Traits Of The Perfect Salesforce

Want to hire a top producing salesperson for your company? Sure, everyone does. In all my management and consulting years I’ve never been mandated to hire average salespeople.

But hiring top producing salespeople on a regular basis—those individuals who consistently sell at least four times more than their average counterparts—is perhaps one of the greatest challenges in business. In this chapter we look at the first of the six best practices used by the world’s best sales teams to overcome this challenge.
We have already established that selling is a natural born talent. The next logical question then is which talents do we look for? What are the natural ingredients of a top seller? When I set out to answer this question so many years ago I quickly came to the problematic realization that the answer depends on the type of sale you are hiring for. There isn’t one ideal recipe for a top producer because there isn’t just one sale type—there are many. Haven’t we all experienced the frustration and bewilderment of hiring someone we knew to be a top producer, only to watch as he or she flounders in the new sales position? Well the first secret is to understand that different sale types require very different talent sets.

Some salespeople for example love to prospect. Other salespeople hate it. Some salespeople love serving the same clients for years and years. Others need to win over new people all the time. There are those salespeople who excel at the long-term sale, where many meetings are needed to assemble many pieces of a solution with many participants from different departments—they love to orchestrate all of this. Then there are those who prefer the shorter sales cycle, which typically means many more sales, or “victories,” per period.

Some salespeople thrive on selling “concepts,” where others simply can’t do it, excelling instead with the consistency of unchanging product features and benefits. Some people love to convince others; they thrill to the challenge of converting others to their way of seeing things. Others thrive on fulfilling (or surpassing) the predetermined needs of their clients, and simply cannot sway other people’s opinions—they’re too empathetic. They make great servicers, but terrible closers.
Remember, if hiring a top salesperson was as easy as finding a known top producer and then training them to sell your product or service, well. . . everyone would just be doing that. The fact is, with so many different combinations of the above sale characteristics, selling your product or service can be a completely different job than selling another product or service, thereby requiring a completely different set of talents.

The following is a typical job ad for hiring salespeople. It was distilled from dozens of newspapers and career Web site ads (ads that read so similarly that I started to think they had all been copied from the same source), and it denotes the common characteristics being sought for most sales jobs today.

A self starter with strong communication skills; able to work independently but also a team player; aggressive and highly motivated. Several years sales experience, preferably in our industry, with a post secondary degree.

While interviewing for these qualities may not seem particularly illogical, there are two flaws. First, the typical job interview does absolutely nothing to uncover whether your candidates truly possess the talents you are looking for (which we address in chapter five). The second flaw is with the identification of the talents themselves. Self starter, communication skills, team player, highly motivated—these “qualities” are not nearly specific enough. It is probably accurate to say that we would want to hire these qualities for all of the different sales jobs—perhaps for any job at all! You need to be far more precise in naming the talents you seek. You must learn how to hire people that are naturally “wired” for your exact sale type.

Over the course of 25 years I have identified and refined 10 different selling talents. After you read their definitions you may realize that you have several different sale types within your organization—each requiring different talents—that are currently being executed by the same salespeople. This usually explains why you have salespeople that seem to always sell the same few products or services, and rarely sell others.

Of the 10 Selling Talents, the first six deal with how people are hard-wired in terms of work ethic, tolerance levels, ability to influence, and aptitude for abstract communication and thinking. One person’s idea of “working hard” can often put another person to sleep. Some people’s idea of fun on the job can be hell to others. Top salespeople all influence other people very well, but their specific communication abilities vary greatly. We can all think of someone for instance who is very persuasive, but not particularly articulate.

These first six are must-haves; your candidates must possess the exact needed arrangement of all six. Talents seven through ten however are more preference than talent, and with these you have some leeway. This will be explained when you learn the talent-based interview process in chapter five. Let’s get to our selling talents.

Talent 5. Need: Create versus Established

A client of ours is a partner in a construction company specializing in commercial ventilation systems. They have a good reputation and they bid on, and win, many commercial installation jobs.

A few years ago this company took on a new “product.” They felt that annual maintenance contracts for commercial building ventilation systems (not unlike an annual maintenance contract for a home furnace or central air conditioning) would be a relevant addition to their offerings. And they were right. But from a “need” point of view, these two sales jobs are completely different.

When the salesperson tries to illustrate why her company is the best choice for the construction side of the business, the need is known. That is, we already know that there is a building project going on. Without having to ask, we know there is the need for a ventilation system. The prospect does not have to use my client’s company necessarily, but they do have to have a ventilation system. The need has already been established before the sale even begins. But this is not true for the maintenance side of the business. Although there may be tremendous value to purchasing a maintenance contract, it is not essential. The need must first be created.
It is of course very common to have related product lines like this—it’s just good business. But in this example, the two sale types are very different for the salespeople, and certain things must be structured accordingly. This is why you have heard me say that you may well have several different sale types in one company—requiring different talents—and why many of you have had experiences where your salespeople just don’t do well with certain products or services that you feel are such “natural companions” to your core products.

Some salespeople do very poorly when it comes to creating the need but excel when the need is already established. Others thrive on the challenge of creating need. We must appreciate that when the need has not yet been established, the sale has a whole extra step. You can’t even begin the “selling process” until there is need.

Copyright © 2007 Derek Gatehouse

Author
Derek Gatehouse has spent thirty years as a sales rep, sales manager, sales VP, and sales trainer at companies in many different industries. He's currendy the CEO of Vendis Inc., a New York-based consulting and training firm. This is his first book. He lives in Montreal with his family.