Are you still your company’s #1 salesperson? Harried schedule for you?

Friday Funnel Focus by EPOCH Sales Management Solutions

• How many salespeople have you had for your small business? 
• How many were “A” players versus B,C or D salespeople?

Here is a typical answer that we get from small business owners:

Total Number of Salespeople = 15

“A” Players - 1 (6.7%)

“B” Players - 3 (20%)

“C” Players - 3 (20%)

“D” Players - 8 ( 53.3%)

Sound familiar to you?

For today’s article, we are going to assume you decided you need someone to fill the Account Executive Role to find new opportunities at new accounts and that your business is “Sales Team Ready”, okay?  (You can review the various sales roles here.) 

What do you need to do to put the right person in that role?

In a prior blog article (What to look for in your next salesperson?), we shared our beliefs that you should:

1. First, ensure you have the RIGHT PERSON by comparing them to your company core values and the desired salesperson traits. That article details what traits make a successful salesperson.  In this article we want to add the three most important things to look for in a successful hunting salesperson:
   • Optimistic Attitude
   • Competitive Spirit
   • Need for Achievement

Want the entire list of traits? DOWNLOAD HERE 

2. Do they have the right selling skills? Or can they learn them?  Here are 12 Skills to Master to be a successful salesperson:

•    Effective time management
•    Commit to ongoing improvement.
•    Disciplined new business development.
•    Build strategic target lists
•    Develop compelling sales messaging
•    Conduct proactive outreach 
•    Prepare, Open Call, Establish and build rapport
•    Discovery and Qualification
•    Build Value and Create Desire
•    Overcoming Objections
•    Gain Commitments
•    Timely follow-up

3. Build a Job Performance Model to help define what person you are looking for with respect to cognitive skills, behaviors and interests.  Contact Dave Priddy at dave.priddy@epochsalesmanagement.com and he will help you build a Job Performance Model at no cost to you.  It will help you better “see” what you are looking for.

As we mentioned earlier, the blog article (What to look for in your next salesperson?)  helps walk through what to be looking for.

Now, you know what to look for, but how do you determine which candidates have the best chance at being that SUCCESSFUL salesperson?

Let’s look at the interview process.  

In a past blog article, Conducting Phone Screen Interview, we guide you through the process to determine which candidates are a potential fit and recommend you focus in four areas:

1. What are they like on the phone?
2. Do they seek opportunities for achievement?
3. Do they fit the role?
4. How curious are they?

That blog article provides a list of sample phone questions, but more importantly helps you probe deeper to get to know the real person. The concept is similar to using a “pain funnel” in the discovery and qualification step of the sales call process. The article also shares a way to test their resilience and grit.  

We recommend that the hiring manager do the phone screen and initial face to face questions.  We have a unique process to dig deeper here and are happy to share that list of questions. Simply contact Dave Priddy at dave.priddy@epochsalesmanagement.com or call him on his cell at 612-308-3705.

Following the phone screen and initial face to face interview, we recommend a battery of assessments to help “see” what we might have missed in the interview process.  Our primary assessments are the PXT Select to evaluate Job Fit and EQFit to assess emotional intelligence.  We also include a personality assessment to help fill the gaps on the information from the other two assessments and the interviews.

Successful candidates then interview with the leadership team and other key members to help “see” what the hiring manager might have missed, explore company fit and let the candidate get to know more about the company.

We find these steps help improve the odds of hiring a SUCCESSFUL salesperson.

Want to know more? (SCHEDULE A 30 Minute Discovery Session Here)

REMINDER

Again, for this article we assumed you need someone to fill the Account Executive Role to find new opportunities at new accounts and that your business is “Sales Team Ready”.  Next week, we will dig more into what it means to be “Sales Team Ready” and the impact of not being “Sales Team Ready”.

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We help small business owners scale their teams from themselves to 5 salespeople and beyond.

While growing Small Businesses and Building Great Sales Teams is hard, the process to do this is simple. But, simple does not mean easy. 

Tired of Unsuccessful Sales Hires?
As an entrepreneur, do you feel harried and chaotic?

In the meantime, get our guide to the 3 Part Formula to a Healthy Sales Pipeline