LJ Sarkodee: Tips in Recruiting A-Players in Sales

About LJ Sarkodee: LJ Sarkodee, is the creator of Freedom Sales School, author of Conversations that Convert, and Founder of Sales Closers. She has over 20 years of high-ticket sales closing experience, selling services from £2k ($2.5k) - £100k ($120k). LJ's expertise lies in helping businesses and entrepreneurs close more deals and generate more revenue through effective sales strategies and techniques. Her company, Sales Closers, provides a wide range of services, including sales coaching, training, and consulting, that help her clients achieve their sales goals and grow their businesses. She hired and led virtual sales teams around the globe, to sell out multi-six and 7 figure launches. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about LJ.<br /><br /> In this episode, Nancy and LJ discuss the following:Why do people burn out in sales?LJ’s person burnout story.Recruiting sales professionals and finding A players in sales: tips for interviewing the candidates.Why are some people really afraid of outsourcing?Peculiarities of the high-ticket closing sales cycle.Get control of the sales process.Importance of training outsourced salespeople internally. <br /> Key Takeaways: Whilst that was a hard period and a hard lesson to learn, I'm thankful for it, as it taught me how I didn't want to do things moving forward.When we are looking for A-Players, it's always character first and foremost what we're looking for.I kind of make a joke that if a salesperson is too good at interviews, that's a concern of mine.A surrendered sale is just the art of being present in the conversation and allowing it to flow from there. In the training team internally, we see that element of continual improvement and we believe that it's a skill to receive feedback and receive coaching. "And linking it back to what we said at the very start, I think sometimes as women as well, we're trying to balance all the things and spin all the plates at once, being a mom and a business owner and doing the sales, be a good wife. And we try and wear all these hats, and it's just not practical at all. We're just not very kind to ourselves and, my belief is that when we're in that, prospects aren't getting the best of us so we're not showing up in the best possible way, whether that be working for ourselves or whether it be working for in an employed role either way. If you're showing up at kind of... the gas tank is half full, then you're doing no one any favors at all. And that inevitably will come crashing down at some point if you don't listen to your body." – LJ "So, I think again, when it comes to higher ticket sales, what we're looking for as much as the sales experience is the life experience. So, when it comes to, you know, overturns, handling objections, that kind of thing. If someone doesn't really have it in the muscle or doesn't have the life experience to be able to connect with the prospect and understand where they're coming from, I think that's, it's quite difficult and we notice that in conversions. " – LJ “There's another nuance with surrendered sales for me as well. And that's in the sales conversation itself. It's like the art of being attached to the outcome and just being present in the conversation and trusting the flow of that conversation rather than trying to over-control and over-orchestrate what's going to happen next. It’s, you know, this surrender is just the art of being present in the conversation and allowing it to flow from there.” – LJ Connect with LJ Sarkodee:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ljsarkodee/Sales Closers: https://www.salesclosers.com/