Even if you’ve never considered a career in sales, Herbert M. Greenberg’s insights can help you.
Herb, author of “How to Hire & Develop Your Next Top Performer” (McGraw Hill, $24.95), was working at a large insurance company in the early 1960s and noted that most of the hundreds of salespeople hired eventually failed. Thinking there must be a better way to select salespeople, Greenberg and a colleague looked for an assessment tool. There weren’t any.
So he and the late David G. Mayer spent four years studying the characteristics of successful salespeople and developed a tool they called the Caliper Profile. The Profile revealed that great salespeople usually don’t conform to the stereotype.
Greenberg kids that – legalities aside – most companies seek a salesperson who is a white male 25 to 35 years of age, who has 20 years of experience, has multiple advanced degrees, is earning $60,000 a year, but will work for $20,000. Even if such a candidate existed and could be hired, the odds are 4 to 1 he would be the wrong person, according to Greenberg, whose Princeton, N.J.-based firm, Caliper, assesses job candidates and helps companies hire the right people.
Greenberg says that successful salespeople – regardless of age, education or experience – have five key qualities that probably are innate:
Empathy. This is the ability to sense the reactions of other people, to pick up on their subtle clues and cues – but not necessarily agree with them or lose objectivity and become sympathetic. Having empathy enables good salespeople to really understand what a customer wants, even if those desires aren’t articulated.
Ego-drive. This is the need to have a prospect or customer say yes. What great salespeople seek, Greenberg says, is an opportunity to turn others around to their point of view. Of course, ego-drive must be balanced by other factors, including:
Service Motivation. This is the need to receive a “thank-you” from customers for having come through. While many sales jobs now require both ego-drive and service motivation, Greenberg says finding both qualities in one person is unusual.
Conscientiousness. Follow-through is essential in a good salesperson. Some are internally conscientious and can plan, organize and carry out detailed tasks on their own. Others are externally driven, and will follow a “to-do” list given and enforced by a manager.
Ego-Strength. Successful salespeople have a strong sense of self. When their pitches are rejected, they don’t take the turndown personally, they just try again.
If you are in sales and don’t have these qualities (and 55 percent of salespeople don’t have them, according to Greenberg), you probably should consider another line of work. But if you do have them, consider sales. Greenberg once tested an accountant whose assessment results showed great aptitude on all five measures. The accountant had wanted to try selling, but felt his chances of getting a sales job were slim because he had spent his entire career being miserable behind a desk (“No wonder,” Greenberg observed, “he was forcing himself to be something he wasn’t.”) Greenberg convinced his company to give him a chance, and now he is one of their most successful producers.
Article – Copyright 2001 Evan Cooper. Syndicated by Paradigm News, Inc.
