You probably don’t need a team of superheroes. Learn why hiring for everything can leave you with average salespeople, and how to hire for what truly differentiates you.
Sales leaders are constantly exposed to research identifying the characteristics associated with strong sales performance.
Analytical ability matters. Empathy matters. Drive matters. Relationship skills matter. Adaptability, product knowledge, resilience and communication all matter too.
It is tempting to turn that evidence into a hiring profile that says:
“Find us someone who is exceptional at all of them.”
That may be exactly the wrong approach.
Research from customer-service settings highlights an important hiring problem: when organizations try to maximize too many employee attributes simultaneously, they inevitably face trade-offs. The candidate who scores reasonably well across every desired dimension can end up being exceptional at none of them.
You probably don't need a team of superheroes
Most organizations cannot consistently find, afford and retain an entire sales force of extraordinary performers.
They have to deliver a differentiated customer experience with a largely normal distribution of talent.
That changes the hiring question.
Instead of asking:
“How do we hire salespeople who are great at everything?”
ask:
“What must our salespeople be unusually good at for our particular value proposition to work?”
A company selling highly technical solutions may need salespeople with exceptional analytical curiosity. A relationship-intensive business may place greater weight on empathy and network development. A highly transactional environment may benefit more from disciplined execution and persistence.
Trying to maximize all three can leave you hiring a salesperson who is simply average across all three.
Hire for differentiation. Design around the rest.
The better approach is to identify the capability that is hardest to substitute and most important to the experience you want customers to have.
Then build the sales role around it.
Hire disproportionately for the differentiating capability.
Redesign the job so salespeople rely less heavily on capabilities that matter but are not central to your competitive advantage—perhaps through technology, sales support, specialists or team-based selling.
Train and coach the remaining capabilities where meaningful development is possible.
This turns salesperson selection into a strategic design decision rather than a search for the mythical perfect candidate.
The takeaway
Research can tell sales leaders that many characteristics contribute to performance.
It does not follow that every organization should try to hire for all of them equally.
The more useful question is:
“What does our salesperson need to be exceptionally good at for customers to experience what makes us different?”
Hire for that.
Then design, support and develop around the rest.
