A sales management consultant, Mawuli Ocloo, has urged sales organisations not to allow their gut feelings, stress and ego lead in recruiting sales personnel.

According to him, these factors are likely to lead to employing the wrong people for the job, considering the unprofessional process of recruiting the employee.

Speaking on Joy Business Master Class show, Mawuli Ocloo indicated that sales companies must organize a structured interview and invest in assessment tools to enable a proper definition of the job.

He mentioned three common mistakes many do. First, he said “never use your gut feelings to decide on who you should recruit for a sales role. Very often, business owners or head of sales just hit it up with somebody at the interview they build, rapport they seem to like the person and they think that at the end of the session what do you think about this person. And oh I think that, and very often that’s guts feelings and it will hurt you ultimately.”

Secondly, “recruiting under stress should be avoided. You see, advertising for positions and you see sales person needed urgently…immediately that is a problem because in sales, in other to sell fast you need to slow down; it is simply because sales is a process and you need to go through each process without skipping and that takes time, and it slows you down. But ultimately, once you have it done then you are good to go.”

Thirdly “no one can sell as better as me, so at times sales managers, business owners think they can do so much and they tend to want to see the same attitude or skill set or aptitude from the people the intend to recruit and that’s wrong.

Mr. Ocloo also urged sales organizations to adopt a more innovative way of recruiting sales personnel.

“If I were going to meet a potential customer and I needed closing skills or how to overcome objections, now mobile applications can give us the opportunity to tap into that data, tap into that training model, five minutes, ten minutes and I’m ready to go. What to look out for. So that’s how sales training has become agile,” he added.