I love when candidates ask me the question, "so what are you looking for when you hire salespeople for your team?"  While I have developed a benchmark for the Account Executive - Inside Sales job at Business.com that has 24 points to it, I always reply the same way.....

"DRIVE!"

I'm looking for salespeople with Drive.  I don't typically hire salespeople that have a wealth of experience in my industry.  Why?  Because experience with no drive is a waste of a hire.  Instead, I'd rather hire somebody who is "green" or has very little experience who has tons of Drive.  To me, that's a winning combination.  What is drive?

Thanks to the very enlightening book Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again by Dr. Chris Croner (who is a great author and one heck of a stand up guy by the way), I now have a good grasp of what Drive means.  Straight from SalesDrive.info, Drive is composed of 3 parts:

1. Need for Achievment:  The intense desire to attain excellence and accomplish challenging goals, found in athletes like Tiger Woods.
2. Competitiveness:  The unquenchable thirst to outperform one's peers, and win the customer over to your point of viw, found in athletes like Michael Jordan (of course, Chris is from Chicago.  I would say athletes like Jerry Rice or Joe Montana if I had my choice) and
3. Optimism:  The certainty and resiliency that will not be denied, found in athletes like Lance Armstrong.  Boy oh boy have I learned the importance of this one recently when hiring salespeople.  Having a high need for achievement, high competitiveness but low optimism can be really tough to manage and can lead to failure.

I'll take a team of highly driven individuals with no experience and stack them up, toe to toe with highly experienced (read "I'll bring a huge Rolodex of contact and customers to your company") salespeople and I'm confident the highly driven individuals will beat them out over the long term.  No question.

Check out the video below.  I'm hooked.    

http://www.sellingpower.com/video/?date=5/7/2008



Kevin Gaither is a highly motivated, seasoned, hands-on sales executive with a 15+ year track record of consistently exceeding sales goals, building highly motivated, energized and productive sales teams, and excelling at developing new business. Kevin Gaither is a highly independent, assertive, creative and confident self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced and entrepreneurial company. Kevin Gaither has the proven ability to recruit, hire, train, retain and develop top-ranked sales teams by clearly articulating objectives using analytical thinking, reference to facts and best practices. Kevin Gaither has excellent leadership, prioritization, communication and analytical skills. Kevin Gaither has the ability to develop and clearly articulate objectives using both analytical thinking, reference to facts and best practices.