Hiring the right people starts with knowing what makes a good salesperson want to do the job well. There are hiring solutions very helpful with figuring out the right interview models to gain this valuable information. In the meantime, here are some clues for knowing how to hire employees with the right motivation and mindset.

• High Energy – A sluggish, lazy, distracted sales team will get you nowhere. Even if one person on that team strays from the goal, it could set you back a great deal of lost sales in the long run. Hiring the right people definitely means hiring energetic ones. What makes a good salesperson is one with focus and stamina that lasts or keeps renewing until the goal has been reached.
  

• Strong Integrity – It’s true that a strong salesperson is often one who is willing to bend a rule or two, but not at the expense of your company’s integrity. Beware of applicants who exhibit signs of being overly willing to do whatever it takes to make the sale. Hiring solutions are all for naught if you’ve got a team of dishonest salespeople. Your company reputation is at stake, so screen applicants for integrity as a top priority.
  

• Quick Learner – Luckily, it’s not always important that a sales applicant have much product knowledge yet. Training is the key to learning your products and practices the right way, so it’s almost better to start from scratch in certain sales positions. However, assess applicants for the quick learners in the bunch and you’ll benefit in more ways than one. Quick learners tend to be great in high-pressure situations. On the spot sales pitches don’t faze them like their slow-learning counterparts.
  

• Wants the Golden Ticket – Here’s what makes a good salesperson – someone who wants the top prize. Competitiveness is a great quality that sales people to have. If the interview and assessment tests show that this applicant wants the top sales spot on your team, it’s likely they’ll work very hard to achieve it.
  

• Seeks Praise & Rewards – How to hire employees with great sales skills, and keep them for the long-term, is to offer a lot of praise and rewards for sales goals met. The desire to make as much money as possible is what makes a good salesperson get up every morning. Offer them that chance and you’ll see the great salespeople flock to your doors.
  

• Can’t Get Enough of a Good Thing – Sometimes sales people will bring in a high percentage of sales and then sink back into their comfy careers without trying hard for more. This is not what makes a good salesperson for the long haul. It’s essential that the applicants you interview display an eagerness to reach each summit and then beg for higher mountains to climb. When a sales person loses steam, they risk bringing down the entire sales team. Hire self-motivators with high energy and you won’t have this problem.
  

What makes a good salesperson tick is the desire for big money, big rewards and repeat success. It takes highly energetic self-starters to be a great sales person and it takes the right interview information to know them when you see them.

Selling as a profession suffers from far too many sales hiring failures.

Unlike other professions where an MD, DDS or LLD comes after the name, there’s no “SSM” degree.

Sadly, most sales managers don’t really know what makes a good salesperson. As a result, they persist in hiring people to sell for them for all the wrong reasons.

Sales applicants who “handled themselves well in the interview,” “got past their screener” or “who have years of sales experience” are deemed the best candidates. And, so the cycle continues: bad sales hire after bad sales hire after bad sales hire, all join the ranks of sales teams.

In having studied good salespeople for nearly 16 years, good salespeople have one thing in common – a “sales personality.” No other criteria are common to top sales performers.

What is this “sales personality” of a top sales performer?

It is a combination of the right personal interests, values and personality style.

In 16 years of research we have found top sales performers are “high practicals — where money or power are their highest values. And they are strongly ego driven, confident communicators and rule breakers.

Start looking for salespeople with these personality characteristics and watch your sales hiring success ratio rocket to new heights.

How 90% of Sales Managers Skip Steps in Sales Hiring

Sports analogies and sales are made often for a very good reason – because there is a direct connection between what it takes to succeed in sports and what it takes to succeed in sales.

Less than 10 weeks ago I announced that I was going to run the Tel Aviv Marathon.

The idea of running a non-US marathon was so exciting to me. Since I was scheduled to be in Israel at the time of the marathon and had always wanted to run one in a foreign country it would be perfect.

Except training for a marathon takes 18 weeks if you are 58 years old while I was allowing 12 weeks.

Sales managers who skip steps hiring salespeople to end up with duds 3 out of 4 times.

When we talk to managers we often hear that they start by evaluating less than 20 applicants. Yet, one of the steps to making a good sales hire is to evaluate a minimum of 20 applicants.

Managers will tell us “I only got 5 applicants from Craigslist” or “When I ran my newspaper ad I only got 8 applicants.” As if that fact means they then skip the “Minimum 20 applicant rule” and head on to make a sales hire with what they got. Nope. Sorry, Charlie.

If you only get 5 applicants from Craigslist that means you’ve got to run an ad on Careerbuilder. Or, better yet, use the section in the Sales Hiring E-course on Using Social Media.

I hesitate to identify any step as more critical than the other steps, but making a good sales hire requires that you pick from many applicants. Evaluating fewer applicants is about as sure a predictor of failure as I can think of.

Oh, and about that marathon…I’ve learned my lesson. I’m going to scale back to a half marathon. Still a decent goal, but nowhere near as impressive as a full marathon. Next time I won’t skip steps. How about you?