Companies that adopt Action Selling ® discover that the system dramatically improves the performance of sales rookies and veterans alike. It doesn’t matter if learners are new to sales or if they have spent 20 or 30 years repeating the same mistakes. It doesn’t matter how their personalities would be classified by any popular sales typologies: hunters, farmers, challengers, relationship builders, or what have you. It doesn’t matter if they are so-called 2.0 Salespeople, adept with web tools and social media. It doesn’t even matter if they are “born salespeople,” with a natural gift for the role, or not.

Regardless of any of that, when salespeople learn and achieve mastery in Action Selling ®, they get better at their jobs. A whole lot better. Here’s another way to say it: With Action Selling ®, you really can teach people how to sell.

That has implications for hiring. And they are downright revolutionary.

If you really can teach selling, why is sales experience your top hiring criterion?

Think about it. When you hire salespeople, you probably look first and foremost for experience in your industry, product knowledge, and a strong background in sales. After all, history repeats itself, right?

So how is your batting average? Not so great? “History repeats itself” isn’t a bad or dumb principle in this context, but it’s a long way from foolproof. And there is a rule of hiring that outweighs it: Hire for the qualities you can’t teach.

This means that if you are using Action Selling ®, product knowledge and years of experience may be getting too much weight in your hiring decisions. If I know for sure that I can teach people how to sell, and how to do it at an outstanding performance level, then I can give more weight to factors I can’t teach. For instance, I can surround myself with people who are smart, who communicate well, and who have a strong desire to succeed. If they already have some of the skills and experience I want, then that becomes a plus. But sales experience need no longer be my primary criterion.

One Action Selling ® client who arrived at this insight says that the No. 1 thing he now looks for in job candidates is the “desire to be great at something.” If that were my top hiring criterion, what kinds of questions might I ask job candidates? How about these:

  • Can you give me an example from your past where you truly excelled at a task that was assigned to you?
  • When you were given this task, what were the initial performance expectations? How did your actual performance differ from those initial expectations?
  • What obstacles did you have to overcome?
  • What was it that motivated you to deal with the obstacles and to outperform the expectations?

With Action Selling ® covering your back in the sales-skills department, you can afford the luxury of a hiring process that aims to surround you with great people. Why would you not take advantage?

Want to learn more about developing a great sales force? Get the book: Masters of Loyalty.

Action Selling ® in Action

Todd Eber wasn’t happy with his batting average when it came to hiring new salespeople. So after he discovered Action Selling ®, Eber, the president of electrical and plumbing-products wholesaler W.A. Roosevelt of La Crosse, Wis., was open to changing his hiring strategy.

“I found that Action Selling ® can reliably take good people with just about any level of sales experience and turn them into great salespeople,” Eber says. “So today, we look for candidates who are open-minded, adaptable, eager to learn, and show a desire to be great at something. We’re finding that salespeople who are ‘brought up’ with Action Selling ® secure wonderful new business.”

For information about how to make sales training pay huge dividends, contact Action Selling ® at (800) 232-3485.

Read a great book about developing salespeople: Masters of Loyalty