Hiring and Training Good Salespeople

In 1964, David Mayer and Herbert M. Greenberg released a study that began to change selling, or at least who was hired to do it. Their work had taken 7 years and the empirical results were amazing. They concluded that there were two overriding attributes to good sales people. They must have empathy and ego.

Empathy, in the context of their report, meant having the ability to feel the way the customer felt. Without empathy, we are guessing at what the shopper wants or what their real problem is. With a great deal of empathy, we know. Shoppers feel that they are understood and open up even further. The purpose of empathy is to close the sale. After all, you cannot enhance the shopper’s quality of life without selling them something they need.

Sales people with little empathy often fail at sales. They are seen as poor listeners who just can’t get in touch with the customer.

Ego is the drive to get the sale. He or she needs to get the sale. Closing deals is a part of their identity. They feel much better about themselves once they close a deal. Failure hurts a person with ego. They are motivated to sell because it is the only way they can avoid failure and feel success. Yet failure does not break them. They can accept the fact that many, even most, of their sales efforts will not succeed and keep driving hard.

It really doesn’t matter if someone is interest in selling if they don’t have a good healthy balance of empathy and ego. If they don’t care enough, they will not be good listeners. While they will get some sales through perseverance, they will muck up a good many opportunities and leave the firm with a poor image. If they don’t have enough ego to drive home the close they may be seen by customers as nice and caring, but too many of them will buy from someone else.

Training is essential to becoming a good sales person. However, all the training in the world will not make someone succeed if they simply don’t have the psychological makeup to be a sales person. The combination of hiring right and training well is critical.

The necessity that inspired Mayer and Greenberg’s research was the fact that 50% of insurance sales people were turning over in the first year and 80% within three years. If turnover is high in your store, take a look at your hiring criteria and your training. Hire the right people, and your training investment will generate a much higher return. Hire the right people without providing the training and you will likely lose them to a store that will.