measured on their selling skills today<\/a>, their motivations for success and their potential to become better at selling. These are the primary factors that lead to success in the position. Prospecting consistency, qualifying questions and closing abilities are strengths to search for when hiring salespeople. Focusing on their personality is not.<\/p>\nI don’t know if that analogy works or not, but I hope it conveys the basic point. Look for sales candidates who ask good questions, who clarify ambiguous points and who qualify the position for which they are applying. These are the primary factors that lead to success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m in to analogies this week so I have had this one rattling around in my head for a while. Its Friday so let’s try it. If you are familiar with football and specifically the wide receiver position, you know that their primary purpose is to run fast, accurate routes and catch the football when it is thrown to them. On running plays, they may run hard downfield as a decoy or they may try to block a defensive player. These activities are simply secondary at best to their role. Suffice to say, wide receivers usually have the cleanest uniforms at the end of a game (sans the punter and… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiring","category-hiring-salespeople"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-5A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2553,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2015\/04\/hiring-what-you-need-to-know\/","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":0},"title":"Hiring What You Need To Know","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"April 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Experience is a tricky component to successful sales hiring in that it is often overvalued.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, it is important, but you never want to overvalue it.\u00a0 The reason is that you can teach new salespeople about your product or service a lot easier than you can teach\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Aptitudes"","block_context":{"text":"Aptitudes","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/hiring\/assessing\/aptitudes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":959,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/results-based-work\/","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":1},"title":"Results-based Work","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"May 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From Seth Godin's post Who should you hire? There is a fundamental shift in rules from manual-based work (where you follow instructions and an increase in productivity means doing the steps faster) to project-based work (where the instructions are unknown, and visualizing outcomes and then getting things done is what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hiring Salespeople"","block_context":{"text":"Hiring Salespeople","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/hiring\/hiring-salespeople\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":747,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/03\/hire-fast-fire-fast\/","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":2},"title":"Hire Fast, Fire Fast","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"March 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From Dick Costolo's Ask the Wizard blog: Briefly, the \"No False Positives\" school of hiring says that bad hires are worse than no hire because bad employees infect the company with all sorts of issues. Better to march on with nobody filling an important slot than to bring in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hiring Salespeople"","block_context":{"text":"Hiring Salespeople","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/hiring\/hiring-salespeople\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1663,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/07\/first-round-cuts\/","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":3},"title":"First Round Cuts","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"July 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The frequency of layoffs has started to rise as the economy continues it's slow progression (no, it hasn't recessed).\u00a0 Up here in Minnesota we have experienced some large layoffs recently.\u00a0 But there is an interesting point in all of these layoffs when it comes to salespeople. Many times the underperformers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1402,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/02\/the-demand-for-salespeople\/","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":4},"title":"The Demand For Salespeople","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"February 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Salespeople, with strong skills, are always in demand in any economy.\u00a0 Certainly some sales opportunities have an ebb and flow tied to the current economic conditions, but those are mainly business-to-consumer positions.\u00a0 From that understanding comes a 2008 sales hiring outlook from Monster.com. First key graph: In 2008 as always,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hiring Salespeople"","block_context":{"text":"Hiring Salespeople","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/hiring\/hiring-salespeople\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1265,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/10\/stuck-in-the-middle-with-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":5},"title":"Stuck In The Middle With You","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"October 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"When recruiting sales talent, we often get caught in the middle on one important topic. Timing. Sourcing a strong candidate who is looking to move at the right moment is a complex undertaking. Few salespeople will cash in their current job for blue-sky possibilities which is how most opportunities appear\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hiring Salespeople"","block_context":{"text":"Hiring Salespeople","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/hiring\/hiring-salespeople\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}