That was the name of a panel last week at Radio Ink’s Hispanic Radio Conference in Miami. The RAB’s Jeff Schmidt was one of the presenters. Schmidt provided a few excellent slides during his presentation about where you should search for top salespeople, and how you should interview them.
Every manager knows how costly it is to an organization when a salesperson is hired, only to find out a few weeks later that the person interviewed didn’t turn out to be the same person out on the streets.
During his presentation, Schmidt said he doesn’t believe radio stations have a structure when recruiting salespeople. He says, for the most part, radio looks for salespeople when they need salespeople. And he believes managers should always be recruiting.
Two of his favorite ways to recruit include Indeed.com and LinkedIn. His tips when you are searching for sellers:
– Always read the resume and always check references.
– Interview the person several times, including having others that work at the station interview the person.
Some questions to ask:
– “How’s your job search going?” Because there’s no doubt your candidate has been interviewing for other jobs and you want them to be honest about that with you.
– “How did you prepare for this interview?” If they researched your company before the interview, you want to know that. If they sound unprepared, you’ll figure that out quickly.
– “What are the 10 biggest wins of your life?” Jeff says he’ll stop them before they get to 10, but he likes to know what some of them are.
The two most important traits of selling superstars, according to Jeff:
Know-how and disposition. “You hire for traits and train for skills.”
Here’s Jeff’s full list of traits of successful sellers:
Reach out to Jeff at [email protected] for all of the slides from his presentation.
Hire a farm kid. They’ll have all of those traits and more.
Selling will either be the easiest highest paying job you’ve ever had or it will be the hardest lowest paying job you ever have, it’s all based on your attitude. Jeff knows what he’s talking about. I’ve seen him in action.
Lemme unnerstan’ this.
An individual who demonstrates all those (above) attributes is going to go into local radio sales…?
How ’bout narrowing that down to: Must have a pulse and most of their own teeth.
There are nos selling superstars left in radio or in the Media>>>