Hey Top Sales Leaders! Here are the five essential areas (with an acronym of CAMPS™) you can ‘target’ to help you improve your ability to recruit the best high-activity sales professionals for your market.
The first is by paying attention to something that affects you and your children and even your brand and it’s, as my business partner would say, related to saying no to “crazy or lazy!” That’s Character – a sales candidate’s level of honesty, hard work ethic, personal responsibility and a concern for others.
The next way you can make an excellent hiring decision for sales is by finding out about the Attitudes the candidate has toward sales as a career and toward your company’s services or products. Questions structured to find out this information will tell you if someone will enjoy what they do which is one important factor if being a top rep for you and your company. And, knowing how they feel about selling or toward your products will tell you how focused they will be on learning sales process skills or product benefits.
A third way to make an excellent sales hire is by discovering their strength of Motivation. For example, in our research, 25% of top reps are competitive and the other 75% want to earn a specific amount of money for a specific reason. Some have a high ego-drive and others do not. Because intrinsic motivation is so important, using well-designed interview questions in that area will give you another critical piece of knowledge about them. Are they motivated to sell at the right levels?
The next way you can make an excellent and predictive hiring decision is by assessing their Personality traits to see if they are aligned with those of other high-activity sales professionals, or if they are more related to those of an accountant, an engineer or a retail clerk, etc.
The final way you can make an excellent hiring decision for sales is by knowing the Skills of a high-activity sales professional – find prospects, maintain high-activity, handle rejection, set appointments and sell face-to-face. With a laser focus on these critical sales skills, you can assess their personalties for social skills, urgency to act, optimism and assertiveness and predict how quickly they can become competent and how stressful this will be for them.
By the way, there’s no way that my son, the nuclear engineer will sell for you – no way. And, you may like the people that interview with a good amount of social grace, but Can They Sell?
That brings me to the end of these thoughts on recruiting the best salespeople. Remember CAMPS™,
recruit character first and make sure you have a conscientious person who will work hard, enjoy sales and your products, and will want to achieve. That’s better than the alternative – a lot better!