I once had the choice between six smart engineering students to hire a summer intern. They all had good things to recommend them. When I made my choice, the students’ professor challenged me. I picked a poor foreign student with an accent. He asked what was wrong with the other students, and pushed them on me. I told him nothing was wrong with them. They were all good kids. Then he asked why I picked Jimmy C. I told him that he had more drive.
Read MoreCuriosity is the catalyst for learning. If you aren’t curious or interested, it’s very difficult to learn. I believe learning is important in sales for two reasons.
Read MoreIf you are hiring an exceptional sales person, look for someone who wants to help his or her prospects. The emphasis is on help. For the “Me” generation, it’s not about “You,” it’s about “Them.” And as long as it is about “You” and only making the sale, your prospects won’t trust you, and you won’t make the sale.
Read MoreI believe one characteristic of likeability is “Authenticity.” The dictionary defines authenticity as the quality of being genuine. As an adjective, “Accurate in representation of the facts, trustworthy, reliable.” How do we look for authenticity in hiring sales people?
Read MoreEmotional intelligence is the ability to understand other’s emotional and psychological state as well as one’s own reactions and emotions. Intuitively it makes sense that to do well in sales, you not only need to understand your prospects emotions, but your own as well. Is there a correlation between EQ and sales ability?
Read MoreI prefer to hire smart sales people. The smarter the better. Changes in the market over the last ten years require smart people to help prospects solve problems. Not just the problems the prospect knows about, but problems they haven’t thought about yet.
Read MoreIt’s the category of internal candidate criteria we tend to focus on the most when hiring sales people. We tend to hire people we like, and we like people like ourselves. So hiring for internal criteria his is where our gut takes over. However, you can use corporate values and your own list of internal criteria. Here are mine.
Read MoreWhat are your criteria for hiring a great sales person, and what qualifications are you looking for? There seem to be as many processes and sets of qualifications as there are sales managers. This series explores hiring qualified sales people.
Read MoreEvery VP of Sales and Sales Manager will tell you that the most important thing they can do to achieve forecast is to “hire right.” The question is why so many struggle with this process?
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