How to Hire a Good Salesperson

Intro: You’re listening to The Sales Focus Podcast. Your go-to for developing high-performing teams, next level sales skills, and real results. It’s time to get focused.

Welcome back to The Sales Focus Podcast. I’m your host, Tony Horwath, founder and CEO of Sales Focus.  As I’ve talked to you in the past, we’ve been in the business of developing sales teams for clients for the past 28 years.  My sales history goes back 30 years, and over those 30 years, I’ve tried to really educate salespeople in a practical way. There’s a lot of sales training out there. There are a lot of tools out there. If you go on LinkedIn or you go on the web, there are thousands of people talking about sales. There are specific training programs. A lot of really good information out there.  When I started my career, it was limited, and we had to develop a lot of our own information. We didn’t have a lot of CRMs, we didn’t have a lot of capabilities. I was fortunate enough to go through a lot of different training techniques. Still, those training companies are around today, and I think they helped me develop my own skill, my own technique, my way of selling.

I’m not an extrovert. I’m an introvert. I’m an engineer by degree. I’m a process person. Most people would think, “Wow, that doesn’t equal to a good salesperson.” Most people think salespeople are extroverts and talk a lot and very animated and just, you know, all that. You don’t have to be. Some of my top salespeople over 28 years, or 35 years really, have really just worked on developing their skill, right.

Look at sales as developing a skill. Some people get into sales thinking, “Oh, anybody can do that,” right? And years ago, no one used to like the term salesperson, right? It was business development, account executive, client manager, a lot of different terms out there. But you are a salesperson if that’s what you’re doing. You’re representing your company to execute contracts and generate new revenue and acquire new clients. You’re a salesperson. It’s not a bad word. It just depends how you interact with your clients. Are you a, excuse the term, used car salesperson? Are you overly aggressive? Do you not stop talking? Right?  Those are not good traits of salespeople. Salespeople are people who listen well. Salespeople are people who really work on developing their skill sets. They have to be really skilled at understanding their product, understanding the client or the company, excuse me, the company that they represent, and then be able to take that information and then meet with someone, understand that business of the client, and solve business problems.

If you’re able to solve business problems, that’s when you’re a good salesperson. It’s not just selling a product. It’s not just selling it because it’s cheaper or selling it because everybody needs one, right? It’s about how can I make your life better? How can I make your business better? A good salesperson has that ability to communicate effectively, but really study their skills and become a better salesperson if they work on their techniques.

So every time we launch a program, a new program, most of our clients, the number one question they ask, “How do you find good salespeople?” Well, the reason they ask that question is because they’ve tried multiple times to hire salespeople and the salesperson or people have failed. They haven’t found the success that the client wanted or the company wanted or desired. So what happens, especially in small businesses, they go out and they hire a salesperson. And traditionally, salespeople interview well. It’s a big red flag if someone does not interview well in a sales role. So if they interview well and they hire that person and you bring them on board, then what do you do, right? Do you train them? Do you provide them support? Do you give them guidance? Do you develop the ICP? Do you set up the KPIs? Do you establish their selling process, their outreach process? How are you going to generate opportunities? Are you doing all that for that salesperson? Are you expecting the salesperson to come in and do all that themselves?

Well, small business owners, unfortunately, a lot of them are not traditional salespeople themselves, so they don’t really know how to support a salesperson, how to give them the tools that they need to be successful. So they hire a salesperson. Salesperson comes in and they go, “Okay, bring in some revenue, make some phone calls, do all these things,” and the salesperson fails in six months. And the ownership looks at each other and go, “Oh, we hired the wrong person. Let’s hire someone else.” So they go out and they hire another salesperson. They go through the same process, and they waste a year or 18 months on two bad hires? No. They wasted a year and a half because they haven’t developed the process internally in order to hire the right people, train the right people, implement process and then inspect what you expect. Right?

So hiring good salespeople, what do you look for? I’ve talked about this so many times in my career. What do we look for in good salespeople? First and foremost, work ethic. You have to put in the time, right? You can’t be a lazy salesperson. It just doesn’t work. You have to have discipline, meaning every single day you have to have that drive in order to be successful. I love people who have background perhaps in sports or in military because they achieve certain expectations every single day. They have the discipline that it takes in order to be effective in sales. Sales is about numbers. It’s not just about numbers, but numbers matter. You have to go out and you have to talk to so many people. You have to email so many people. You have to knock on so many doors. You have to do the activity levels in order to build that pipeline.

So when we interview salespeople, we really look for a lot of intangibles, more than just the resume, because resumes only say so much, and most people are not going to put down negative things on their resume, right? Years gone past, you could really call references and ask a lot more questions than you can today. So it’s very limited as far as the information that you can gather on some of your salespeople. There are tests out there you can do for salespeople. Personally, we haven’t had great success with that. We found that it wasn’t a real indicator of what we should expect from, from that salesperson. So for us and our recruiting team, it’s really about asking the right questions to putting them, I wouldn’t say in a stressful situation, but to challenge them in the interview process to understand how they reacted in a difficult situation or how they react if something doesn’t go well.

As we all know, you have to take no, right? You have to get a lot of noes in sales in order to get to the yeses. It may take eighty percent noes just to get a couple yeses to build your pipeline in order to get the results that you need. So you have to be able to put up with that. And young salespeople getting into the business, what they don’t understand is how hard it is and how much work it takes. And I promise you, if you are committed to doing the right things on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis, you can be successful if you do certain things. Work on your communication skills. We can’t have salespeople who are saying, “Um, uh, uh, like, like, like.” That type of communication really will make a customer or prospect kind of look at you like you’re not confident in what you’re selling.

Confidence is really, really big. You know, fake it till you make it, as they like to say.  Sometimes, especially early on when you’re representing a new product or a new company, you have to go in with that confidence of just faking it, and then you can come back with the right information sometimes. I’m not saying lie to a customer, but go in with confidence in what you’re representing, what product you’re representing.

When we look for those in-intangible items on a person, that work ethic, that communication skill, right? The knowledge of using technology is also important. We have challenges sometimes of people who aren’t comfortable in using CRMs, because we’re not capturing the intelligence or the information from the customer base. And when you’re looking at building a business or you’re looking at building a territory or developing pipelines, it’s as important to find out why people are saying yes as why are people saying no. So you can really look at it and understand, is the salesperson missing something, or maybe the message is wrong, or maybe the communication is wrong, or maybe the product price point is wrong. And if we’re not getting that constant information, it’s a challenge for the organization.

So salespeople have to be hardworking, great communicators, good with technology. You don’t have to be a technologist, but good with technology and comfortable with technology. And the last thing I always say is have a genuine interest in people. Be interested enough to ask questions and really talk to them about their business. Go out with the idea of, “Hey, I’m out here to solve problems. I want to come out and make your business better, or you as a homeowner. I want to make your life easier. I want to improve your process. I want to reduce your cost. I want to make your living easier.” And if you’re solving problems, and you’re making people happy, and you’re developing a partnership with clients and a real relationship with clients, that model will last forever, right?

So hard work, good communication, good technology skills, and then a real interest in people. That’s what we look for in salespeople. We have hired over 30-thousand salespeople over the past 28 years. We have trained them, and we have managed them. None of them are the same. They’re all different. Most sales organizations, most sales teams typically have a 20/60/20 rule, right? 20% are the top performers. 60% are in the middle and top, and 20%, unfortunately, have to be replaced. But when we really look at that bottom 20%, it’s because 90% of the time, they’re not doing the work ethic. They’re not out knocking doors, making phone calls, sending out emails, and doing what’s necessary in order to get over the hump. A lot of times, it’s just doing the work. And we always say, “Find that person who’s willing to work hard.” We can train you to sell. We can teach you techniques, just like we’re doing today. We can give you ideas on how to be a better salesperson, but I can’t help you open that door in the morning. If you can’t open your car door or your door to your customer, if I can’t get you to do that enough times on a day-to-day basis, I can’t help you be successful.

So work hard, have fun when you’re out selling, learn about the companies you’re out talking to, and enjoy what you’re doing. Until next time, focus on success. Hit our website at salesfocusinc.com and find out some more tips and techniques you can do to become a better salesperson or to build your business. Thank you.