The people who work in the sales area stand out from the rest. Their way of working and their way of being lead almost anyone to conclude about them, for better or for worse, 'they are a seller' or 'they are in sales'. On the other hand, some salespeople sell more, give better results, are more successful.
Reflection can include many, many aspects. Why are sellers the way they are? Who can be sellers? How to identify them before hiring them? Can we make them better sellers?
The answer to these and other questions, as happens in general with the activity of selling, are normally obtained from folklore, popular tradition or the expertise of those who manage a sales force, the result of their intuition and personal experience.
In general, the big question is why are some sellers better than others?
Recruitment
A Sales Representative recruiting program usually establishes who is responsible for the process, who the people with authority to hire; what the job description, what the recruitment sources and what the steps for evaluation. In addition, of course, to include a Candidate Profile.
The cost of a recruiting program is high, in direct and indirect terms: advertisements, payment for agency services, psychological tests, medical examinations, job interviews, etc. And your goal should be stated in terms of 'attracting a few good candidates' rather than 'maximizing the number of possible candidates'.
Therefore, it is necessary to specify both some explicit requirements for the self-selection of candidates and specific criteria for their internal selection procedures. The tricky thing is that recruitment includes sources as diverse as:
- Internal Sources, the candidates work in another area of the company Identification of candidates by our own employees External Sources, the candidates work for another company Educational Institutions Notices in the Media Employment Agencies Professional Associations No source, candidates arrive alone
The big question is, what profile of people does each of the different recruiting sources generate?
Selection
When a few candidates have been recruited, the next step involves determining which of them have the most suitable characteristics for the position and the best aptitude for the job. The procedures for doing so include the application forms themselves, personal interviews, reference research, physical examinations, and psychological tests that are intended to measure characteristics such as Intelligence, Personality, Aptitudes, and Abilities. All of this is done with the intention of predicting who the potential candidates really are to be successful salespeople.
The big question is, does the information that is handled about the candidates really have predictive power?
Training
Every time a Sales Representative has been hired, the company places its hope that a training process will solve those deficiencies that it had to admit in the candidates for the position. Beyond giving them tools to cover their quotas, information about the market, contact with customers, knowledge of the product or service and at least one reason to accept the job, you must give them adequate training.
Not only for new salespeople, but for everyone, training objectives normally have to do with aspects such as improving performance or productivity, improving motivation or work environment, reducing staff turnover, improving customer relationships or better manage your resources and responsibilities.
Actually, several questions must be solved beforehand, such as Why train them? How to train them? o How to train them?
The two big questions now are Who is worth training? And how to evaluate the results of the training?
Evaluation and Compensation
Following the same order of ideas, similar questions can be asked about the criteria for evaluating the performance of salespeople and the parameters for establishing their compensation system. Just as it is not thought that all Sales Representatives are equally good, so it must also be thought that their compensation should not be the same.
The critical question is, what does the seller's performance depend on?
Comprehensive perspective
'Selling is more an art than a science' all seem to tell us. However, the implications of the previous questions are real, objective, concrete and significant for the company.
In order to give them a valid answer, as well as useful and practical, it is necessary to work with a comprehensive perspective that leads to understanding, predicting and modifying the behavior of Sales Representatives, seeking to improve both their performance and their satisfaction in what individual, as the commercial indicators of the company in general.
The following example of a Conceptual Model is intended to give this comprehensive perspective and constitute a framework for developing a quantitative model.
It focuses on two indicators that are also interrelated, the satisfaction of the seller and their results, expressed through some performance indicator. These are affected by three large groups of variables, as they have to do with the individual's profile, the environment in which they carry out their work and the way the company handles it.
It also shows the relationship that these variables have with the different sales force administration tasks: recruitment and selection, training, motivation and evaluation.
Identifying, understanding and explaining the different variables that affect the Performance of the Sales Representative and their Job Satisfaction is possible if we relate them through a Conceptual Model that helps predict individual results and strategically manage the process that covers their recruitment, selection, training, compensation and evaluation.
Even so, at the end of the day we realize that there are other variables that in practice define their performance and satisfaction. The seller's actions. And also, that there are other factors that significantly determine these results, although difficult to measure: the ambition and vocation of the seller.
