What motivates great sales people ? Archives

Three top motivators for sales people – Money isn't one of them

May 8, 2025

How to motivate sales people is a common debate among sales managers and compensation specialists. It’s commonly assumed, by non-sales professionals, that sales people are money hungry individuals and that the more you pay them the better they’ll perform. That would be wrong.

In my 33+ years of sales and sales management, I’ve worked with many sales professionals, and not one that I would consider incredible, counted income as their key motivator. The joy of winning, helping and relating are the consistent traits I see in the incredibly successful sales people I’ve had the fortune of working with and learning from, in my career.

Joy of winning – Great sales people are addicted to competing and winning. That addiction drives them to always be looking for that extra action to increase their probability of winning. That joy draws them back to the battle no matter what the odds. The reason these people work so hard, is due to a healthy paranoia not because they starve for the big payday. When I talk to these people I can see and hear the joy and energy that surfaces when they talk about competing.

Great sales people also know how to learn when they don’t win. They clearly distinguish between losing and getting beat which is healthy and they learn from both. Losing is the hardest to take because it means they didn’t do all they could and realized it too late. Getting beat is when they know they’ve done everything in their control and still got beat. (It’d be like me going one on one with Lebron James and getting off one shot he doesn’t block. That would be a miracle.)

Joy of helping – Great sales people like to help people. Whether it’s getting information on your product or getting information on great places to vacation, sales people have a need to be helpful. It’s important here to distinguish between real help and manufactured help. The latter is when people create crisis or situations that require their assistance. This is not a trait of great sales people. The former is when an action or sharing of information will make it easier for the customer to get their desired result. This is the mark of a great sales person.

Joy of relating – Great sales people relate well to a diverse set of people. This doesn’t mean they’re all extroverts or charmers, but more that they genuinely are interested in the knowledge they gain from relating well with others. It’s more common than most think, for sales people to be introverted but still be very curious about what others know. The joy of relating comes from the sales person’s desire to obtain knowledge from other people rather than from a book, film or blog.

So, great sales people aren’t necessarily the stereotypical smooth-talking, cut throat, aggressive, big personalities. They aren’t the people that close the hardest during the interview and, in fact, many great sales people will tell you they don’t recall the last time they did a hard close.

Look for those who are addicted to winning, enjoy helping people and who naturally relate to a diverse set of people. These are the people who will sell the most for you and, consequently, they’ll be the ones who have the highest incomes, but not because money is their key motivator.

Athletes and great salespeople – Peas in a pod?

May 8, 2025

Hiring great salespeople is a priority for any business. When clients ask me what to look for I give them three key traits that I see in great salespeople – they are natural helpers, great at relating to all kinds of people and they’re addicted to winning which makes them very competitive. The problem is that it’s hard to validate these good sales traits in just a few interviews so what can we look for?

It turns out that people who choose to participate in competitive sports tend to have these good sales traits. A good friend, Lisa Hufford, sent me an edition of the Harvard Business Review with an article titled “What Separates the Strongest Salespeople from the Weakest?” One of the findings was that “over 85% of top salespeople played an individual or team sport in high school.”

I was a starter, never a star, but I chose to play sports all through school until I severed my left ACL, playing football, junior year of high school. I also played intramural sports in college and I coached my kids’ sports teams. I loved it.

I’ve observed the connection between sports and sales success for many years and now we have supporting research. What are things we learn from competitive sports that make for great salespeople?

Learning from winning, getting beat and losing – No matter what the outcome of a competitive pursuit, we learn things that make us more unbeatable the next time. We learn by getting beat by a better team. We learn equally as much by losing when we don’t prepare well enough.
Collaborating with a diverse set of people – Whether playing individual or team sports, you quickly learn that disagreement with teammates can’t interfere with your effort. We might have teammates we don’t like but when we take the field we have to collaborate to win. Athletes tend to be good at staying focused on the bigger picture.
Practice – Sports teaches us how to develop great habits. In sales, the more you do the right things, the better you will get. The more you practice building and delivering compelling value propositions, the more it becomes habit. The more you successfully deal with rejection, the more it becomes habit. Turning hard things into habit is a major difference between good and bad salespeople.
Getting on board even if you disagree – We don’t always agree with the play calls. Even so, everyone has to perform their role in order for the team to win. I was a running back and I wanted the ball to a fault. I’d get angry when my number wasn’t called. I found myself on the bench mid-season until Coach Jess Wilkins showed me film of me missing blocks. He said, “You’re the best ball carrier we have but if you don’t block you won’t play.” He helped me make blocking a habit and I became a starter again.

How do we find out if candidates played sports in high school or beyond?

What do they do for recreation and relaxation – People who played sports tend to find ways to continue feeding that need throughout their lives.
Look for their love of sports versus how good they were – We aren’t all created equally as it regards physical abilities. We’re looking for good teammates, relationship developers and competitive mindsets.
Are they still playing? – I worked with great salespeople and leaders who now race cars and bicycles. Others play their chosen sports in adult leagues. They are choosing to compete.
Can they describe the benefits and challenges of teamwork? – If they can describe both in detail they will likely know how to get on board with a team direction even when they disagree.
Can they tell you what winning feels like? – When I ask this question I get a bonus. I get some people who will tell me about the joy of being on a team that won. Others will tell me about individual pursuits but not how they contributed to a team win. I generally want the former.

Certainly, sports is not the only indicator of future success for salespeople and sales managers, but now we have research that says it’s important. Whether they were bit players, starters or stars, the research says that they have the foundation to be successful in sales.

Win lifelong customers by being unreasonably accountable

May 8, 2025

It’s critical that we understand the practice of RELIABILITY as it regards sales specifically and business in general, on our way to winning lifelong customers. It’s doubly crucial that we guard against the misconceptions that exist around this very important ability.

First we need to look at how people respond to the notion of being accountable for whatever the best next action entails – no matter what. What I often observe, when raising this ABILITY, is that people reject it. What I’ve learned after many years of managing people in the disciplines of sales and marketing, is that people hear accountability but they think responsibility. They respond negatively because they’re defending themselves from being blamed for an undesired result. Let’s define the two words in the context of sales.

Responsibility – Being responsible for something in business has two meanings. The present-tense is that we own the performance of an assignment, project or team. The past-tense is that we were the cause for something that happened.

Accountability – Being accountable for something in a business sense means that we own whatever happens next. We are in charge of the best next action. Whether we caused the problem or not we step up to own the solution.

Rob is one of the most customer-centric people I’ve had the privilege to work with. His nature, in life and in business, is to be unreasonably accountable.

Early in his career, Rob worked for a company that offered component manufacturing and supply chain services to a myriad of technology companies. His customer was a prominent computer manufacturer and he was competing for their business with a deeply entrenched incumbent service provider. In this case Rob had convinced the decision-maker to trial his company’s storage devices and was having an initial order shipped from Raleigh, North Carolina, to the customer’s location in Norfolk, Virginia. Ironically, because the incumbent was managing the project Rob was, in effect, delivering product to be used by his competitor.

As luck would have it, the shipment of the storage devices was damaged in transit. Rob, of course, immediately got on the phone with the project manager (his competitor) in the hopes of understanding what happened so he could determine his best next action for resolving the problem. The competitor was unclear about what had happened and was generally unhelpful. Rob hung up the phone with no more clarity about the situation than before he made the call.

Rob had a manager who instilled in him a lifelong discipline that “if you have a problem, get to the problem.” After brief consideration about how important it was to satisfy this prospective lifelong customer, Rob decided to get to the problem. He was able to get co-workers to complete tasks he had been assigned and he got in his car to drive the 184 miles to Norfolk, Virginia, so he could see firsthand what had happened to those storage devices. He not only was able to resolve the issue but he demonstrated the act of being unreasonably accountable to the decision-makers. That best next action led to Rob winning the business and, more importantly, his actions led to winning lifelong customers.

Being unreasonably accountable is about taking the best next action when our customer needs help. When our customer has a problem, whether we caused it or not, if we’re capable of helping – we do it. We step up because we want to help our lifelong customers – not because we want accolades but because we’re unreasonably accountable.

Top three motivators for great salespeople

May 8, 2025

Spoiler alert – Money is not a top motivator for salespeople that are consistently great.

How to motivate sales people is a common debate among sales managers and compensation specialists. It’s commonly assumed that salespeople are money hungry individuals and that the more you pay them the better they’ll perform. Wrong.

In my 30+ years of selling, managing salespeople and managing sales managers, not one that I would consider incredible, counted income as their key motivator. The joy of winning, helping and relating are the consistent traits I see in the great salespeople I’ve had the fortune of working with and learning from, throughout my career.

Joy of winning – Great salespeople are addicted to competing and winning. That addiction drives them to always be looking for that extra action to increase their probability of winning. That joy draws them back to the battle no matter what the odds. The reason these people work so hard, is due to a healthy paranoia about losing, not because they starve for the big payday. When I talk to these people I can see the joy and energy that surfaces when they talk about competing.

Great salespeople also know how to learn when they don’t win. They clearly distinguish between losing and getting beat which is healthy and they learn from both. Losing is the hardest to take because it means they didn’t do all they could and realized it too late. Getting beat is when they know they’ve done everything in their control and still got beat. (It’d be like me going one on one with Lebron James and getting off one shot he doesn’t block. That would be a miracle.)

Joy of helping – Great salespeople like to help people. Whether it’s delivering needed product information or details on great places to vacation, salespeople need to be helpful. It’s important here to distinguish between real help and manufactured help. The latter is when salespeople create crisis or situations that require their assistance. I see this too often and it’s not a trait of great salespeople. Real help is when an action or sharing of information makes it easier for the customer to get their desired result – a standard for incredible successful salespeople.

Joy of relating – Great salespeople relate well to a diverse set of people. This doesn’t mean they’re all extroverts or charmers, but more that they’re genuinely interested in the knowledge they gain from relating with others. It’s more common than most think, for sales people to be introverted but still be very curious about what others know. The joy of relating comes from the sales person’s desire to obtain knowledge from other people rather than from a book, film or blog.

Great salespeople aren’t necessarily the stereotypical smooth-talking, cut throat, aggressive, big personalities. They aren’t the people that close the hardest during the interview and, in fact, many great salespeople will tell you they don’t recall the last time they did a hard close.

(Note: This is an article first posted in 2013 but the topic has come up in multiple workshops so I decided to post it again.)

Hiring Successful Salespeople: What to look for

May 8, 2025

Hiring successful salespeople is a priority for all companies. In my first week at Hewlett-Packard, Irene Bjorklund (GM Northwest Area) made a comment that has stayed with me throughout my career. Someone had asked her, “How do you know when a person will be successful at sales?” Her answer was, “They’re instantly relatable, they’re comfortable in their own skin and they know how they’ve been successful whether it’s in sales, school, sports or whatever they’ve done.”

I’m fortunate that Irene has remained a strong mentor throughout my career, even after we had both left HP. Through conversations with her and my own experiences, I’ve been able to shed more light on her memorable comments from those early days after she hired me at HP.

They’re instantly relatable – These are people who we want to talk with. They’re listening and responding in ways that show they’re interested in what we have to say. It’s a natural conversation where neither of us feel like we’re making an effort. Their presence is genuine which naturally attracts conversation because we have the opportunity to learn something – it’s simply enjoyable. This doesn’t mean they’re the most charming, attractive or charismatic person in the room, but rather that they’re engaging and instantly relatable. Time just flies.

They’re comfortable in their own skin – They’re confident not cocky. Psychologists tell us that the line between cockiness and confidence is thin in how people act, but stark in the way they’ll perform. In a 2012 article on psychcentral.com John Grohol writes, “Arrogance is one result of building self-esteem from outward sources such as financial privilege or constant praise. However, yank the external support system away, and the person’s sense of self-worth goes with it.” We’re looking for salespeople whose self-esteem is built from within and we find them in people who aren’t overly connected to material possessions or any professional position they may hold. They are confident no matter what they have and no matter what they do.

They know how they’ve been successful – They can tell you what they’re good at, why they’re good and describe how they do it in simple and clear language that teaches the listener how they can apply the knowledge to their own success. In other words, successful salespeople are good at teaching others how to be more successful. It’s standard in all interviews to ask people about their successes and failures. The mark of a good salesperson is when they can tell you why they are successful in ways that allow them to repeat their wins and not repeat their failures.

People who are naturally relatable, confident not cocky, and self-aware are the ones who are destined to be successful salespeople. Hire them before they leave the building so you don’t end up selling against them.

Salesforce Automation – Three things you get from it

May 8, 2025

Salesforce Automation (SFA) has been around for many years in various forms. For most of its existence it’s been a tool for large corporations with significant IT budgets and IT staffs. Recently, it was reported by GetApp®, a site that connects businesses with sales management software vendors, that “48% of SMBs are migrating from manual methods to SFA software for the first time.”

What’s changed? The cloud, the cost, and software/service compatibility are key factors.

Today’s cloud offerings have turned previously complex software deployments into simple turn-key services that eliminate the need for complex infrastructure and support. GetApp® recently ranked the Top 25 Small Business Sales Apps and all are simple and secure cloud-based services with excellent support offerings. (See the rankings below.)

The cost of SFA is no longer calculated in the thousands of dollars but instead in the hundreds, for even the most comprehensive offerings. In many cases the cost is even lower for very simple cloud-based services.

The compatibility of these services has advanced greatly from antiquated offerings that only compile native reports. Today’s SFA tools integrate with productivity software, digital marketing tools and social media solutions. It’s becoming commonplace for small businesses to use automated marketing tools that are either part of the SFA service or easily integrated with it.

The advancements in SFA are substantial and with the help from services such as GetApp® it’s easy to find the right applications for your company. But there’s a caveat – even though SFA tools are simple to find and implement, the biggest barrier to success continues to be usage. Can you get your salespeople to use the tools effectively and will the data result in more sales or just more work for salespeople?

This is a conversation inside every company that implements SFA and the focus is usually about how you force salespeople to use the tool. Unfortunately, that’s the wrong conversation because the success of SFA starts with management, both sales and non-sales. The foundation for a successful SFA deployment is when management expressly needs and uses the information produced by these tools.

Three things that management can do to motivate salespeople to keep SFA tools updated:

Coaching: Managers and executives can use the information in the SFA tool to structure one-on-one coaching sessions. The SFA tool, when updated honestly by salespeople, will outline successes and difficulties. When sales managers and other leaders, base coaching on helping with those difficulties it motivates salespeople to keep them updated.

I worked with a marketing executive who met with salespeople weekly in order to stay current on customer issues. She would have 45 minute meetings with agendas built from the sales challenges she saw articulated in the SFA tool. Meetings with her were highly valued and she would only meet with salespeople who had current and relevant information in their tool. No surprise – salespeople were motivated to stay current with their tool.

Executive updates: It’s common for salespeople to build executive summaries when executives make customer visits. When required briefing documents are different than what is in the SFA tool, salespeople will forgo tool updates and just focus on creating pristine briefing documents. If, instead, company leaders review information in the tool and don’t require extra work by field personnel, it’s amazing how motivated salespeople are to keep their tool updated.

Smooth change management: The only certainty in any business is that things will change. Salespeople and sales managers earn promotions and/or move on – executives do the same.

When I took over the Asia Region for one of Microsoft’s divisions, I learned from one of my mentors that all I needed to know should be in the SFA tool. He suggested that I not ask for transition reports from my predecessor or any of my directors but instead just review the tool. By acting on his suggestion it helped me learn the unfiltered realities, it helped me to see who wasn’t performing, and it helped me see where my support was needed. It was much more effective than having everyone build customized reports which resulted in more work and occasionally fabricated information.

You’ll see better utilization of SFA tools when sales and corporate leaders consistently use the information to enhance coaching, simplify executive updates, and smooth the constant change management that is required in all organizations.

The best sales people are proud to sell – Three simple reasons

May 8, 2025

The best sales people are proud to sell – Three simple reasons

Many people sell for a living but they either don’t know it or don’t want to acknowledge it. If you aren’t proud of your job, I submit that you can’t be incredibly successful at it. My goal is to give the reader a way to think about selling such that you can be proud and incredibly successful whether you are called a sales person or not.

Everyone has heard the phrase, ‘Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ In anything having to do with selling the axiom is ‘Love what you do or you’ll never work.’

What is selling?

Selling is the act of helping people buy something that benefits them and their businesses, within the bounds of what the seller can successfully deliver.

If you are helping a relative find good healthcare and you believe that you can help them make better decisions, you are selling.
If you are a server at a nice restaurant and the customer’s experience, with you, determines if they will return again, you are selling.
If you are an attorney that relies on good word-of-mouth about how well you helped your clients, you are selling.

As Daniel Pink says in his bestselling book “To Sell Is Human”, we are constantly trying to, “…coax others to part with resources.”

In business it’s always about serving customers/clients who are people. It’s never about tricking or misleading them. Unfortunately, the sales profession is burdened with negative stereotypes. All of us have had experiences, as customers, that support the negative stereotypes. We’ve all dealt with a sales person who lacks integrity and comes across as sleazy. Regrettably negative experiences stick in people’s memories. This is the foundation of negative stereotypes.

Consistent practices of incredibly successful sales and business people

Competing all of the time – It’s no secret that successful sales people and business people, are competitive. It’s common for the overt, untoward competitiveness to become part of the stereotype. What isn’t common is the knowledge that the best sales people compete, the hardest, to earn visibility and credibility when customers aren’t buying. They are building the foundation of a productive acquisition by learning about the customer, their industry and their people.

Relating all of the time – Any effort to develop a deep relationship in the midst of competition is viewed with a skeptical eye. People are people and when they know they are being sold to they will be guarded. Developing meaningful personal relationships with customer/client decision-makers cannot happen in the midst of the buying process so you have to be relating all of the time.

Helping all of the time – Only showing up when the buying process starts is the worst thing a sales person can do. Customers evaluate our offers of help differently when they are in the midst of a buying decision. They know we are competing and naturally apply more scrutiny to what they hear or see even if we are genuinely offering help.

Be a proud seller whether you are a sales person or not. Compete all of the time, relate all of the time and help all of the time. Being proud will make you love what you do. Love what you do and you’ll never work another day in your life. Love what you do and you’ll be incredibly successful.

Situational selling is what the best sales people do

May 8, 2025

Business leaders still ask me for the “if-then” formula for successful selling. They want a turnkey method that says if yes then do this. If no then do that. I call this decision-tree selling and we see it used effectively in “self-select” selling models.

If we want customers to self-select our product, without engaging with sales people, then we build marketing materials and interactive sales tools that lead the customer through their self-determined buying process or decision-tree. A great example is Amazon where they give the buyer all of the information they need to self-select without ever interacting with a human being.

With Amazon, the business model starts with the expectation that customers are knowledgeable about the product category for which they are shopping. It also presumes that a single person is making the purchase decision and that their information needs are similar to a high percentage of shoppers.

The customer searches for what they need like “printers” and Amazon generates options. The customer chooses what is most important to them. Is it price? Is it ratings? Amazon’s system is also smart enough that it knows to offer accessories such as paper and ink. The customer gets enough information to self-select what they will buy and they execute the purchase with a click of the mouse. This is self-selection selling (a.k.a. transactional selling) in 2014.

B2B selling does not allow for decision-tree selling. Each sales situation is different. A few examples include:

Multiple decision points: Generally, we are selling to more than one person. We sell to different people from different groups with different needs. We also have to navigate political environments.
Multi-faceted competition: We have companies selling against us but we also have internal opponents, apathy, and other projects competing for the same resources.
Past experience: Previous purchases may have gone badly and they may not have even involved us. The decision maker who was positive and aggressive last year may now be cautious and hesitant.

The best B2B sales people know there is no simple decision tree because no two sales situations are the same. The number of decision permutations is endless. If there is no standard series of steps and if no two sales situations are the same, how do we identify sales people who will do the best in all situations? How do we find the best situational sales people?

Winners: The best sales people are addicted to winning. Everyone likes to win but great sales people need it. As a consequence, these people intensely study their customers, their products and their industry with a goal of always getting better. This is much like an athlete or musician who is always practicing. Great competitors also differentiate losing from getting beat. Losing is when we fail to do everything we can to win. Getting beat is when the competition was just better on that day and we learn from it.
Helpers: The best sales people are also addicted to helping others. They need to help others in a genuine way and providing vital information about the right product or service is a way to satisfy this need. We have to be careful here because there are those who like to create problems so they can save the day. The best sales people, thankfully, want to solve real problems so they can provide genuine help.
Relaters: The best sales people are also addicted to building relationships with diverse people. The more diverse the people the more charged up the best sales people get. This does not mean they are all the stereotypical extroverted, charming people who are the loudest in the room. It does mean they are genuinely interested in learning what makes other people tick, whether in a sales situation or not. When we are genuinely excited about learning what makes people tick we learn why they make buying decisions. This is the foundation of the best sales people.

The best sales people handle situational selling by acting on their healthy addictions to winning, helping and relating. Find this combination of traits in employees or potential employees, and you will find your best sales people.

Practice makes sales

May 8, 2025

Malcolm Gladwell made the “10,000-hour rule” famous in his book Outliers. He chronicles the path of multiple people who became great in sports, music, technology, etc. He shares research that shows that successful people aren’t born with superstar capabilities. Instead they find things they’re passionate about and practice them more than everyone else. In the book Gladwell posits that those people who have practiced something for 10,000 hours or more become great at it.

In the world of sales, there’s ongoing debate about whether sales people are born or made. I’ve heard business leaders say “you’re either a people person or you’re not.” We’ve all heard the stereotype of sales people being naturally outgoing, extroverted people who have the “gift of gab.” I’m here to tell you that it’s all about practice and for me it started way before I got a sales job.

I started school in the 1960s when America was deep in racial tension. Starting in kindergarten, I was bullied every day, purely due to my race, to the point where I was afraid to go to school. Adding to this I was shy, small and the youngest in my class. My birthday was so late that in most other states I would have been in kindergarten when most of my classmates where starting first grade. So to me, they weren’t just bullies, but big bullies. But from every challenge comes learning and strength.

By second grade I had learned two incredible lessons that have helped me throughout my life. First, the bullies didn’t bully kids they knew. I was good in math and reading. My teachers, Mrs. Feely and Mrs. Mangles, asked me and two other kids to help others with their homework. It turns out that some of those kids I was asked to help were the bullies. Some continued their bullying ways but most figured out I wasn’t the bad person they assumed I should be, given I was Chinese. I learned that helping people was a way to create VISABILITY in the right way.

By helping, I also earned CREDABILITY and the kids who assumed I was stupid because of my race figured out that it was actually viable for them to learn something from me. I was showing CAPABILITY in teaching and was showing RELIABILITY as a friend. I stopped waiting for teachers to give me direction, but instead looked for opportunities to help people with math and reading.

The second thing I learned was, not as noble but it, nevertheless, was a great lesson. I learned that I had physical abilities that were conducive to self-defense. By second grade, I was tired of getting beat up so I started fighting back. After getting into another fight on the playground our PE teacher, Mr. Bird, asked me to come to his office. I prepared for the worst but I had a surprise in store.

Mr. Bird was an ex-Marine and while he was muscular, he was small. My guess is he had been on the receiving end of some bullying when he was young. Mr. Bird sat me down and asked, “Where did you learn to punch with both hands?” I didn’t understand the question so he said, “Most people can’t punch with both hands. You’re also faster than most of the kids out there. You may be small but you’re an athlete. Has anyone told you that?” I answered “No.” He went on to tell me that I had to protect myself but that fighting had to be a last resort. He said that showing people you’re an athlete in different ways was a better way to get the bullies to stop. He was right.

As I got more involved in sports the guys who at one time were bullying me were now my teammates. Instead of taking my ball on the playground they’d invite me to play ball with them. In both ways, I created VISABILITY in the right way. I created VISABILITY, VIABILITY and CAPABILITY with former bullies who were now my teammates. By the fifth grade the bullying had pretty much stopped.

By having to deal with bullies, I was practicing THE FIVE ABILITIES of selling. I practiced how to relate to people and I was finding fun in helping them. I also learned a more meaningful definition of winning which was not beating others but instead getting others to choose me. As Gladwell might say, I started practicing VISABILITY, CREDABILITY, VIABILITY, CAPABILITY and RELIABILITY when I was five years old. Look for people who started practicing when they were young and you’ll find great sales people.

Hire the rolodex builder, not the rolodex – 3 traits

May 8, 2025

I’ve heard from many start-up CEOs and Founders, “I want sales people with a rolodex.” Since I left Microsoft, to start The Five Abilities™, I’ve been approached by recruiters who are very open that their company/client wants my rolodex. They assume after 30+ years in tech that I must have a good network. The truth is I probably have a better rolodex than they assume because I’m still building it, and with a broader audience.

My intent is not to brag but instead to emphasize the importance of hiring sales people who know what to do when they’ve turned to Z, in the rolodex, and still need more prospects. Yes, hiring people with a great network is ideal and reference selling is very efficient but the only certain thing about a rolodex is that it gets old. Even in today’s networked world, it’s more important than ever that we hire sales people who know how to open doors when they don’t know the people on the other side. If we only look for the rolodex we might miss the raw sales skills that can build a rolodex from scratch.

3 traits to look for…

Helpers – People can have a lot of connections and still not have a great network. Productive networks are built by people who have a history of being consistent helpers and value providers both at a professional and a personal level. These are people that others call for help. Walk into an organization and ask people who they seek for help and coaching. When you start hearing the same name repeated, you’ve found the center of a productive network.

Improvisers – I’m a musician and in the music world good improvisation is the sign of a good musician because no matter what is being played they can join in. The best improvisers make the music better. The reason improvisation is so important in selling is because the best rolodex builders develop meaningful connections in varying circles and find the opportunities for very different people to form common bonds for success. This merges rolodexes and creates an even larger network.

Information junkies – Rolodex builders get high on new ideas and different opinions. They can see multiple points of view even when they don’t agree and they can merge disparate ideas into collaborative action. They aren’t know-it-alls, but they know a lot and they know how to use information to help others. Helping others draws more people and more information thus feeding their habit and their rolodex.

Helper, improviser and information junkie. When we find these traits in a candidate, hire them before they leave the building because someone in their growing network, which may include the competition, is waiting outside to ask them for help.

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