A Guide To Hiring The Right Junior Salesperson

“Establishing trust is better than any sales technique.”

Mike Puglia

What do you think makes a great junior salesperson?

Here at Sloane Staffing, we know every sales industry leader has their industry idiosyncrasies: the faced paced, highly specialized tech-sellers operating at lightspeed as they scale; the medical sales teams operating under strict pricing and health and safety demands; the retail sales pro dispelling supply chain issues and driving quality transactions across entire countries. 

Each sales profession has to handle the rigors, challenges, and customer demands of their specific industry, and each seller has to bring something unique to the table. 

Sales professionals have to have a well-established foundation of sales techniques and interpersonal skills to become leaders in their field. But like any other specialist industry, these skills are developed over years of practice. And when we say specialist, we do mean specialist - the unique balance of communicative and persuasive skills, the focus on trust and long-term relationship building, the wide, in-depth industry knowledge, and the encyclopedic knowledge of prices, inventory, lead-times, innovation, training, and product or service integration takes a very specific type of personality and figures-obsessed. person-centric talent. 

For sales recruiters focused on the next generation of sales professionals - those unpolished, eager, sponges of information and sales teaching - there needs to be a focus on potential, and the raw personality types that can be crafted into specialist salespeople in any industry. 

We believe that there are a few, key, foundational assessment criteria that are indicators of great sales professionals with potential. These are:

Are they a “Culture Fit”?

Culture fit is a fluid term, and very much changes industry-to-industry, but in essence describes the behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, work-flows, and social interactions of your company, and is often used as a screening term to assess whether new recruiters align with those same values.

Culture fit judgments determine how well your team communicates with one another and with new hires. The term - and assessments within - becomes a bellwether for how integrated your new hire would be within the overall matrix (and future) of the company.

Corporate “culture” can feel relatively benign and quite illusory to many employees, but it’s one of, if not the primary reason why your company retains talent and is one of the driving soft attractions in your recruitment arsenal.

The irony of developing a supportive, unique, personality-driven, and magnetic corporate culture is that it’s often not something senior leaders can teach, instruct, or force on staff. It has to develop organically. 

The only way this occurs is if leaders (and recruiters) take a more hands-off approach to employee interactions, and simply steward staff towards positive interactivity and relationship building. You’ll find your teams naturally develop mini-hierarchies, mentor and mentee relationships, and friendships that supersede an imposed, unreal or unnatural order. 

This is a good thing, and once you’ve found your own company culture you can use it as a marker for new recruiters - are they a culture “fit” and does their character, desires, and passions for your industry match your existing team?

Often the only way you’ll know if your young salesperson is a proper long-term fit with your company is by giving your employee time (what with your new employee has not yet met your team, other senior leaders, customers, or users). 

But there are signs your prospective new employee is the right person - look for indicators of their cultural drivers and passions, such as hobbies; analyze their communication levels and interactivity during the interview; ask senior line workers or co-workers to assess the applicant (and where possible invite them into interviews); and speak freely about your culture and assess their reaction.

References

Simple, yet highly effective at not only determining if your sales applicant is the right culture fit but if they match the direction and have the raw skill to operate as a salesperson. 

Often the attitudes of a gold standard salesperson - strong communication skills, relationship-building skills, natural rapport building, an eye for detail, and a natural predilection to hitting targets and engaging with people - can be seen in almost any job or within education.

Seek details from referees around these points, and ask reference givers to elaborate on two of the most important parts of a sales role: how do they interact with people, and are they goal-oriented?

Do they value communication?

We want to separate out communication as the paramount soft skill any salesperson needs, and we see it is absolutely essential you factor in some sort of communication assessment within your interview process. 

Making a judgment call on a junior salesperson doesn’t necessarily hinge on their ability to succinctly communicate in only one interview.

We advise you to make that sort of judgment over a 2-stage interview process, factoring in low-pressure tests such as simple sales quizzes or role-playing tests. While we don’t advocate completely for using the Jordan Belfort “sell me this pen” shtick, the point of that test is clear - are you able to focus clearly on selling a solution?

You should be able to garner how well a candidate speaks, uses body language, understands direction, and is able to disseminate information quickly and succinctly. 

Do they understand your audience and your purpose?

Does your candidate know whom you sell to and why?

The modern sales operative needs to be more than a script reader and customer service agent. They need to be full-spectrum brand representatives, able to communicate not only raw sales information and data, but the purpose and reason for the company, its USPs, its approach to ESG, and how and why the product or service has been developed specifically in relation to the customer.

Your sales teams cannot simply list why their solution works and expect a Yes or No. The rhythms of sales have changed; the methods of selling have changed; the modes of communication, customer service, feedback, ordering, cataloging, and orders have changed. Your sales team needs to understand their audience, first and foremost, and how your solution, service, or product provides them with a solution.

Junior sales employees cannot be expected to be immediate industry experts, but they do need to have some grasp of the overall sector. They need to be concise in how they communicate it and, at a bare minimum, interested in innovations and developments in the industry.

Your junior sales professional also needs to have a grasp of your purpose - your reason for being beyond a profit margin, and why your company continues to do business in our disrupted new working world. 

Are they eager to learn?

Lastly, are your junior salespeople eager to learn?

In our fast-paced, digitally revolutionizing world, no industry stays still for long. Businesses - empowered by more and more digital tools and tech-based solutions - are rapidly changing, and your teams need to be agile enough to handle fluctuations in sales needs. 

They also need to be cognizant of industry changes to lead times, sales processes, supply chain problems, and (as will inevitably happen at some point or other) how to react when deliveries don’t turn up, or services fail. 

Learning, and the ability to adapt and adjust rapidly becomes central to your junior salespeople becoming experienced sales professionals. Their raw passion for learning is a key sign they will become confident, knowledgeable company operatives, able to handle any problem as it arises, and able to jump on any opportunity to grow a customer base, deliver services better or perfect a sales relationship.