The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [48]
About half of the salespeople I’ve worked with over the years gave up after a single rejection. They would call a client, the client would say no, and the salesperson would never call that person back. Very few, perhaps only 4 percent to 5 percent, keep trying after four rejections. Yet, as you learned in the previous chapter, I’ve found that it takes about 8.4 rejections to get a meeting. And what makes the difference between people who will face that rejection one time and quit or 40 times and never quit is determined purely by the strength of their ego.
However, since it’s difficult to find people who will face eight rejections and keep trying, I now build in procedures that require salespeople to try again and again and again. In fact, I build in 12 attempts that a salesperson will make, and I educate the salesperson in advance that the client will say no at least eight times. This sets up the expectation in the salespeople to receive rejection and not take it personally. They’re trained on the first day of the job that they are going to go after the client 12 times, even after the client has said no every time.
Yes, you can teach some people to go back again and again, which we’ll cover in Chapter Nine. But it’s great when you hire someone who, without you ever asking or training, is built that way. These people will be way more persistent to close that sale. They also have the personal ambition that drives them to continually improve every thing they do. Wouldn’t you love to hire people who innovate and expand upon and improve every single task you assign to them?
If you don’t understand the personality profile that makes top-producing salespeople, you might just turn them away after interviewing them. A high-dominance and high-influence candidate can seem overly eager in a job interview—maybe even come on too strong. Don’t let a little bravado put you off; it is the essential ingredient in every superstar. During an interview, the person is the product, so they must present themselves with confidence and assure you that they are the one for the position. This aggressive behavior will scare some employers, but it is exactly what you need in a salesperson.
Using personality profiling will enable you to single out the superstars in your applicant pool. DISC profiles and other “behavioral assessment” tests are good tools to evaluate a candidate. Coming up in a few pages, I will give you a method for profiling that you won’t find in any of these tests, and in five minutes, it will tell you if you have a person with high dominance and high influence. As I’ve said, I’m obsessed with becoming more and more accurate about hiring, especially about hiring salespeople. After taking a half-dozen “behavioral assessment” profiles and examining a half-dozen more, my staff and I have found one that is remarkably accurate—so much so that we negotiated to have this testing mechanism added to several of my Web sites. At www.chetholmes.com you’ll find a blue button that says, TEST STAFF AND NEW-HIRES W/AMAZING RESULTS.
Exercise
Look again at your list of initiatives or jobs for which hiring a superstar could change every thing. Write down the personality profile you think would make someone succeed in each job. If you get stuck, think of someone you know or a famous person or character who would do well in the job and list the traits that you associate with that person.
Now we are ready to give you the full guidelines for how to advertise, interview, and screen the weak from the stars.
Guidelines to Hiring Superstars
Design Your Ad to Attract Top Producers
My ads begin like this:
SUPERSTARS ONLY $50K to $300K
Don’t even call unless you are an overachiever and can prove it. Come build an empire within our fine, progressive company. We are in the XYZ industry, but we don’t hire backgrounds. We hire top producers. If you’re average, you can earn $50K with us. If