Author Archives for Shanan Marshall

There Is No Substitute For Experience – By Chris Gee, PhD.

July 2, 2021 9:23 am Published by Leave your thoughts Welcome to week three of our seven week blog series on the predictive demographic traits of competitive sales reps.  For those just joining us, the two previous characteristics that were covered were: (1) Coming from a Warm Referral Source; (2) Being Employed at the Time of Applying.  This week’s predictive demographic trait is PREVIOUS COMPETITIVE SALES EXPERIENCE. This characteristic is relatively obvious, but nonetheless extremely predictive of future sales rep performance and retention. Our research shows that individuals with > 3 years of competitive sales experience are ideal, as they have demonstrated a commitment and proficiency in this career path and the ability to network and prospect outside of their natural market (e.g., 2nd and 3rd generation referrals). Individuals with previous sales experience understand and accept many of the features of a competitive sales career that typically deter or dissuade others. Take variable compensation for example. Many people without sales......

#2 – Recruit the Currently Employed by Chris Gee, PhD.

June 23, 2021 2:20 pm Published by Leave your thoughts Welcome to the second installment of our blog series focused on the predictive characteristics of top performing salespeople.  As a reminder, the data utilized in these analyses is global in nature and includes competitive sales positions across a variety of industries that are part of SMG’s vast database of over 25M respondents. It is also longitudinal in nature (includes the past 10 years) ensuring no temporal or geographical biases are present. PREDICTIVE TRAIT #2: EMPLOYED AT THE TIME OF APPLICATION Our second predictive attribute of top performing sales reps is that they are currently employed at the time of applying to a new career opportunity. This is a natural progression from last week’s trait (warm sourced) as the majority of these folks are not actively job seeking in the traditional sense (e.g., on Indeed applying to 50 opportunities a night). In fact, most of them are likely very comfortable in......
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