Whenever I conduct my Hire the Best Workshop, I always ask participants what a person needs in order to be successful in sales. Typically, I will hear that they need to be: a good listener, rejection-proof, a team player, organized, an effective communicator, have perseverance, be goal-orientated, have industry knowledge, be money-motivated, be self-motivated, etc.
I have interviewed salespeople for over 35 years, and during that time I’ve developed some insights on effective interviewing methods. Here are five of my strategies that will enable you to better evaluate the salespeople you are interviewing:
Here is our preferred process at Performance Group:
Evaluating sales candidates can be one of the most challenging tasks because candidates are trained and skilled on how to present. They know what to say, what not to say, how to read people and present the best features and benefits about themselves!
While screening may be a step in your hiring process, I propose that every step have a screening element built into it.
How will they respond?
How people respond in an interview is more important than what they know.
When interviewing, most candidates know the “correct” answers to your questions. This is especially true when interviewing salespeople.
Because of this, you need a process that gets past what they know, and forces them to share what they will actually do.
What do you value? Most of us are never asked this question when it is one of the most important questions to ask ourselves and our candidates.
So answer the question; what do you value?
If you are like most people, you’ll start with honesty, integrity, relationships, and other easy layups.
Look around your office and think of your home surroundings. Look at what you wrote checks or swiped your credit card for in the last year. When you do that, you’ll start to see what you truly value.
“Not another interview,” I say to myself.
I’ve conducted ten interviews in two weeks and they were all duds. Worst of all was being caught in interviews where I knew within the first ten minutes that the salesperson was not going to be a fit and wasting the next twenty-minutes being polite.
“We hired some salespeople and not everyone worked out,” the conversation started. Where have I heard this before I thought to myself? Oh I know… almost every conversation I’m in starts out this way. “Not unusual,” I stated, “How can I help?” “We need a pre-hire screening assessment and I heard you can help us out with that.”
“What does your gut tell you?” I asked my client about her potential sales candidate. She stated; “I don’t believe he would be the right fit.” “I would follow your gut,” I responded.
Two weeks later I received this email from her: I’ve decided to move ahead with this candidate. ” Despite the fact that I told him I had other candidates he persisted in his follow-up. I believe he will do very well here.”
It dawned on me the other day that I have been auditioning most of my life. I auditioned for plays in high school. I auditioned for the varsity offensive tackle position. Every week in wrestling, I had to “audition” to keep my position on the varsity team. Today, I audition with prospects about my training, consulting or recruiting services. But when I started my professional career and was seeking employment, I stopped auditioning and started interviewing. Why did the auditioning stop and the interviewing start? It does not make sense.
“We look for what I call the X-factor and if we find it we don’t hire,” my brother stated. My brother is a city administer. He is aware that if you hire someone for a government position, they could be with you for a long time because it is difficult to fire the non-performers. Therefore, he is very selective in how he hires.