Key #1: Create a vision of your ideal sales candidate. The characteristics you desire may differ from another organization or manager. Personally, since my management style is to work closely with individuals to coach their sales behaviors, I seek highly coachable salespeople. Another manager may prefer a candidate that is quite independent and requires little handholding. Regardless of the characteristics you seek, take the time to write them down. My list includes the following characteristics: leadership, teamwork, decision-making, persistence, administrative skills, and goal setting. The ability to evaluate these skills may not be as elusive as you might think.
Key #2: Past behaviors are the best predictors of future performance. Many recruiters and human resources specialists utilize a combination of four basic methods for evaluating new hires: personality profile, stress test, situational testing, and behavioral interviewing.
I am not a big fan of personality profiles such as Myers-Briggs and DISC Theory, as they often tell you who should succeed but not who will. Stress testing can take a variety of forms, but is usually a high-pressure interview tactic that is recommended when you feel you might have a difficult management challenge. The potential problem with stress testing is that a high-pressure interview situation that is handled poorly may turn off—and turn away—a solid candidate. Situational testing, for example a typing speed test that might be administered to a secretarial candidate, is a great tool when you’re hiring a secretary; however, it may be less suitable for hiring salespeople because it’s difficult to create realistic sales situations that can predict future behaviors.
The most reliable interviewing style for sales is the behavioral interview, during which the manager asks a salesperson about past situations and the behaviors that the sales candidate encountered and demonstrated. For example, I often ask this question: “Describe a time when you made a decision that contradicted company policy and how you justified it.”
Believe it or not, there is a correct answer to this question. The purpose of asking it is to learn about a situation in which the candidate took a calculated risk that helped achieve customer loyalty while costing little to nothing for the employer. In addition, this can be a gauge of confidence and a candidate’s critical reasoning skills. One candidate told me that he offered his prospect a custom color on a window at the standard window price. He justified it by noting that the $1 million order, if achieved, would provide ample opportunity to amortize the cost of the custom color. That initiative spelled a win-win situation for the organization.
Conversely, I often ask salespeople to tell me a time that they conformed to a company policy even when they disagreed with it. This question helps determine how manageable a new hire will be: If the salesperson has difficulty with this question, then a red flag should go up. For example, one sales candidate I interviewed stated that he ignored paperwork because he felt it was unproductive. Another candidate stated that he frequently pushed for better pricing for key customers. These are signs that the candidate might be difficult to manage as well as lacking in sound reasoning skills.
There are a multitude of behavioral questions you can prepare to help gain a better perspective on the talents of a potential hire. If you want to know how a candidate will behave in the future, learn about his or her past performance.
Key #3: Hire slowly, fire quickly. It is better to not hire a qualified candidate than to risk hiring an unqualified one. In other words, the conservative approach to hiring is the correct approach. Every manager and business owner feels, at some point in his or her career, the frustration of dealing with a bad hire—the costs continue to rise while the performance remains deficient. The best way to overcome the risk of a bad hire is to proceed with caution. Meanwhile, when you discover that you’ve made a mistake, make the right decision to cut your losses quickly.
Hiring is a percentage game. I’ve never met a sales manager who has a career score of 100 percent—someone who nails a top performer every time a sales position must be filled. However, some Sales Leaders have percentages a cut above others, and they are invariably the ones who take recruitment to a higher power by cautiously hiring talented people and then developing their skills!
Rick Davis is president of Building Leaders, Inc., a Chicago-based sales training organization. 773.769.4409. E-mail: rickdavis@buildingleaders.com
