How does a sales manager choose the right salesperson?

How does a sales manager choose the right salesperson?

For an enterprise, the salesperson is the bridge between the enterprise and the customer. The customer’s first impression of the enterprise is from the salesperson. , a company's sales staff are very critical, they represent the company in every word and deed. Therefore, selecting the right salesperson is important for a business.

Let’s look at an example first: a salesperson from a company walks into the office of a potential customer of the company and conducts an initial interview with him. After shaking hands and greetings, the salesman opened his bag and began to promote the advantages of his product, which lasted about 45 minutes. After speaking, he packed up his materials, shook hands with the client again, and walked out of the office. Before he even left the building, he called his manager to report the situation. ?I introduced him to our latest products and their different colors. The meeting went great. I kept saying, we will definitely win this business!?

Anyone who has ever done sales can see that there is something obviously wrong with this interview. The salesperson just keeps introducing the features and advantages of his product without having any idea of ??what the potential customer needs. The salesperson in the appeal case completely failed to conduct customer needs analysis during the interview, which is the most important part of the marketing process.

In fact, when companies recruit sales personnel, their work is similar to that of sales representatives. Recruiters need to develop a plan to analyze needs when recruiting sales representatives, just as sales representatives do when prospecting for potential customers. Talking about the company's great achievements like the salesperson did in the above case will not be very effective. Sales managers often refer to that practice as "throwing darts while blindfolded." If your company's salesperson recruiting strategy adopts the approach of the salesperson in the above example, it is destined to fail.

1. Develop strategic analysis needs

There is no such thing as an outstanding salesperson. To develop a needs analysis strategy, you need to start with a basic question. What is the goal of the salesperson hiring process? Obviously, to recruit great salespeople!? Wrong! Great salespeople don’t exist! Think about it: How many of these so-called? great salespeople? come into your life? Your company failed miserably? How do you explain the failure of this type of superstar employee in your company?

If companies believe that there are outstanding salespeople in the world, then their failure can only be attributed to the following two reasons One of the reasons. Either your company's product is terrible, or those people have completely forgotten their sales skills as soon as they step through the door of your company. There is no third reason.

Personal selling skills are not the only reason for a salesperson's success. Success is the result of a perfect match of needs, goals, and desires between the salesperson and the job. This means that the goal of the salesperson hiring process is to match the salesperson to the job. Essentially, you need to create a "marriage" between the sales candidate and the company.

1. Clarify the type of candidate.

First of all, enterprise sales managers should describe the characteristics of the ideal candidate in their minds and make a choice between necessary qualities and ideal qualities. Just as a salesperson needs to understand the characteristics of an ideal customer, a recruiter needs to understand the characteristics of an ideal candidate to develop their needs analysis strategy. This detailed written description tells you who the ideal candidate for the position is. The entire sales talent selection program will be based on it. During the interview, role simulation, and assessment process, recruiters should compare actual candidates to ideal candidates. The needs analysis strategy should be adapted with the goal of uncovering fit or gaps between the candidate's qualifications and onboarding requirements.

2. Master the content and timing of questions.

In marketing, demand analysis has several purposes, one of which is to discover potential customers. The same goes for recruiters.

A needs analysis strategy allows you to quickly identify the critical flaws in a candidate that could cause them to be kicked off the hiring list.

But which areas should recruiters explore? The question comes back to characterizing the ideal candidate. Those areas that are considered "must-have" characteristics of a successful candidate are what recruiters should explore. For example, if one of the required characteristics is that the candidate must have extensive experience selling services to C-suite executives, ask about the candidate's aptitude in this area.

3. Be prepared to make proposals.

When salespeople conduct an effective needs analysis, they gather information to develop a proposal (which includes pricing). However, unless the salesperson has gained the potential customer's approval and can ask him about his company's current situation, such privacy issues are unlikely to be brought to the table. This may happen during the first meeting, or it may happen later in the sales process. After all, smart salespeople know that you can't craft a winning proposal without doing the best you can to understand the prospect's current situation.

The same is true when the sales talent selection process reaches the stage of issuing job offers. When you make a job offer to a candidate (like a savvy salesperson presenting a proposal to a client), you expect the candidate to accept the offer. Who wants to waste time on a potential customer who has no intention of buying? For a sales rep, losing a customer unexpectedly to a competitor is a surefire loss.

The recruiting experience is largely the same. If the candidates you have worked so hard to recruit are eventually snatched away by other companies, this will undoubtedly waste a lot of cost and energy on your part. If the price you offer is much lower than the candidate's psychological price, then there is no surprise if the candidate rejects you. Long before you send out job invitations, you should discover the candidate's psychological price range during the needs analysis process and respond to it.

For example, as part of a needs analysis strategy, recruiters also need to know what will be done to get candidates to leave their current employer if they are looking for new job opportunities, and what you can offer them. The weight of this opportunity compared to other opportunities. Remember, your biggest enemy in the sales process is the other person who chooses to maintain the status quo—that is, decides not to make any changes. The root cause of this dilemma for recruiters is a poor needs analysis strategy. This principle is also similar in recruitment. If a candidate chooses to sit still in his current role, perhaps your needs analysis strategy is what's holding him back from accepting a new role.

In general, every question under the needs analysis strategy must have its purpose, that is, to find places in the actual candidate that match the characteristics of the ideal candidate. The more matches there are, the stronger the marriage between the person and the company.

2. Distinguish between desirable characteristics and necessary characteristics

Companies invest heavily in trying to attract sales talents through recruitment advertisements, but the content they use in their advertisements greatly reduces the effectiveness of the promotion.

Close your eyes and picture your perfect partner in your mind. Have you thought about it? Close your eyes again and think about it some more. How many essential qualities do you require from the other person? Is it 5 or 10? Maybe you have drawn up 20! Think about your list again. Are each of the above necessary qualities for an ideal partner? Or are they all ideal qualities? Which qualities are you willing to relax on? For example, some people have strict requirements on the religious beliefs of their partners, and height is only a desirable trait. . Others think exactly the opposite.

The decisions people make depend on their requirements for necessary and desirable traits. There are areas where they can compromise and there are areas where they can't. Companies list the qualities they look for in candidates in their job ads. However, there are many items on many corporate advertising lists that should be classified as desirable traits.

Employers post job advertisements to attract people to apply for jobs, but such advertisements can make the entire recruitment process difficult to run smoothly. Basically, this kind of advertising is not so much about attracting people to apply for a job as it is about convincing people that they are not worth the attention of the recruiters. Below is an example of such an ad.

Qualified candidates must have:

Undergraduate degree in business or life sciences

MBA degree from a well-known university

?Ten years of sales management experience

?More than ten years of B2B sales experience for Fortune 1000 companies

?Familiar with the principles and methods of a recognized professional field, or possess experience in multiple fields Working knowledge

Ability to use CRM tools

Experience using rigorous, formal sales methods

Ability to prepare ROI reports and present them to top management Competencies

? Telecommunications industry experience (required)

How many people can meet the criteria of this list? Very, very few. If a candidate meets most of the important criteria but fails in one or two, will the company really refuse to consider him? Posting such a strict job ad is not going to attract people to apply. The company will miss out on potential sales superstar candidates.

In fact, companies create a profile of ideal candidates for sales positions. If the standards are set too stringently, and only one person in the world can be qualified, then when will the company be able to recruit people? This is not to suggest that companies lower their recruitment standards or hire people whose performance is below average standards. Who would be affected by this? It's no good. However, there are two subsequent steps that the recruitment process should take.

For example, a company believes that an ideal candidate should meet 20 requirements. The next thing to do is to rank them in order of importance, from one to twenty. The first item on the list is the most important. Basically, you are ranking the criteria in order of importance. This is not too different from what people do when subconsciously looking for a life partner.

After completing this step, the next step is to classify all requirements into one of two categories: must-have or desirable. Start with item 20 (the least important item from the previous step) and work your way up to item 1. If this step is done correctly, most of the items on this list will fall into the "desirable" category, with a limited number of required items at the top of the list falling into the "must-have" category. These are the key attributes that you consider a successful salesperson to have, and you should list them as must-haves in your job ad.

There is no doubt that these steps are difficult. Here's the key. Companies want to make sure they are encouraging the right candidates to apply for these roles rather than scaring them away. Think back to that company with a daunting list of job requirements. Would they really turn down an extremely smart candidate without an MBA? If the answer was no, then they shouldn’t list this requirement in the ad. , because it scares away qualified potential candidates. Are they including the requirement for telecommunications industry experience in their job ads because they don’t want to train new employees in this area? If the answer is yes, then they shouldn’t advertise the requirement because the company may miss out on someone who just needs A super sales star who can learn this knowledge with a little help! ;