I’ve hired a handful of salespeople over the last few months.

Something that I think a few people fail to consider from a hiring standpoint is that there are several different subcategories of salespeople.

Depending on the type of company you have, you ultimately have to dictate what kind of salesperson you’re looking for.

Here’s a few of the main archetypes that I see pretty often (this is not a conclusive list - there’s a ton more of these).

1) Salespeople who are extremely good at selling a specific product/service

This is largely a function of industry expertise/knowledge of the market.

I would put myself in this category. 

I wouldn’t consider myself to be a great all around salesperson, but I would say that I’m EXTREMELY good at selling short term loans.

I have a clear understanding of the various reasons why a business owner would seek out a short term loan.

I know the bad things that will happen if they don’t secure the loan and the timelines associated with it. 

I know what the other options are and what they can realistically get. 

I know exactly what questions to ask on a call to get the ammo that I need. 

I am lethally good at this…however it’s not necessarily transferable.

If you threw me into selling cars, insurance, or real estate, I would struggle bigtime. 

I believe that if you’re selling a relatively complex type of product/service that isn’t easy to learn, it’s best to find someone with niche experience on it who understands the industry. 

If you’re a company like Salesforce who sells enterprise CRM solutions, it would be in your best interests to pull someone from a company like Hubspot who also sells CRM’s.

Or at a minimum someone from a place like SAP or Oracle that sells enterprise software and has existing relationships with your potential clients. 

2) Salespeople who can simply sell anything

I’ve met salespeople who can sell ice to an eskimo. 

You can give them a one pager breaking down the details of your product/service/pricing, put them live on the phones on day 1, and they’ll close. 

These people are generally very good all around persuaders. 

This is the type of person that can not only close a very large deal and PIF…

But can also walk into a crowded restaurant that they’ve never been in before and somehow magically persuade the hostess to open up another table. 

Or persuade a police officer to not give them a ticket when they blatantly deserve one.

Or…this may not be very PC but I’m gonna go there anyway because it’s relevant in this instance…

Guys who are REALLY good with women (I’ve never met a natural salesperson who struggled with women). 

If you sell high-ticket, I personally believe this is the exact archetype that you want.

Someone who you can throw on the phones with a random cold traffic prospect and they’ll find a way to take care of business in 45 minutes. 

If you have a strong marketing team + setter team in place, these types are an extremely rare and valuable commodity. 

The downside with these types is that they typically suck with sales process. 

They don’t do followup, admin work, and probably will never be a good sales manager.

Which leads me to my next point. 

3) Process Driven Salespeople

If your company has a high volume approach that requires a lot of deals closed (and also more of an outbound sales model)...

A lot of times success comes down to sales process (rather than raw sales skills). 

I found this to be very important in loan sales, where we had to close 30+ deals per month. 

If you’re starting a business (rather than working as a salesperson) this is extremely important.

If you’re a sales manager, this is also extremely important.

A process driven salesperson in my opinion has a clear understanding of leading indicators and lagging indicators.

If they want to get on calls, they know what to do. 

They know which channels to hit and which lists to reach out to. 

To give you an example:

I knew a few salespeople at the startup I used to work at who were extremely good at cultivating good lists to reach out to.

They would scrape lists of people who took calls with previous reps, didn’t close, check the notes on why they didn’t close, and then take a strategic followup with an offer that was more fitting to them. 

Maybe the previous rep got the dollar amount of the loan right, but the term was too short. 

A process driven salesperson would find a way to get a longer term with a slightly higher rate. 

I wouldn’t consider that to be raw sales talent, this is more of a strategic process. 

I could write a book on sales process and there’s a million different things to talk about here but some salespeople are lethal at process-building.

In a high volume outbound type model, these people are super hot commodities.

I also think that in an early stage business, if you’re looking for a salesperson that can simply “figure it out” (not a good hiring approach in my opinion but people still do it anyway), then this is the type of person you want. 

4) Whale Hunters

Whale hunting is, admittedly, one of my personal favorite topics to talk about. 

Some salespeople don’t necessarily do a lot of volume, but they’re simply good at closing MASSIVE deals. 

This is an art. 

In the right vehicle, people like this can make a killing. 

Think luxury residential real estate or enterprise SaaS sales, or other models of this sort. 

If you’re in a model like commercial real estate, you could do one big deal per year and still make a killing. 

On a smaller scale, this is the approach that I’ve taken with my own business these last few years.

I don’t do a lot of deals, but I hunt big name clients and play the long game.

I think that whale hunting is very heavily related to your ability to understand positioning (another topic that I could speak on for days that’s too much for one post).

I think it’s also heavily related to personal network/relationships. 

So if you’re hiring salespeople sometime soon…

I’d definitely screen for what archetype of salesperson you’re looking for.

• D

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