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Hello, I am Steve Suggs, sales recruiting expert and author of the book, Can They Sell.
Welcome to my sales recruitment video blog where you learn to hire the best sales people.
When hiring salespeople, it's tempting to look at the sales performance of the candidate
and jump to the conclusion that they'll be a good fit on your current team. It's also
tempting to conclude that a person with a charming personality who's never sold before
will quickly take to your training and get off to a quick start. So to avoid a hiring
mistake, you give your candidates a personality assessment which tells you that they are in
fact naturally wired for sales. You hire them, and during the first few weeks on-the-job,
things are going well. They're hitting their sales targets and appear to be getting along
well with everyone in the organization. One day, you get a phone call from an existing
customer who tells you about how your new top salesperson was rude and arrogant during
their last visit with this important client. You're able to reassure the client that you'll
take care the situation, and fortunately, there's no collateral damage. You dismiss
the situation as an overreaction to a misunderstanding. However, a few days later, one of your customer
service reps comes into your office, closes the door, and begins to tell you another story
of where this same top salesperson stretches the truth when making a large sale. You have
a talk with your salesperson who quickly dismisses the situation as a simple overreaction by
a jealous customer service rep. Your top salesperson is very convincing, so you again dismiss the
situation as someone being too sensitive. Over the next several months, similar situations
continue, and you eventually have to make the decision to fire this top salesperson
because of their struggle to get along well with others and their dishonesty. So you're
asking yourself - what did you miss during the selection process that caused you to hire
a high producing salesperson who struggles with the character traits of concern for other
people and honesty? The first lesson we can learn from this situation is that a personality
assessment only gives us the picture related to one of 5 dimensions that must be measured
when hiring a salesperson, which only adds up to about 20% of the information that we
need. The second lesson that we can learn is that even though a person has the right
hardwired personality traits for the job, we must also look at the corresponding character
traits necessary to perform the job well. There are four character traits that must
be measured during the interview process: honesty, hard work ethic, concern for others,
and accepting responsibility for the outcomes of our decisions. We can look at the personality
traits and predict which character traits a person will most likely struggle with. Therefore,
during the interview process, once we have the scores on the personality assessment,
we can predict which character traits with which our candidate will most likely struggle,
then measure these character traits with behavioral interview questions. For example, we have
found that top salespeople typically have a high resiliency to rejection. The personality
traits that cause this resiliency to rejection are high social confidence, high good impression,
and low to moderate need to nurture. If we think about these personality traits, we have
a very confident person who works hard to leave a favorable impression, and who is more
task oriented than people oriented. We can look at the character traits and quickly determine
that the two most likely areas of struggle will be concern for other people and honesty.
Confident people with a low to moderate need to nurture are more likely to struggle with
being insensitive and running over people to get what they want. To determine whether
or not this lack of character is present in our candidate we simply ask behavioral interview
questions that relate to concern for others and getting along with people. We also ask
good questions during the reference check focused on how well our candidate gets along
with others and blends with the team. Salespeople with a high resiliency to rejection could
also work so hard to leave a favorable impression that they embellish the features and benefits
of the product to the point of lying. Again, we simply measure their historical behavior
in the area of honesty to predict whether or not they will be honest when they come
to work for us. As you can see from this example, the best personality traits that help a salesperson
be a top salesperson also have a dark side which can cause salespeople to struggle with
the corresponding character traits. Many managers tell me that they want to hire a salesperson
who is coachable. When I ask them what they mean by coachable they usually respond by
saying, “I want someone who will follow instructions with no pushback and never question
or resist the rules and procedures.” I encourage them to think differently about coachability.
The key personality traits which help a salesperson confidently execute the sales process and
resist rejection carry with them a high degree of independence and entrepreneurial spirit
which typically doesn't carry a high degree of quiet compliance and acceptance without
question. What sales managers really want is a top salesperson who, even though they
may give them some pushback and objections to your methods, eventually they do the right
thing for the team and the company. You really want the confident, independent personality
who also has the character traits of honesty, hard work ethic, concern for others and personal
responsibility. It’s that right combination of personality and character. If you actually
hired the person with the ideal personality traits for easy coachability, you would be
hiring a person who is not hardwired for a high-activity, high-rejection sales job. So
be prepared to handle the resistance and independence that comes along with top salespeople. To
make your job easier, hire the salesperson who not only has the right personality trait
combinations but that also bring all the character traits to the job. Here are some other helpful
hints. Just like the highly confident person who has a high resiliency to rejection may
struggle with the character trait of concern for other people, the person with lower confidence
and lower resiliency to rejection will most likely struggle with being easily taken advantage
of by others. These principles are different when it comes to personality predicting work
ethic. A low work ethic is not as easily predicted by personality traits. However, it's important
to understand how low work ethic manifests itself in different personalities. Salespeople
with the personality trait of low goal orientation and the character trait of low work ethic
is the person who we refer to as ‘lazy’. This is the person who avoids work, and is
very unproductive. The salesperson with high goal orientation and low work ethic can often
work at a fast pace and be very focused on accomplishing a lot in a short period time;
however, their low work ethic is characterized by a lack of discipline. This is the person
who is so eager for immediate results that they are always chasing after the easy money.
This is evidenced by several jobs over a short period of time or many projects started but
never completed. They can also be the person with big ideas and big goals with very little
results due to their lack of discipline to follow through when the job or the task gets
really challenging. Finally, the character trait with which we suffer from a chronic
epidemic in America; accepting responsibility for the outcomes of our actions. Many people
find it easier to blame others than look in the mirror and admit their contribution to
the mistake. The salesperson with the ideal personality traits of high social confidence
and high good impression, which contribute to the high resiliency to rejection, many
times are missing the character trait of accepting personal responsibility. You'll notice signs
of this during the interview process if the candidate has a difficult time admitting mistakes,
or spins a weakness as a strength. I've had many situations where I ask the candidate,
“tell me about a situation where something went wrong and tell me what you did about
it.” I've heard answers from, “I can't really think of anything right now” to stories
about where something went wrong but it was because of many things beyond their control,
having nothing to do with the decisions they made. These types of answers indicate a struggle
with the character trait of accepting personal responsibility. Keep in mind that our hard-wired
personality traits predict the character traits with which we will most likely struggle. Knowing
this information, we can spend time during the selection process focused on those particular
character traits. Thank you for joining me. See you next time on the Can They Sell video
blog for more sales job recruitment training. As always, please leave your comments below
and forward this video to anyone who will benefit. Now go enjoy recruiting the best,
and learn to use personality traits to predict character trait struggles.