We\u2019re often asked what makes today\u2019s selling landscape different from the one that David Sandler, the founder of our company, lived and worked in.<\/p>\n
One good answer to that question has to do with the degree of commitment to a personalized learning path<\/strong> \u2013 that is to say, a given salesperson\u2019s openness to the identification, acquisition, and deployment of relevant, brand-new selling skills. Personal, proactive resolve in pursuing such a learning and development path seems far more important to sales success today than it was in the late 1960s \u2013 and even back then, David Sandler knew it was important!<\/p>\n Today, however, the extraordinary levels of rapid change we see occurring in communication technologies, in markets, and across whole industries tell us that salespeople who are comfortable adapting to such changes, by creating the new skill sets necessary to navigate them, are going to be more successful and more highly valued than those who assume they already \u201cknow it all.\u201d In Sandler\u2019s day, salespeople who didn\u2019t consistently pursue and acquire new skill sets could sometimes camouflage their unwillingness. Today, that\u2019s virtually impossible. If you do not adapt, you will not thrive.<\/strong> Sales leaders who understand that will have a significant marketplace edge over sales leaders who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n All of this is to say that leaders are well advised to recruit and retain salespeople who are focused, not just on the skills that equate to successful outcomes today, but also on the development of skills that will permit them to contribute optimally tomorrow. With that principle in mind, we offer our list of the ten personal traits that we believe anyone considering hiring a salesperson in 2024 ought to be looking for during the interviewing and vetting process.<\/p>\n The verifiable presence of these ten traits in an applicant suggests that hiring you are looking, not just at a salesperson who will excel now, but at one who can be counted on to contribute at optimal levels even in an uncertain future.<\/strong> Whenever you\u2019re evaluating potential new sales talent, consider creating interview question sequences that will help you to identify the presence or absence of these traits. Your aim is to solicit relevant, impromptu personal narratives from the applicant in each of these areas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Remember: you are looking for tangible evidence<\/em> of the presence of these traits<\/strong>, <\/em>not boilerplate slogans or smooth restatements of ideas you\u2019ve expressed in one way or another during the interview. What happened in the person\u2019s work history that suggests the presence of one or more of these traits? When, where, and how did it happen? Who else was involved? Ideally, you want to see verifiable evidence of all ten \u201csalesperson of tomorrow\u201d traits before you extend an offer to join your team!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re often asked what makes today\u2019s selling landscape different from the one that David Sandler, the founder of our company, lived and worked in. One good answer to that question has to do with the degree of commitment to a personalized learning path \u2013 that is to say, a given salesperson\u2019s openness to the identification,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":17971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1120],"tags":[1630,1176,1629],"class_list":["post-17970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-sales-kickoff","tag-sales-meeting","tag-sko"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n