Hiring new sales staff is not an easy exercise and requires a great deal of thought and planning. We need to ask ourselves are sale representatives born or made. It may be true that good sales people have similar behavioral and personality traits. However, good sales people are also skilled and trained to know both there products and clients inside and out. This can only be provided by good business practice. So there is a combination of factors to take into account when taking on new staff.

Below are 3 challenges when hiring new sales staff:

Hiring

Sales teams are only as good as the individual members of the team. Sales managers need to select individuals who will fit into the existing team and slot into the current culture of the organization. There is much to be said about job fit and one badly fitting member can affect the entire teams performance.

Quite a bit of time should be spent finding the right sales staff to join your team. By examining the team you have you’ll be able to see the type of salespeople you need to look for. You will need to examine the behavioral needs of the position. Different people are suited to different kinds of sales, for example, inside sales, outside sales and manning call centers. It is important to measure the proposed candidate against the position on offer.

Motivation

Unlike other positions within the company sales staff cannot hide from results. Sales people are measured daily and when things go wrong it is felt by all. The results of bad sales and a slump are highly visible. Visibility is good for sales people with the right personality but disastrous for other sale staff and morale can fall sharply.

Sales can slump though an economic turn down, increased competition and a change in the sales person’s duties. There are other factors too like a fundamental change in the company’s direction. It is necessary to keep the team focused and productive. New sales staff need to come into a highly motivated and functioning team to settle in and become productive the quickest time period possible.

Retention

Having hired the right sales staff, the next challenge will be keeping them. Good sales staff will always be in demand. The success and rise and fall of the average company will depend on the quality of their sales staff. For this reason top sales staff will expect and demand professional leadership and a high level of job satisfaction. Generally speaking most companies find there are not enough suitable candidates to fill the positions on offer. This situation is unlikely to change in the near future.

Sales people tend to stay in jobs when they are well trained, engaged and have sufficient challenges. They must also believe they can succeed and grow with the company. Satisfying the above needs will do much to retain and reduce sales staff turnover.

Behavioral assessment will help to gain an insight into what makes a good sale person tick. Sales skills assessment will give data on strengths and areas of growth. A combination of these two forms of data can give valuable information on how to keep top sale performers content, happy and engaged in their jobs.

Most organizations these days use various forms of data to drive sales performance. The same data can be used to increase efficiency and produce good sales results.