When it comes down to it there is very little magic in finding, selecting and recruiting a sales superstar.
The problem that I frequently observe is that business owners, MSP’s, VAR’s and or sales managers make the mistake of hiring people for the wrong reasons. You see, I believe in hiring sales people for their behaviors not for the quality of their resume that they have produced.
First and foremost hire those people with attributes that can’t be trained.
For instance, I can’t train tenacity nor can I train curiosity. Both tenacity and curiosity are important ingredients in the sales success. I also can’t train competitiveness, a sense of urgency and an overriding desire to win.
These are behavioral traits that must be manifested by a candidate in order to be considered for a position that I’ve nicknamed “hunter”. As you know, hunters are those men and women who need to win.
They’re extremely competitive.
These are the men and women who will bring new accounts new business and open new territories for your company.
In order to start the screening and selection process of a hunter, I will ask all candidates my “hunter question”. The hunter question simply stated is to have the candidate tell you when was the first time in their life that they can recall competing for something.
I also want to know what was it they contested, how did they do and most importantly how did the outcome affect them?
You see, my experience is most hunters can recall competing for something they wanted in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Hunters have also manifested a behavior of competing throughout their life.
I’m not talking exclusively about athletic competition. Rather, I want people who are competitive not necessarily athletically competitive.
If the hunter failed in his or her earlier competitions, I want to know how that impacted them. This trait is vital to the success as a hunter. A sales hunter has the possession of a short term memory. I am not talking about a health ailment, but I am talking about people who can fail and will recover from that failure.
Lastly, the most important trait is the ability to self correct based on a failure.
For instance, a sales representative who goes out to give a presentation to a prospect and fails to win the order should analyze what went wrong, what went right, and implement a correction. This trait of self correcting of mistakes is vital to success in today’s sales arena.
Make sure you ask these questions and interview to ascertain the behaviors and traits of your hunter/sales candidates. If you’d like some help recruiting hunters, click here.