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.

Drayton Bird, sent this today. Drayton is a very clever world class marketer. I’ve learned a lot from Drayton. Like many highly successful people, he shares freely. His free email tips contain gems. Sign up at the bottom of this message.

Hire Salespeople Better Than Yourself is Smart Hiring

by Drayton Bird

I confess: this is not my idea. I have no idea who came up with it.

But I know my old boss David Ogilvy’s dictum, “If we hire people better than ourselves will become a company of giants; if we hire people worse, we will become a company of dwarves.”

However, David (like a lot of good people) had no qualms in stealing stuff.

Nevertheless it is a natural failing – through insecurity, I guess – to hire people that aren’t as smart as we are. That way we feel less threatened.
But I can think of more than one occasion when I have taken on people who I thought better than me in some way. One was Brian Thomas who came into our Covent Garden offices in 1980 and said “Do you have any jobs?”

I asked why he had come in. He said, “I’ve been reading your house ads, and you sound like the kind of people I’d like to work for.”
(Hint: remember that your ads are certainly read more by your staff than by prospects, and also by possible employees.)
I spent ten minutes talking to Brian and realised he knew more about the mail order business than I did, so we hired him. Within a year he was the managing director (I couldn’t run a fruit stall).

More recently I hired my current partner, who certainly has a better analytical mind than I do – as indeed she should, being a Doctor of Philosophy.)

So remember, try not to be daunted by clever people; you’re a lot better off hiring them than trying to do everything yourself.

Best,
Drayton

www.draytonbird.co.uk.

Today’s Wall Street Journal’s front-page article “Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need” says if you want to hire salespeople you are facing a hard task in this economy. In fact, in 2011 one of the hardest jobs to fill is sales reps.

With unemployment at 9% according to government stats, you’d think it’d be a piece of cake to find good salespeople.

The Journal article dwells on companies need to see past job experience – and many applicant’s lack of experience as the problem.

That kind of thinking, that sales experience predicts future sales success, is the heart of the problem…

Fifteen Years of Research Shows Why Most Sales Hires Fail

Since 1996 research by Advanced Hiring System on successful sales hiring has concluded that experience in sales should only count for 10% of the decision.

Much more weight needs to be put on the sales applicant’s personality style and values. These characteristics can be measure with Sales Assessment tools like ValuesMatrix(TM) and StylesMatrix(TM)

Why Don’t Sales Managers Hire Better Reps?

Top sales reps possess a unique blend of drive and charm – coupled with a willingness to break rules. Also, top reps have highly practical values and are motivated by money and power.

Since these characteristics can be measured effectively with ValuesMatrix(TM) and StylesMatrix(TM), managers can go beyond resumes.

Data suggests that going beyond resume reading gives companies a much wider pool of applicants to chose from. Considering more applicants, rather than a small handful, give managers the ability to successfully fill the critical role of salesperson.