Sales training and coaching · Hiring and onboarding sellers
Build the hiring scorecard from the reps who already sell well for you.
A top performer profile is a list of the five to seven traits that separate your best salespeople from your weakest, each weighted out of one hundred. A hiring scorecard turns it into scores for candidates. This page ends with an anchored scorecard and a sheet to test it against the reps you already have.
Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.
In one paragraph
A top performer profile is a list of the five to seven traits that separate your best salespeople from your weakest, each weighted out of one hundred. A hiring scorecard turns it into scores for candidates. This page ends with an anchored scorecard and a sheet to test it against the reps you already have.
A chemical distributor in Ankleshwar interviews a candidate who is articulate, well dressed and from a big-name company. The owner scores the candidate high on a feeling. Six months on, the new hire has not opened a single new dealer, while the quiet rep from a local trading family keeps winning them. Nobody wrote down what the quiet rep does that the new one does not.
A profile starts by putting your two best and two weakest reps side by side. Ask what the best ones do differently in a week: how many return visits, how they handle the credit conversation, whether they take correction well. Pick five to seven traits that show up in your business, not in a textbook.
Each trait gets a weight, and the weights add up to one hundred. For every trait, describe the behaviour behind scores of 10, 7, 5, 3 and 1, worded so that another interviewer would reach the same mark. Those anchors are the scorecard. Without them, three interviewers give the same candidate three unrelated marks.
The owner and the sales head build it together, once, and test it every six months. It follows the hiring readiness check and feeds the skills-based interview kit, which is where the scores get collected.
Where this sits
Topic 7 of 8 in sales training and coaching: hiring and onboarding sellers. Building the early team, hiring against evidence and ramping new reps.
- The topic before
- Coaching the sales team
- The topic after
- Training programme design
If you want this done for you
The last three hires interviewed well and could not sell.
The work
What this is actually like.
“Experience in your trade can be the wrong thing to weight”
Owners over-weight years in the same industry because it feels safe. Put that trait on the scorecard and then test it: do your best reps actually have more of it than your weakest? In some businesses the answer is no, and a coachable outsider outsells the experienced hire.
“Weights are an argument, so have it now”
If the owner thinks work ethic is half the score and the sales head thinks product knowledge is, the disagreement will surface at the offer stage when it is expensive. Settle the weights before the first interview, with the best reps' results on the table, and write down why.
“Anchors stop the friendly-candidate problem”
A pleasant candidate drifts to a seven on every trait. If a 3 on persistence is written as "gave up after one call" and a 7 as "changed approach after two refusals and went back", the interviewer has to find that story in the answers before awarding the mark.
“Two data points are not a pattern”
With only four reps, the profile is a hypothesis. Hold the weights loosely, score current reps on the card and see whether the order matches your own view of them. Where it does not, either the card or your view is wrong, and either answer is useful.
What we do
What you end up with.
The documents this topic produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.
The best versus weakest sheet
Two columns with named reps, rows of observed behaviours: visits per week, follow-ups sent, how they behave when a buyer says no, how they use the CRM or notebook. Fill from the last six months of actual deals.
Result: Finished when each row is a thing you saw, not a thing you assume.
The weighted scorecard
Five to seven traits, a weight for each adding to one hundred, and a score from one to ten with anchors written at 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10. The hire threshold goes at the bottom, agreed before interviews begin.
Result: Finished when two interviewers who have never discussed a candidate give scores within two points.
The back-test
Score each current rep on the card, then compare the ranking with their actual results. Adjust the weights where the card ranks a poor performer high.
Result: Finished when the card puts your best rep above your weakest.
The candidate score sheet
One page per candidate: trait, score, the evidence heard, the interviewer's initials. Scores are filled before the panel compares notes.
Result: Finished when the owner can defend each score by pointing at a quote.
The six-month review
After a hire has worked for six months, compare their performance with their interview score and note which trait mispredicted.
Result: Finished when the card has been changed at least once on the evidence.
Why us
Why owners pick GullySales over an agency.
Marketing and sales, as one job
Most agencies stop at the enquiry. We also fix what happens after it: the reply, the follow-up, the quote and the CRM.
The person on the first call does the work
No account managers in between. You are never handed to someone you have not met.
A baseline before anything starts
Your numbers are written down on day one, so every later report compares against something honest.
The fee in writing, split three ways
Our time, your media spend and production on separate lines. You always see what goes to us.
No guarantees we cannot keep
The term is agreed in writing and never a default twelve months. We never promise a ranking or a lead count, because nobody controls those.
One office, and we say so
Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru. We work across India by call and WhatsApp and travel when a session needs to be in person.
#257, 3rd floor, Sri Nanjundeshwara Complex, Nagarbhavi 8th Block, Outer Ring Road. How we work.
Your brief
Tell us what you need, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps about your business, what you want and who decides. Most questions are a tap, and you can skip any you would rather answer on the call.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
How many traits should the scorecard have?
Can we copy a scorecard from the internet?
What candidate data are we allowed to keep?
What if our best rep is the owner?
How much does it cost?
How long is the contract?
How soon will we see results?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
What if we are not happy with the work?
Where to go next
The work that carries this topic further.
The rest of hiring and onboarding sellers
Or read all of sales training and coaching.
Your next practical step
Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.