Skip to Content
section-header
Influencers Invited Sales Blog

What To Look For When Hiring a Sales Professional


So, you’re on the market to hire a sales professional. Finding a front line personality to represent your business and make the sale is never an easy task. After all, sales is what drives any business, and if you don’t have the right sales team, you’re not going anywhere. While sales is an easy profession to get into, it’s a hard profession to ace, and the difference between an amateur and a professional salesperson is night and day. Here are some factors to consider when looking for the perfect sales professional to add to your roster:

  1. The Right Fit — Just like with a suit or a pair of jeans or shoes — fit is everything. And so it is with finding your sales professional. Whether they admit it or not, sales professionals have different sales personalities, or seller styles, which lend themselves to particular sales cultures and sales jobs. The trick is finding out which sales culture you are or want to be, and then finding the sales professional who fits that culture to match. At the National Association of Sales Professionals, users can create free memberships and take a seller style assessment, revealing their sales style and ideal sales culture match, after which point, they can apply and be recruited for jobs via the NASP Career Center.
  2. A True Professional — The proof is in the pudding when it comes to sales professionals. You can’t fake great sales techniques or sales closed; you’ve either got it, or you don’t. Barriers to entry in sales are low, so it’s a reality that while there are a number of people who call themselves salespeople, there are only a certain percentage who have the sales techniques and the experience to call themselves professional. In addition to the seller style assessment, members of the National Association of Sales Professionals can get professionally certified as a Certified Professional Salesperson (CPSP). Who does it help? You. Because when you want to look for a professional, you can just go online and look for one that’s certified. It’s that simple.
  3. Passion is Everything — Vince Lombardi, former coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said that “the difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” And so it is with sales professionals or any professional you wish to hire. You can’t endow anyone with a passion for their career, and so, when you are hiring, you must look for somehow who has that passion within them to succeed, to make the sale, to make the close. Career coaching can only go so far. Passion can’t be taught, and it is a huge determinant in a person’s success. Look for passion.


About the author