Build Your Gold Standard Sales Team - Sales Team Operations and Training Manual

Author: Chen Xinru / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features:
4.1.4 Comprehensive Quality of Sales Personnel
When selecting and hiring salespeople, companies often believe that those with sales experience, intelligence, and good communication skills will excel. However, this understanding is one-sided. Choosing people solely based on these criteria may lead to failure. When selecting salespeople, consider the following aspects.
Strong language and written communication skills
Salespeople need excellent verbal and language organizational skills when introducing the company, products, specific sales strategies, and market development plans to customers and consumers. They also need to provide sufficient and detailed market research reports and proposals when conducting market research and proposing marketing strategies and suggestions to decision-makers.
A good personal image
To convince customers to accept your products, sales advice, and work collaboratively with you, they must first accept you. Honesty and professionalism leave a positive impression on customers, making half of your sales work successful. Therefore, salespeople must pay attention to their attire, personal hygiene, daily and work etiquette, and emotional connections when interacting with customers.
A certain level of professional knowledge
When selling products to customers, salespeople need to explain knowledge about the production process, simple physicochemical indicators of product quality, and answer questions about product knowledge and industry conditions. They often need to handle temporary issues related to product appearance and intrinsic quality. Thus, salespeople should possess a certain level of product expertise.
A certain level of education, a willingness and ability to learn, and a strong desire for self-improvement
The market is constantly changing, with new situations and problems arising at any time. Marketing concepts are also evolving. This requires salespeople to learn frequently and continuously improve their skills to stay updated with new knowledge, perspectives, and methods in marketing. Only those with a certain level of education, a willingness and ability to learn, and a strong desire for self-improvement can adapt to the ever-changing market demands.
Good psychological quality and strong resilience
Excellent salespeople remain emotionally stable in the face of difficulties, setbacks, and failures. They remain composed and handle negotiations smoothly even when they reach a stalemate with customers. They can maintain mental stability and reject temptations from customers, even when they feel disregarded. All these positive attitudes stem from good psychological quality and strong resilience.
Good communication skills
Good communication skills are a reflection of a salesperson's comprehensive qualities.
A strong potential for growth
While sales experience is important, having strong plasticity and greater potential for growth is even more so. People are not born knowing everything, and those who can quickly develop into excellent salespeople through effective training have a brighter future.
Sufficient loyalty to the company
The market changes rapidly, and people also evolve, but human changes can be even more unpredictable. Since competitors always try to infiltrate your market and recruit your sales team, if some salespeople lack sufficient loyalty to the company, and your corporate culture cannot fully win them over, your sales team may face division and disintegration. Therefore, loyalty to the company is a crucial factor in selecting salespeople.
Team spirit
Lastly, when hiring salespeople, those who claim to have been underappreciated for a long time and often lament "There are many talented horses, but few good horsebreakers" should not be hired. A person who believes they have been underappreciated for a long time must hide significant flaws. P33-34