The Overlooked Tip for Increasing Sales: Hire Radiators, Not Drains

Training is key in any business, but hiring salespeople with the right mindset gives companies the upper hand from the very start. Candidates tend to fall under one of two groups, and HR must begin to look beyond the resume to determine the correct categorization of potential employees.

One personality drains those around them with negativity. The second type radiates energy, uplifting others to the next level. Seeking radiators is an intentional shift in organizational focus, but one that can have monumental impact. Some of the benefits of doing so are obvious, some are surprising, and all of them should be cause for serious consideration.

Obvious Benefits

1. Enhanced Sales Culture: When team members genuinely enjoy the people around them and a positive vibe exists within team meetings, they tend to retain more information, brainstorm more new ideas, and better execute on strategies presented. Sales culture is affected most when people wear their hard work and accomplishments on their sleeve instead of their challenges. Having a few radiators on the team can go a long way in spreading the productive ideology every sales organization needs.
2. Growth Management: Sales organizations are overwhelmingly focused on growth. This means companies are changing constantly, and radiators, unlike drains, are able to maintain a positive attitude when adapting to these changes.
3. No Fear of Rejection: An inevitable part of sales is rejection, and lots of it. If a salesperson has a bad week, it’s easy to become demotivated for the following week, and the cycle continues. For radiators, even one “Yes,” regardless of how many “No’s” they faced, is enough to keep them feeling confident and moving forward.

Surprising Benefits

1. Enhanced Overall Culture: For many organizations, the relationship between different departments is strained—or at least disconnected—and working together day-to-day can be a challenge. But radiators encourage positive inter-departmental interaction and eliminate unnecessary stress between divisions of the company. If a company feels tension between the sales side and operations, it’s time to seek radiators.
2. More Cross-Selling: Radiators don’t look at their business selfishly. Instead, they have the ability to remove personal emotion from the sale. In an environment where cross-selling is an opportunity, radiators are happy when a sale is made, even if it benefits someone else.
3. Help for Leaders: People will always trust the feedback of their peers at a slightly higher level than that of their management. Leaders can rest easier knowing the radiators on their team will lift up their fellow salespeople, which ultimately will increase productivity and business growth.

How to Seek Radiators

1. Ask situational questions during the interview.

• “Can you describe a time when you were faced with a fair amount of challenge or setbacks? How did you respond?”
• “Was there a time when you had to be the positive person among a group that was suffering from an overall negative or pessimistic vibe? How were you able to handle this task?”

2. Trust your gut.
   Radiators are far too valuable to trivialize. If there’s even a suspicion that a drain is on the list of potential candidates for a position, companies should never bring him or her on board. This may sound extreme, but the cost to the team’s culture and productivity is far too great a risk.

JP Hamel is vice president of N2 Publishing. Founded in 2004 and based in Wilmington, NC, N2 Publishing, Inc. is “turning neighborhoods into communities” by partnering with affluent neighborhoods to produce more than 900 private, monthly publications filled with resident-contributed content. Recently, N2 Publishing earned its seventh consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000 list, occupying spot number 1,764. For more information, visit: http://www.n2pub.com.