Looking to become a sales rep but unsure if you’re right for the job? Fear not!
While it’s tempting to transform yourself into the person you think your hiring manager wants you to be — whether that persona actually fits you or not — successful sales reps are not necessarily beholden to a standardized way of doing things.
Nor should they be expected to exceed their peers right away. According to Brad Snider, senior director of global corporate sales at Redis, thoughtfulness, perseverance and coachability rank as the three most important characteristics he looks for when assessing potential employees.
“Every master was once an apprentice,” Snider explained, emphasizing that tangible skills can always be learned — even if the aforementioned pupil isn’t immediately confident in their abilities.
For those looking to enhance their sales acumen, Built In Austin met with Snider to learn how he helps ambitious self-starters develop their skills to become the sales representatives they know they can be.
What are the traits that define a successful salesperson?
I look for three major characteristics when hiring: thoughtfulness, perseverance or grit, and coachability. Thoughtful people are prepared. They approach their day with a plan, look before they leap, understand the benefits of being a team player and are culturally additive. Gritty people have a mindset of positive psychology, where their subconscious guiding principle is perseverance combined with passion for particular long-term goals. Gritty people are builders and find more fulfillment in the complex journey than in short-term wins and losses. Coachability speaks for itself.
If a person has established a track record of success, coupled with growth within previous roles where those three characteristics are present, they’ll find success here at Redis — and in life.
How do you help your reps develop their own sales acumen?
Of course, there are the basic tasks that need to be done: weekly calls, frequent performance reviews, periodic analysis of performance data, and personalized goals and targets. That said, I really enjoy working with reps on developing skills that are universally applicable at any company, like persistent discovery, selling with authenticity and micro-closing through the sales process. People buy solutions to business challenges that are discovered by thoughtful consultative business partners — not feature sellers. We don’t need to develop sellers to be a person that they’re not, saying things they wouldn’t say in a way they wouldn’t speak.
The most basic measure of a great manager is how many people they have developed.”
What’s a lesson you’ve learned that helps you bring out the best in your direct reports?
People are motivated by mastery, autonomy and purpose. My focus as a manager is to cultivate an environment that allows these characteristics to flourish. We work on a weekly basis to become a little better every day and reinforce mastery. We do this in a way that’s not micro-managed and provides a person autonomy of thought and process. If we can provide mastery and autonomy, I believe that purpose can be found in the professional development journey that the employee is on, combined with the recognition that we have the luxury of selling a database that’s a fundamental building block in the way we experience our modern world, today and tomorrow. That’s a pretty exciting thing to share at any company, but I want all of my direct reports to cultivate their skills at Redis. The most basic measure of a great manager is how many people they have developed. My hope is that everyone we work with is better for having invested themselves in our team.
