Never take your sales hiring skills for granted.  And never assume you’ve got all the answers until you get some sales hiring training under your belt.  Hiring mistakes can begin before the applicant is even in front of you for the first time.  If your old sales hiring habits keep creating stagnant (or worse) sales results, let these quick tips help steer you back on the right path.

1. 1.       Start with Enticing Job Postings and Advertising

You’re actually starting the sales applicant screening process the moment your job listings are posted.  Writing enticing job ads is the first step for attracting top performing sales people to your company.  Save time and money on the hiring process by getting the right people in the interview chair.

1. 2.       Never Underestimate the Power of a Great Headline

What makes a good salesman want to find out more about the job you’re offering? A great attention-grabbing headline.  Use specific details about the job benefits, when possible. Entice them in a headline that lays out exactly how much money they could make at your company in the first year or two.  For example, your headline might read “If You Don’t Want to Make Six Figures or More, You Need Not Apply.” Always be truthful with your headlines and ad content, but bring the most enticing details forward.

1. 3.       Use Important Key Words to Attract the Right Applicants

If you want to know how to hire employees with great sales skills, appeal to the skills they feel they already have and you need them to have. Use key words like independent, strong-willed and persuasive in your job candidate requirements. Top salespeople want to be where those traits are rewarded.  The role of sales hiring gets much easier when you appeal to sales professional egos in this way.

1. 4.       Learn that What Makes a Good Salesman Might Be a Surprising Discovery

Don’t just depend on your skills regarding how to take interview questions. Successful sales hiring requires more. Use sales assessment testing to determine each sales candidate’s values and sales personalities. See this section in the AHS Sales Hiring Course for more details.

1. 5.       Know How to Ask Interview Questions like a Hiring Expert

Vary the kinds of questions you ask in each interview. Ask your applicants to answer fully and creatively to resolve sales challenges they might face. The AHS Sales Hiring Course interview model is easy and comprehensive. The questions are already provided for your convenience.

1. 6.       Be Professional.  Be Fair. And Be Quiet.

Sometimes how to hire employees with the traits you need requires more than just the right process. Be professional in all communication. Be fair by using the same testing and interview questions with every applicant.  And let the applicant do most of the talking.  This is their time to shine and your time to make note of whether or not they can.

1. 7.       How to Hire Employees with Top Sales Potential Starts With You

Think successful sales hiring depends solely on the quality of sales applicants? Think again. Going about sales hiring the proper and professional way has a huge impact on your hiring success.

These tips can enhance your sales hiring skills by leaps and bounds, providing your company with the support needed for better sales. To be truly great at sales hiring, use the comprehensive information provided by the AHS Sales Hiring Course.

There is nothing that will change the course of your business’ success as quickly as hiring top salesmen. Quite simply, top sales performer are able to find ways to sell your product that average salespeople never will.

The problem comes in in the hiring of top performers. Most managers who are in charge of the hiring process are TOTALLY CLUELESS on how to spot one of these Tiger Woods of sales. On top of that they fail to approach the project systematically.

Here then, is your definitive, if abridged guide, for hiring a top sales performer:

Step 1) Write an ad that speaks to top sales performers. The mind of the top salesmen is different from that of mere mortals. Top sales performers think of themselves in very concrete terms, By that I mean they are motivated by practical values – money and power. Mention the money and be specific. If they can’t make a lot of money they are not going to consider applying.

Top performers are also very strongly ego driven. Make sure you appeal to their sense of being able to reach heights reserved for only the superstars. Mediocre salespeople want it safe, top sales performers want the stars.

Step 2) Advertise for your top performer. There are a lot of choices here on how to attract good applicants to apply for your sales position. Our clients are reporting that www.Linkedin.com has become a good source of applicants, but it is not free. On the other hand there’s www.SimplyHired.com – the best part is its free. Post your job here (but be sure to make sure you’ve done Step 1 above) http://www.simplyhired.com/a/add-jobs/request?type=feed

There are many other places to advertise your need for a top sales performer. Be sure your website and Facebook page has a place for applicants to apply. Also, set up a Twitter strategy to get the word out.

Step 3) Evaluate your sales applicants. Here is where most sales managers screw things up, so pay attention. You do not want to read resumes for previous sales experience or previous industry sales experience. Most managers do, but most sales hires are weak. You decide whether you’ve got the guts to do it right here.

Applicants should at this point be evaluated with a validated series of personality profiles. We offer them and you can sign up to try one on yourself here. If you don’t use ours, make sure that the one you use is offered by a company that knows something about hiring salespeople. Most, in our opinion, don’t.

Step 4) Interview your applicants, but not like everybody else. At this point you have filtered your applicants for qualities that top performers exhibit. This means that they have the personality style of top performers. It does not mean they’ve done anything with their talent. Some people call this emotional intelligence. My Dad used to call it getting off their asses and doing something.

Your interview must be scripted. No winging it. Your interview must ask tangential questions. Don’t ask the same stupid questions that every other sales manager does. You must ask questions that get them to show you were they have demonstrated:stick-to-it-iveness, follow through, the ability to overcome adversity and discipline. Make them show you where they have been great in their lives.

Also, you don’t sell in the interview. Pretend you’re boring. Be an engineer. Make them sell, but don’t get all excited with them. Maintain control.

Step 5) Evaluate references. There are some amazing tools out there to support reference checking. It gives your references a chance to anonymously respond to your request for information on the applicant. They cost but they are worth the investment.

That’s the system. Five steps to hiring a top sales performer that take eight weeks to implement. If you’d like more information on how to implement the steps, take a look at www.advancedhiring.com

Knowing how to hire employees with top sales performance skills starts with you. Are you sure you know how to conduct an interview correctly? Do you know what makes a good salesman a top performer? Do you know what it takes to entice and excite top salespeople to apply at your company? Well, you’re about to find out. Take the quiz below to see how ready you really are to be a sales recruiting powerhouse. How to hire employees with the right stuff might require changing your mindset about how to get the job done right.

1. 1.      Which job applicant is most likely the best salesperson in the bunch?
   1. The one who values knowledge above all else.
   2. The one who values money above all else.
   3. The one who values creativity above all else.
   4. The one who values social acceptance above all else.

The answer is b: The one who values money above all else. Believe it or not, that’s exactly what makes a good salesman. Top sales performers are creative and knowledgeable, but they show up for work every day to make money and make lots of it. Knowing how to hire employees with this trait is as good as gold. The more income they want to make for themselves, the more they’ll make for you.

1. 2.      What’s the best role to take with applicants during the job interviews?
   1. Educator Persona – They are the student and you are the teacher. Treat the interview like an initial training workshop, educating them about the job as you gather information.
   2. Mentor Persona – Excite and inspire the applicant during the interview process, showing lots of emotion to keep them excited and engaged with you.
   3. Engineer Persona – Stick to the questions and do a lot of listening. Stay objective and don’t show excitement. The applicant should do most of the talking.

The answer is c: Engineer Persona. This approach allows the applicant’s personality to come through naturally instead of simply as a reaction to yours. The other personas might find the applicant trying to adapt to what they think you want to hear. The more reserved Engineer Persona allows you to observe and really listen. Successful sales recruiting means sitting back and letting their authentic personalities shine through.

1. 3.      What are the great places to post sales job listings?
   1. Social media accounts
   2. Internet job boards
   3. Shopper papers
   4. Church bulletins
   5. All of the above

The answer is e: All of the above. Most of those suggestions are obvious, but church bulletins, you ask? Mega churches can have congregations of more than 2000 members. If it makes sense to the kind of business you do, tap into the church bulletin readers. They deserve great sales jobs, too.

1. 4.      Which of these applicants should you interview based strictly on the information below?
   1. The one with the best resume.
   2. The one with the best looking suit.
   3. The one with the prettiest face.
   4. The one who wants your job.
   5. None of the above.

The answer is d: The one who wants your job. Assuming you’re the business owner or sales manager, you should know how to conduct an interview that reveals an applicant who wants power, leadership and has an entrepreneurial mindset. As for the resume, it tells you nothing about a job candidate’s true ability to be a top sales performer. Only pre-employment testing and proper job interview practices can achieve that. It is best of you learn how to hire employees without using the resume as a crutch.

1. 5.      What’s the most important question to ask a job applicant’s former supervisor?
   1. What is the applicant’s age?
   2. Would you consider this applicant a horrible or wonderful person?
   3. Was the applicant an A-Player?
   4. All of the above.

The answer is c: Was the applicant an A-Player? This question requires a simple yes or no answer and simply asks if the sales applicant was a great asset to their previous employer. The other questions above aren’t legal for former employers to answer. If you guessed either a or b, brush up on these important details before calling any of your job applicant references.

For more insightful instruction about how to hire employees for a top sales team, become a member of the AHS Sales Hiring Course.