Screening for Team Players
With sales managers orchestrating sales teams, an important criteria in hiring involves looking for “team players.” A sales managers need to test candidates for traits such as:
Their ability to cooperate and encourage others with whom they will work.
Their willingness to share praise with fellow reps instead of seeking credit only for themselves.
Their willingness to trust others in sharing information and tasks when working toward a common goal, instead of being anxious about controlling all aspects in the selling process.
Their focus on problem solving for costumers as the primary concern, instead of secondary issues such as how recognition or reward will be apportioned later on if the sale is successful.
Their eagerness to learn, as opposed to attitudes that suggest they will see themselves as wiser or smarter than others on the sales team.
The manager needs to seek out reps with confidence and integrity but without egos so that they will simply never make good team players. If the manager suspects that the prospect need to hog the limelight too much, is intolerant of others in matters of selling, or is unduly critical in attitudes to others, the manager should look elsewhere.
Candidates for whom working independently is the primary attraction of sales, will not fit an organization where coordinated teamwork is the key to sales results. Such candidates are better left to the more entrepreneurial, lone-wolf types of sales positions, such as selling stocks and bonds.
Tags: reps, Screening