Recently I’ve been talking to several customers about how to hire the right salesperson, and it reminded me of one of my favorite maxims about hiring: Hire the heart, train the brain.

Simply put, it means that the most important thing in hiring is finding someone who cares as much about customers and their happiness as you do. It means hiring a person you are proud and excited to have working with your best customers.

When people care, you can always teach them the mechanics of the job—product specs, sales process and so on. But you can’t train the heart. They either love what they do or they don’t.

If you’re looking to bring on someone new to your company—whether it is an employee or a contractor—make sure you have a process for attracting the right hearts (and weeding out the wrong ones).

You’ll never worry about hiring the right person if you hire the right heart.

If you need help creating a hiring process that weeds out the wannabes and brings in the real deal, check out this free webinar, How to Hire the Right Salesperson the First Time.

Laura Posey is chief instigator at Dancing Elephants Achievement Group. Guest blogs such as this one are published regularly, and are part of The VAR Guy’s Business Acceleration InfoCenter.