a strategic sales leader. However, misuse or misplacement of these exact same sales people can result in failure for the individual and the team.

At any rate, I appreciate you sharing the article. Keep up the good work!

Reply
Brent
8/6/2017 02:11:01 pm

Beautifully put. It is clear that you have a deep understanding of what to look for in hiring salespeople. As you're aware from my profile, I spent ten years in various sales, sales management, and sales trainer positions and can attest that rockstar salespeople are a certain breed. They have characteristics that truly cannot be taught. They are innate personality traits. And you've done a great job at describing how to look for those traits.
I have no need of hiring sales people for my company as of now. But if I did, this article would certainly make me think of you and your staffing company.

Reply
Eric
8/8/2017 11:25:22 am

Informative piece. I learned a few things. Wish I read it before my last sales hire LOL

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Stefanos Makris
8/16/2017 09:41:09 am

Some excellent advice and insight here. Thank you for sharing!

Reply
Nico Prasetio
9/3/2017 04:55:38 am

Well written short article but rich of essential information for hiring good salesperson, straight to the points.
Good work thanks for the sharing.

Reply
Dee Dixon
9/7/2017 06:48:17 am

You had me at step 1: You can't teach hustle! Great article and I've leveraged one or two in the past when I was looking for talent to match my opportunity. I would certainly use this guide to coach for better hiring with my future team.

Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Martin
12/11/2017 01:19:07 pm

I just read this article from Vic Sbrega on hiring sales people. As many of you know, I spent 15 years in recruiting/staffing, and this is the best article on hiring sales people I have read.

Reply
Stephen Swenson
2/8/2018 06:29:45 am

I went into a Volkswagen dealership not too long ago. Met a salesperson who clearly had fire in his belly, he wanted to win me over, and drive for the close. His name is Craig. I said, “Craig, I like the CC. It’s nice looking, well-appointed and has decent power, but does it have torque steer?” His response was, “Oh yeah, this has got torque steer built right into it.” I leaned over and whispered, “Craig, torque steer is *bad* thing.” He lost the sale. All that you’ve said here, Vic, is vitally important. But if the salesperson doesn’t have integrity, *real* product knowledge, and a passion for their client’s mission, then they are simply hawking snake oil. Craig provided a direct answer to a question he didn’t understand (integrity), about a product he knew little about (product knowledge), to a guy who loves automobiles (client’s mission).

Reply
Matt Ostanik link
2/9/2018 08:05:54 am

Good article. I agree that you can't teach hustle and the other qualities described. The point about you can teach them to use CRM tools is very true. For my team, we actually build a playbook of actions that help them be successful. So if you add in the other qualities, these playbooks can track and monitor that success–giving the sales leader and the reps a framework for accountability and a pathway to help the entire team improve.

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