How to hire a good technical salesman
Finding and keeping an outstanding sales producer isn’t easy. My experience is that many technology companies, perhaps most, don’t set about hiring a salesperson in an effective way. You are going to need the right strategies and, be warned, they may clash with the ideas you hold now. Have you have tried hiring salespeople in the past and failed to get a good one? Then you’ll know the cost and frustrations of getting it wrong. Perhaps you have never needed to hire a salesperson before, but want to now.
Much of the first part of this manual is about the problems you may face if you give the wrong person the job. But if they are already sickeningly familiar, you’ll find the later sections describe steps you can take to improve your chances. It’s worth doing properly, there’s a big pay-back.
In a hurry? If you need to hire a technical sales person quickly, go straight to the section: Hiring Checklist for a step-by-step process.
Are you wondering, ‘Can I be confident that your advice is right?’ It’s based on my 27+ years of selling and recruiting and managing salespeople for my own businesses and the experience of sales managers and company owners I’ve met. In the last 13 years I’ve trained sales teams for technology companies large and small worldwide. During that time I’ve had the opportunity of meeting some excellent sales-people and seeing which companies are able to recruit them and how, and which businesses fail to and why. I think you’ll agree once you see the reasoning behind the process that it’s common sense and it leads to predictably good results.
Read this manual, with an open mind, and you’ll get an understanding of what it takes to find your own champion salesperson.
• You’ll get a strong flow of profitable orders
• Leads are turned into business, not wasted
• Your company grows
• You don’t have to invest much of your own time, which frees you up to develop other parts of your business
• It inspires your other employees by demonstrating that excellent sales results are possible. • By the same token they render invalid the usual excuses.