“Just what makes that little old ant

Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant?

Anyone knows an ant

Can’t

Move a rubber tree plant!

But he has high hopes,

he has high hopes . . . .”

Anyone who remembers telephone tables, Mouseketeers (the original ones), and a Solar System with nine planets may remember this cute little song with a big message. The message? Keep trying, even if everyone around you thinks the task is impossible. That’s tenacity. The DiSC assessment calls it Drive. It’s the ability to keep plugging away, even when the situation may seem hopeless.

Tenacity is another element in the formula of what makes a good salesman. A salesman needs tenacity when he’s faced with rejection, when he needs to find new leads, perhaps by cold calling, or just when he needs to get out of bed an hour early to research a new product. Tenacity is the ability to force optimism—to truly believe that, even when everything seems to be going wrong, something great is waiting just around the corner.

Another indication of what makes a good salesman is the habit of goal setting. Actually, goal setting is a corollary of tenacity. If a person sets goals for himself by the day, week, month, and year, he always has something to keep him moving forward. There will be obstacles; there always are. Market conditions will take a nosedive, popular trends will peter out, new technology will make a product obsolete, decision makers will be no more than just a voice on a recording (sometimes not even their own voice), the list of possible calamities could go on and on.

A good salesman, however, will greet obstacles and challenges with gusto, and keep his focus on his goals. Ultimately, the unreachable decision maker becomes a connection. Or networking pays off and referrals from contacts start to pour in. Or a brilliant idea redefines and regenerates the market. Because of tenacity, calamities become opportunities, the salesman turns the corner, and there it is—something great!

If you have an employee who meets most of the requirements for what makes a good salesman, he understands that his success comes from within himself. He doesn’t make excuses or beg for help; he just reaches within for the resources to solve problems and stay focused on his goals. He also realizes that, for the most part, making a sale is not an instantaneous event. It requires nurturing—building relationships, understanding the customer and the customer’s needs—and it involves a careful process that must be followed from initiating the contact to closing the deal. It’s the same as the AHS sales hiring process: every step is crucial to achieve success.

Whatever you want to call it—tenacity, persistence, drive, determination—it’s crucial in the formula for what makes a good salesman. With tenacity, calamity becomes opportunity, adversity becomes advantage, and mountain becomes ant hill.

If you follow the guidelines set out in the Advanced Hiring System, you already know everything there is to know about how to hire a salesperson. If you find that you’re still experiencing a high level of turnover, there could be a problem in the way you handle your employees after the sales hiring process is finished.

After the hire, do you A) show the new employee her cubicle, give her dozens of forms to fill out,  and get her started on her first assignment, or B) take a little time to introduce her around, show her the lunch room, tell her about your company volleyball team, and familiarize her with the values and practices shared by all employees of the company?

Hopefully, you chose what was behind curtain B. If you didn’t, that could be a big reason behind your turnover problem. What we’re talking about here is not just how to hire a salesperson, but how to retain her with new employee onboarding. Even though you’ve followed all the proper sales hiring steps, her success isn’t guaranteed.  It’s also extremely important for new employees to be guided to adapt to the culture that uniquely defines your company.

Of course you’re going to set new employees up with their job responsibilities and what the expectations are, but there should also be a specific orientation process to educate new employees in how they fit in with the values and norms that shape your corporate community—your company culture. If you don’t have this type of an onboarding process, or if you have a process that is unfocused or inconsistent, your new hire will feel like a fish out of water, hopelessly flopping around and wondering how she got there.

Neglecting to integrate a new hire into your company culture can also have a negative effect within the company.  After all, she’s not a blank canvas; she’s bound to have her own ideas and values as she enters your company. If you used the AHS assessments to identify her values and styles, she may fit right in without having to adapt too much. But if there is some basic difference, and you don’t attempt to show her how your culture is structured, her values may work in conflict with company values.

For example, if integrity is important in your company culture, but your new hire comes from an environment where management required them to do “whatever it takes” to make a sale, this employee will need a little educating as you mainstream her into your culture. If she doesn’t adopt your values, your customers, your other employees, and you will experience culture shock.

No matter how professional a company, it’s important to also be personal with new employees, even though person-to-person interactions may take a little time out of someone’s schedule. If no one makes the effort to welcome a new hire, she’ll get the idea that her presence with the company isn’t valued.

The upshot is, it takes satisfied employees to assure satisfied customers. By taking the time to properly onboard new employees, you’re enabling them not only to embrace your company culture and take ownership of the mission and vision of the company, you’re empowering them to realize the superstar status promised by the hiring process.

Let’s face it: everything we do as sales managers revolves around one idea—ROI. Even our sales hiring methods impact our company’s bottom line. For that reason, we want to make certain that our process assures us of hiring the right person the first time, and that has to do with your hiring speed limit.

I know, you’ve got a high-performance company, and it’s important to you to keep it running at top speed and top efficiency. When something needs to be done, you want it done day before yesterday. That’s what better sales is all about.

The problem is, it’s not often possible to realize the greatest benefits of good sales hiring if you’re racing through the process at mach speed.

If you race through your sales hiring or skip some of the steps in the process, you can actually be incurring substantial expenses by ending up with the wrong people. They won’t contribute to better sales, they’ll be miserable, you’ll be miserable, and soon they’ll be gone. That’s practically a given. Then you’ll have to hire again, and if you don’t have proper sales hiring system in place, as well as the patience to follow the procedures, you’ll find yourself in a recurring loop of hiring failures.

Following the process outlined in the AHS Sales Hiring course materials may seem as though it will take up a lot of time in the beginning, but it actually evens out during the entire process since it significantly reduces the number of viable candidates you’ll end up having to interview. The DISC assessment, along with the values and styles matrices, will allow you to focus on the potential top performers as you eliminate candidates who don’t fit the salesperson profile .

Taking the time to give more than one interview per candidate is also an essential step in effective sales hiring. Remember, for every coaching system for sales hiring, there are probably five coaching systems for interviewing. A candidate can appear polished and perfect during one interview, but that could just be a well-coached façade. Making the time for additional interviews will give you an opportunity to identify inconsistencies and see below the surface.

Of course, no highway system runs smoothly without also having a minimum speed limit, and there is a need for one in sales hiring as well. You don’t want to wait around until there’s a huge need before you think about recruiting new blood. While there may be many top performers out there, chances are they’re not all standing in line until you’re ready to hire them. It’s important to keep yourself open for sales hiring opportunities when they present themselves, even if you weren’t necessarily considering hiring salespeople at the time. After all, an investment in quality will only bring in better returns.