This excerpt is taken from a sales ad by a well-known, national recruiting company:

But you must be sales orientated – it (sic) you have a specific industry or occupational background such as IT, engineering, or whatever that is good but again not a requirement. You must be smart – normally a college grad.

Boy, where to start on that short piece of bad writing. I would not recommend using “whatever” in an ad – sounds like a high school student. I doubt the author’s intention was to state that college grads are the only smart candidates, but you can see how the mangled syntax of that sentence could be misconstrued.

I continue to state that online ads are very effective for sourcing strong candidates, but the ad must be well constructed . . . and well written.

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This week we focus on another important sales leadership trait.  We’ve seen this trait firsthand have the effect of holding a sales team together during turbulent times.

Conveying Role Value
This ability draws upon a variety of traits (empathetic, interpersonal and leadership) to instill in an employee a sense of value for the task at hand. It is the ability to convey to another the value and importance that a given role carries with it. This is not a measurement of a person€™s ability to understand a role€™s value, but to communicate that value to another or group of others.

A sales manager with strength in this capacity will be able to effectively instill in an employee, or employees, a belief that what they are doing has value. They will be able to paint a clear picture of how and why that role is important€¦to themselves, to the company or to others.

A weakness in this area can be indicative of two things: Either the manager attempting to convey this value does not adequately appreciate the value in a role, or their ability to communicate ideas and concepts to others in such a way that they are perceived as valuable is lacking.

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