How to Hire a Good Salesperson

There’s always a certain amount of risk involved when hiring a new employee, whatever the nature of your business. Choosing the wrong candidate for any position can be damaging to a company, but if you hire a bad salesperson, the cost can be twofold. Not only will you lose more time to advertisement and interviews, but a mistake in sales recruitment can also result in missed sales opportunities, and can even damage your reputation with potential clients. Although there’s no guarantee of getting recruitment right first time, there are a couple of steps you can take to increase your chances of hiring the right candidate.

Silence is golden

Many people believe that good sales technique is all about the ‘gift of the gab’, but this isn’t usually the case. Charm, warmth and good communication skills are all important qualities, but are still next to useless if the salesperson doesn’t know when to shut up. In a business-to-business sales environment, listening is just as important as talking – prospects are often nurtured over a long period, during which time the salesperson should look to build a strong personal relationship with the client. This relationship is less like a friendship of equals, and more like a client-counsellor relationship, in which one party does most of the listening. The salesperson needs to take an active interest in the client’s problems and needs, and let them talk for as long as they want to. A good salesperson will employ the counselling skill of ‘active listening’, which involves communicating through healthy eye contact, attentive body language, and non-verbal ‘encouragers’ such as nods or smiles. When it’s their turn to speak, a good salesperson will answer questions calmly, confidently and succinctly. All of this can be tested in an interview, in which the candidate is essentially selling him or herself to you. Rather than talking at length about themselves and their achievements, expect a good sales candidate to ask questions of the interviewer. In sales, it is vital to understand the client and their needs, and that is usually achieved through listening, clarifying, and pertinent questioning – not talking.

Make life difficult for them

Alongside charm and good listening skills, confidence, persistence and good organisation are very important in sales. It’s difficult to test the organisational skills of a candidate, although alarm bells should ring if they’re late for the interview. Confidence and persistence are much easier to gauge, and one of the best ways to test a candidate is to be a tough audience. This doesn’t mean that you have to fidget, yawn and look disinterested – that’s just bad manners. However, you should try to make yourself a tough nut to crack. Be stern and hard to please. Be blunt, ask probing questions, and interrupt them a few times when they’re in full flow. Without going too far, try your best to unsettle them, and see how they cope with it. If they remain calm, polite and unflustered, and handle your questions with a quiet confidence, then you may well have found the perfect candidate.