How to hire only the best salespeople
AVOID HIGH TURNOVER As a sales manager, losing over 80% of your sales force in a year and a half will make you look bad. To improve, focus your hiring on current salespeople. Just looking at car dealers, real estate agents, financial planners, and insurance agents, you end up with 6,000,000 nationwide. Some of these vendors to hire and many to avoid. Determined for you are those that can sell your product and those that you don’t want to hire as your next salesperson.
1. REAL ESTATE AGENTS You’ve got a mix here, but it’s easy to determine who you want. All real estate agents can sell houses. They can wait for the phone to ring, become a house tour guide, and hopefully find the house the prospect will buy. You don’t want sales order takers, so skip them. Narrow it down to full-time real estate agents, with a consistent core program and at least 4 years of experience. You also want to “list”. The advertiser is looking for homeowners and must be somewhat aggressive and convincing for the prospect to choose that agent’s company to tie the sale of their home.
2. TELEMARKETING SALESMEN Avoid them like plaque. They will cost you sales, trained to be aggressive and brainwashed to never understand that no means no.
3. CAR SALESMEN A kind of mixture of the 2 previous groups. Used car salesmen go for the sale, but almost slam the hood down on the prospect’s head to do it. All the insiders look like they can sell when they rush you to the door. However, if you’re personally a good salesperson yourself, you can smell in a minute if that’s the person to hire. Too many sales order takers here, so use your best instincts.
4. PROPERTY AND CASUALITY INSURANCE Not in these, 90% are too friendly and are perfect for quoting and taking orders. The other 10% are not going anywhere, and since they have a career, they settled down.
5, FINANCIAL PLANNERS (stockbrokers). Many sellers think they can become an overnight sensation earning $100,000 or more. Less successful financial planners are bad at emotional selling that doesn’t involve fear or greed. In addition, they sometimes put commissions before needs, or analyze too much before being able to sell to the prospect.
6. EXPERIENCED LIFE INSURANCE BROKERS Be careful to pre-qualify before the interview. They MUST have 4+ years of experience, a current client base, and their own effective leadership system. You’ll get some takers here if your sales offer is good enough. Many would like to drive less and operate regular business hours. Now that they have mastered the art of closing, the ball is in your court. As a sales manager, how much do you want this broker/agent to be part of your team? A health plan paid for by the company and a real form of payment can increase by 25% could be what is needed.
