You need staff and you need to interview a pool of candidates and see which one of them can sell.

There is a myth that some people believe that they can recognize sales people as soon as they see them, as soon as they chat.  To some extent, that is true because during the chat, they will exhibit some of their selling abilities.  Certainly, they will exhibit their communication style but whether that style is the right one for selling or not is harder to tell, so being able to be a good communicator is a really small fraction of the equation for being able to sell.

Another myth is that, it’s their energy, the twinkle in their eye, the spring in their step, their motivation, their ambition that really counts, so people that really want to succeed, that are passionate about selling or the product, or some other aspect of their life, this energy will exude when they are selling.  This energy may indeed exude when they are selling but it isn’t going to help them sell.  Their energy levels is about how interested they are in selling all their product which is certainly helpful, but their ability to sell is what’s crucial.  There’s a huge chasm between being interested in something and then you are able to do it.

I have a great passion for quantum physics and a whole bunch of engineering topics but I’m never going to make an engineer because despite my passion and interest, I don’t have any of the relevant abilities.  So we have a sales test that identifies the 75 attributes which you can never see in an interview that allows people to sell.  It’s not a skill-based test because skills are something that people can develop, you can teach them, you can change them, and you make skills better.  what you need is that they have the core capacity on which to build those skills.  Find out if your candidates can sell before you interview them, before you get mesmerized by their passion and certainly do observe for yourself as many of those skills that they may possess, but remember the current skills can be topped up, that core capacity.  It’s either there or it isn’t.

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Next in the series: How to Cold Call