Research shows that of the sales professionals in North America, 40 percent of them will miss their quota, 22 percent are not trainable, and only 10 percent will actually provide a desired ROI. Hiring sales representatives that prove to be solid contribution to your organization is a difficult task. This is due to the difficulty of recognizing the desired skills and criteria that the best sales people possess. With selling, tangible factors such as experience, is not always the most important thing to look at when hiring sales reps. It is the certain intangible qualities and skills such as charisma, adaptability, enthusiasm, confidence, and organization that help to make a salesperson successful.
Above all, confidence is one of the most important qualities for a salesperson to posses. Confidence and selling go hand in hand. Building confidence can be tough for most people, but having a solid understanding of the product, the competition, and the most effective sales techniques can help build that confidence and make an average sales rep into a star performer. Executive search groups, recruitment agencies or “sales headhunters” specifically attempt to recognize intangible qualities such as confidence within their candidates for employment.
These executive search group will try to recognize confidence within their candidates by looking for indicators such as a firm handshake, maintained eye-contact, enunciated and clear speech, and overall charisma. If you are looking to hire employees for a job in sales within your organization, try to hire individuals who exhibit these indicators of confidence. It is also a good idea to ask the candidates for employment what their organizational skills are like, and what methods they use to keep up with their daily tasks. 80 percent of non-routine sales occur only after at least five follow-ups, so a sales rep who exhibits strong organizational skills is a desired trait to have in this industry.