Having a sales hiring process that upgrades your talent is a smart way to grow sales and raise the bar for your team.
THE CHALLENGE
Leaders know the value of a great sales hire. A strong salesperson often means the difference between achieving the profit goals of the company and quickly escalating expenses. The challenge is consistently finding those great salespeople.
Unfortunately, many companies do not give enough thought to designing their sales hiring practices and processes. In addition, they hire salespeople in the same way they hire any other position within the company which is a mistake. Other companies neglect to design the first 90 days to make sure training and onboarding sets the new rep up for success.
DEFINE WHAT YOU NEED
Good hiring practices begin with a carefully written job description that includes not only the responsibilities of the position, but the qualities, skills, attitudes, and most importantly experience the right person will possess and demonstrate. What kind of selling will this person engage – consultative, transactional, strategic, major account selling? What level experience will they need? What selling skills do you need – consultative, qualifying, value selling, prospecting, closing? How complex will the sale be? At what Degree of Customer Focus® does your company want your salesperson to engage?
OBJECTIVE PRE-HIRE ASSESSMENTS
The next piece in a great hiring process is to ask all candidates to complete an objective pre-hire sales screening assessment. By screening candidates early you avoid interviewers getting attached to candidates only to discover they lack the necessary skills. By screening candidates early in the process with a validated, reliably accurate, EEOC compliant assessment, less bias can impact the process. Many engaging salespeople interview well, only to fail miserably at closing any business. That’s because of their hidden Sales Reluctance® called ‘Yielding’ (BSRP, Dallas, TX), or what Dave Kurlan (Objective Management Group, Boston, MA) calls ‘Need for Approval.’ We provide several sales specific assessments that predict performance based on your selling environment and what type of salesperson you need. These assessments get to the true abilities of the salesperson so that you are not limited by what they offer you in their interview.
PHONE INTERVIEW
Next, a phone screen interview should be administered. Interviewers often aim to build interest in the position by talking more about the company than allowing the salesperson to demonstrate their skills during this first call. The phone interview should be quick, the interviewer should be neutral as opposed to friendly, and it should measure the sales candidate’s ability to be articulate, demonstrate interest, engage the interviewer, build rapport and attempt to stay engaged with the interviewer.
IN-PERSON INTERVIEW
Next, an in-person interview should be scheduled with 2 interviewers when possible. This interview should begin with questions prepared in advance by the interviewers that help clarify the claims and experience reported on the resume. The interviewers should maintain a neutral, ‘blank face’ stance and allow the candidate to engage and attempt to build rapport. Then, interviewers should dig deeper into any areas the assessment revealed as potential weaknesses.
Interviewers should ask a series of consistent ‘behavior based’ questions. Some questions should be designed to uncover specific examples of how a person achieved past success. Whenever possible, role-playing in the interview can be used to reveal exactly what the candidate would say and do when presented with typical scenarios they will face on the job. Consistently asking carefully designed questions and providing real-time situations for the candidate to role-play with you are a powerful way to reveal their capabilities.
For more tips for attracting and building a hiring process that allows you to hire the best and upgrade your sales talent, give us a call. We’ll help you build the hiring process that works for your company.