A former leader of mine once proudly shared the story of how he was promoted to marketing director during a meeting. He said: "In the final round of interviews with the chairman, the question posed to the four of us, who had all been with the company for a long time, was: 'What do you consider your greatest contribution to the company?' The other three talked about sales growth, cost reduction, market improvement, etc. I was the only one who mentioned that during my four years with the company, five sales managers had emerged from my team, two of whom were named the company's annual outstanding sales managers this year. In the end, I got the promotion." I remember this vividly. Indeed, the essence of enterprise competition is talent competition. Is a manager qualified? It depends on how many capable generals they have under them. Is a team's performance excellent? It depends on how many top sales experts are in the team. Today, let me share some thoughts on the topic of top sales talent.
-01- The Confusion of Regional Managers and the Establishment of Standards for Top Sales Talent Many regional managers face a dilemma: they feel that the top sales talent in their team is never perfect. Based on years of experience, they select people by intuition and external conditions, which easily leads to a vicious cycle: can't find top sales talent—find them but can't recruit them—recruit them but can't retain them, and then the search continues. If this cycle is not broken by changing inherent thinking, it will never be solved. So what are the habitual thinking patterns of regional managers? Simply put, first, they look at age, major, and education; second, appearance and attitude; third, years of service and experience, especially advanced experience from leading brands in the same industry. During the interview, after these three criteria are applied, more than 90% of the hiring decision is made; the rest is just formalities and symbolic. Is the top sales talent recruited this way what you really need? I think it's fifty-fifty, for three reasons: First, education and major only prove that the person was qualified in books, which is somewhat one-sided; second, appearance and attitude shown during the interview are also one-sided; third, some people stay in the same position at leading brands, repeating the same work, so ten years of experience is the same as one year, which is even more one-sided. So what are the standards for selecting top sales talent? Currently, my subordinate team has up to nearly 20 sales managers, each with 4-6 subordinates. After several months of data analysis, I found a phenomenon: when I removed the top sales talent recruited by habitual thinking (2 sales managers and 8 salespeople), the company's performance remained almost unchanged. But when I added back the removed personnel according to the new standards, the company's performance increased by 21%. And I summarized a rule: Good sales performance has little to do with the superficial information of salespeople (which is the information managers directly obtain through interviews under habitual thinking), but is closely related to hidden information, also known as sales talent (which requires assessment tools or specific case studies to obtain). Superficial information includes: education, major, network resources, age, years of service, experience, etc. Hidden information includes: personality, tendencies, work attitude and style, internal drive, etc. The five basic criteria for selecting top sales talent based on hidden information are as follows:
1. Internal Drive: Salespeople who like sales work and have mortgages, car loans, and children. A considerable number of people engage in sales work out of necessity—they can't find other satisfactory jobs, dislike constraints, or need to make a living—so they are subjectively resistant. These types cannot be used. Liking is the first driving force, and life pressure is the second. If a candidate possesses both attributes, there is a 60% possibility they will become top sales talent.
2. Innate Confidence: Confident people are always energetic and motivated. For sales, which requires passion and enthusiasm, lack of confidence is absolutely unacceptable and frightening. Because if you don't believe in yourself, how can you make others believe in you? But in reality, for some people, their innate inferiority is hard to change even with high training investment; these people are essentially unsuitable for sales work.
3. Sales Insight: Insight means a salesperson can fully understand the customer's words, inner thoughts, and body language from the heart and soul. For marketing personnel, without market insight, they are like walking dead, with no hope in the marketing world. Because the market is always changing, relying solely on theoretical knowledge learned in school is not enough to make a living. You must rely on your own insight to continuously improve, to establish yourself in the marketing world, and to be a competent marketing person. I believe insight is innate, like what people say: "the sales switch is turned on." Those who don't have it cannot be cultivated into top sales talent.
4. Daily Morality: The relationship between customers and salespeople fundamentally comes from the salesperson's moral standards. Customers always like salespeople who keep promises, take responsibility, and are enthusiastic. On the contrary, the greatest sorrow for a salesperson is not being deceived by customers, but being distrusted by them. In social business activities, the scarcest factor is integrity.
5. Habit of Excellence: If a person was good in university, found a good job, and is an excellent employee in the company, then they are more likely to succeed in what they do. Some people naturally have high standards for themselves, and they are more likely to succeed in anything. You need to find such people. Excellence is a habit; excellent people will always be excellent.
-02- The Standard for Top Sales Talent Is Not Ideal or Abstract, but Comes from Our Internal Excellence Benchmarks!
1. How to Select Ideal Candidates from a Sea of Resumes? The period right after the Spring Festival is when employee turnover is highest, and it is also the best time to recruit top sales talent. Let me share my recruitment insights: a. Before recruitment, summarize the common traits of current excellent employees, using both superficial and hidden information, and match them one-to-one with candidates. The more matching points, the more they meet the standard. b. Build a talent resource database, collect widely, screen quickly, race against time and competitors. c. Use the elimination method for resume screening: exclude those who haven't stayed at any job for more than 3 years; exclude those who have changed jobs more than 3 times in 5 years; exclude those with logical inconsistencies in time, events, income (i.e., fabricators); exclude those whose job descriptions don't match their work; exclude those with education below associate degree; exclude those with too large a cross-industry jump (e.g., a former operator at Foxconn coming to do sales); exclude those without ambition for high salary. d. After screening, create a WeChat group, arrange for the sales director to chat online with sales managers, and sales managers to chat online with top sales talent. The topics are basically set: send a common topic, and each person answers individually. The topic is to describe a difficult situation they personally solved in their career, including the difficulties faced, how they viewed the difficulty, what actions they took, and what results they achieved. e. After screening, conduct interviews. Pay attention to a few points: first, you must respect the candidate in your words, actions, and dress; second, during the interview, never ask questions you don't know the answer to. If you know the answer, persist until you get the result you want. Third, no one is perfect; don't dream of changing a person's shortcomings. We should discover their strengths and play to them. The core principle for treating top sales talent is: treat your candidates like customers.
2. Discover the Top Sales Talent You Need in the Market I will only briefly mention this; I believe everyone knows how to do it. One reminder: when visiting the market, pay attention to competitors' dynamics and the customer relationships and visual merchandising of their salespeople. The most effective way to get contact information is through the customer contact cards on the wall. Secondly, good salespeople have relatively high incomes and generally don't leave, but top sales talent often have conflicts with company systems or managers. As long as you stay in contact, opportunities are plentiful.
3. When Flowers Bloom, Butterflies Come: How to Attract Top Sales Talent? a. First, let's talk about recruitment titles. The essence of a recruitment notice is also marketing. Marketing first requires traffic, so the title is very important. It should capture the pain points of job seekers. This year, I participated in many on-site and online job fairs. A few booths were packed: one was a network company with the notice: "If you want to buy a house in Zhengzhou, come here." Another was a real estate company with the notice: "We are a real estate marketing agency. The person next to me (with a photo, on site) created 56 million yuan in sales in 3 months." Think about these two notices: one captures the pain point of young people's housing pressure, the other captures the pain point of job seekers tired of poverty and in urgent need of high income. Marketing is truly everywhere. b. Establish a good corporate image. You must be strong yourself; beautification is useless. Once, a competitor tried to poach one of my excellent sales managers. The manager came to resign, saying the other company offered a high salary. I kept him with just one sentence: "Go and check. That company you mentioned can't even fulfill its promises to its own customers. How can it fulfill its promises to you?" The market circle is small. Integrity has special value that other morals cannot compare. In business management, companies must define the rights and obligations of employees through contracts, and achieve integrity management through contract fulfillment. Only then can a good corporate image be established and top sales talent be attracted.
Final Thoughts: To build a successful enterprise, you must have a strong marketing team, and the cornerstone of a marketing team is top sales talent. The purpose of this article is to tell regional managers a truth: As the population structure changes, the individuality and diversity of practitioners are becoming more prominent. You cannot wear new shoes and walk the old path. Always maintain integrity in business operations, always innovate in talent recruitment. Top sales talent is the primary productive force of an enterprise. I hope that in your future career, managers can be proud to say, 'I made significant contributions to the company's talent pipeline construction.'
Extended Reading:
Defensive Battle for Strong Brands | Nongfu Spring's Distributor Reform
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