Havingexcellent sales managers working for your business is not as straightforward as it seems. Savvy business owners know that having experience in the field is good, but that is just part of the criteria that sets top-performing sales representatives apart from the rest. Whether you’re looking to hire or trying to find out which ones in your company are the cream of the crop, it helps to know the most important qualities of top-performing sales representatives.
- Top Reps Are Achievers
An average sales representative will be content with just keeping up with daily goals. Topsales representatives, on the other hand, are willing to go the extra mile to exceed these goals. This constant drive for greater success can be tied to an achievement-oriented approach to life.
How to Find Them among New Hires – Looking for new hires with this trait can be as simple as looking for the personal achievements section of their resume. The more (valid) awards or recognitions for excellent performance in their previous jobs, the better, especially if they barely have any prior experience in the trade.
How to Find Them among Your Current Employees– Using software to evaluate the performance of your current sales representatives, keep an eye out for top-performing outliers. Automated compensation tools, in particular, rely on performance-based metrics to determine those who could get bigger rewards, and can also help you identify your top representatives.
- Top Reps Have People Skills
One of the key factors that determine successful sales is how well a representative can connect with theircustomers. Instead of just driving a potential customer to make a purchase, top sales representatives take the time to understand the customer’s needs and use that knowledge to encourage a purchase.
How to Find Them among New Hires– Interviews and mock demonstrations are an effective way to have a quick first look at how well a representative can carry a conversation.
How to Find Them among Your Current Employees– Monitoring calls for further evaluation can help you gauge a sales representative’s conversational skills. More importantly, you can check out their performance and look for representatives with higher-than-average chances of successful conversion.
- Top Reps Are Confident butCareful
We all have to accept that not every sales pitch will end in a purchase. Failed sales are not enough to put the top representatives down, and they will always have that same aura of confidence that makes them look and sound more convincing to other potential buyers. However, do not mistake this trait for complacency, since top representatives always think about backup plans in case something goes wrong.
How to Find Them among New Hires– Conduct personality evaluation exams and ask for feedback from previous employers.
How to Find Them among Your Current Employees– Once again, use special software to monitor your representatives. Keep an eye out for brief periods after a failed conversion. Average sales representatives will more likely hit a series of low performance and failed sales, struggling to recover from a setback, but you won’t see the same happening to top sales representatives, which take extra measures to keep figures up.
- Top Reps Love Their Job
This particular point is true for almost any job, but even more so when that job is as demanding as making successful sales. Those who are in it just for the paycheck will still be able to meet demands, but top representatives see being on the job as a rewarding and fulfilling experience.
This trait is different from the rest because a huge part of it also depends on you as an employer. The more rewarding the job is for them, the more motivated sales representatives are and the more willing they are at going above and beyond. The secret to making top representatives love your company is by giving them enough reason to exceed expectations through reasonable bonuses and incentives, which can be managed using the appropriate technologies.
Top-performingsales representatives are a major asset to any business. Knowing how to find and keep them motivated can be the biggest factor in making your business more successful.
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