Jessica Reinstein asked:
For many organizations, there is a wide gulf between sales leads and sales generation. While it is not possible to convert every lead into a sale, the onus always remains on narrowing the gulf to minimum. Therein lies the necessity to build sales team resilient enough to achieve desired objective.
Companies live and die by the sheer quality of their sales force, and so the priority to build sales team is rarely questioned. Corporate history is replete with instances where an excellent sales team has generated tremendous sales for an average product, but a poor sales team has not been able to cut much ice even with a top-quality product.
Many a time, companies rely on individual sales performance at the cost of taking trouble to build sales team. While this benefits in the short term, this cannot help over a longer period. Difficulty arises when selected sales persons fail to deliver for one reason or other. Big companies recognize the fallacy of individual brilliance and therefore emphasize the need to build sales team as a coherent unit.
Would you build sales team from in-house staff or hire outside service? This is a debate that is best left to company management to decide upon. When a company agrees to build sales team from in-house staff, it gains direct control over the team and can access the decision-making process leading to planning and executing a sales strategy. Further, in-house sales-team works for the company only, and its primary goal is to sell company’s goods or services. An outside agency, on the other hand, may be dealing in many products from different companies and does not owe strict allegiance to any particular company.
The first step to build sales team is to get on roll capable, goal-achieving individuals who will collectively make a formidable sales force. What are the traits to look for in a salesperson before taking him/her on board? Here are some important ones:
• A team person, willing to work together.
• Eager to learn.
• Willing to share accolades and brickbats with equal élan.
• Extrovert, lively, optimistic and ambitious, yet self-disciplined.
• Wants to make a lot of money.
• Willing to do whatever it takes.
• Entrepreneurial and possessing ability as creative problem solver.
• Hungry to succeed.
• Willing to work hard.
Despite generous budget, recruiting ideal salespersons is often a big challenge for companies. It is one thing to ask the right questions, quite another to screen right candidates. If not done properly, it becomes difficult to build sales team which will be responsive to company’s growth strategy.
Fortunately, SPQGOLD’s Sales Preference Questionnaire is an effective help for a company to build sales team ideally suited for its purpose. SPQGOLD offers online test administration, which is a big advantage for 2 reasons. First, it reduces recruitment cost to a large extent. Second, SPQ*GOLD’s comprehensive analysis ensures an almost fault-free end-result. This translates to more value for less cost incurred in order to build sales team.
No wonder, SPQ*GOLD enjoys an unrivalled acceptance across wide cross-section of companies as the only proven tool to help build sales team.