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Video Script
Hello, I am Steve Suggs, sales recruiting expert and author of the book, Can They Sell. Welcome to my sales recruitment video blog. 3 1/2 minutes of learning to hire the best salespeople.
During a conversation with a sales manager about sales recruitment, he said, “I have a candidate, Paul, who is smart, extremely technical and very friendly, and I think my clients will like him and value his expertise, but I am concerned about his ability to manage time well enough to have enough sales activities.” I told him, “Let’s have Paul complete a sales profile.” After looking at the results of the profile, we confirmed his concerns. Here’s what we discovered.
To access and administer a sales profile, please visit http://www.CraftProfiles.com
Paul is hardwired for becoming an expert and nurturing people by helping them solve problems using his technical knowledge. However, he lacks the natural personality traits that give him an internal clock with an alarm that rings when it’s time to stop talking, and stop helping, and move on to the next customer. He lacks the drive and control needed to complete a high number of sales calls and presentations in order to be a top producer. As the sales interview continued, and we checked references, we soon learned that everybody loved Paul for his expertise, but they were confused as to why he was not actually selling more.
Here’s how these 4 personality trait combinations work when recruiting for sales. As salespeople, we spend time on details and with people.
The ideal salesperson has high scores on the Goal Orientation and Need for Control personality traits dovetailed with low scores on the Detail Orientation and Need to Nurture traits.
These natural, hardwired traits make it easy for the ideal salesperson to make a large number of sales calls because they control the conversation in a way where they’re giving the client the right amount of information and nurturing them at appropriate levels to get the sale. They’re more focused on the right combinations of efficiency and technical expertise rather than on an over abundance of information.
Paul’s personality is the complete opposite. In this situation, it’s difficult to diagnose Paul’s lack of sales productivity primarily because we are tempted to admire his technical expertise and nice disposition. In this situation, it’s better to encourage Paul to become the technical sales support person rather than the sales hunter who must create new accounts.
It’s important to remember that this particular time management and sales productivity problem is because Paul has the wrong hardwired personality traits for the sales position. Trying to train and coach him to become a different person than who he is built to be is an almost impossible task that I do not recommend.
Thank you for joining me. See you next time on the Can They Sell video blog for more sales job recruitment training. As always, please leave your comments below and forward this video to anyone who will benefit. Now go enjoy recruiting the best, and have fun in the sales interview.