Successful Selling is more Than Personality

Many more can talk than can sell. Did you ever hire someone because they sounded so great - presented themselves so well - you thought they could do anything? But six months later, you're tired of hearing how great they sound, you just want some results? Why? What went wrong? To answer completely, there are two areas that need to be addressed: 1.Behavioral Style. 2.Knowledge of Selling. Behavioral style refers to behavioral elements of selling a particular product for a particular company to a particular client base. These elements include: •aggressiveness •cold-call reluctance •extroversion •multi-tasking •rules compliance •natural enthusiasm •self starting tendencies •servicing •paperwork •tendency to detail •product information •customer relations •consistency •follow-up and follow-through •tendency to listen. It takes a very different style to sell computer parts directly to computer engineers than it does to sell computers to general public. Similarly, to close sale to a rural, easy-going, family-oriented type buyer requires considerably different style than closing same merchandise to a fast-talking, hurried, bottom-line oriented urban buyer. By analyzing what you're selling, who you are selling for, and who you are selling to, a company today can articulate customized behaviors optimum for their situation. Salespeople can then be hired whose natural behaviors are ideally what you are looking for. Those salespeople who are not exactly 'natural' in these behaviors will nevertheless benefit tremendously from understanding just what behaviors are best to role-play, or emulate, to excel for your company.

"The Art of Hiring Smart: Finding the Right Person for the Job"

Benchmarking is a process which establishes behavioral standards most appropriate for a given position - that is, what behaviors are most effective most of time in this job. A well-defined Behavioral Job Description acts as a standard in evaluating existing employees as well as a guide in hiring new employees. Today's benchmarking tools are powerful, but they can cause as much damage as good if they are carelessly applied. With help of objective tools and targeted guidance, process has productive results. No matter which quality tools are used in benchmarking process, more and more companies, because they have experienced misguided application, are turning to professional help. Traditionally, most benchmarking has involved profiling employees in a target position to determine which attributes are most common in your best performers. This imperfect method has several potential dangers. First, it actually assumes you already have best performers and that you can find none that can perform better. This assumption limits benchmark standards to your current employees only, and does not consider standards outside your current environment. Another common mistake is that guidelines for selecting and ranking top performers have not been well-defined. For example, sales statistics have been erroneously used to rank performance. As an example, Joe has been selling for us forever. His figures make him look like a top performer, but Joe developed his client base back when all he had to do was take orders as people called in. He was only salesperson in an easy market with little or no competition. Today, however, is much different. Competition is fierce. If Joe had to start from scratch in today's market, how would he fare? How long would it take to build that client base now, if he could at all? If you based your sales position's benchmark on Joe because his statistics look good and hired people with this benchmark as your guide, you may have hired ineffective people with Joe's traits.