Can Non-Copier People Sell Copiers?

By Allan Erickson
23 July 2001

Is that a rhetorical question? To be precise, yes...and no! There is a huge group of people in our industry who answer yes, of course non-copier people can sell copiers, even multifunctional devices (given computer literacy skills), the question does not even warrant an elongated answer. There is another group of hiring managers who insist on seeing only experienced people as candidates for their openings. For them, this is not a rhetorical question: it is to be responded to with a resounding "NO!"

As with many challenges, puzzles or questions – the truth lies somewhere in between. Logic tells us that if everyone is partially right, then everyone is partially wrong as well. Stated another way: nobody's right if everybody's wrong. (Buffalo Springfield)

When you get right down to it, it depends on the individual candidate you are evaluating, and the evaluation process you use to determine suitability. Ultimately the question pales (Can Non-Copier People Sell Copiers?) in deference to overriding considerations: Is my process for finding and hiring good people yielding quality hires, defined as consistent sales execution and personnel retention?

Experience As Your Guide
We've all had the experience of hiring someone who comes recommended and has direct industry background, only to find out the person is burned out or brings bad habits or is the archetypical shark – hit and run, hit and run – which doesn't do a lot for long-term customer relations. Similarly we have likewise taken a chance on someone with outside sales experience (no direct copier sales) and for compelling reasons we gave them the opportunity – and they shined! Also, we have hired both copier experienced candidates, and green trees fresh out of college, and they set the world on fire. However, some green trees cost thousands of dollars to hire and train, and they left or were fired in a couple months without having sold one unit.

All these field experiences would tend to tell us that hiring is a crapshoot, so just hold your breath and take your chances, but that is an expensive, and very risky approach. It is also an illogical conclusion. There are proven ways of limiting liability and increasing your odds of making good hires, whether the candidate brings direct industry experience or not.

Essential Attributes
From a variety of sources, our research indicates that a sales person must embody a majority of the following skills and characteristics to be successful. Therefore, evaluating applicants to see if they have a majority of these attributes will increase your odds of making a good hire:

• A people person
• Great communication skills
• Integrity
• Positive attitude
• Oriented to solving customer problems
• Hard worker, competitive
• Appropriately assertive
• Skilled in listening and asking qualifying questions
• Responsible and self-confident
• Stable, able to handle rejection
• A pleasant negotiator
• Passionate about product
• Knows buying/sales cycles
• Gains access to real decisionmakers
• Understandings the value of activity
• Team player, creative and energetic
• Professional appearance
• Not afraid to ask for the order

Fair & Objective Process
Time and again in recruiting and hiring seminars the point is stressed that the evaluation of applicants must center on job-related skills and attributes with an eye on always being objective. "Feelings" should not enter into it. For a hiring authority to decline a candidate because it didn't "feel" right is to shoot everyone in the foot, because that person could have been the next super star in the office if the evaluation had run the right course. Further on we list methodologies for evaluating candidates to maintain a fair and objective approach, all designed to achieve quality hires.

Job-Related Questions
Essentially there are two areas of job-related questioning for sales people we find most useful: sales track record verification, and real-life renderings of past performance in specific circumstances. Here are some examples of sales track record questions, which can be verified through reference checks:

1. What was the revenue in your area of responsibility when you started in your current role, and what is it now?

2. What is your monthly quota, and how often do you meet or exceed quota?

3. How many sales reps in your region, and how do you rank among them?

4. What is your average gross profit on a deal?

5. What is your track record selling service/supply agreements?

To get behind the resume' even further, questions like these require the applicant to relay real-life stories according to specific circumstances described in the questions themselves:

* Tell us about the most competitive sales situation you were ever in, what did you do, and how did things turn out?

* Think of a specific time when consistent prospecting really helped you avoid a personal slump when everyone else was crying "recession!"

* Please share a time when you wrote out your goal with an action plan, acted upon it, and tell us about the outcome.

* Listening skills are central to success in sales. Tell us about a time when your listening skills gave you the competitive advantage.

* Share an actual instance when your positive attitude and self-confidence helped you win the deal.

* Tell us about a time when you were able to step into another person's world to understand their take on things.

Five Areas of Evaluation
Giving each of the following areas of evaluation an equal weighting (20% of the overall consideration) will generally yield a complete and balanced picture of the candidate's suitability, leading to a determination to hire or not. Some managers even develop a point system from 1 to 10 in each category, and unless the candidate scores at least an 80%, the process is over.

1. Report from the recruiting or sourcing agency: resume', sales track record info and phone interview report, reference checks.

2. In-person interview with sales manager asking only job-related questions, with write up.

3. Second interview with another manager in the outfit.

4. Reference checks, and/or background check.

5. Certain forms of testing: focusing on skills assessment and avoiding the more subjective areas such as IQ or personality tests.

Conclusion
Hiring experienced people might help shorten ramp up time and save on training expense, but the risk is getting people who may no longer have fire in the belly, or they bring bad habits. Considering other outside sales professionals, even fired up college grads, is a viable option, if the evaluation process is solid and objective. We have even found inside sales people in related fields sometimes present transferable skills to outsides sales of business machines.

In any event the contemporary mantra for sustained growth and reduced turnover appears to be – Develop people! Ongoing training and mentoring of entry level people produces the next super major account rep. Nurturing major account people sows the seeds for growing your next branch manager, and helping managers succeed provides you with your next VP of sales.

Finally, a direct answer to the initial question, from my corner of the world is "yes." I say this because most people who enter the industry do so without direct copier experience. I was recruited to selling copiers after a career in journalism, followed by a couple years in media sales. Today's super sales studs used to sell cars, or advertising, or yellow pages or computers or real estate or whatever. Tomorrow's super stars may or may not present direct industry experience, but why limit the pool of talent and potential?

© 2001 Allan Erickson. All rights reserved.