A dynamic, driven salesperson is an asset to any sales team. Certain personality traits can make a salesperson near unstoppable. When you look at your own sales team – or applicants for sales job openings in your company – how closely do you pay attention to their personality traits? We think it’s about time you made personality a priority. Along with the values of your sales staff, specific personality traits can make or break great sales.

Dr. William Moulton Marston (1893-1947) was an American psychologist who developed the DISC assessment behavioral model used today by professionals like doctors, educators, employers and sales managers for personality analysis. DISC stands for Drive (or Dominance), Influence, Steadiness and Compliance (or Conscientiousness).

The DISC assessment questionnaire is often given to sales job applicants before hiring decisions are made. This assessment helps the sales manager determine if the potential employee has the kind of personality traits a high percentage of top sales performers display.

• Drive – The ego drive. The salesperson’s desire to overcome obstacles in order to achieve what they want.
• Influence – Your sales employee’s ability to communicate with others in a way that makes people comfortable and convinces them to act.
• Steadiness – The ability to adapt to the current conditions or environment, like having to sit at a desk in one location all day.
• Compliance – The salesperson’s relationship with the rules in place. Do they feel rules are set in stone or can they be manipulated to better suit a circumstance or get the sale?

Using DISC assessment tests can help sales managers determine the personality mix of their sales team. Knowing this information could help:

• Build better sales teams
• Resolve conflicts
• Create awareness that allows a salesperson or sales manager to adapt better to the needs of the job or the team
• Support healthier interactions

So what are some of the personality traits you’re looking for? You’re looking for a blend of a salespersons drive, influence, steadiness and compliance traits which allow them to communicate well with your company’s clients for better sales. The AHS Sales Hiring Course further discusses how to measure a sales applicant’s personality style. By analyzing DISC assessment graphs, you can successfully determine which applicants have the personality style like those of top sales performers.

Taking the extra steps to assess the personality traits of your salespeople can be the difference between hiring top sales performers and average sales performers. Your business could depend on it.

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

It’s possible to hire sales people who will outperform your average employees without using any complicated hiring procedure that’s costly to implement. Advanced Hiring System shows you how. All you have to do is change your sales hire system.

Why Do Your Hire Sales People?

You probably want more sales. Who doesn’t? But you have to ask yourself a few other critical questions before starting to accept job applications.

• What salesperson do I want to hire? What qualities am I looking for in him or her?
• What makes a good salesperson? Do I have any success stories in my company that I could take as model?
• How much can I pay my best salespersons? Can I afford to hire the top performers? Will they be content with what I can offer them? Why would they prefer to work with me and not my competitors?

It’s important to have answers to all these questions before you hire sales people, if you expect to make your hiring process more effective, and so reach to the top performers out there.

The DISC Assessment

DISC is a behavioral model based on the work of psychologist William Marston. It’s the most used business personality assessment model, and many will say that it’s the best.

You have probably used the DISC assessment already when hiring sales people – almost all sales managers do. Advanced Hiring System relies on the DISC model, but expands on it, making it an even more effective personality assessment that will help you hire sales people who outperform your existing sales department employees.

What Makes a Good Salesperson?

The right values and the right personality. While every salesperson is ultimately unique, there’s one thing that all salespersons have in common: a drive for money and power. That’s why, using the DISC model, you want to find and then interview those applicants who have a strong tendency for money and power.

But that’s not all. To hire sales people who will outperform the rest you have to compare your applicants’ personality with that of proven top salespersons. In this way you can spot those few applicants who have the most potential, and who you really want to interview. When comparing personality styles, you really want to look at the graphs, which provide the most conclusive evidence.

Advanced Hiring System

Advanced Hiring System proposes a simple method to compare personality styles quickly and effectively, so that the application screening process, with its search for the top performers, will go smoothly, even when you have to deal with many candidates.

The system includes styles analysis graphs, as well as the success insight wheel. To learn why candidates who score in the conductor and promoter areas of the wheel are good, and why those who score in the persuader area are great, check the Advanced Hiring System sales hiring course.

To hire sales people who will surpass your expectations you need to use the right hiring system. Great candidates are always there, the tricky part is to identify them. And Advanced Hiring System does just that – with it the sales hire process becomes a lot easier, and much more effective.