Pre-Screen TeleSales People for Skills That
Match Your Company's Selling Proposition

The Internet is changing the staffing paradigm for many sales organizations. Face-to-face selling is being replaced and augmented by telephone sales follow-up to prospects who self-select by clicking on company web sites for solutions to their needs.

The critical component for success in this environment is to hire sales reps who have telephone sales skills and experience that match up with your company’s selling proposition.

1. If your company sells inexpensive, well understood products that require little explanation, you can hire part-time sales reps from a large pool of retired executives, housewives and college students who have minimal experience, good verbal skills, and can be readily trained.

2. When calling or customers to sell service contracts, upgrades, supplies and add-on products your present service representatives and sales support employees may be the first place to look to staff telesales team. If you have a direct sales force, the telesales team can also be an excellent entry level position and training grounds for new sales people.

3. If your company sells complex, high-value products and services, the game plan changes: In this case you'll have to recruit and hire full-time, highly skilled telephone sales professionals who can interact at a peer level with prospects. These pros will have the telephone persona to build trust and credibility using only the spoken word.

Fortunately, today there is an increasingly large pool of experienced part-time and full-time telephone sales people you can reach through employment web sites, classified advertising and employement agencies.

Whatever steps you take you take to staff your telephlone sales team, be aware that only one in ten people have the innate talent and personality make-up to succeed in telephone sales. As a result, the turnover rate for telephone sales can be three times that of a direct sales staff.

This fact makes it imperative that you not only do due diligence in checking resume facts and references, but, that you pre-screen the sales competency of telesales job candidates.

Here's the good news: You can you improve the odds of hiring successful telephone sales representatives with a very basic sales assessment you can perform over the phone.

This is how it works:

1. Provide candidates for telesales jobs with a concise description of your company and its products and services, as well as that of a prospective customer and provide them with details of a typical selling situation.

2. Allow them a few days to prepare for a telephone sales presentation at a specific day and time. You (or someone you designate) would then play the role of prospective buyer during this call.

3. Rate their performance on the following five criteria by awarding points from 1 = Poor to 5 = Excellent for each:

1. Previous Experience: Previous sales and industry experience count for a lot. Award one point for every year of related experience up to five. 1 2 3 4 5

2. Voice Quality: Listen closely and score for a regional-neutral accent, clear pronunciation, good vocabulary, moderate rate of speech, and most of all the tone of the voice. Tone is critical because it projects professionalism, enthusiasm and confidence. Deduct points if you detect nervousness, hesitancy, timidity or lack of confidence. 1 2 3 4 5

3. Call Opening: Score how well the candidate opens the sales call. Did they give their name and reason for calling? Did they sound confident? 1 2 3 4 5

4. Rapport Building: This key predictor of sales success is difficult to quantify but you’ll know it when you hear it. Did this person have the ability to make you trust them? Did they sound believable? 1 2 3 4 5

5. Closing the Call: Did they ask for the order or to further the process of consideration? Did they paraphrase your comments and use them to reinforce selling points? Simply put, was the candidate persuasive enough to be on your short list? 1 2 3 4 5

A sales person who scores 20 to 25 points is good bet to succeed, while one who scores 10 to 19 probably should not be considered for a telephone sales position.

For information on a more comprehensive telephone sales assessment click on http://www.salesjudge.com/.

Go to www.SalesJudge.com for more information on sales assessment solutions