Key Skills To Look For While Hiring Sales Reps

A business is built with vigorous hard work and by investing an insurmountable amount of time and capital. Therefore, choosing the best candidate for selling your hard work is crucial. You should wish for nothing less than the best for your business, especially while hiring sales representatives. It is these employees who have to carry your business forward by selling it and making it reach more and more people. Look for the right sales representative skills in every candidate.

Even though a degree and profound theoretical knowledge is a much-needed requirement you should not ignore the other aspects as well. It is not the degree that will fetch you, new customers, it is the persona and the acquired skills of your employees that will. Given below are the skills you must look for in a candidate while hiring a sales representative: 

Good communication = thumbs up 

This goes without saying that communication is the key. You need to ask for a favor you have to communicate. You want to give your opinion, you have to communicate. You need to buy a product, you need to communicate to the shopkeeper. And you need to sell a product, then you need to communicate and convince the customer. 

Communication is inevitable and one of the key sales representative skills. Communication is not just talking, it goes beyond that. The way you talk, the tone of your voice, the way you are directing the conversation, and the way you are conveying your point. It all is a part of communication. 

Communication is the bedrock of your relationship with your customers. Your sales representative must have the ability to communicate well enough to land new customers and keep the existing ones satisfied. While hiring a sales representative you should observe how well the candidate is able to express. 

How did they use their body language and how well could they utilize their knowledge about sales. Noticing these trivial details will help you to come to a fair conclusion.  In the end, all you have to do is measure on a scale of 1 to 10 how much they were able to convince you to hire them. 

Confidence never goes out of trend

Having good communication skills is one thing but communicating with confidence is another. Confidence with good communication skills is like the cherry on top. Everything’s better with confidence.

Your sales representative can convince a customer only when they are confident. If they are putting forth their point but their voice is trembling or it lacks power then it will not intrigue your customer. The confidence in your sales representative’s voice will make the customer curious about your product and might even end up opting for your service. 

You will know that a candidate has confidence even though they are nervous while giving the interview but still answering the questions as if they know all about it. Being nervous is not problematic but being able to handle that nervousness is what matters. Hire a sales rep candidate who is polite and yet carries power in the voice. 

Emotionally intelligent 

Sales is a tedious, stressful, and demanding job. Not everyone can sustain themselves in the job because of the challenges it offers. This is why a salesperson needs to have good emotional intelligence and master emotions in sales. A sales representative with low EI is more likely to end up quitting the sales job. If you want a good sales representative who is consistent as well as hardworking then the sales representative skill you should look for is emotional intelligence.

Emotionally intelligent sales representatives are well aware of the situation and themself. Because of this knowledge, they can handle their emotions better and focus on work. This control of emotions eventually results in good results. A salesperson with high emotional intelligence is more likely to land a customer as they can understand the customer’s point of view and emotional state. 

They can put this knowledge to use and change their pitch and its tone as per the customer’s needs. Furthermore, they can also build a strong connection with the customer. However, if a sales representative is not emotionally intelligent they are more likely to be fearful and undermotivated. They fail to take rejection and are unable to push themselves to do better. 

They might as well cost you a few customers as they lack empathy towards them. Therefore, make it a point to always look for a sales rep with high emotional intelligence. 

Sales= interpersonal skills 

Your sales representative can communicate in a manner that a customer feels that your product is indispensable. All the sales representative skills are interrelated. A salesperson with good interpersonal skills is also most likely to have good communication ability. These two skills together can help you get any client. 

Good interpersonal skills also boost an employee’s confidence and a confident employee fetches you, new customers. Interpersonal skills are also necessary for maintaining healthy customer relationships. The customer is now the king. 

Customer satisfaction and customer retention are the most important aspects of any business as per sales statistics – 2020/2021. Your sales representative’s interpersonal skills are what is going to make your customers happy or end up disappointing them. Your business is completely dependent on your sales team’s interpersonal skills. Make sure while hiring a sales rep you observe if this addition to the sales team will add quality to your team or not. 

Active listening

It is often said that listening is more powerful than speaking. This is indeed true for the sales representative. A sales representative has to listen to customer’s needs and preferences daily. That means they must be an attentive listener. However, hearing is often confused with active listening. 

Hearing is just using your ears to listen to what the customer is saying. But active listening is listening to what the customer is saying, comprehending the information, finding solutions, and then putting the information to use for further actions as well. 

For instance, if a customer often buys chocolates from your shop then your salesperson must know that chocolates are liked by a particular customer. 

Later, the salesperson should use this information for upselling your chocolate products by convincing the customer to try new ones. It is the responsibility of your salesperson to listen to your customers and then use the information further. If a person is expressing their grievance then also active listening comes into play as the sales representative has to make sure that they say what the customers want to hear and do not disappoint them. 

Time management for business management 

It is not unknown that a sales representative has to handle a huge volume of calls in a day. Sometimes the circumstances are such that they do not even get breaks in between. That is why time management is one of the must-have sales representative skills. They must know how to allocate time to customer calls, cold-calling/warm-calling while also handling their office work. Work overloading is inevitable when it comes to sales.

 The job profile requires a lot of energy and time. A good sales rep will always be able to manage their work and life while the other would be struggling to complete the required number of calls itself. 

If your sales team has time management skills then they are more likely to give better results. Time management helps the employee to have a good work and life balance. This reduces the stress of the employee and makes them perform better.

 One way through which you can help your sales reps in time management is by using advanced calling tools such as Interactive Voice Response and CRM integration for your business.

 Using advanced software for calling will reduce your agents’ manual task of transferring calls and manually dialing customers’ numbers. This way they will be able to manage their time better and there would be an increase in their productivity as well.

Ability to handle unfavorable situations

Every day is not a bed of roses, especially for a sales team. Being in sales is more of a bumpy ride and ups and downs are inevitable. The situation is not always favorable and a sales rep might not always be able to land the client they want to. 

That’s exactly where one needs to put their ability to handle unforeseen events and bad days. You must hire a candidate that would be able to handle rejections and would still be able to perform. Being able to move forward and leave bad days behind is a skill that gives unexpected results in the long run. 

This skill helps in cultivating a growth mindset. Your sales representative should not only be able to handle bad situations but they should also know how to use the lesson for growth later. 

You have shed blood and sweat to bring your business to reach its current position. You need to hire the shoulders that you can trust with your business’s responsibility. You must look for the above-given sales representative skills while hiring a sales representative, but you must also get the technology that facilitates your sales team’s work and help them perform better.