Hiring Outside Sales Representatives: What are The Things You Look For?

Outside sales representatives work outside the company premises visiting potential or existing customers to sell the company products or services. They are of immense value to the company as the customers can get a real demo offline. If you want to sell fast; employ outside sales representatives.

The big question is, how to choose the right ones? In this article, you’ll find a mini-guide on what you should look for in an outside sales rep, and what kind of tasks they can complete for you.

Required skills

The skills that are needed to be a good outside sales representative are:

• Ability to identify who may be the potential customers
• Good communication skills to schedule a meeting
• Punctuality to meet the customer at the proper time
• Technical knowledge about the product or service
• Talk to the point and win the confidence of the customer

Call list

You need to make a list of the persons you will visit on the day. Make sure that the appointment times are not close enough, so you can meet the potential customers at the scheduled times. Try to fix up appointments with the parties who belong to a particular geographical location so that the time to commute between them is minimum. Follow up with the clients who tell you that they may purchase your product or service later.

Dress-code

Follow the dress-code that is specified by the organization. If there is no particular dress-code for the outside sales representatives, wear a sober dress that goes with your personality. It should be acceptable to the persons you meet too. So never go for a very extravagant dress that will supersede the very idea behind your meeting.

Body language

Your body language must be proper. You should not sit with your legs crossed or do anything that may distract your customer’s attention anytime during the meeting.

Personality

Always speak with confidence so that the customer feels that you are honest. He always likes to buy from a person that he can rely on. So, you need to focus on the advantages that your product or service will give to your customer. Listen to everything that your customer says, understand his needs and talk accordingly. Keep your conversation short and simple. That will enable you to get to your goal fetching you the desired outcome.

The companies should confirm that the outside sales representatives they are going to hire possess the required skills and knowledge about the above points. If you are recruiting fresh candidates, check whether they are having the skills. Rest you can train.

Key characteristics of an outside sales representative

The key characteristics of an outside sales representative are as follows:

• Strong interpersonal skills
• Self-starter
• Detail-oriented
• Independent
• Team-player

Responsibilities of an outside sales representative

The responsibilities of an outside sales representative is to sale no doubt. But he can acquire this sale by:

• Any method that is permissible
• He can forecast sales, think out of the box, and come up with an effective strategy
• Judge the skills and needs of the customer. Come up with answers so that you can build a long-term relationship with the customer

Where to look for outside sales representatives

The best place is recruitment agencies. Not any recruitment agencies, though – you need to partner with a specialized agency, such as CulverCareers. CulverCareers is a sales recruitment agency dedicated to help businesses connect with sales talents, which also include outside sales reps.

Looking at all the positives that you may get from an outside sales representative, I can tell you that outside sales representatives are worth keeping in an organization even today.