You are the Sales-Manager of an electrical goods distributor. What characteristics would you look for when hiring a new sales-representative?

You are the Sales-Manager of an electrical goods distributor. What characteristics would you look for when hiring a new sales-representative?

Most every company needs sales people, but hiring the right person can be difficult. Often, attracting the ideal candidate does not happen. It can take months to understand this expensive lesson. At a very minimum there are two standards that most organizations include in one way or another as part of their selection process. They include mental, social and knowledge (How to Become a Successful Salesman?  2005).

Mental traits include accuracy, alertness, imagination, initiative, observation, and self-confidence (Pezzullo 1998). The salesman should be alert, ready to find out ways and means of serving the customers. Alertness is a part in which the sales person should inspire confidence of the customers. Customers normally would not like hurried salespersons as well a slow one. It is one of the most important mental attributes, which should be developed by the salesperson.

If a salesman with imagination will have the ability to imagine the articles required by the customer, such a customer would be relieved and so thankful for suggestions and ideas given by the salesperson. The salesperson should know how to think and decide for himself instead of having to be told everything, he should be independent. The main quality in a good salesperson is the ego drive, which makes him want to make the sale. He must stay enthusiastic of the job. The salesperson should have the capability to get decisions for himself and help indecisive customers into making his decisions by gentle means of questions and suggestions. The salesperson must have the trait of keen observation. A person who is a keen observer will instantly sort out the problems and find a solution at an early date. Self-assurance springs from the knowledge. So he should gain thorough knowledge of the goods he sells, likely types of customers. The salesperson should have faith in himself and products he sells to the customers.

The ability to make friends and to cope with people is one of the most valuable assets. Social traits include ability to meet the public, the major quality of a salesperson to meet the public and speak about the product he wants to sell them (Pezzullo 1998). He is also asked to overcome large resistance, deal with the strangers in his selling activity and open up new territories. The salesman should always be polite and generous to his work and to the customers. It deals, not to be late for appointments, addressing customers in a friendly way. Never lose temper, say thank you and good-bye while leaving. All the workers should be cooperative help one another to make pleasant working conditions.

The salesperson should have the understanding about the products he is selling. Salesperson without technical knowledge about the product would be a risk to his customer. Naturally he cannot explain something future to the customers, which he himself does not understand. If the salesman has the knowledge about the product, he would be capable of answer all the queries posed by the customers. Even if a single answer were not given clearly, the customer would doubt about the quality of the product. Besides by having the knowledge it will become easier to make the customer understand about the product. (Pezzullo 1998)

Salesmanship is not something that everyone is born with, and not everyone can learn it.  Those are some traits that sales manager should look for before making one more blunder and hire someone who is not capable of exceptional performance. Hire those that are ready to go, not someone a sales manager has to train before they can be let out of the gate.