Sales is a field with its own unique challenges. Those who thrive as sales professionals embrace these challenges with a specific set of essential skills.

Here are the top skills sales candidates need and how to evaluate these skills during the hiring process:

Listening

The best salespeople listen louder than they talk. Their primary interest isn’t in saying everything they know – it’s in hearing what the prospective customer has to say. By actively listening to a customer’s position and needs, top salespeople gather the information they need not only to make a sale, but to build a relationship.

Look for candidates who practice active listening during the interview and use what you say to help sell their own skills.

Curiosity

The best salespeople always want to know more: more about their customers; more about the products they sell; more about their own performance. In medical fields, this curiosity is doubly essential. New advances in medical devices, pharmaceuticals and biotech demand that sales staff constantly learn how new products work, what they do, and how they’re different from their predecessors.

Look for candidates who mention what they’ve been learning lately. You can also ask: “When was the last time you needed to learn something new on the job, and what did you do?”

Rapport-Building

Top sales staff need to start building relationships from the moment a prospective customer picks up the phone or clicks on an email. The more quickly they can build rapport, the easier it is for them to segue into a conversation that allows them to listen for the information they need to meet the customer’s needs.

Look for candidates who build rapport quickly in their cover letter, phone calls or interviews. You can also ask about their personal “best practices” for building relationships.

At SMR Group Ltd, our recruiters focus on building relationships with some of the best sales and marketing talent available, so we can recommend outstanding candidates to our clients in the medical device, pharmaceutical and biotech industries. To learn more about hiring sales candidates, contact us today.