Most heads of sales and sales recruiters look for consistent quota achievement, earnings history and industry experience in evaluating salespeople. Are they looking for the right things? Actually, no. What they ought to be looking for is customer-centric oriented salespeople. As you’ll see below, companies look for the wrong salespeople.

How can someone with zero industry experience become one of the top performers in a $500MM software firm in his first year? (That was me, by the way)

Michael Bosworth, author of Solution Selling, describes natural salespeople. How do we find this 10% and how do we manage them? Let’s let Mr. Bosworth tell us, from his book, Customer-Centric Selling.

“…some salespeople are exceptionally talented, in the sense of being naturally customer-centric. Our best guess is that they make up about 10% of the sales population. They are gifted, intuitive salespeople, with the remarkable ability to transform (mostly irrelevant) product training into a coherent message – one that is tailored to the title and function of the person they are calling on.

…calls made by customer-centric salespeople are conversational. These salespeople relate to buyers, establishing their credibility by asking intelligent questions. Rather than leading with offerings, customer-centric salespeople ask questions. They seek to understand a buyer’s needs, so they can focus on the parts of their offering that provides a fit.

Their opinions of what is qualified and what will close can be taken to the bank. They rarely waste time – yours or theirs – on unqualified opportunities.

Customer-centric salespeople need minimal coaching. After completing training, they find the best product and support people, and pick their brains to understand what the offering allows the buyer to do. Customer-centric salespeople make their first sale quickly, and most make their numbers the first year. In subsequent years, they almost always exceed whatever quota they are assigned.

They do not want to be managed, they hate red tape, and they like to have the freedom to do whatever it takes to get the business – even if it means stepping on toes internally.”

What do you think? We love comments and retweets.

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Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.