Have you ever wondered why there are people who seem like they can sell anything?
Possibly you have ever met such a person, or have even bought something from him. If you work for a company, you may have a sales group, and it really is quite an important department. If for any reason you have to organize a sales group, do you know where to start? Do you know what it takes to start a group of trained salespeople? Knowing what is needed can also give us clues as to how best sales can be made, which could benefit us on our own. deal.
The first thing is to ask ourselves some questions such as the following:
- How much experience should salespeople have when hired?
- How important are computer skills?
- What should be included in training for salespeople?
- What personal traits make one person a better salesperson than another?
- How do you know if you are hiring someone good or bad?
When starting the process of recruiting salespeople for a sales group, it is worth spending some time planning and setting a budget for Advertising, hiring, interviews and training are expensive, if you don’t want to spend time and money on the wrong candidates.
Before interviewing the first candidate, you have to take into account the salary you want to reach. Depending on how attractive you are, it can be a good lure for the best candidates. For this reason, it is advisable to be clear about what you are paying for on other sites. You have to put the ad in a very descriptive way, such as clarifying the work that needs to be done before the sales call, what is expected of the service to be given, goals to be achieved, etc. You should think about the entire sales process and detail what you want to achieve, the tools to use and the expectations in the results.
A good option is to visit a vendor’s convention or similar event. At these meetings there are opportunities to meet qualified candidates in a short period of time. There are companies that prepare everything so that we can visit these types of events, and the price may vary depending on the place and duration. Anyway, many people decide to delegate the entire process to specialized companies to hire professionals. It is not what is known as outsourcing, since the company looks for professionals although it does not hire them directly.
If you are in a new company or entering a new market, you may prefer to focus your resources on your core product or service rather than building a sales team. If this is the case, then outsourcing may be the answer. This could save us time and effort to get a sales team quickly. An external company can provide training, management, strategies and handle the entire administrative issue as well. There may be added expenses, but in the long run it is one of the most effective systems to implement in a company. If instead you are going to do the hiring yourself, one of the first steps is to write a good advertisement asking for commercial personnel to make people want to work in the company.
It is good that in the ad a brief description of the company is made, but if you go into too much detail. You can include some of the benefits that will be given in case of hiring, such as if you are going to give a company car, bonuses, flexible hours, etc. This can often make the difference between getting the best candidates or the not so good ones. The experience you have should be requested as a requirement to get an idea of the knowledge they have. This is not always accurate, but it helps. It must be remembered that money is one of the things that motivates the most, so the benefits should also be mentioned on the salary range, commissions, etc.
Candidate evaluation for a sales team
In the previous lines we talk about how a sales group and how to organize it. One thing that must also be taken into account is to make a good evaluation of the candidates when forming the team. To do this, you must have a good idea of the experience and skill level of the candidates for the sales position after having reviewed hundreds of CVs that have probably accumulated.
At this stage you should be asking yourself, have they been in front of other people selling before? Are they just out of college or do they already have a few years of experience? Do you have a training program strong enough to catch inexperienced candidates?
There are many things to think about. With sales, experience is not always the most important thing to consider, especially if you already have sales reps who can help in training and learning new employees. In order to be good salespeople, candidates need to have good research skills to know what users want and understand their needs, their business, their business structures, etc. These skills can be taught, but the experience of digging for the necessary information is helpful. In these times, this experience includes good knowledge to investigate in Internet, and also search techniques – asking co-workers, making phone calls, finding good references, etc.
Of course, having good communication skills is very important. Most of the things a commercial does require communication – both written and verbal. Whether it is an explanation of the specifications of a product or service, or communicating the benefits it has, everything is based on how the information is reflected and negotiated. Pay attention during the interview to how candidates express their qualities and “sell” themselves.
As has been said before, good technical skills are already necessary in our day. What level of computer literacy should they have? Regardless of the topic of the business in which they are going to work, they should at least have good knowledge in text editors (Word) and spreadsheets (Excel), and it wouldn’t hurt if they knew the basics of manage databases. It is also important that they know how to make presentations with a program designed for it, such as Powerpoint. Many clients expect high-level presentations from salespeople, so they must be comfortable using this technology, and in some cases designing their own presentations.