You are hired. Now what should I do?

It is important to hire the right person for the job and the setting. But what happens after you hire someone? How can you help the new hire adapt and lay a course to be successful?

I have often been asked to coach a new hire for the first six months when an environment is particularly challenging. For instance, I was recently asked to coach a newly hired manager, because the day that she started, the company announced it was being sold and her hiring executive would be retiring shortly. And you wonder why she might have been a bit stressed?

Any new hire is going to be concentrating on two things initially. First, learning the job and demonstrating competence are key drivers. This is the “See, you hired the right person” motivation. Often, they are driven to make changes and prove their abilities quickly—a normal behavior for new hires but often a problematic behavior, especially if they have not learned the job or environment well enough to create meaningful change. Still, most new hires try to do this. They are like the seller who tries to close without learning what the customer really wants.

Second, new hires want to fit in with the others in the work environment. They want to find someone with whom they can bond and build a positive relationship. Obviously, introverts have the greatest struggle with this aspect of onboarding. Also, if the environment includes conflict directed toward the new hire, problems will arise.

Therefore, integration is often tough for many new hires. They frequently experience what psychologists call social anxiety. Typical integration conflicts that can result in social anxiety include:
• An overlooked incumbent may be resentful
• the new hire’s charge to change things may cause ripples
• the new hire may be unable to get the information that is needed to do the new job
• the new hire’s role may be encroaching on the responsibilities that once belonged to someone else
• a supervisor may lack good skills with everyone, including the new hire
• The new hire feels excluded, judged, and/or passively resisted

The biggest cost of such anxiety is a tendency for the new hire to withdraw and avoid asking questions. Reluctance to ask questions is a natural reaction to resistance, because someone new does not want to highlight his/her ignorance about the new job or the organization. Yet, the new hire, to be successful, must gain information and learn quickly. Anything that reduces a willingness to ask questions also reduces successful integration. If a new hire feels he/she must guess rather than gain clarity through questions, there is an increased chance of failure during the onboarding period.

So how can you help reduce this stress and increase the chances of a successful integration into your company?

The best solution to such a situation rests with the supervisor. A new hire suffering social anxiety needs a positive relationship with the supervisor. Through that relationship, a safe route to asking questions and gaining information can be found.

The focus of that relationship, however, needs to be twofold. First, it needs to create an environment where the new hire feels unthreatened and is, therefore, willing to ask questions. Second, the relationship should be focused primarily on ensuring that the new hire ultimately gains the information he/she needs to do his/her job effectively. It is a purposeful relationship with limits suggested by common sense and organizational realities. If that relationship is not bound by strict limits, it is likely to be seen, questioned and resented by others, and the relationship can easily contribute to even more exclusion and resentment toward the new hire.

Help the new hire learn how to get things done in your organization. Keep in mind that often the “needed” information is not processes and procedures but, rather, who holds the tribal knowledge and who can actually get things done in the organization. Once things start getting done, the culture will begin to adapt to the new hire and relationships within the work group will resolve themselves or become an indicator for further changes in the work group.

It should also be mentioned that, just as new hires get social anxiety, the introduction of a new person into an existing work group creates anxiety for members of that work group, too. Sometimes referred to as the “impact network”, research suggests that a new midlevel manager, for instance, has a potential negative performance impact on an average of 12 or more people! Helping a newly hired manager build relationships with direct reports, bosses, and peers is critical to both his or her success and the productivity of others. A new hire needs help learning about his/her network, and those in that network need to learn to adjust and adapt to the new person. A supervisor or boss needs to be alert and proactive in addressing such feelings and work to alleviate whatever myths or realities are present that are creating the anxiety. Role clarity and focus on shared outcomes can often help with this process. Inviting senior team members to play a role in helping the new hire learn and connect is also a way to reduce problems.

Outside coaching for a new employee can often help the person navigate the dangerous waters of onboarding. Such coaching typically needs to include coaching the supervisor, because the relationship between the new hire and the supervisor will largely determine if the new hire is successful (assuming the new hire is a good hire).

(Thanks to Drs. Nifadkar and Bauer for your recent article in the Journal of Applied Psychology for providing the research basis for much of this blog.)

Dr. Duane Lakin is author of Ten Ways Top Sellers are Different and The Unfair Advantage: Sell with NLP!

Interview Tip: Beware of first impressions and your "gut" reaction

As a professional interviewer, I am always amazed that I still see managers and executives who say to me, “My gut tells me if someone is a good choice.”

Your “gut” is your unconscious making a decision for you. If you don’t use discipline, such as that found in a structured interview, you are falling victim to a known psychological fact: Your unconscious decides in less than three minutes if you like someone. If you are a seller, this is a critical insight. Sell yourself in the first three minutes. If you are the hiring manager, you need to pay close conscious attention to this 3-minute phenomenon.

What do YOU do in that first three minutes of an interview?

Average interviewers spend the initial interaction in “small talk”.  They rationalize this by saying they are trying to put the candidate at ease. I am always a bit skeptical about who is putting whom at ease, but the behaviors are the same. Small talk. Friendly banter. Ease into the interview.

Unfortunately, by the time you and the candidate are ready to “ease into the interview,” your unconscious has probably made a decision. From then on, the average interviewer is asking questions to give him/her a reason to justify hiring the person. The “gut” has already spoken…”I like (or don’t) like her.” I have seen some managers who say they only need to interview for about five minutes to know if the person is the right one or not. In reality, those managers indeed know if they like the candidate, but they have no idea if the candidate is the right one to hire.

Is it any wonder that I tell my clients, “My job is to find a reason that you should not hire the candidate.” I am trying to overcome their “gut” bias.

Go ahead and “ease into the interview.” Be gracious and friendly. But don’t make a hiring decision during this time. Fight to overcome your unconscious. Move from small talk into a structured interview with planned behavioral questions to introduce analysis, judgment, and discipline into the interview process. Overcome your “gut.” And, yes, this takes more than three minutes.

Dr. Duane Lakin is an industrial psychologist, professional interviewer and author of “Ten Ways Top Sellers are Different” as well as “The Unfair Advantage: Sell with NLP!”

Understanding Top Sellers: Observation 4..They have "Curiosity"

T op Sellers approach a sales call in a manner different from average sellers. The Top Seller is thinking about what he/she wants to learn in this call to help accomplish the goal. The Top Seller is curious. The goal is well-defined, and the pre-call thoughts are about what questions to ask and what information to look for to move the process forward. The average seller is thinking about what questions the prospect may ask of them! This is a critical difference between Top Sellers and average sellers. Top Sellers are thinking about what they need to learn, and average sellers are thinking about what they need to say. It is, therefore, not surprising that a Top Seller does far more listening in a sales call than an average seller. Top Sellers know the power of knowledge. Information gives them confidence and an increased sense of the control they seek. As a result, they are always looking to see what they can learn that will help them achieve their goals. They ask questions and they listen. A food ingredient company had been working with a major food processor for several years. The sales people worked closely with the R&D lab where new formulations were being tested. One day, while leaving the lab and walking through the main production floor, a new sales person on the team asked, “Isn’t that tomato soup?” “Yes, of course,” he was told. “That is our biggest seller.” It turns out that tomato soup needs a key ingredient that was one of the primary products sold by the food ingredient company. But for two years or more, no one had ever asked what else the customer made and would there be other opportunities to sell them additional products. They had simply gone to the lab and sold small orders of their products. Until a new sales person, a potential “Top Seller”, joined the team, no one was curious enough to look around and ask about other applications. Unlike the sales team above, Top Sellers are curious. They ask questions. They truly want to know. They are interested in what is around them and what they can learn from others to help them have an advantage. This curiosity can sometimes take the form of competitive intelligence gathering, such as reading a competitors invoice that was accidentally left on someone’s desk. Just as often, it is an active and conscious effort to ask questions and learn more about a customer as well as a market. It is not surprising, perhaps, that there is a program called “Question-Based Selling.” Top Sellers ask questions. But these questions cannot be canned. They can’t learn “Five Questions to Ask Your Prospect.” True curiosity is not just an attitude. It is a behavior.  Top Sellers are not looking for answers. They are looking for insights and information.  They ask questions and listen to the answers. Top Sellers want to know what the prospect worries about and wants to achieve. What problems does the prospect have? What help does the customer need? How does the prospect want to be sold? The questions that are important to a Top Seller are not “qualifying questions”. They are not part of “consultative selling”, a process that can test the patience of some buyers. The typical sales process where a sales person asks about needs or current vendors or similar “questionnaire” questions does not provide what Top Sellers want to know. In fact, such questions can seem like an interrogation and can be off-putting to prospects.  Top Sellers want to know who the prospect is, what is important to that person, and how is the best way to influence and make a difference to this individual. What is the business and where is the pain? Who are my competitors? Who is influential in making decisions in the business? What is your wish-list? These are more broad-based than “How many pounds of nitric acid do you use in a month?” These are things she can learn by listening and observing, not by following a checklist of questions. These are not answers to questions she has to ask because her sales manager requires them. These are answers she wants to discover to satisfy her curiosity and to give her an advantage. It may be because of their curiosity that Top Sellers are good listeners and, often, good conversationalists. They often have a broader knowledge of topics and issues, and because they are always learning, they can talk intelligently about many different topics. Still, it is their ability to listen that most correlates with their success in sales. It is hard to sell value if you do not want to listen and learn. Curiosity also fits well with the competitive drive of Top Sellers. Simply put, they want to know more than the next person. They want to know how someone else can sell or make a change, and they use that information to make themselves more competitive and successful. Another key correlate of curiosity is the Top Sellers’ relative comfort with ambiguity. Few average sellers are comfortable outside the lines of what they expect and know and are accustomed to seeing. Top Sellers are not afraid of ambiguity, because they are curious. They want to know more. They want to understand and find clarity. Average sellers (and politicians) want to get back “on message” and talk about what they planned to talk about. In a similar manner, Top Sellers leave a sales call re-playing the interaction in their head. They are thinking about what was said and what they could have said in a different manner. They are learning from their experience, even if they failed to achieve their goal. Every interaction becomes a learning experience. Average sellers typically are thinking about what they need to do next or where they need to go now that the sales call is concluded. Curiosity does not typically equate to wanting to participate in “sales training”, however. Top Sellers are curious about ways to reduce their fear and the risk of failing with useful knowledge and information. While curious and motivated to learn what will give them better control and influence, they are not eager to participate in formal learning situations. They are skeptical. They are also fearful of looking foolish or stupid in front of their peers. Typical training programs are painful to most Top Sellers. Still, they will be curious and learn enough to use a new skill when they need it to win their goal. The President of a small manufacturing company was a participant in a workshop on psychological selling skills. He was largely unimpressed with the program, because he believed he was a very successful seller and did not need to do the work needed to learn some new skills. In the participant survey, he did not rate the program very high. The next week, he was making a sales presentation. Unfortunately, it was not going well, and he knew it. As he described it later, “I didn’t know what to do, so I tried one of the crazy things Lakin was talking about last week. All of a sudden, the room changed, and I got my price without any real pushback or negotiation. I would like to change my rating that I gave that presentation last week. It was definitely a ‘10’.” Top Sellers, like most people, do not want to work hard enough to change how they do things. However, Top Sellers have the courage to notice when something is not working and the curiosity to ask themselves, “What else might work?”  Others see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. How often has a sales person told her manager, “Oh, I think it went very well” when, in fact, it did not go well at all. This is not a lie. This is simply failure to have the courage to notice when things are not going well. Top Sellers expect to win, and they know when they are not winning. They have the determination to stay engaged and involved until they are successful (if possible). As a result, if they are aware of a new option or a new way to make a proposal, they will often be one of the first of their peers to try it. While not showing a lot of enthusiasm for the training per se, they will draw from that training when they need it.   Trainers should not expect Top Sellers to be enthusiastic participants in a training session, unless they can incorporate competitive games into the learning process. Yet Top Sellers are often the first to test a skill in the field and report results back to the others. But they will only use the skill when existing skills are not working for them and they ask themselves, “What else might work here?” Learning for the sake of learning will not motivate them. Learning must contribute to their sense of control over a situation when failure is suddenly a real possibility. When there is a chance they might fail, they will learn and use anything that is seen as a useful way to give them a competitive advantage.

Understanding Top Sellers: Observation 3..They have "Grit"

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It takes energy to sell. Any good seller is motivated to get up and go to battle. But for the Top Sellers, it is different. They have more than energy. They have more than “motivation.” They have “grit.”

Angela Duckworth is an assistant professor at Penn. She has been studying “grit” for many years. She defines it as “sticking with things over the very long term until you master them.” A person with grit has more than energy. He or she has stamina and determination.

A Top Seller with “grit”  wants a goal badly enough that working toward that goal is not work but just part of the process. An average seller, for instance, is willing to make cold calls but may complain about it and find other things to fill the day when possible. A Top Seller who needs to make cold calls to sell will look upon the activity as just another thing that has to be done. It is not separate from the goal of being a good seller and meeting sales goals. It is one and the same.

A recent candidate told me about getting a job with one of the largest chemical companies in the world. He said his first two months were spent in what they called Sales Boot Camp. About a third of the people left before the training was completed. either of their own choice or because they were asked to leave. He said it never occurred to him that he might not finish. (Optimism) It was hard, but it was what was necessary to get the job and excel.

Many people have goals. But how many never let go of them? As Duckworth points out, graduating from a two year school is a challenge, but it is nothing like graduating from a four-year college. It usually takes “grit” to hang in and go through all the academic hurdles, pay the price, and forego other activities to get the four-year degree.

In spite of Duckworth’s example, a college degree…or the absence of a college degree…does not, by itself, lend any clues about “grit.”  Does getting a degree online require as much “grit” as getting a degree in a conventional academic setting? It depends. It is not the degree; it is what it took to get it. That is how you find out about “grit.” The candidate who told me recently that he is thinking about getting his college degree does not have “grit”, at least in the area of academic achievement. Thinking is not all that tough. But the person may have “grit” in other areas of his/her life. Academic “grit” is not a pre-requisite to being an achiever in the work world and in sales. But the successful candidate must show some “grit” somewhere in life that is meaningful and relevant to the position in question.

A Top Seller must have “grit” to meet quotas and excel. It helps to be smart and driven, but it is focus and persistence that characterize “grit.”

Athletes often have “grit”, and their stories give a hint about what to listen for when interviewing in search of a Top Seller. “ You gotta want it so bad you are willing to be exhausted” was how one football player described college pre-season.  Vladimir Horowitz, the esteemed piano player, hated practicing, but he practiced four hours a day, because that was what it took to be great. A pro-bowler in the NFL said, “Sure it hurt, but I knew it was worth it” when describing the exercises and drills he endured every year of his playing career.  A Navy SEAL described his experience in this way: “It was the toughest training I ever experienced but I knew it was necessary.”

“Worth it”? “Necessary?” These words only make sense when paired with a clear focus, even obsession, toward an end goal.  To someone with “grit”, the end goal is so important that whatever it takes to get there is worth it. Necessary. No complaints. No skimping. No sneaking out of practice or finding excuses to not make calls. The goal is clear and the steps to get there are simply part of the process.

When interviewing sales candidates, ask “grit” questions.

            "What have you wanted so badly that you gave up other

             things to achieve?”

“Was there ever anything so important to you that you suffered through things others might have called boring or hard or even impossible? Describe what you endured. Why did you do that? (Listen for the goal.) Why was that so important to you?”

“What was the most difficult learning experience you ever had?”

“What was the toughest challenge you ever faced? How did you overcome it? Why did you go to so much trouble?”

“Tell me about something you wanted to master but had to really struggle to reach that level.”

“Grit” is character. Character differentiates good sellers from Top Sellers. People with “grit” do not give up. Nor do they complain. They do the “reps” and run the steps and study the financial reports and hit balls out of the sand and play scales. They do what they must to reach their goal of being excellent. Some say it takes 10,000 hours to excel at something. Those with “grit” are not keeping track of the time.

Understanding Your Top Sellers: Observation 2...They need to control

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UNDERSTANDING TOP SELLERS

OBSERVATION TWO:  Need to control

A Chicago company that processed residential mortgages routinely hired new college graduates for their training program. Once trained, these young people would be assigned to field offices to sell their services to residential brokers. Part of their sales pitch was a commitment to processing loans quickly to enable the realtor to get a closing date quickly.

The training program was in the home office, and all trainees were immediately assigned to processors who handled the paper sent from the field. It would only take about three days to know who was going to be a top seller. By the third day, at least one new hire would realize that his/her future success depended on these office people. If the process was to be controlled after the papers were sent to the office, the processing team needed to be responsive to the person submitting the papers. Future top sellers saw this immediately, and they began bringing donuts and coffee or taking the processors to lunch on a regular basis throughout the training program. 

Top sellers fear they will fail. To manage that fear, they develop a strong drive to control. They believe that if they control enough factors in the sales process, they decrease their risk of failing. They are able to tell themselves that they are preventing the problems that will hurt them.

Anyone who has worked with a top seller has seen this need to control. As soon as an order is submitted, the top seller will be calling to see the progress on the order. He/she will be checking with production or the warehouse to ensure that the product will be available as promised. Although sales managers want their sellers in the field talking with customers, top sellers often spend much of their time trying to control the internal sales ordering process. It is not unusual for a sales manager to suddenly see a top seller wandering the halls of the office or filling emails with questions and follow-up requests for status reports.

When you ask a top seller what he/she wants in sales manager, you will often hear this control issue.  As a recent candidate told me, “I want a manager who can be a resource to work with finance or production to be sure that things get done.”  

When interviewing a sales candidate, one of the first things to look for is how effectively the candidate tries to control the interview. Top sellers are able to stay “on message” in spite of attempts to distract the candidate. They are polite but focused. They may refer back to an earlier question by saying, “You were asking earlier about…”, for instance. 

The top seller candidate also may not be eager to engage in small talk. The stereotype of the sales candidate who references the fish on the wall or the photo of the family skiing is misleading. The top sales candidate will stay focused and want to talk about his/her sales successes in the past as well as why he/she would be a great fit for the company doing the hiring.

A recent sales model referred to as The Challenger Model describes a seller as someone who wants to debate and push the customer. While this is not wholly inaccurate, it seems to miss the real point of the behavior. The top seller will push and advise only when he/she sees a need to step in and control. As long as a top seller feels in control, he/she will not push. There is no need, and the risk of being seen as pushy is too great. Knowledge that can be shared and the ability to lead the customer to trust the seller’s judgment result in the control a top seller needs. He/she does not have to be entertaining, assertive, or pushy.

Top sellers know it is not the customer who needs to be controlled. The top seller learns how to control the sales process, which includes influencing the decision to make the purchase by knowing what to talk about and how to make themselves valuable. Top sellers do not worry about “closing techniques.” They see ways to control the process long before the traditional close.

Understanding Your Top Sellers: Observation One...They fear failure

INTRODUCTION

Are you trying to hire top sellers? Do you understand what makes them tick?

An interesting challenge in any industry: how do you identify who would be a top seller?

Test manufacturers would have you believe that you can “profile” top sellers as a guide to hiring practices. They take the top producers, give them a test, and then use the combined averages as a guide to whom you should select and whom you should ignore.  

Unfortunately, such a practice does not work. It only sells tests.

It does not work, because no test can sample how a seller thinks. It is the thinking process that differentiates top sellers from the rest of the pack.

Try this: Take your top sales producers and put them in a room. Do they look alike? Do they dress in a similar way? Do they sound alike? Do they have similar interests? Are they all extroverts? Are they all verbal?

Probably not!

Any group of top sellers is more likely to include more individual differences then similarities on the surface. It is only beneath the surface that you can begin to understand and see that a top seller thinks in a unique way when compared with an average producer. 

In my 35 years of interviewing and watching the development of sales professionals, I have identified what really differentiates the elite sales force. I hope my observations are helpful.

OBSERVATION ONE:  Top sellers are driven by fear and anxiety

When working with Dean Witter many years ago, I was once told the story of a senior manager who took his top two producers to breakfast one day. He said, “You both make well over a million dollars a year. Yet you are both the first ones in each morning and the last to leave at night. Why? I want you to write as simple an answer as you can on the back of this piece of paper.” He gave them a moment and then took the papers from them. Both had written the same word: FEAR

Top sellers act confident. They can even appear arrogant and superior at times. But beneath the surface, their driving force is fear. They are anxious that their string of successes will run out. As a result, they must work harder each day to prevent such failure.

The top seller from the food distributor John Sexton & Co. had come within $50 of breaking the all-time record sales for a fiscal year.  I stopped by his desk to congratulate him. I mentioned how close he had come to breaking the record. He just laughed and opened his bottom desk drawer. In the drawer, he had thrown a stack of papers. I indicated that I did not understand. He said, “Those are orders I did not turn in this month.  I was afraid I was just getting a lot of end-of-year orders, and I would have no sales at all in January. So I tossed the orders in here until after January 1.” In his drawer were at least $500 worth of sales orders.

Most top sellers will not admit to fear. But listen to their words. They often talk about being “lucky.” When asked to explain what they do that is different from others, they will grasp at concepts that only sound good but reflect little of what they do. “Lucky” means they believe it could all end tomorrow. They rarely can tell you why they are successful.

“Lucky” also means “I’m not sure I can do it again.” As a result, it is often the top sellers who yell loudest about having their quotas increased. A larger target for the next year, based on their performance for this year, only increases their fear. They typically sandbag their forecasts, not just to ensure that they will get their bonuses, but as a way of dealing with their fear about their future.

I once heard a sales manager complaining about the lack of urgency in a seller. She had been a top seller before being promoted. Her complaint: “This may be the only time we have such a window of opportunity with this customer.” Logically, this is not likely to be true. However, she is a top seller by nature, and her fear is that such an opportunity could disappear.  It is not “We have an opportunity and let’s move on it.” Instead, it is “We have an opportunity and may lose it.”

Top sellers could be classified in psychological terms as “Away-from” personalities rather than “Toward.” They want to prevent or avoid failure. That is why, as Daniel Pink has observed in a recent book, incentives do not really work with top performers. Top sellers are motivated to prevent failure, and a quota with bonus is nice but not a driver. Their drive is internal and comes from their need to avoid that which they fear the most—failure. If they do not get their bonus, they are disappointed and even angry, but the real reason is that missing their target suggests that failure may be lurking ahead. If they achieve their bonus, it is enjoyed, but it does not motivate them to do anything different the next year.  It is also why some top sellers, when they get in a slump, have more difficulty than most crawling out of it. A slump may be seen as temporary by average sellers. Top sellers assume it is their worst nightmare coming true.

The fear I see in top sellers is what I call a “healthy neurosis.” It is the reason they answer the phone quickly, yell about orders being slow to get through the office, or complain that customer service is not being responsive to a customer need. When a neurosis becomes so bad that a person is afraid to act, then it is no longer a motivator but a liability. But a healthy neurosis is seen as an excellent source of motivation. It drives the top seller to work hard the next day rather than relax after a big sale. After all, today may have been the result of luck, and tomorrow may begin a long drought of no-sales. Therefore, they get up early and tackle the job that needs to be done.

Using a professional interviewer

Too few companies acknowledge that it would be helpful to hire a "professional interviewer". Even though most executives do not really like interviewing candidates and usually hope the next candidate is a good one, they also rarely admit to being weak interviewers. Often these same companies look for "tests" to make the selection process more effective.

By themselves, test scores can be quite problematic and can often result in rejecting good candidates. No test can tell you who can do the job. Psychometric tests can be very helpful, however, to the professional interviewer who can combine the test information, probe the history and distill trends, habits, and the thinking process one uses to make decisions. Only a disciplined behavioral interview combined with an understanding of how to interpret psychometric tests can help identify if there are risks to "fit" or growth potential.

Notice my emphasis: "risk". A good candidate can look really good but some fatal traits can keep those good traits from appearing in the workplace. I tell my clients that my role is to find the flaws and fatal traits that are likely to be such risks. As an old saying goes, "Beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes all the way to the bone." Some traits or behaviors block the good ones from surfacing. Those are the traits I look for in the testing and in the interview. Unlike most hiring managers in an interview, I look for reasons to NOT hire someone. Even the best of us can miss a few of these, but if you are able to eliminate one or two bad hires yearly, it easily provides a good return on the cost of a "professional interviewer." I know, because I've been doing this for 35 years.

Is the interview over?

When your last manager candidate ended the interview and walked out of the room, did you have your questions answered? Did you have questions TO be answered? Only by preparing for an interview can you know when the interview is over.

Well-formed outcome to help ensure fit

A group facilitator for a worldwide organization of CEO's recently told us how he uses "well-formed outcome" statements with prospects for his fee-based development/coaching program. He uses a full VAK mix and asks each person, "How do you see yourself benefiting from a group of peers who can give you feedback and insights on your leadership and your organization?" (We have suggested that he add, "...who will tell you what you may or may not want to hear and help you see yourself through the eyes of others who are your CEO peers." He then listens for a response that indicates self-awareness and an openness to learn from feedback and support from peers. He reports excellent success in enrolling new members who fit the program well. They join knowing what to expect and ready to participate. In spite of the economy which has hit small to medium-sized businesses hard, he maintains full groups and his turnover is low.

Sales success traits

Like the holy grail, interviewers are always looking for the characteristics in a candidate that will tell if the person can sell. Two that I particularly look for are 1) Social monitoring and 2) Control.

Social monitoring is much like empathy. It means the person has a good radar for how others are feeling and acting. When done well, it fits the definition of emotional intelligence. But for sales people, it primarily means that the seller is noticing his/her impact on the prospect and can make adjustments as needed. In NLP terms, it is the ability to take a 2nd position and see the interaction through the prospect's eyes by noticing what the person is doing or saying.

Control is seen in two ways. First, the individual tries to control the interview, whether it is with you or with a customer. Conversations are forced back on track and toward the seller's purpose. Second, once an order is received, the seller controls the process inside. He/she rides that order and sees that people process it quickly and accurately. Often, the seller is seen as an irritant by inside people due to this control, but most good sellers show this trait.