Hiring and coaching salespeople would be a lot easier if people had their own manuals or care instructions that listed their top strengths and included advice for helping them reach their full potential.
Wouldn’t that help you select and retain more top performers?
When you buy an article of clothing, it comes with a tag that describes what it’s made of and how to care for it. When you buy a TV, it comes with a manual that includes operating instructions. Just about everything you interact with comes with recommended care instructions.
When you hire a salesperson, you need to understand what they’re made of and how to coach them best, but since people don’t come with instructions, it’s important to identify their strengths and understand the coaching they need.
Resumes today are often built using templates or professional assistance and they can make anyone look like a superstar. When you conduct face-to-face interviews, you may meet with people who are good at interviewing, and it can be difficult to uncover their talents.
How to Hire and Coach Salespeople
How do you identify talents during the interview process and how do you know how to get the best out of people after you hire them?
The following steps will help you eliminate the guesswork and build “care instructions” for each person to help them reach their potential.
1. Identify Their Natural Talents
Using a validated talent assessment specific to the job role allows you to uncover an individual’s innate talents…or what they’re made of. It’s crucial to learn about their talents before you hire them because you can teach them the skills they need and you can give them experience, but you cannot teach talents. A talent assessment gives you a clear understanding of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses to determine if they are the right fit for the position.
Then after you hire them, the assessment gives you the information you need to develop their strengths while working around any areas of weakness they may have. This allows you to create the best coaching strategies to help them be successful.
2. Ask What They Need
Every person you manage is different and unique. After you understand their strengths and weaknesses, the next step is to ask them what they want so that you can individualize your approach.
Asking questions to understand the seller’s personal goals, the coaching and support they need, what motivates them, and how they like to learn will help you grow your relationship and get them what they need to be successful.
Our clients use a relationship-development tool called the Growth Guide which provides a list of questions like:
- What would be the best challenge we could give you at work right now?
- When you’re successful, whom do you want to hear about it?
- When we are working together on a project, how can I be most helpful or useful to you?
In this step, you will want to create a list of questions to uncover how your people want to be motivated, recognized, coached, and supported.
3. Create Priority Coaching Strategies
Understanding an individual’s talents and asking questions to uncover what they need will give you great insight into how you can help them achieve success.
The third step for setting your seller up for success is creating a few priority coaching strategies based on what you learned from their talent assessment and the questions you asked them about what they want.
You can use this customized plan in your interactions with them and during onboarding, training, one-on-ones, and client meetings to help them perform at their very best.
