When it comes to hiring and retention, you might be surprised to find out that a high percentage of sales managers still make bad hiring decisions, regardless of the industry. Now being the smart sales manager you are, you would want to know those areas you might go wrong and start eliminating them as soon as possible. Listed below are some tips that would go a long way in letting you into the secrets to hiring successful sales people. They are:

Having a good knowledge of the sales process prior to being interviewed:  It does not matter whether the cycle of such sale is an hour or months, there are certain steps that will help you determine if the sales rep being interviewed will be successful or not. Based on this, it becomes necessary that such candidate have a good grasp of the sales process and you can then use to assess the potential sales person’s performance and capabilities.

Assess the candidate’s managerial fit: As far as hiring and retention is concerned, this step is very important even though most sales managers tend to completely overlook it. As a sales person, the candidate should be able exhibit characteristics that points to ability to motivate other people, ability to give direction when required, achieving laudable goals with minimal support and direction.

Carrying out reference checks on the candidates previous records: Apart from assessing the person’s knowledge of sales processes, it should also be determined if the person has engaged in previous sales and if yes, what were the types of buyers involved in such sales, what was the sales cycle, how complex was the product or service and the level of competition during the period of the sales. You should also look at the person’s behavioral issues during that period, team leadership, organizational skills, and lots more. 

Apart from the above, the other secrets to hiring successful sales people include the following:

· Find out how the candidate managed the sales process and how effective it was.

· Make a comparison of the candidate’s successful sales accounts and yours.

· Make a comparison of the candidate’s unsuccessful sales account and yours.

· Carry out proper research on how well they faired in making their quota and in cases of not being unsuccessful in making their quota,  what got in their way and were they able to salvage the situation.