Basic Concepts in recruiting and selecting SalesMen

Importance of correct recruitment and selection to the sales manager

Every Coompany's Present and future profits and prosperity, and not least your own figures as a salesman, are insperably bound up with the men and women the company employs and with those who are selected to work in your companies salesteam.

So no matter how skilled your company may be in training, developing and motivating your sales team, all the efforts and successes in these areas will depend upon the quality of the people that are selected to sell the companies products or servies.

Recruiting and selecting sales staff is thus one of the key tasks for every marketing and sales executive. It would be no exaggeration to say it is the most important work a manger does. It is also one of the most difficult. so you cannot afford to be an amateur.

The Selection decsions you make are important for two other reasons.

First - your company and in particular your sales force is a group of people who are working together to ensure that what they do individually and as a group adds up each year to the achievement of a number of objectives, e.g. planned sales targets, increasing the market share of a particular product or on the other hand ensuring that as a product declines, your share declines less steeply than your competitors; the development of customer relationships, confidence and respect for your company.

Secondly - From the salesman's point of view, the decision to join a company may be the most serious and far reaching one he has ever made. He is probably a husband, a father, a property owner, a person with fears, ambitions, needs and a whole set of attitudes conditioned from his own upbringing to life and to the kind of work he does. So a wrong decision about a job impinges upon his family and can be as disastrous for his wife and childrena s it is for your company.