The group dynamics for hiring salespeople is essential to discover certain individualities in candidates. These attributes will differentiate good salespeople from those with the ability to become top performers faster.
A selection process is the method by which the team of taj seek to attract people in the market with skills compatible with a given position. This search, if done correctly, is directly related to your results.
And that’s a fact!
Hiring is one of the biggest problems in B2B sales that we can see in Brazil. In addition, there are several negative impacts that bad sales hiring can bring to your process.
So not only is it difficult to get the hiring right, but also to deal with the consequences.
With that in mind, I’m bringing you some content to help you get good results and a direction when it comes to hiring new salespeople.
In this article I won’t mention the obvious, such as: the salesperson you are looking for must be a person who communicates well.
If this was the information you were looking for, sorry, but I’m not going to say that a good salesperson MUST BE COMMUNICATIVE! This is a skill that, believe me, if the person doesn’t have it, it develops over time.
Selection of CVs
The focus of hiring team of Capital Smart City is selection, but it all starts with attracting new talent that the company uses to attract the best candidates to its selection process.
I love to joke that you must know how to sell your company with the right approach to your target audience.
With candidates in contact with your company, the first step is to sort out their résumés, thinking about bringing those with the best fit for your position.
Some characteristics are indicators that the person has the quality to join your team. Others indicate that the person may be a hiring mistake.
Remembering that in sales there is no cake recipe. Candidates will not always be the same.
Characteristics specific to your market and your company must be observed, such as previous experiences or skills that are consistent with your organization’s culture.
For this step, thinking specifically about sales, we are always tempted to have as a favorite someone who has had previous sales experience.
Thinking about the MTSP, the mental model we adopted, this more experienced person should already have, being optimistic, all aspects related to the area.
However, this is a fallacy!
A person who has experienced the stress of the commercial area may even have a salesperson’s mindset, but the speech, technique and process are different in the overwhelming majority of cases.
If you choose someone who is experienced, that person already has vices in the market. You need to be careful about choosing such a candidate.
Focus on checking attention points at this stage, those basic red flags already defined as: languages, time spent in other places, lack of qualifications and other common problems.
Group dynamics for selecting sellers
Finally, we have reached the key stage of the selection process for salespeople, a part underestimated by many managers, but with enormous strategic value.
Think with me: what does a salesperson deal with daily? That’s right, people. And in a group dynamic, we have what? You got it right again, people.
And, even better, people interacting with each other and trying to generate value for your company in order to be hired.
See how the candidates’ goals in a dynamic converge in relation to their goals with the hiring of new talent:
The candidate wants to show that he is good enough to be hired, you want to hire someone for your sales team and this area needs someone who knows how to generate value to sell your solution!
What a coincidence, no?
Making my point of view clearer, let’s understand what group dynamics are. First of all, get it out of your mind that this is the stage where you will see if the candidate knows how to work in a team.
THAT’S BULLSHIT!
The group dynamic is a practice that involves people who will interact in some way as an appraiser search specific features to fill a vacancy.
And these people know that they need to show themselves as the best option for the job, and they can even pretend to be what they are not.
The focus at this stage should be to seek soft skills, those skills that reflect the candidate’s own personality and behavior.
Some points are very relevant in this group dynamics process. Let’s go to them?
Soft Skill #1: Curiosity
In our course on Outbound Marketing & Sales on the Outbound Go platform, we talked a little about hiring from the point of view of The Sales Acceleration Formula book.
Genuine curiosity is a point every salesperson should have, especially for consultative sales. This feature cannot be forced, it must be a real interest.
Being curious is not just about being an investigative person who asks questions and tries to understand more of the conversations in which you participate.
Being curious also means being someone tuned in and attentive, someone who consumes information, who always seeks to know and learn more.
The entire situational mapping of a consultative sale depends on someone curious and, when this is natural, a lot of training time is saved.
About knowing and learning more, it is not just today that we see that selling has changed, and will continue to change. Knowing how to be on the safe side and consume the right content to understand the fundamentals and adapt is essential.
Soft Skill #2: Coachability
A good salesperson has to learn fast, be adaptable. The commercial area has great fluctuations, changes and adaptations of speech.
Think of someone who doesn’t adapt: how will this person, when getting used to a speech that no longer converts, change? She will have difficulty and the effort to change will not be small.
Finding someone with such a characteristic, which is directly related to the curiosity to find ways to be better and optimize the process itself, is essential.
Soft Skill #3: Intelligence
A smart salesperson differentiates himself and is more likely to become a top performer, as he can think fast, get around objections better, and understand leads more easily.
A smarter person has inputs to be able to easily understand people and their problems, using the right argument for each case found in their funnel, especially those that deviate from the conventional.
Soft Skill #4: Empathy
Every salesperson must be empathetic and be able to genuinely put themselves in their lead’s shoes. This makes the process easier and makes your potential customer much more open to your contact.
Think of yourself when you go to talk to someone about your problems.
A person who says the right thing at the right time, who understands your problem and is able to help solve it is almost an angel at that moment.
But think of a person who isn’t really interested and doesn’t listen. You want to avoid, at all costs, talking to this type of person.
In the sale, your product or service should fit as a solution to that lead’s problem. You need to listen and emerge like that almost angel to help her. So, listen carefully to what the lead has to say and be empathetic!
Roleplay, great group dynamics
These points are indispensable for a good salesperson. However, you may be wondering how these aspects can be identified in group dynamics.
At the beginning I said that we have people interacting in the dynamics in the same way that a salesperson needs to do in their profession: talking to strangers.
I even said that the objective of candidates in a selection process is to generate value for themselves, selling themselves to the company they want to join.
The best way to bring these aspects together and get people to show a modicum of knowledge in sales is to have them sell solutions to each other.
Roleplay is a great dynamic, as it is a simulation of something, which in our case could be a sale.
Making these aspects appear in the simulation is easy, the difficulty lies in bringing these skills to the company’s reality, using techniques and speeches that bring relevant information about your scenario.
For example, ask candidates to develop a product for you.
Show some information from your ideal customer profile to guide the sale, such as job title, company, market, and lead needs.
Let them do some research on what was said and let them develop a solution. This first part already gives a perspective on how curious the candidates are.
Once they’re done, their focus should be on convincing you of the benefits of the solution they created. They need to CREATE VALUE, exactly what they will do in their daily lives as sellers.
In the process, analyze each one carefully and give feedback on their performance.
In a second moment, ask the candidates to try again, improving on what was said.
At this point, it will be possible to observe some other points to identify if the candidate is really good.
Change the information throughout the conversation, see if he is smart to work around objections and if he has the coachability not to make the same mistakes as before.
Along the role plays it will also be possible to identify empathy, technique and speech. Empathy is essential, since technique and speech are differentials, but they are easier to teach later.
Final challenge: the interview to hire the best salesperson among candidates
Finally, it is necessary to interview and understand more deeply who you have passed on and may, in the future, join your team.
At this point, try to identify other skills and test everything he has already demonstrated in the process.
In this step you will understand if the person is really qualified. It is the gateway to your company.
Question this person and get their side right. Focus on bringing someone compatible with your company’s team and culture.
There’s a lot to be said about interviews, but that’s not the focus of this article. Will it be my next blog topic? Only time will tell…
Conclusion
We saw the importance of some characteristics in sellers to obtain good results for the commercial sector.
In addition, we saw how to carry out-group dynamics and what are the best practices for this process.
It’s easy enough to talk, but building an effective hiring streak is difficult.
How about telling us a little about the practices your company has been adopting in hiring? We would love to talk about how to improve this! 😉
