When you hire salespeople for your company, you probably don’t realize that there’s a philanthropic spirit behind the goal-oriented, driven, ambitious people that you have recruited. After all, when you ask the typical man-on-the-street to give you the characteristics of good salesmen, altruism isn’t at the top of the list. But you might be surprised.

According to the Advanced Hiring System Values Matrix, the best salesmen are motivated by a desire for money and power. For that reason, many people think that that’s all good salesmen care about. When you really get to know some of them, though, you’ll discover that what motivates them is just a small part of who they are; because of salesmen, the world is a much better place.

Let’s consider the facts: while a desire for money and power may be the primary force that drives good salesmen, they’re not usually just out for themselves. What about the customer? By selling your product to Mrs. X, your salesman—we’ll call him Sam—is making a sincere effort to improve or enhance some part of her life. Oh sure, there are those out there who really don’t care about the customer—those are the ones who have created those unpleasant stereotypes that plague all the good salesmen. Those are also the ones you hope you don’t have on your sales team.

When Mrs. X is delighted with both your product and the way she was treated, she will tell Mrs. Y and Mrs. Z, who will undoubtedly request Sam to help them purchase your product because he made the experience so enjoyable for Mrs. X. Now Sam has helped three people, and who knows how far the word of mouth will go? All because he’s motivated by money and power? Maybe, but now we can see that there’s another whole dimension to Sam.

Now, as Sam is helping Mrs. X, Y, and Z, your growth charts begin to rise. As more people buy your product from Sam, your profits grow, and your company is getting stronger. All because of Sam? Hmm. Just because he’s collecting a commission doesn’t mean that it’s not important to him to do what he can to help ensure
your company’s success.

Taking the whole idea a step further, good salesmen help the economy. Sam takes his commissions and spends money on products and services in your community. As businesses thrive, employment rises, and more products and services become available, and so on, and so on. And now that your business is also thriving, you have to hire salespeople again, and the cycle continues.

Okay, maybe you can’t really save the world just because you hire salespeople. But now you can see how one good hire can help a lot of people, including you. It’s all about money, power–and humanity.

I know, sometimes it seems that applicants for salesmen just seem to fall from the sky. It becomes especially noticeable during hard times—people lose their job due to downsizing or whatever, and they think, “I’ll try sales; anyone can do that.”

What makes them think this way? It’s probably their own attitude toward salesmen. All they can see is a person who’s good at schmoozing; they don’t know what’s behind the smile. All they know is that sales-oriented companies need to try a little harder to stay afloat during difficult economic times, so they are likely interested in adding to their sales forces. That’s when they fall from the sky.

The problem is, most of these sky-fallers make the worst  salesmen. They don’t have the qualities that make a person a top performer, an A player. That’s why you need to brush off most of these possibilities and focus aggressively on your sales recruiting. To do that, you need to get the word out that you’re looking, and you need to get it out consistently, and to as broad an audience as possible.

Fortunately, we live in a time where it’s easy to reach masses of people through the internet. Sure, you can do all your sales recruiting locally if you want to, but there may be top salesmen out there who are dying to work in your area, and since most of today’s job applicants begin their search online,  why limit your possibilities?

First off, how’s your website landing page? Does it tell all of the top salesmen out there that your company is the one that they should work for? Do you have a page for applicants to contact you? That should be your first step.

Next, you can go through the different web opportunities for recruitment: the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can give you a lot of exposure that you might not get by going through the “normal” channels. You can position your company on these sites to establish yourself as a viable employer and give yourself the kind of credibility and appeal that will attract exactly the type of salesmen you want to have working for you.

After you’ve established your presence on the social networks, it’s time to go ahead and post your job offerings on one or more of the internet job boards. The best-known are CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com, Indeed.com, and SimplyHired.com; but there are many more out there that you might want to investigate.

Here’s where you want to shine: don’t fall into the old routine of just ticking off the qualifications of the person you’re looking to hire. That’s about as appealing as a limp handshake. Of course you want to mention what you’re looking for, but you also want your prospects to know that you have what they are looking for.

That’s the first thing that the Advanced Hiring System does to help you. It not only takes you through the step-by-step process of designing the perfect ads for your sales recruiting, but it also gives you the opportunity to have your ads reviewed and get suggestions on how to improve them. After all, if you miss the first step, it’s a long way down.

The proven way for any company to achieve better sales is to hire top performing sales people. Unfortunately, not every hiring manager or sales manager knows how to hire only the top performers and what questions to ask to rule out those who only think they are the best. One of the key ingredients in hiring the best is the sales assessment questions job candidates are asked during the interview process.

During the initial interviews there are certain things you are not allowed to ask, and all good hiring managers are aware of them, but there are other questions that you are required to ask if you only want the best. It is OK to ask sales assessment questions to determine a candidate’s job qualifications and with sales, the candidate’s experience will not tell you anything. After all you are interested in performance not how long they have been in sales and unless you ask how they increased their level of performance in their last position, you won’t know.

By asking the right questions you can determine their values. Don’t confuse values with priorities. Someone’s personal values will not change and cannot be affected by outside influences. However, their priorities will change based on a number of influences. For example, you have established sales goals and their priority is to call on 20 people per day. Another project comes up and they will only have time for 10 calls a day, which is now their priority.

You will also need to establish what most companies call a job description. Unfortunately, once you put that description in writing it could limit the scope of the position. Having a job description can be a map on how to hire a salesperson, as it can be used to develop interview questions sales position candidates will be asked. Achieving better sales should be your priority and assessing the values of the candidates will help direct you to the right person.

Your sales assessment questions should provide answers that are results oriented, not answers that the candidate thinks you want to hear.  Asking what their goals are means nothing if they can’t provide the means of getting there. It’s important to note that while past performance is often an indicator of future success a person with solid values that are in line with your company’s values has the best chance of bringing in better sale and becoming the top performers in your company.