Determining How Well Sales People Will Sell

How can we tell whether a sales person will do well? Every sales person has seven sets of assets that determine how well they will sell. These are:

  1. Business knowledge: How well do they understand our specific business: who we help, why we help them, how we make revenue and profit, and what are our business goals?
  2. Sales knowledge: How well do they know what to do and what not to do at each stage of our sales cycle?
  3. Market knowledge: How well do they understand our clients, clients’ needs, trends, competition, etc.?
  4. Sales ability: Do they have the skills to sell effectively in our market?
  5. Collaboration ability: How well do they work with others on the sales team and in the rest of the company to make sales and support clients?
  6. Sales approach: Do they have and use the appropriate sales approach for our market?
  7. Willingness to sell: How motivated are they to put their knowledge, ability, and approach to work to regularly make sales?

The assets our sales people need will depend greatly on our company’s business model, sales cycle, culture, market, clients, products, and services. We must hire, coach, and train sales people for those assets that make sense for our business.

And if we can’t adequately describe these things to our sales people, we can’t expect them to be successful.

 

In your corner,

Mike

 

Today’s photo credit: Martin Abegglen cc

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