What Does the Perfect Person Look Like?

Painting The Picture of Success

You have a position open for an account manager. You need a great salesperson experienced at selling in a complex environment. Perhaps you want specific industry experience. Or a particular level of education.

So far, you don’t really have a very clear picture of what you’re looking for, do you?

What you really want is a salesperson who will be successful in your organization. And before you can begin your selection process, you need a clear picture of what this person looks like... acts like... sounds like. Without this "picture," you’ll never be too sure whether the new person you hire will be successful until after a few months goes by – along with a lot of wasted time and dollars.

Yet most of us select and hire new employees with very little thought to what a profile of a successful employee looks like before we make a hiring decision.

Strangely, we always know what doesn’t work on the job. If you were to think of the last hiring mistake you made, you’d most likely be able to pinpoint instantly what went wrong. What you want to do is prevent hiring mistakes by first identifying what characteristics translate into things going right. And you want to develop a list of characteristics in a clear, definable way so you can recruit and hire against that list.

The Building Blocks of Success

The purpose of the entire selection process is to predict success on the job.

So your first step is to break down the huge concept of “success on a job” into basic building blocks.

The first building block is the job itself. A job is made up of a number of tasks and situations. Employees then act upon and react to those tasks and situation – their behavior on the job.

Behavior is the next building block. How employees behave on the job determines whether they’re successful or not. So in order to predict success, you must predict behavior as it relates to a particular job. You’re going to take each of these building blocks – job and behavior – and break them down into even smaller, well-defined and measurable components. When you’re done, you’ll have a success profile for your position.

You're probably thinking, "Why don’t we just provide you with a profile of a successful sophisticated salesperson?" That would certainly make your life simpler. Unfortunately, life and work are just not that simple.

Each company. each job... each territory... has different characteristics, different tasks and situations that, in this case, a salesperson will face. You have to define what is successful within your organization and within the territory you are hiring the salesperson. You have to define success for your particular situation.

We’ll be honest here -- painting the picture of what it takes to be successful is like climbing a hill... very hard work. But once you get to the top, it’s all downhill from there. You’ll use the success profile that you build section to recruit, to screen candidates, to assess candidates and interview them. Once you hire them, you’ll use it to develop a training program and assess their performance during reviews. This profile becomes the blueprint for the position that sets the new employee’s expectations and goals.

Predicting Success... What is a Job?

Let's first define the job. Every job boils down to two things: a set of tasks – the activities that must performed, and a set of situations that need to be dealt with. These are the WHAT of a job. If somebody doesn't handle the tasks and situations of the job, there's no chance they'll ever be successful.

What do people do on a job?

Next, we want to know HOW people do their job. People act and react to the tasks and the situations. This is behavior. There’s an old adage that goes, “You don't really hire people, you rent their behavior.” So not only do they have to do the right things, but they have to do them in the right way. They need both the WHAT and the HOW of the position before you can label them “successful.”

What is a Success Profile?

A success profile is a clear and concise description of the critical requirements necessary to meet your expected outcomes. Until you define WHAT – the expected outcomes -- a person has to do to be successful, you can’t determine the HOW -- critical requirements – they need to function within their job.

Here is how you build a success profile:

You need take into consideration the company’s business requirements before you begin to define any individual position in the company,. Where is your company heading? What are its priorities? Is your company seeking to increase marketshare or increase profits?

The answers to these questions will drive what you expect of your individual salespeople.

Where do you get the business requirements? They are handed down from the top. If you don’t know your company’s business requirements, then maybe it’s time to go back to the bookstore and buy a good resume-writing book.

So business requirements drives expected outcomes. Expected outcomes drive critical requirements. There’s no taking shortcuts here. You have to take this step by step, otherwise you’ll end up with a vague, fuzzy job description that may be no help to you in selecting salespeople who will be successful.

To set the expected outcomes, you’ll:

• Determine three time periods for the job
• List the expected outcomes for the first time period
• Test each outcome
• Repeat for each remaining period

Make sure that each outcome you list is really an outcome. Ask yourself:

Is this a deliverable?

If it's not a deliverable, save it. You’ll address qualities and characteristics such as “team player,” “intelligence” and “competitive awareness” in the next section. What you want here is a list of activities you expect this new salesperson to accomplish within three different set time-frames.

Critical Job Requirements – The "How" of Success

Now that you know what it takes to be successful, you can focus on the how – the qualities and characteristics necessary to meet the expectations. These are the critical requirements for the position you are filling. They will drive the entire selection process. You’ll use these requirements in your recruitment efforts. Most importantly, the requirements you develop here will drive the entire selection process – how you screen and interview... and then how you evaluate each candidate to make the final decision.

Types of Requirements

Requirements come in three forms:

• knowledge
• skill
• ability

The first two requirement types, knowledge and skill, are the technical – or quantitative requirements of the job. Abilities are the behavioral characteristics that are required for on-the-job success..

Knowledge

What does the person know?

Your new salesperson must know certain things before they come on board. If you’re going to issue each salesperson a laptop computer, then you may require knowledge of specific computer programs.

Skill

What is the person able to do?

Skill is the ability to apply their knowledge to the tasks of the job. Your new salesperson must have certain skills before you hire them, such as the ability to deliver an executive presentation.

Ability

How does the person perform the tasks of the job?

These are the behavioral qualities that are required to be successful on the job such as teamwork or aggressive. Ability is how the person reacts and acts to the tasks and situation of the job – how they go about getting the job done.

You can’t interview for a behavior until it describes a specific behavior. This is important – and where many managers get off track. You want a salesperson that’s aggressive . . . that’s flexible . . . that’s a team player – yet these terms are never really clearly defined in terms of how it describes successful on-the-job behavior. Break the label down. What exactly do you mean?

Can you recognize it? Are you clear that it will succeed in your environment?

Almost every manager says they need a team player. But can someone that’s a team player really succeed in the job your hiring them to do? If you’re hiring someone to set up a satellite office who will be mostly working on their own with no support structure, then a “team player” – someone who likes to work as part of a consultative team – may fail miserably. Be sure that the requirement works within your environment.

Building a profile for a successful person is critical to hiring great employees. Take th etime to do it right and your hiring results will soar.