5 Ways a Sales Person can identify a winning company

If you are a sales person, then you likely know what it’s like to join a new company only to find that there are internal factors that serve as impediments to your sales success. The degree and severity of these debilitations may vary, but the more there are (and the more severe), the less likely you will achieve the success you had hoped for when joining the company.

Interviewing for sales positions can be tricky. Sales people tend to be comfortable living in the “gray”. They also tend to be confident and optimistic in their sales abilities and chances of success. If they didn’t, then they would likely be in some other line of work.

While so much of a sales person’s success depends on factors they can control such as skill, discipline, work ethic, product or domain expertise, there are critical factors they can’t control. These are factors they need to measure in the interview process. The closer a company under consideration comes to satisfying these five areas, the higher your probabilities of success will be.

• Demand for Product or Service. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if the product you are selling has low demand, your path to commission dollars gets harder. It may be that this is the very reason you were hired by your company. Or perhaps the product is new and so innovative, that you will be creating the demand. Nevertheless, low demand impacts probability of sales success. If you step into a situation where the demand is low, then make sure you negotiate compensation terms that include guaranteed cash flow or excellent pay-offs for success.
• Product Salability. You may have an incredible demand for your product, but if your company’s product is not competitive, clearly inferior, or barely functional then you will have decreased odds of success. You need to gauge the products deficiency when joining the company. You may not have the best product, but feel confident in its value or in the company’s commitment to strengthening the product. The point is to measure the degree of the deficiency and discern whether it’s worth jumping into that fray.
• Territory. Good demand. Sellable product. Bad turf? Might as well abandon your plans for that new sports car. Much of this is industry specific, but make sure you know where the strong territories are for your industry and what the best vertical niches are. The Northeast has traditionally been a strong seat for financial services; the Midwest for manufacturing; the West for technology. If you are in Chicago and your assigned territory is Iowa, then you’re not going to have nearly as much sales opportunity as a colleague who has downtown Chicago as her turf. Make sure that your territory will have ample sales opportunity if you want to increase your probabilities of success.
• Competitive compensation. OK. Compensation, doesn’t directly determine success, but it does have a bearing on motivation. If earnings are one way you gauge your sales prowess, then this one is big. Most people get into sales for the opportunity to maximize income. If you have good demand, salability, and territory along with a weak compensation plan, then you may become a very good rep who is simply poorer than counterparts in other companies. You need to understand what is important to you, but make sure that the compensation you accept is fair and equitable for the required work and is balanced well against other things you value in a company. You may not be the top-paid rep in the industry, but you may have better quality of life. If you are in a sales job and find yourself consistently complaining about the commission structure, then you know how much value the right comp plan has on your ability to succeed.
• People. If all four of the above are strong, but the company culture is horrible, you have little respect for the management team, or have a poor relationship with your boss, then your ability to succeed will be impeded. I see this as a reason for sales people looking to make a change more than any other. Sometimes ethics are in question. Trust issues. Lack of support. The list goes on.

When you are considering various sales opportunities, take these five factors into account. It’s very rare that a company will score all five perfectly. That’s OK. They key is that you actually have given each full consideration and have a pretty good objective view of each. You may decide that it’s more imperative to have a good territory and culture than high compensation. Whatever the mix, the higher you can score each, the higher your probabilities of success will be.

What are the things most important to you when looking at a new sales opportunity?