Who is Behind the Mask? Better Selection = Increased Revenue

8. February 2010 by Dan Trudell.

The word on the street, real or imagined, is that the economy is in trouble. How severe and for how long is anybody’s guess. So, what can you do to maintain and grow your business, regardless of external economic conditions? Superior sales teams produce superior results in good times and bad. By implementing a more effective selection process, you can improve the quality of your sales team which will produce more revenue year in and year out.

So, how does a company build a superior sales team? There are 4 factors that must be present for a superior sales team to come together. These four factors are:

• Successful Personality Characteristics of sales people
• Sales process skills including deep understanding of your customer’s business 
• Excellent sales management 
• Product and pricing knowledge

If any of these factors is missing, it is impossible to build and sustain a high performing sales team. I will expand on each of these factors and then share some action steps that any company can take to begin building a more effective sales team.

First among equals is Successful Personality Characteristics of your sales people. Conventional wisdom has been that to improve sales performance, a company needs to train their people. Before you train them, however, the people you are investing in must have personality characteristics that, coupled with sales training, will drive performance. Examples of some of the key characteristics that have been correlated to superior sales performance are energy level, resilience, optimism and follow through. No amount of “sales training” will overcome missing success characteristics.

Second are sales process skills. With the right sales people that possess the necessary personality dimensions to be successful, training in how to sell can be worthwhile.  A common sales process involves 6 steps:

1. Prospecting- Do they know how to develop new business?
2. First Meeting- Do they create a good first impression, not only appearance, but by demonstrating some understanding of the customers business?
3. Probing and Questioning- Do they know how to ask questions that aid the client in buying?
4. Handling resistance/objections- Do they know how to respond to typical objections or obstacles in the sales process?
5. Influencing- How does the sales person present and persuade the client to move forward?
6. Closing- Are they able to ask for the order to close the sale or do they oversell? 

Too often, sales training has been viewed as the “silver bullet” that can make anyone into a superstar. In my 20+ years of experience, 2/3 of the sales training time and money are wasted on people that do not have the “right stuff” to be successful in sales!

Third, is excellent sales management. Excellent sales management is much more than setting sales revenue targets and assigning accounts. Excellent sales managers understand what motivates each individual sales person and use that knowledge everyday in assigning accounts, developing incentives and contests and in how to relate to each sales person. As an example, some sales people are motivated by affiliation; they need to have time to interact with others on the team every day. Others like to be given their assignments and be left alone to complete them. Treating all sales people the same will guarantee that as a sales manager you will be MIS-managing a good portion of them. In addition, on going feedback is essential; coaching on account strategy is another key factor that excellent sales managers regularly practice. Research has shown that excellent, effective sales managers can have as much as a 50% positive impact on sales performance!

Finally, understanding your industry, the market and the pricing structure and competitive options is important. Often, however, an inordinate amount of time is spent on this one aspect of selling. The truth is that perfect understanding of the internal workings of your organization will not make a person that is deficient in one or more of the first 3 factors successful!

So, how do you get started on the road to a superior sales team? The first step is to understand who is “behind the mask” when you are selecting a new sales person. Screening and selection tools are available today that can provide an enormous amount of relevant information to help aid your selection of sales candidates. It is important to keep in mind that any tool you choose to utilize in the hiring process must be valid, meaning that it accurately measures what it purports to measure; reliable, meaning that the results will be consistent; and lastly that it be job related.

There are many tools available today and as is the case with most things, some are better than others. A tool our clients have had great success with is SalesMax. SalesMax measures sales personality factors, sales knowledge and sales motivations and generates a recommendation for the hiring authority. It also generates specific interview questions to aid in “unmasking” the real candidate. A recent validation study done with SalesMax for a large, multi line insurance company found that those salespeople who scored in the best range sold on average over $200,000.00 more than those who scored in the avoid range.

For more information on SalesMax, send an email to dant@peakperform.net and put SalesMax info in the subject line. I will send you an assessment survey to see if SalesMax is a “fit” for your sales process and a sample report .

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