I have always affirmed that the quality of the salesmen that the manager has in his team is what contributes significantly to carry out an efficient and productive performance in meeting and exceeding his periodic goals.
Whether it's building your team or replacing vacancies that occur over time, the sales manager's efficiency in selecting vendors is your best strength.
However, from experience we know that when selecting we can make mistakes for different reasons, many of which are totally avoidable.
Simply correcting the most common mistakes that are usually made allows it to be converted into a perfectible management, minimizing the negative consequences caused by an erroneous selection.
The best seller selection process
The selection process that I describe in the graph allows you to visualize all the actions that lead to choosing the best candidate to fill the position of salesperson, or any other position in the organization.
But before starting it, we must take a step that is generally carried out in a generic way or without greater precision.
I refer to the development of the "Ideal Profile" to occupy such an important position in the organization.
In addition to the description of sex, age and experience, there are other essential aspects that must be considered as requirements to be met by the candidate or candidates finally elected, which are described in my book "Management Keys For A Successful Sale".
Two cases of reality...
• In one of the sales consulting sessions with a client we were about to start the search for 3 new sellers to join their team.
Suddenly he called his secretary and asked her to bring him the supplement of classified ads from last Sunday. After leafing through the first pages he said: "This is the notice we will post", while highlighting them with a yellow ink marker and added: "Change the post office box details and ready, publish it next Sunday."
When asked why the search began this way, he explained that this is how he had been doing it for years and had managed to incorporate the current vendors that made up his team, although he was not very satisfied with his selections since he had to replace several of them.
Expressed in another way, for my client it was simply like carrying out an administrative procedure more like the many other procedures that are carried out with a certain purpose.
This very common mistake in seller searches eludes two indispensable aspects that would avoid committing it and reiterating it, incurring undesirable consequences such as the ones I describe in the online seminar "How to Develop a Successful Sales Team".
• I had the opportunity to train and share experiences with many sales managers who are currently showing off for the results they obtain through managing their teams.
I asked several of them who was the ideal vendor for their team and how they conducted their vendor selection process, and few were able to objectively answer such important questions.
They described that when interviewing candidates to select them they applied their experience as a salesperson and very especially used their perception capacity and the sensations they perceived during their conversations.
When I later asked them about how many hits and how many misses they had obtained in those selection tasks, the percentage was around 50 to 60% correct.
As can be seen, 40 to 50% of mistakes is an important value that has many consequences, some measurable and others that seriously affect the key sector of any organization.
Conclusions
Having a good team of salespeople begins when only the best candidates who meet the “non-negotiable” aspects of the profile prepared with great care and dedication are incorporated before starting the recruitment stage.
This forces us to assume its importance for the short, medium and long term, since by selecting vendors we are performing a key task that will contribute significantly to the evolution and successful performance of the team.
Excuses for wrong selection are useless. Still less if it has been chosen with negligence applying inappropriate procedures based on ignorance.
Some of the stages of the selection process that take time may be delegated to RR managers. H H. of the organization or external consultants, but the quality of the pre-candidates and the final decision on the best candidate to incorporate is and will always be the responsibility of the sales manager.
Learning only about experiences is good but involves a very high cost.
On the other hand, learning from the experience of renowned specialists significantly shortens the way because it leads to more efficiently performing tasks with fewer risks and better results.
© Copyright by Martín E. Heller - www.HellerConsulting.com
