Small businesses stay afloat at the beginning because the owner passionately sells the business to everyone, all the time. As the business grows too big for the owner to do all the sales, hiring a salesperson becomes the most difficult choice the owner makes. So why do so many smart owners hire bad salespeople? How can you hire salespeople who will succeed?

People tend to gasp during my speeches when I tell them how to sell more for less money: fire the bottom half of their sales staff. Once they start breathing again, I explain they may want to have their low performing salespeople support the successful salespeople as inside assistants to handle the details, if they don't have the courage to fire them. I was glad to hear Christopher Croner agreed with me.

Who is Croner? He's the co-author of the book (with Richard Abraham) “Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again: Selecting Candidates Who Are Absolutely Driven to Succeed” (The Richard Abraham Company, 2006, ISBN 13: 978-0-9741996-1-0, $19.95).

How does this fit into a technology column? Because Croner's company, SalesDrive, offers an online test to measure the three critical components every successful salesperson's personality must have. You can read the book, or pay for the test, but you'll be best served by doing both (according to Croner).

How do most small business owners hire salespeople? Referrals, hire from a competitor, or interview people until they get a headache then hire the person who seems most like them. Six months or a year later, repeat because the first person hired didn't work out. Lose existing business, potential customers, and even good employees aggravated by the bad salesperson. Repeat again.

“The executives are the brain of the company, but salespeople are the life blood,” said Croner during a phone interview. He has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, but he now focuses on business psychology. “Hiring top performers are the most important decisions owners and sales managers will make,” Croner said.

What are the three critical components each salesperson must have to be a top performer? A need for achievement, competitiveness and optimism. Croner packages these three traits, and all the personality traits they include, into one overall term: drive. Personality tests have been around for years to help hiring managers, but Croner added sections and focused his test to identify the top “hunter/salesperson” among your group of candidates.

James Gaskin writes books (16 so far), articles and jokes about technology and real life from his home office in the Dallas area.