How do you choose the best salesperson?

Products

Wednesday 05 June 2024

No matter what market you operate in, the competition today is enormous. The commercial success of your organization depends largely on the effectiveness of your sales teams. The better your sales professionals, the higher the turnover.

The perfect salesperson is someone who not only knows their product inside and out but is also able to build a relationship with the prospect or customer. You need someone with strong verbal and social skills, who can read between the lines and empathize well. The top salesperson thinks with the customer. It is not the product that is leading, but the customer's needs.

Recruiting and selecting sales people is far from an easy task. Some salespeople are particularly good at selling themselves, but once hired, they consistently fail to meet their targets. At sales meetings, they often have all sorts of good reasons for this, which they know how to sell with verve. But the following month nothing changes.

Several studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of sales teams. These studies tell us time and time again that 20% of sales professionals are top performers, and an equally large proportion (20%) perform downright poorly. The remaining 60% of salespeople meet their targets every month. Therefore, there is a good chance that your sales team also includes a few individuals who are not performing optimally.

The cause of this underperformance can vary. It does not necessarily mean that someone is a bad salesperson, just that they are not in the right place. Maybe you hired a Negotiator when you need a Hunter. Or maybe the perfect team player is in a role where you would need an individualist.

Choosing sales professionals

Even in a tight labor market, you must be selective. It is better to keep a position temporarily vacant than to fill it with an unsuitable candidate. But how do you select the right candidate?

Take the time to answer a few questions prior to recruitment. Are you looking for someone who will fit in especially well with the team, or someone who will fit with the market? Do you want a team player or an individualist? Translate this into concrete characteristics that the candidate must meet.

You can then convert the desired characteristics into selection criteria that form the basis of an assessment form and formulate a number of questions to test to what extent the candidate meets the requirements.

Online sales assessment

Setting up a selection strategy takes a lot of time and thought. With TestGroup's online sales assessment, this process is a breeze. You can use this assessment for the selection of applicants, but also to empower existing employees.

In developing the assessment, TestGroup used - in addition to more than 15 years of experience in online assessments - scientific techniques and experience from the field.

The online sales assessment has also more than proven itself in practice. Every day the assessment is used by hundreds of recruiters worldwide.

The online sales assessment provides you with a handy and clear sales assessment report in which all the commercial success and risk factors of your applicant are clearly displayed.

Order here and start testing candidates today.