Beyond the challenge of establishing an applicant’s values and interaction style – topics we’ve examined in previous articles — there remains, for hiring managers, the key issue of whether or not a given candidate has the skills to sell as a true superstar, what I call a Titan. If there is a skills mismatch — if the person you’re interviewing lacks the essential abilities to sell as a top performer — then you’ve got to decide whether or not the person’s existing aptitudes support growth in the key areas. (more…)

In our first article on hiring, we looked at the sales candidate’s value system and will to succeed. Now it’s time to gain an appreciation of how he or she is likely to go about selling. There are many models used for classifying behavior in this area; the model we will be referring to here is known as the DISC model, which was initially developed by Dr. Carl Jung and Dr. William Marston. The DISC profiles we use in our practice were developed and supplied by TTI Performance Systems. (more…)

Hiring salespeople who are motivated and energetic to begin with is essential. You shouldn’t rely on others to breathe life into a hire — the hire must be “alive” from the get-go!

Many organizations miss the boat when it comes to recruiting salespeople. Too many hiring officials either do not know what they want, know what they want and are not sure how to find it, or have a decision-making structure that is actually counterproductive to the key stated goals for the sales force. (more…)