The Two Traits of the Most Successful Inside Sales Reps
"An inside sales team is like an engine and having one lagging part can bring the whole thing down."
Hiring an effective inside sales rep can be difficult. An inside sales team is like an engine and having one lagging part can bring the whole thing down, thus a bad hire is costly and it carries a residual effect. The good news is that a strong hire also has a residual effect and can make the room tick up a notch. After years of observing and managing good reps, great reps and ineffective reps, I recognized that there were two commonalities that most great reps shared.
They have an unshakeable belief in the product: The reps that succeeded really believed in the product and don’t second-guess what they’re selling. For example, let’s say that we are selling a promotion that offers a 20% discount if a client purchases a full series of concerts. The rep who is on his way to failure is the one who gets on the website, reads all the fine print and questions “can we really say it’s a 20% discount? I mean, if you truly calculate the savings, it’s more like 15% because they sort of get a 5% discount if they buy online.” Lack of conviction will equal lack of sales; it’s as consistent as gravity. For this type of reason, it raised a flag to me when a candidate revealed in the interview that they were detail oriented. Top sales reps are wired differently, they think generally; they are “big picture” people. People who are detail oriented have a hard time keeping their pitch simple and buyers will tune out their complex approaches, in addition, they will often not see the direct psychological path to the sale. They’re often “paper shufflers,” appearing to be “getting organized” instead of selling. If you like splitting hairs, go to law school, but sales is not for you.
They have a concrete financial need to produce: The best reps feel their own pressure. They create their own urgency. Whether it’s kids, a family, a mortgage or a payment on a Mercedes, the best reps need to make money and will thus be personally invested in their improvement and success. The reps who don’t need the money are the ones who like to call in sick or mail it in once they hit their minimum quota.
A secondary trait that can be helpful, but yet is non-essential: organization. Organization is a wild card. My top two reps were highly unorganized; their desks were basically trashed, while at the same time, I also had reps who had organizational systems that enabled them to do very well. My conclusion on organization was that it can be used as an equalizer. A B-player can progress to an A-player by having an outstanding system for callbacks, segmented buyer interest, taste in performance, etc.