Sales Training Tip – How To Retain Top Sales People
So you have a top performer. Someone who hits or exceeds their quota each year and is incredibly loyal, despite the fact that you overwork them and don’t pay them as much as other competitors in your industry. You might think it’s best to keep on doing what you are doing; after all, it works, right?
Think again. Sales training tip – how to retain top sales people: be good to your employees! If they are happy at work, they will stay there forever.
This is easier said than done but if you want to retain top sales people this is one of the most important things you can do for yourself and your company. Show your sales people that you care about them and if they are appreciated they will stay.
How to retain top sales people – 9 tips to help you hire the right person:
1) Choose a personality type that will do well with your company’s culture. If you have a rough-and-tumble, cut-throat environment where the strong survive, you probably don’t want to hire someone who is very nice and polite. They may not last long in that environment. However, if everyone works hard and plays hard at your company, more of that personality type can work for you. It’s entirely up to you but tread carefully in this area as your company culture is everything.
No matter what you sell, you need to hire top sales people who will succeed in your organization. Most of them will also be very good at their jobs, so they can help your company win more customers and increase its revenue per employee.
The likely result is a great deal of happiness in the workplace, which means happy customers and possibly even greater sales. And if you do everything right with your sales people, some of them will tell their friends and relatives about the great place to work, as well as its products or services. If many people talk about it, that’s a great way to build a loyal following for your business.
2) Think like an employer – not a candidate . If you are not a salesperson, you might be the farthest thing from the kind of employer that a good sales person wants to work for. Just because you’re interviewing them doesn’t mean that you understand what motivates them or how they think. Try to put yourself in their position and imagine if you were looking for a job. What would your ideal company look like? How would it make you feel? Remember, most people want to find jobs where everyone is happy and has fun at work.
And before making any decisions about newly hired sales people, remember this – just because someone has a good resume doesn’t mean they will succeed in your organization or even like working there. Just because you can hire someone with a certain skill doesn’t mean you should.
3) Hire for fit, not skills . Think about the things that really matter to your sales people in job interviews. Just because they can do the basic things that you ask them to do doesn’t mean they are right for your company. If there’s no real fit between your sales force and your company, the whole exercise may be a waste of time. This is especially true if it means hiring someone who will not succeed or even stay long with you. However, if you find someone who loves your company and its culture, they will work hard and succeed.
4) Find sales people who fit with your product or service . Many of your customers will actually be influenced by what kind of person you hire for a sales position. If customers like that type of person, they’ll do business with you no matter what. On the other hand, if you hire the wrong salespeople for your company it can ruin everything. Think about who does business with Apple and then compare them to Dell. It’s pretty obvious which companies hire salespeople that fit their product or service.
5) Develop special skills in hiring . Consider hiring people who have special skills that will improve your sales force. Hire one person who is great at negotiating deals and others who are top performers. Hire people with a bias toward a high success rate – don’t hire someone who is just OK with the process, because you are asking them to do more than that.
It’s also important to develop your own skills in the areas of leadership and training in order to properly train and do motivational things with your sales team . These things take time and practice, but they are essential if you want them to feel good about themselves.
6) Hire people with a high success rate . It’s easier said than done but if you want to hire top sales people, look for the ones who are most likely to succeed. In other words, go for people who are more likely to win business for you.
7) Be careful about numbers . When hiring sales people, one of the critical things you will use is numbers. This is especially true if you are a small company and need to grow fast in order to survive. However, in this case, don’t obsess over the number of sales that they make in their first few months on the job.
The most important thing is to select the salespeople who will be successful for you. Think about whether you are looking for someone who should work hard and brag about it. Or maybe you want a salesperson who will work hard and not make much money, just to keep morale high. You want people who will like the job and find it rewarding but that’s not always how a salesperson works.
If you are thinking, “I can’t afford to hire two or three of these high-performing salespeople and still take care of my expenses every month,” know that many companies hire at least one person per month with a target of two or three per year. And, you’ll get a great return on your investment for every successful sale that you can get out of these people. You wouldn’t hire someone who has a great resume but who won’t succeed for the money that you have to pay them or the work that you have to do with them.
8) Hire salespeople who aren’t just good in general . Don’t just hire someone because they are good at sales. Tell them why this is an important part of their job and how they will help your company win more business. They need to think about how they can make more money in the same amount of time and grow your sales per employee, which is something every company wants.
9) Find people with a penchant for sales . You can’t hire someone because they seem like the kind of person who would be a good salesperson. Their main objective should be to sell as much as possible, not to do something else that you would rather have them do. That’s why it’s important to know exactly what the job is about and which of your employees will succeed in it.
10) Find and retain great sales people . Once you find a really good candidate, it’s important to get them on board quickly so that they can take action quickly. They may even have existing customers who are ready and waiting for your services or products.
Conclusion
Hiring sales people takes a lot of time and effort. What’s more, if you’re the kind of person who never asks for help, it can be very lonely and frustrating. However, despite all that you have to do to hire these people, your company will benefit from having a great sales team that lives and breathes the thing that you do. This means finding people who are good at what they do and who love doing it every day.