Steps to Identifying Great Sales People

Outlook and Responsibility

Do you have any problem children in your sales department? You know the type: They're probably pretty good business performers, but everything that goes wrong seems to be someone else's fault - or your fault.

Poor outlook in a sales person, or a poor sense of personal responsibility, by themselves are not too tough to deal with. Many times, simply identifying these single "qualities" is the beginning of solving the business problems associated with these traits. Together, poor outlook and lack of responsibility are absolute poison to your company and your sales pipeline.

• Outlook: How a sales person feels about themselves, their products and services and about their company. In an unsuccessful sales force, these are not very positive individuals and, generally, see the glass and the sales pipeline as half-empty.
• Responsibility: A sales person's willingness to look inside themselves to determine how they might solve their problems involving lack of sales performance, rather than blame the economy, product pricing or, worse yet, their own company. Someone who is lacking in personal responsibility is an excuse-maker, always having reasons to sight as those keeping them from reaching their sales goals.

So how does a company leader deal with these types of individuals? Sometimes, if problems of personal responsibility are isolated, it's simply a matter of asking ourselves if we've done everything we can do to identify excuses for what they are and stop accepting them. With outlook problems, the task of understanding the whole individual may be necessary. If both issues are at play, you could be walking into a hornet's nest.

One solution is the implementation of an effective sales recruiting system. Managers who recruit effectively and consistently are never held hostage by their sales people. Accepting that there are plenty of qualified sales candidates willing to step in and sell for your company will work wonders for outlook and responsibility within existing sales teams!

If these two issues are evident or lying just below the surface over the entire sales team, then you could be looking at a sales management issue. Clients tell us when outlook and responsibility are addressed through proper training of sales managers; the entire sales team becomes considerably more effective almost immediately.

Next time you feel the inmates are running the asylum, perhaps it's time to take a look into proper identification of issues like outlook and personal responsibility, along with the others discussed so far. Seica Systems would be more than happy to help your company overcome these problems!