How to spot great sales people

Jack Daly is a sales guru, who built up six businesses into national-sized firms in the US. Two were sold on Wall Street to First Boston and Salomon brothers, with another ranked 10 on the Inc. Magazine Inc. 500 list.

He says that one of the areas where entrepreneurs make mistakes is by getting too intimately involved in the deal making and in selling.

“What they should really focus on is finding other sales people to join their enterprise and growing them once they’ve got there.

“We sell too soon. We’re so driven to hitting our numbers that the person that gets overlooked all too often is the customer. Are we really exceeding what the customers’ actual needs are? Are we delivering something that they actually have a desire and a need for? And so a sales person’s job is to do a lot less selling and a lot more helping people to buy.

“The very first time that a customer elects to buy from a sales person’s company they don’t buy real value; they buy perceived value because the only time that you can buy real value is on the second and subsequent purchases.

“The very first time you win over a customer, what you’re winning them over with is perception of value.

“Those are the people that are going to come in hourly on their own initiative. They’re going to stay late on their own initiative, and when the customer needs something they’re going to jump before any of the customers say they need to be jumping. In fact, they’re going to ask how high they should jump. And as an owner-entrepreneur that’s not something you can very easily dictate.”

Read more about Jack Daly and his sales tips.