Should you require sales experience for Inside Salespeople?

Should you reqire sales experience for Inside Salespeople?

That was a question I received after last week’s Inside Sale Leadership Corner post Have you defined ideal Inside Salesperson Traits?

Ultimately that is a question each organization needs to answer for itself. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help determine your answer:

1. what is the inside salesperson’s role?
2. do we have a robust new hire sales training curriculum?
3. what expectations from start date to “ramped up” do we have?
4. how will sales experience give us a higher inside salesperson success rate?
5. how is the inside sales role here, different from other organizations?
6. where can we attract the best candidates from?
7. does our ideal inside salesperson trait list include sales experience?

Take your answers and determine for your organization, today; should you require sales experience for Inside Salespeople?

Then remember to review both your ideal inside salesperson trait list and hiring requirements anytime your business changes. At minimum my recommendation is annually BUT not when you’re doing performance reviews!

image courtesy of © Andre Klopper | Dreamstime