When recruiting sales staff, most enterprises usually mainly measure whether the applicant has many years of sales experience in the same field and a good sales performance record.

However, if you think about it again, in fact, you will find that these are not the key factors to measure whether the salesperson will perform well.

In fact, a key reason here is that the market we are facing is constantly changing every day. You will notice:

Customers have more and more knowledge and higher requirements.

Competition is getting more and more fierce.

The products or services you sell are becoming more and more complicated.

In some markets, the changes in five years may be drastic and beyond the expected range.

Then, if you recruit according to past experience, how do you know that what you used in the past will be equally useful in the future? The same factors may have brought you success in the past, but there is no guarantee that today and the future will be the same.

Then, you may ask: What about a good sales record? Of course, if a salesperson has stable and excellent sales performance, he may continue to create excellent sales performance.

Unfortunately, however, unlike many other professions, the sales industry is a profession in which you have to deal with failure before you can be trained to be a successful salesperson. No successful salesperson dares to claim that he/she has never been rejected by customers, or that he/she has never lost a business. In fact, like many negotiations, excellent salespeople know when to "give up" and look for other better potential customers, while failed salespeople spend too much time on customers who will never buy.

Therefore, if you see that salespeople seem to have a "perfect" sales record, that is, they can always reach or even exceed the sales target, in a sense, it can be:

Selling in a monopolistic market environment means that consumers have no choice but to buy from specific salespeople.

It entered the market in a relatively early period and gained the largest customer base in the market.

It sells existing loyal customers who already have a good brand image and sells them to brands. These customers don't need to spend much effort to persuade them to buy.

However, the above statement does not mean that having relevant experience and a good performance record is not important for evaluating a salesperson. This only shows that you have several years of sales experience and a good performance record, not a hint of future performance.

Key behaviors to promote sales

Key measures to promote sales

When a company always pays attention to sales figures to determine the success or failure of its sales team, in fact, it is often the sales process (such as how you sell) that determines the sales results you get. How good your sales process is depends largely on the habits of each salesperson and the performance of sales practice.

Different companies have different sales processes for different customers who buy different product lines in different regions. Therefore, the key to successful sales is different for different situations. The sales process that a company should have can include:

1. Only sell to those customers who have strategic cooperative relations, (and then) the sales staff should establish complex relationships and let people at all levels of their customers' internal organizations buy from you.

2. Constantly develop new sales opportunities and keep buying from new customers.

3. Find a balance between new business development and existing key account management. Sales staff can not only let newly developed customers buy from themselves, but also won't lose existing customers.

In fact, because different customers in different markets have different needs and different methods to meet their requirements, the sales process may become much more complicated. When you are not sure what the next salesperson should adopt, here are some key practices that apply to most sales processes (which most salespeople lack most):

Constantly develop new customers to ensure smooth sales channels. For most salespeople, no matter how experienced they are, they prefer to deal with existing customers rather than looking for new customers. However, if a salesperson tries to gain new potential customers by using standardized practices, it actually shows a good sales habit.

Constantly explore the "pain points" of customers or the problems they face, and actively seek solutions and suggestions to help them solve those challenges and problems.

Ensure a good relationship with all key influencers in the customer company, not just relying on friendship with one person. Moreover, salespeople who can do this can usually establish good relationships with people with less influence in order to obtain more customer "information".

Learn from mistakes and customer rejection and strive for the next step. When a customer is no longer worth your time and energy, it is also a good practice to know when to give up and take the time to find a new and better customer.

So, when you interview your candidate, you can try to start with the following questions:

"If I am a potential customer and you want to do business with me, how can you contact me for the first time?" Play a role and ask the candidate what he/she usually does.

"What makes your customers buy from you instead of others? Why don't other customers buy from you? " (Note: If the candidate gives a general answer, such as "Because I provide a good service", then dig deeper and ask him/her what a good service is)

"Usually, how many people do you need to communicate with to make a deal? Can you give an example of what you need to communicate with many people in order to get sales? " (If necessary, ask candidates to draw the organization chart of their customers. )

"Is there an example to illustrate that you think you may have made a deal, but somehow it didn't work out? What do you think you can learn from such an example? " (Note that some very confident candidates will tell you that they know their customers very well.)

"In some cases, do you have to give up a sales opportunity? If you encounter this situation, how would you refuse the customer? " Beware of those who always say "I will never give up any deal".

Cultivate capable sales staff

Cultivate those competitive salespeople.

Not surprisingly, most candidates may not be able to give you satisfactory answers to the above questions you asked in the interview. Even the existing salespeople in those companies can't give a good answer. Otherwise, sales consultants like us will soon lose their jobs! )

Then the next question will be: if we set such high standards that few candidates can really perform according to our requirements, does this mean that we should not hire these people?

Of course not! In fact, key practices like this can be taught and learned. In fact, those well-behaved salespeople have been learning how to be a well-behaved salesperson throughout their careers. Only a few well-behaved salespeople are "born" to know how to sell and are good at selling.

Therefore, although most candidates can't master the key methods that can help you improve your sales, you can choose those candidates who know some (if not all) and those who want and are willing to learn some new methods to improve your sales performance. Such a salesperson will surely succeed in the near future.

Some companies are unwilling to invest time, energy and money to train newly recruited salespeople. There are several reasons for this:

1. "We expect the newly recruited sales to have excellent performance immediately, so we will rely on their experience to recruit!"

2. "We don't have the time and resources to support those poor salespeople."

3. "If we teach them too much, they will probably turn their heads to help our competitors."

In fact, these companies have realized that if they can recruit salespeople who can produce good sales results immediately, they don't need any form of training or counseling. This is really good. However, there are few salespeople like this in the market, and even if a small number of salespeople can be recruited, they will usually pay a high salary. In any case, because past experience and sales performance tracking are never a guarantee of success, companies can master key sales habits and abilities by training and developing newly recruited sales staff.