Types of Salespeople: The Best Strategies for Hiring Them
Salespeople or sales executives play a crucial role in the success of any business. However, not all salespeople are the same, nor do they possess the same skills, motivations, and goals. It’s essential to understand the different types of salespeople and how to choose the most suitable ones for your company.
In this article, we will explain the main types of salespeople you can find in the market, their characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. Additionally, we will provide tips on hiring the best salespeople for your team based on the type of product or service you offer, your clients’ profile, and the commercial strategy you wish to follow. This way, you can optimize your resources, increase your sales, and retain your customers.
What is the Best Profile for a Salesperson?
Success in sales requires not only technical skills but also a series of personal traits that are key to performance. Generally, the best profile for a salesperson combines exceptional communication skills, the ability to build lasting relationships with customers, strong persuasion skills, and a proactive and positive attitude. Additionally, the ideal salesperson should work well under pressure and adapt to different situations and clients.
While there are various types of salespeople, certain traits are common among the best professionals in the field. For example, empathy is crucial for understanding customer needs and offering personalized solutions. Active listening is also essential for establishing a connection with the customer and providing exactly what they need. Persistence is another important trait, as sales often require multiple attempts before closing a deal.
In summary, the best profile for a salesperson combines technical skills with positive personal traits. The perfect combination varies depending on the type of product or service being sold, as well as the market and sales strategy being implemented. When looking for candidates for your sales team, it’s important to consider these traits and carefully evaluate each candidate’s skills and personality to find the best fit for your company.
Common Characteristics of a Good Salesperson
These characteristics enable a salesperson to establish a good relationship with customers, understand their needs, offer appropriate solutions, overcome objections and obstacles, and successfully close sales:
- Communication skills
- Customer orientation
- Persuasion
- Confidence
- Empathy
- Adaptability
- Proactivity
- Resilience
Technical and Professional Skills of a Salesperson
In addition to personal characteristics, a salesperson should also possess certain technical and professional skills to perform their job better. For example:
- Knowledge of the product or service they sell
- Mastery of sales and negotiation techniques
- Use of technological and digital tools
- Handling of sales data and indicators
- Continuous learning ability
Types of Salespeople
Salespeople can be classified in various ways, but one of the most common is to divide them into seven categories based on their behavior with clients and their overall work approach. These categories are:
- Standard Salesperson: Trained in sales and follows established procedures but lacks interpersonal and communication skills, resulting in cold and routine relationships with clients.
- Hard Worker: Relies on personal reliability and dedication to work, always motivated and focused on their profession. They take a constructive approach with clients, gathering information and offering long-term solutions.
- Self-Made: Developed their skills and abilities through direct experience without specific sales training. Their greatest strength is their communication and interpersonal relationships, focused on intangible values.
- Challenger: Always proposes a different point of view to the client, helping them discover new opportunities and perspectives for their business. They have a deep understanding of customer needs and know how to persuade with solid arguments.
- Problem Solver: Experts in the product or service they sell, demonstrating all its functionalities and benefits to the client. Their goal is to solve the client’s problems with personalized and effective solutions.
- Relationship Builder: Focuses on creating a trust and loyalty relationship with the client based on empathy, active listening, and respect. Their goal is to retain the client and turn them into a brand advocate.
- Aggressive Salesperson: Uses aggressive and manipulative sales techniques, seeking to close the sale at all costs without considering the client’s needs or interests. Their priority is to achieve quick and quantitative results.
Recruitment Sources for Hiring Salespeople (and Their Disadvantages)
To hire the best salespeople for your team, companies need to resort to various sources and strategies. Some common methods include:
- Personal and Professional Network: Leveraging recommendations from people you know or work with. This method can be effective due to the trust and credibility your contacts provide.
- Disadvantages: It can lead to biases, favoritism, lack of diversity, and limited options. Additionally, conflicts of interest or performance issues may arise if the salesperson does not meet expectations or fit the company culture.
- Professional Events: Attending or participating in sales-related events like fairs, conferences, seminars, or workshops.
- Disadvantages: This method can be costly, inefficient, and ineffective due to the limited duration, large number of attendees, and high competition at these events.
- Social Media: Using social networks to search for salespeople, allowing you to spread your job offer, showcase your company culture, and directly contact potential candidates.
- Disadvantages: Information overload, lack of credibility, difficulty filtering and classifying candidates, and the risk of damaging the company’s reputation if social media is misused.
- Job Portals: Online platforms where you can post job offers, filter candidate resumes, and manage the selection process.
- Disadvantages: Issues like low candidate quality, high volume of applications, time and effort required to review and respond to candidates, and lack of personalization and differentiation of the offer.
- Headhunters: Professionals specialized in searching and selecting talent for specific positions. Their services can save time and resources and provide access to qualified and hard-to-find candidates.
- Disadvantages: High service cost, dependence on the headhunter, loss of control over the selection process, and potential incompatibility between the headhunter and the company or candidate.
The Video Resume: The Best Strategy for Hiring Salespeople
One of the main challenges in hiring salespeople is effectively evaluating their characteristics, skills, and competencies. However, using a video resume as a selection tool can facilitate this process. A video resume is a summarized audiovisual representation of a candidate’s professional background, lasting up to 30 seconds. This format has several advantages for both candidates and recruiters, making it the best strategy for hiring salespeople.
Advantages of Video Resumes for Hiring Salespeople
- The video format is ideal for evaluating personality, creativity, and communication skills, which are crucial for a salesperson’s performance.
- Allows candidates to highlight their strengths, achievements, and motivations beyond the written data of a traditional resume.
- Offers recruiters an opportunity to assess candidates’ experience with new technologies and their adaptation to market trends.
- Helps recruiters capture candidates’ attention, get to know them better, and evaluate their potential without needing an in-person interview.
- Saves recruiters time and resources by filtering the most suitable candidates for the position based on their profile and skills.
- Demonstrates candidates’ initiative, commitment, and interest by taking the effort to record a video resume.
How to Hire Salespeople with a Video Resume
Salespeople represent the face of your company and must possess the skills, personality, and motivation to close sales and retain customers. But how can you evaluate potential salespeople without wasting time and resources on lengthy and tedious interviews? How can you differentiate those with real talent from those who simply talk well?
Steps to Follow:
- Define the Type of Salesperson You Need: Answer the question, “What type of salesperson do I need?”
- Identify the Product or Service to be Sold: Define the profile and the product or service you will sell.
- Create a Job Announcement in Video Format: Record a job announcement in video format and upload it to Cazvid. In the video, specify that candidates must submit a video resume demonstrating how they would sell one of your products and upload it to Cazvid.
- Evaluate Candidates: Assess candidates’ skills, abilities, communication, attitude, personality, sales techniques through the simulation of a product sale.
Final Recommendations for Hiring Salespeople
Before concluding, here are some final recommendations to ensure your selection process is successful:
- Clearly Define the Salesperson Profile You Seek: Look for experience and knowledge in the sector, as well as the necessary competencies and attitudes for the job.
- Use the Video Resume as an Initial Filter: The video resume quickly reveals if candidates fit your needs. Pay attention to their expression, the image they project, and their body language.
- Value Candidates’ Creativity and Originality: A video resume offers an opportunity to stand out and showcase personality. Look for candidates who use humor, share anecdotes, or demonstrate their selling ability.
- Complement the Video Resume with Other Evaluation Tools: Use additional tools like knowledge tests, personality tests, or group dynamics to deepen the candidate’s profile and see how they handle different situations.
- Provide Personalized Follow-Up to Selected Candidates: Maintain contact with the candidates and inform them of the next steps in the process. Show interest and professionalism to leave a good impression on the candidates.
Conclusion
Among the different types of salespeople, each has its advantages and disadvantages, fitting different profiles needed for your sales campaigns. Finding and recruiting salespeople can be challenging, with many factors to consider and traditional methods often falling short. Adding tools like the video resume to your strategy, combined with other evaluation methods, can save time, reduce costs, and improve decision-making. Use the Cazvid app and its offerings to enhance your recruitment processes efficiently.