The Sales Performance Suite

Identifying the Top Performing Sales Rep

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bufferchuck/

Sales managers have long struggled with defining the characteristics of top sales reps and have frequently used the old saying, "You'll know when you see them" to do so.

That saying recalls a question a sales manager once asked us, "I've got a great rep who runs rings around the rest of the team. What does that rep do that the others don't?"

There's been quite a bit written on this question, both in the sales management and behavioral science circles. Since this is a sales blog, we'll focus our effort there.

Aside from the obvious - which are your rep's monthly, quarterly and yearly sales figures which tell if quota was met, exceeded - or not - part of our answer lies in what we'll call the "personality mix" - those traits which point to a individual's potential for success or failure in sales.

But how do you do that?

The first thing to do is to establish a profile of common characteristics of strong salespeople. While there are some variations to the needs particular to your sales environment, it's generally agreed that successful salespeople are;

• Enterprising: Salespeople are leaders. They like to drive people and events from start to finish, especially their sales cycles. They're doers more than thinkers and are interested in the "big picture" than the details. Also, being true entrepreneurs, they're comfortable with risk and take ownership of outcomes, both good and bad.

• Sociable: In sales, it's all about people so to be a success, your salespeople must like helping others and working with teams. They must communicate well, thrive on human interaction and prefer talking with people over working with machines or data. If they don't, they're better in a cube working on lines of code.
  
• Assertive: The best salespeople exhibit limitless energy and don't let themselves to be stalled or blocked when advancing their sales cycle. They can intuitively sense when they need to take control and have the ability to rebound from setbacks, too. The top salespeople are the ones on your team who're restlessly asking "What's next?" and are ones who're never content unless they're moving forward.

Take a moment and using the characteristics above, match them to your top performers.  You'll find that your top performers share these characteristics. Once you've established that, your next step is to use your "Top Performer Profile" as a "best practices" hiring tool. We'll talk about that in a later post.