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Course 7: How to Hire a Sales
Superstar – Interviewing, Checks and
the Offer
Step 3: The First Interview
“The Biggest Sales Call of Their Lives”
¾ Look back on your best experiences in interviewing an applicant, and use
that as the “standard” when hiring future employees.
¾ A sales job interview is no different from a sales call. The applicant is, in
fact, selling himself!
¾ As a sales manager pay very close attention to how the applicant sells
himself during the interview. Keep in mind you are actually witnessing him
perform the job you’re looking to hire him for right before your eyes.
¾ How the applicant sells himself to you is exactly how he’ll sell your
company’s products/solutions as a salesperson.
The Best You’ll Ever Get
¾ Everyone puts their best foot forward during a job interview. As a sales
manager, it’s safe to assume you’re already seeing the best from an
applicant.
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¾ What you see is what you get. Don’t force yourself to think they’ll perform
better on the job than on the actual interview.
¾ Sales people SHOULD interview well.
¾ Everyone has their bad days. If you interview an applicant on one of his
best days, which is most probably the case, you need to consider how
he’ll perform the job on his bad days.
¾ Ask yourself the critical question: “I’ve seen what this applicant can do on
his best day. But is it good enough that he’d still be an asset on his bad
days?”
¾ Never make excuses, even when applicants are hard to come by. The
right applicant with the right skills and qualifications will eventually walk
through that door.
¾ Take note sales people are masters of sales talk – especially about
themselves!
Interview Guidelines
¾ The most important rule in interviewing well is to take copious notes in the
margin of the resume – you’ll use this vital information later
¾ Let them do the talking, you talk 10% of the time and listen 90%
¾ Whatever you do, don’t “give away the store” and like a good poker player,
never show your hand
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¾ Using uncomfortable silences is a very effective technique to excellent
interviewing – you need the discipline to do it.
¾ Always notice any excessive fidgeting or blinking.
¾ Don’t ever lead the candidate with questions that show your bias.
¾ Look out for any hesitation when you ask your “big questions”
The art and science of interviewing a salesperson
¾ Your aim is to make the interview candidate as comfortable as possible.
That way you can get the most truthful information out of them.
¾ Your pre-interview includes not launching right into questions but instead
talking about the position and the company for the first few minutes.
¾ “The Resume Walk” is a technique used in the first interview only to gain
maximum information while getting the candidate to talk about the subject
they are most knowledgeable on
¾ Use “The Funnel” with large, wide, broad sweeping questions, lulling them
into a comfortable rhythm, making them comfortable and at ease
¾ Have a short Q and A session at the end of the first interview. Allow more
time for this section in the final interview.
¾ Always tell them what to expect next in the interview process. It’s
respectful and sets the proper expectations.
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Step 4: The Second Interview
Killer Questions to Uncover the Fabulous Five…and More
¾ Now that you have the first interview under your belt, its time to start
thinking about who you want to bring back for the second, and possibly
final, interview.
¾ There’s a good chance that if you were using the techniques from the
previous lesson, you have good idea as to who makes it to round two.
¾ There are also five secondary traits that, although they are not as
essential as “The Fabulous Five” - the candidate should possess if they
are to succeed in your organization. You need to ask questions that relate
to these traits. They are:
o Strong interpersonal / oral communication skills
o Strong sales ability and skills
o Entrepreneurial aptitude
o Determination / perseverance
o Strong organizational / prioritization skills
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¾ You must ask manageability questions to gauge suitability. However, the
asking of these questions is easy to do, but far more important is your
interpretation of the answers.
¾ Always ask “knockouts” that determine:
o Are they selling you?
o Are they utilizing the appropriate “selling style” match for your
product and company?
o Do they close you?
o Do you like them?
Step 5: Background and Reference Checks
¾ No matter how nice and honest the candidate may seem in an interview,
be realistic. People will always do what is best for them.
¾ There are a number of techniques that you can employ to minimize your
chances of having your potential offer either rejected or deferred due to a
counter-offer from their present employer.
¾ Depending on what your company’s policy is, reference-checking is highly
recommended prior to making the offer.
Step 6: The Offer
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¾ You’re still interviewing
¾ Until the candidate signs the formal offer, you are still in the interview
stage with them
¾ Set the base salary slightly lower from the start
¾ Get the candidate a little bit more on the base salary than they may have
been expecting
¾ Use sign-on bonuses
¾ Make the case that in times when you have high performers with solid
track records at the ready for hire, you can give some of those individuals
a sign on bonus
¾ Use guarantees
¾ Over-deliver on base salary
Final Thoughts
¾ When in Doubt…Keep Looking
¾ You don’t EVER compromise. Instead, find another way to get through
until you find the right person.
Action Guide
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Course 7: How to Hire a Sales
Superstar – Interviewing, Checks and
the Offer
Now that we have given you an overview of what the ideal sales candidate looks
like, as well as how to screen those candidates to get the cream of the crop, now
its time to get into interviewing. Once we’ve done that, then we can finally make
the offer and get them on board selling!
Without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Step 3: The First Interview
“The Biggest Sales Call of Their Lives”
Seasoning is an essential experience trait that I always look for when hiring.
Combined with the “Fabulous Five”, having a few years under your belt and a
track record of success that can be documented is paramount to making a good
hiring decision.
A few years back, I decided to interview a salesperson who despite having only a
few years of prior sales experience, the years he did have were pretty darn good.
As he took me through his past experience, he easily built rapport with me and
was self-deprecating but extremely self-assured. He spoke to me directly and
clearly about his past accomplishments and related how those accomplishments
could be applicable to the available position. He effortlessly worked in anecdotes
and analogies to what he had accomplished, and to what he would accomplish
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when he was hired by me. He had done his homework and was obviously wellprepared.
He also gave specific examples of individual situations and sales calls;
describing the sales techniques he utilized to achieve the stellar sales results he
had accomplished in the less than five years he had been in sales.
What I remember most about this interview, out of the hundreds I have done over
the last ten years, is when he was telling me how good he was, he did it in such a
way so that it came across without a hint of cockiness, like he was just relaying to
me the facts, with little fanfare.
Finally, at the end of the interview, both as I was starting to pack up my files and
the hotel phone was ringing alerting me to arrival of the next candidate, he
suddenly realized that time was running out of time on this sales call.
After trial-closing several times in an effort to get a definitive answer as to
whether or not I would take him to the next step in the interviewing process, he
asked me if I would like to see the presentation he had done for me. I refused not
once, but twice, as I felt the pressure of keeping my interview day on schedule.
After the third time asking me, he decided to divulge that the presentation was a
power point he had done on his computer. With his laptop in “sleep” mode, he
powered it up despite my earlier objections. He proceeded to show me his
presentation on why my company was “a perfect match” for his skills. The
presentation was complete with some animation, bullet points and salient
analogies between his past experience and the unprecedented success he would
have once hired by me.
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I was standing up, ready to escort him out the door, but somehow, with his wit
and persistence, he was able to somehow get me to sit back down and view all
twelve slides of the presentation, with quick narrative provided by him. Sensing I
liked the effort and continuing to joke with me that I had to hear his “final pitch”,
he asked me again to commit to seeing him for a second interview. He asked me
repeatedly, without any stiffness, if there was any reason I would not take him to
the next step of the interview process.
I told him I could not think of any reason. Finally satisfied, I warmly bade him
farewell until the next interview which with his gentle prodding, we agreed would
be the following Tuesday.
I offered him the job by the end of that week.
In his first full sales year with me, he was the number one salesperson in the
country, winning the first of two CEO Circle Awards in consecutive years, the
award given to the top 5% of the sales force. The following year, he was
promoted to a sales management position.
The Standard
Why am I telling you this story?
For a few different reasons. The first reason is that I when I interview sales
candidates, even today, I always compare them to “the best interview I have ever
had”, namely this one. The standard had been set and it’s a standard that I
always refer back to in times of indecision with candidates. You may have a
similar experience from some point in your past and it’s a good idea to keep that
experience in the foremost of your mind as “the standard”.
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Secondly, it underscores the fact that a sales job interview is at its core, a sales
call! For the interviewee, it is the biggest sales call of their life.
Masterful Musings
•
How much weight do you put on your company’s hiring standards? Do you stick to it
down to the letter? Or do you simply trust your instincts when interviewing
prospective applicants who don’t quite match the company’s hiring profile?
•
Recall your best interview experience.
•
How did you fare when you walked inside the interview room and into the “biggest
sales call of your life”? Was your performance good enough to be set as “the
standard” on which you could compare your own hiring interviews on?
Sales interviews are different
The beauty of being a sales manager is that unlike interviewing an engineer, a
teacher’s aide or a computer programmer, the interview unto itself tells you
exactly how they will behave in the actual job. The interview allows you the luxury
of observing them while they are doing the exact thing you are interviewing them
for.
After all, isn’t a job interview just a big, glorified sales call? And the product they
are selling they know all the features and benefits on, better than any widget they
could ever sell.
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The candidate previously mentioned was no different. In fact, after he was hired,
he sold our company products in exactly the same way he sold me on him. In
many cases, he was even better.
Countless times, I observed him tactfully navigating his way through a cold call,
gaining agreement, injecting self-deprecating humor to disarm his prospects,
probing for needs and pain points, working the office staff, then finally proposing
his solutions with our products, while weaving the needs and information he had
uncovered in his initial prospecting. He performed his sales calls in the exact
same way he interviewed with me.
Just as he did in his interview with me, he confidently and carefully closed for the
business. After meeting some resistance, he uncovered the customer’s final
objections, re-closed and set up commitment dates and timelines for delivery.
What a beautiful sight it was to see!
Bottom line: he sold exactly the same way he interviewed.
How they sell you is how they’ll sell your prospects
Your interview candidates are no different. How they sell you is how they will sell
their customers. If they lack something in selling you, then that deficiency will
quickly be identified by you when they start working for you.
As sales managers, we can never forget that we have this advantage over other
hiring managers because in the task of the interview itself, we get to view our
candidate “doing the job” before our very eyes!
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Always remember, the interview is the biggest sales call they will ever have.
Remember that and use it towards your advantage when screening and hiring.
Masterful Musings
•
When all is said and done, the interview should thoroughly impress you. No less. A sales
interview is just one big glorified sales call, and the applicant is selling something he
knows extremely well—himself—better than any product or widget that would ever be put
into his hands. If he can’t convince YOU to buy HIM, how is he going to convince hesitant
clients to buy any of your company’s products/solutions?
•
Think about your biggest advantage as a sales manager over other hiring managers: you
get to observe applicants perform the job right during the interview. Are you going to just
throw this away in favor of a “one and done”?
Give yourself a 1 if you are easily convinced during interviews. Give yourself a 5 if you
judge applicants knowing the interview is in itself already a preview of how they’ll perform
on the job and a perfect score of 10 if you were already using this technique BEFORE
reading this lesson.
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Masterful Takeaways
•
Standards are not be set in stone. Learn to trust your gut feelings as a sales
manager.
•
Look back on your best experiences in interviewing an applicant, and use that as
the “standard” when hiring future employees.
•
A sales job interview is no different from a sales call. The applicant is, in fact,
selling himself!
•
As a sales manager pay very close attention to how the applicant sells himself
during the interview. Keep in mind you are actually witnessing him perform the job
you’re looking to hire him for right before your eyes.
•
How the applicant sells himself to you is exactly how he’ll sell your company’s
products/solutions as a salesperson.
The Best You’ll Ever Get
When you were interviewing for your current job, you probably prepped yourself
for days, making sure you did all your research on the position, spoke to the few
people who know the job well, maybe got a little background information on your
boss-to-be. On the day of the interview you woke up that morning, you might
have rehearsed your answers to some of the potential interview questions while
you were in the shower. Maybe you made extra sure that your hair was just so
and wore your best suit.
The point is this, when you interviewed, you made every possible attempt to
represent yourself in the best possible way. In short, that day, unless you were
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sick, you presented yourself in the best possible way you knew how. It was the
best that you had.
By the same token, when you are interviewing sales candidates, this is the best
that you’ll ever see of them. If they don’t interview and sell you, chances are slim
that they will sell any sales prospect they are presenting your product to. In the
interview you have with them, you are observing them at their very best. It
doesn’t get any better than this.
Don’t convince yourself that maybe they’ll do a better job when they’re out in the
field, because they won’t. If anything, they’ll be worse in their daily sales calls
than they were in the interview. Just like you dolled yourself up as best as you
could for your management interview, they did the same thing when they
interviewed with you. Everything else will be a steep drop off.
You may tell yourself, that some people just don’t interview well right? No! Not
salespeople. If a sales rep cannot sell you in an interview on their best day, they
cannot sell effectively when they’re not at their best. And let’s not kid ourselves,
there are plenty of days as a sales rep, that you do not have it all working in your
favor. There are plenty of days when a rep may go to work when they are not at
their best.
Nobody is always at 100%
Let’s not kid ourselves, who is really operating at their absolute peak every
minute of every day? Maybe Superman, but even he has bad days, and feels a
bit insecure about his superpowers at times while he’s waiting around for the next
world crisis at the Hall of Justice.
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My point is this, if they cannot sell you on their best day (the interview day) they’ll
never be able to sell you on their not so best days. And for most people, the bad
days outnumber the good ones.
Just remember while you’re interviewing the candidate keep in mind that you’re
not going to get anything better. Even remind yourself during the interview: “this
is the best this candidate has to offer – is it good enough for me?”
The day they interview with you is the best that candidate will ever give you. It’s
the best you’ll ever get.
If their best isn’t good enough on that one day…then keep looking.
Whatever you do, don’t make excuses for them. So if the first interview goes
“pretty well”, don’t give them a second chance. Don’t delude yourself into thinking
that if you just give them a second interview, they’ll show you something you
didn’t see the first time through. Just because you don’t have that many other
candidates in the pipeline, don’t make excuses. Start fresh and the right
candidate will eventually walk through your door. You’re far better off letting them
go. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Don’t make excuses,
just move on.
Masterful Musings
•
Remember when you interviewed for your dream job, probably the one you’re
holding right now? You went to bed very early the night before and maybe even
bought new shoes just to look impressive during the interview. Simply put, you did
your best to be in top condition that day. Now how do you feel about hiring applicants
who obviously didn’t come prepared to be interviewed by you?
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•
Some applicants won’t come prepared. Others simply aren’t good enough. If so, do
they deserve to be part of your sales team? Ask yourself if you’re being too lenient.
•
Rate yourself 1 to 5 on how often you give “less than stellar” applicants another
chance by interviewing them a second time – 1 being “never”, 5 being you’re too
lenient.
Professional Interviewees
Although there are many great and fun things about interviewing sales people,
they do have a tendency to be very good at showing and discussing their
primarily attractive features. They also have a tendency to “fudge” the not so
desirable traits.
The nerve of these salespeople not talking about their bad habits!
Buyer beware. Beware of the sales interviewee.
Sales people are the trickiest to hire right because they are extremely adept at
selling. And selling is what you do as an interviewee in a sales interview. After all,
when you interview sales people you are in essence, interviewing “professional
interviewers”. And what is a job interview after all? It’s really just a glorified sales
call.
This is after all, what they do all the time. And along the way, due to their
profession, they have become extremely adept at featuring the most desirable
and attractive parts of their products when they are in a sales call with a
prospect.
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When they interview with you, the circumstances are really no different.
No fair balance
How many sales people do you know who in the course of a sales call, come
right out and say: “Yeah, Mr. Prospect, I know you seem real interested in the
XYZ Corps Super-duper Widget, but quite honestly it has lots of service issues
that you won’t find out about until I’m long gone. Your best bet is to call the PDQ
Corp and buy their Super-duper Widget”.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen that happen…neither have you.
They never give you “fair balance” or reasons not to buy. If they are asked about
a feature of the product that is not so appealing, or maybe is not as good as the
competition (both perceived competition and real), they typically place some kind
of spin on the issue or slightly change course and underscore other, more
appealing attributes of the product. The professional interviewer will do the same
thing.
Have you ever asked an interview candidate “what is your biggest weakness?” I’ll
guarantee you the answer they give you is one of two:
1. “I am a perfectionist and I’m too hard on myself”
2. “I could do a better job on my administrative paperwork”
I’ve never seen an interview candidate actually discuss anything to the
interviewer that would prevent them from putting themselves in the best light to
get the job offer. I’ve simply stopped asking the clichéd interview question
because it sheds no light on the candidate whatsoever.
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The difference is that the professional sales interviewer will be far more versed
and experienced than a chemist per se, in minimizing their faults, due solely to
the fact that they perform similar “sleights of hand” in their everyday work. It
stands to reason that the salesperson would be far more adept at this skill than
the average interviewer.
Keep this fact in mind when you are interviewing; you are dealing with
“professional interviewers”, because of what they do for their chosen vocation.
Don’t ever forget that they know all the features and benefits of the product
they’re attempting to sell you. And they can sell those most attractive features
and diminish the unattractive features better than any widget they could ever sell.
They know their product’s features extremely well, no doubt. But they also know
its not-so-good parts equally as well. And they may not want to tell you
everything about those aspects of the product. To uncover both the good and the
not-so-good will be up to you to figure out.
Masterful Musings
•
What personal strategies do you employ to determine whether an applicant has
real talent or just plain talks a good game?
•
With regards to the question about the applicant’s weaknesses, do you take it as
a sign of skill or as a sign of arrogance? Take note these are professional
interviewees you’re dealing with.
•
Have you ever hired an applicant who managed to avoid the “weakness”
question effortlessly? How was his performance on the job?
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Masterful Takeaways
•
Everyone puts their best foot forward during a job interview. As a sales manager, it’s
safe to assume you’re already seeing the best from an applicant.
•
What you see is what you get. Don’t force yourself to think they’ll perform better on
the job than on the actual interview.
•
Sales people SHOULD interview well.
•
Everyone has their bad days. If you interview an applicant on one of his best days,
which is most probably the case, you need to consider how he’ll perform the job on
his bad days.
•
Ask yourself the critical question: “I’ve seen what this applicant can do on his best
day. But is it good enough that he’d still be an asset on his bad days?”
•
Never make excuses, even when applicants are hard to come by. The right applicant
with the right skills and qualifications will eventually walk through that door.
•
Take note sales people are masters of sales talk – especially about themselves!
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Interview Guidelines
Before we get into the formal structure and questions of the first live interview
itself, there are a number of do’s and don’ts you should follow when doing live
interviews. Each of them will assist you greatly in uncovering the core
characteristics of each sales candidate so you can make the most informed
hiring decision possible.
1. Take Really Good Notes in the Margin
We will talk about the usage of this information in later lessons, but one of the
hallmarks of a good sales interviewer is the ability to prepare effectively and think
about what you need to do DURING the initial interview so that you can then use
this information to make critical distinctions in later interviews and with deeper
lines of questioning.
And you cannot do this later, if you don’t take good notes now.
When I say take good notes – this means you need to make note of statements
from the interviewee that you may have any kind of questions about. Instead of
asking the question right then and there, jot the statement down, let them finish
and then at some point afterward (this may even be in the next interview), ask
your question regarding that statement. This is extremely useful in jogging your
memory revolving around crucial statements and detailed data that you can use
to later challenge and test the mettle of the sale interviewee. The data you’ll jot
down now may seem simplistic and not all that relevant to the hiring
process…but trust me, when we divulge to you how to use it, it will make the
difference between making brilliant hiring decisions and brutal hiring decisions.
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So for now, from the very start of the interview you’ll need to make sure you jot
down anything stated in this context. As an added note, write your notes in the
resume margin itself. This way, you’ll never worry about losing the notes and
everything will be kept in one place. If you start on a notepad, that pad can get
lost or misplaced, so just keep a file for the territory you are interviewing for and
have all your resumes in that file. Each resume will have the notes on it. It’s far
easier that way.
OK, so what do you write down?
Since the first interview lasts about an hour, you don’t have a whole lot of time to
ask a ton of really specific questions. The idea of the first interview is to get just
enough information to determine whether you want to bring the candidate back
for the second interview. So if the candidate makes it to interview number two,
you’ll want to have ample questions queued up for him or her.
Here is the list of statements you’ll want to write in the margins:
•
General statements – i.e. “I always have been a…” “I enjoy the direct
sale…”
•
Emphatic statements – i.e. “I really loved selling granite tombstones”.
•
Contradictory statements – something that contradicts something else
they had stated previously – i.e. “I was ranked number one in 2007” after
earlier saying “I had a YTD quota attainment of 100.3%” (the two
statements don’t really seem to jive, right?)
•
Write down the “in between words” – “I pick things up pretty quickly” or
“this is kind of a better role for me”
•
False platitudes – “I’ve always been able to do really well wherever I’ve
gone…” “I’ve always been a really good salesperson…”
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•
Ambiguous statements – i.e. “I was one of the top salespeople that
year…” “
Why do you need to write these down?
Because you will be using these statements in the next lesson to “dig deeper”,
filter out the crap and get to the “real deal” of who they actually are.
Platitudes and general statements are completely useless to you as a hiring
manager. What you need are specifics and when you uncover the specifics
behind the general statements and useless platitudes, you get to who they really
are.
2. Shut Up!
Salespeople do like to talk. I know it’s a cliché, but it is true. I’ve never really
known one that does not like to talk. They especially like to talk about
themselves.
Unfortunately, sales managers like to talk as well. And the mediocre ones talk
way too much in interviews.
If you are teaching your sales people that the most important thing they should
be doing in a sales call is ask questions and listen for answers, then why are you
not following your own advice in the sales interview?
Well, first off, its fun to talk about the position that you’re interviewing for. It’s also
fun to talk about your “management style” and all of the characteristics that you
as the hiring manage look for in “the ideal sales candidate”. It makes you feel
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important to pontificate to your loyal subjects all that you know and all that you
are.
The problem with doing this is that it doesn’t help you hire the right sales
candidate. It only hurts you.
An interview by “time of talking” should break down as follows:
Them talking: 90%
You talking: 10%
So if you give an hour for all of your initial interviews, then you should talk for a
grand total of about 6 minutes.
If you do a “Q and A” section at the end of the interview (always do it at the end –
never to begin), then maybe it should be 85-15 or so.
The point is this; the time you spend in an interview should be spent with you
finding out about them, not you telling them about you. You are the interviewer
and they are the interviewee. If you keep it that way you’ll uncover a whole lot
more about your candidates than you will in an interview with you talking the
whole time.
3. NEVER Show Your Hand!
Only at the end of the final interview do you want to start telling them the
character attributes you are looking for in “the ideal sales candidate”. As
discussed below, don’t ever discuss this up-front. If you touch on it, be brief and
don’t show your hand – make sure you keep your cards on what you want to hear
close to the vest. Show them nothing.
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What you want is for them to tell you what they are all about. And then you match
their talents and skills to the required talents and skills required to be successful
at the job.
As we discussed previously, it’s a marriage. But just like match.com, you are
looking for ‘the perfect match”. Don’t over talk what you want, let them tell you
what they are all about.
Just don’t show your hand – meaning, don’t tell them more about the job and the
company requirements than you really need to. It’s simple, let them tell you what
they know about the company, you just keep your mouth shut and listen.
4. Uncomfortable Silences Are Your Best Friend
“Don’t you just hate uncomfortable silences?”
-Mrs. Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction
As much as you may hate them in the world outside work, in a job interview, with
you as the top performing sales manager trying to uncover the most you can
from an interview candidate in an hour’s period of time, uncomfortable silences
are your best friend.
In an interview, you hold all the cards, you set the tone for the interview and you
are the one asking the questions. This position of standing allows you to control
the uncomfortable silences.
Say you are asking a candidate about a year in which they had a particularly
difficult time getting their territory going in the right direction. At some point, they
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come to the end of what was a long description of why they didn’t perform as well
as they maybe should have. What do you do then?
Do you feel the need to empathize with them and start telling them about one of
your worst years as a sales rep and play the “co-misery game”? Do you let them
off the hook and move to the next question you’ve been dying to ask them? Don’t
do either.
It may make you feel good to let them off the hook, but it is golden moments like
these in a sales interview when they eventually run out of breath, steam and
energy, long after they have given you all the reasons why they couldn’t do
something, that it is the time for you to hold your fire and stay completely silent…
The candidate will feel the uncomfortable silence and want to fill it up with
something, anything; it’s so uncomfortable for them. But not for you. Stay silent,
see what they say.
Its in times like these that sales candidates reveal their true self because they
have run out of the canned “there really wasn’t much I could do, the economy
back in those years was just killing the market for reusable masking tape” or “the
market for fishhooks just dried up because everyone was starting to eat chicken”.
What they say next will be unscripted and will give you valuable insight into who
they are.
Its times like these that candidates make their big blunders and reveal
themselves to you. Its “unscripted time” and whatever happens is completely
unexpected.
Have you ever been to a cocktail party and were standing around a group of
people who you had nothing really in common with and one of those
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uncomfortable silences came over the group? You felt the pressure to say
something, just say anything because you have been standing there silent and
you don’t want to look like a moron. And so instead of being your normal
articulate self, you blurt out something completely irrelevant, non-sensical or
worse, offensive?
This is the unfortunate power of the uncomfortable silence. It didn’t work so well
for you in that case, but it can work wonders for you in sales interviews.
I once had a candidate after discussing at length the painful process of being laid
off by his previous company; he freely admitted that when “the merger talks had
finalized between my company and XYZ Corp, I took the entire summer off”. He
only admitted it after I had asked him a number of questions surrounding the
merger, how it made him feel, what he did proactively to enhance his position
and standing, etc. It was at the tail end of an excruciatingly long silence that he
revealed that nugget. Obviously, he’s not the kind of candidate we want to hire.
Use those silences to your advantage to find your ideal sales candidate.
5. Always Notice the Fidget
As a new sales manager I didn’t notice every little detail. As is the case when
doing something new, you don’t have a lot of confidence to just throw it into
autopilot and let it fly when you’re brand new. Like everything, you become more
skilled the longer you do it. And as I became more skilled in interviewing, I
started to pick up on the real subtleties of interviewing, including body language
and how to read it.
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Around that phase of my career, I was interviewing a stellar candidate and really
feeling good about the interview. I thought that I may have just found my new
sales rep. However, on one of my questions, I noticed that the candidate had
quickly glossed over one of the “why I left that job to go to the next one” question
rather quickly.
In my follow up questions, I went back to that one job and asked her to clarify
why she had left that position. She was normally extremely calm and confident
but when this subject came up, as she was telling me why she had left the
company to “seek other challenges”, she fidgeted; shifting her position in her seat
in such a subtle way as to hardly notice. Fortunately, I picked up on it. Something
told me that there was something going on there. I made a note and then went to
other questions in the interview.
Later in the interview, she made reference to the type of job that sales job that
she really liked, it just so happened to be the same kind of job she had LEFT on
the question where she fidgeted. I circled back to the question again.
Since it was now the third time discussing it and now knowing that she couldn’t
avoid it any longer, she went on to explain that she had a terrible relationship
with her boss at that job. She went on to explain that there was a disagreement
over the particulars of a performance review she had received and the two had
words – with her uttering a few choice words she now regretted saying. Long
story short, she was fired shortly thereafter.
She then started to cry…oh boy.
Needless to say, we did not hire her. But my point is this: watch for “the fidget”.
“The fidget” tells you when the words the candidate is saying do not match the
actual truth. People give this away without even thinking about it, but it’s your job
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to notice. Because when you do, you’ll get the real story behind the story, it you
non-threateningly ask it the right way.
6. Don’t Lead the Witness
When you ask a question and the candidate is obviously struggling, don’t give
‘em the answer! Just like in a good sales call, first ask, and then be as quiet as
possible.
Don’t be like a television courtroom attorney and unwittingly “lead the witness”
For example, if the candidate suddenly loses their train of thought or struggles
with the answer to a question you have posed, give them time to answer.
Whatever you do, don’t answer for them. The natural human tendency is to “fill in
the gaps” and be agreeable and helpful. You can do this all you’d like in the
outside world, in interviews however, don’t do it.
You don’t have to come across as a jerk, but simply give them time to answer. If
no answer comes in fifteen to twenty seconds or so (yes, twenty seconds – a
virtual eternity for us who hate long silences), you may want to let them off the
hook slightly by saying:
“There’s no rush, Ill just give you some time to think of your answer”.
Then wait for their answer. The answer will eventually come. If it’s taken fifteen
to twenty seconds to answer, you’ll want to write this down in the margin to
review it later in the interview process, if they make it that far. If you sense that
the problem they’re having is the way you asked the question then simply ask
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them if they’d like you to restate the question. Then re-state it in simpler terms,
but with the same intent.
The point here is that most interviewers, when faced with an obviously struggling
candidate like this tend to help answer the questions for them. This is what we
categorize as “leading the witness” and a big interviewing no-no. There’s a
reason why you asked the question, right? So you need to wait for the answer.
Force them use their brain, not yours.
“Leading the witness” also involves helping the candidate answer a question by
chiming in with them on their answer. This especially happens when the
interviewer asks a question with which he may have a strong opinion. On
questions like: “why do you love sales?” I’ve seen on countless occasions a
sales manager chime right in with the candidate on their answer, telling them why
they love sales so much. Remember, your job here is to listen 90% of the time
and talk 10%, this is one of those listening times.
This way, you can gain as much valuable insight as you can from the candidate
so that you can make the best possible sales hire...
Helping the candidate answer those questions, or even leading them with
insights of your own will greatly bias your decision making process in pursuit of
your goal.
Fight the urge to add your two cents and “don’t lead the witness” – make them
answer independent of your interjections and biases.
7. Watch for Hesitation
Do they hesitate when you ask the big question?
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When you ask a big question and the candidate hesitates slightly or has to think
a lot about an answer, then you may want to take a closer look.
For example, this is usually done when you ask an alternate answer question
like: “If we offered you the job and your company gave you a promotion at the
same time…which would you choose?”
If the candidate hesitates in the slightest then you know they may have some
conflicts. Obviously the answer to the above question would be to pick the first
one, but if they stutter or stammer, you may have an issue.
Let’s say you’re interviewing for a direct sales position, but the candidate has
done a lot of servicing and selling in their current role, you could ask this question
clear out of the blue to quickly gauge the candidate’s gut reaction: “Which part of
that job do you really like – the servicing or the selling?” If they hesitate you know
they're not sure and may not be an ideal hire for you.
However, if they immediately answer “sales” with no hesitation whatsoever, you
have just uncovered very powerful information to match your sales hire criteria.
This technique works best when it is asked with no real lead-in or indication of
what you will ask. You could be on a completely unrelated topic and just pop this
question right out of the blue. You want the candidate to be caught off guard a
bit, that way you can be assured the answer is a real one.
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Masterful Takeaways
•
Having a strict set of interview guidelines will assist you in interviewing candidates
evenly.
1. Take excellent notes
ƒ
List of statements you’ll want to write in the margins:
o
General statements
o
Emphatic statements
o
Contradictory statements
o
Write down the “in between words”
o
False platitudes
o
Ambiguous statements
2. Shut Up! - Them talking: 90% and you talking: 10%
3. NEVER Show Your Hand! – Don’t tell them what you’re looking for.
4. Uncomfortable Silences Are Your Best Friend – They will be filled by the
candidate
5. Always notice the fidget – Be mindful of non-verbal cues to investigate
6. Don’t lead the witness – Be objective, let them answer…even if it’s a
subject you are passionate about
7. Watch for hesitation – Especially important on the “big” questions
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The Art and Science of Interviewing a Salesperson
To make absolutely sure that you are interviewing every candidate on a level
playing field, as well as to make your interviews to be as productive as possible,
it’s critically important for you to evaluate each candidate in the exact same way.
Same-ness in structure, used in combination with controlled evaluation tools
make this possible. You can deviate from the formula ever so slightly if you
absolutely have to – but do your best not to.
The formalized structure helps you to process the information that you receive
from your questions in a balanced manner, so that all candidates are given an
equal chance. The downside of not following any set structure is that you will be
less likely to make a sound hiring decision as determinants may be biased and
disproportionate.
Remember that hiring salespeople is the most difficult of all hires due to the fact
that you’re interviewing them in their native environment. Don’t forget that the
interview is “the biggest sales call of their life” – so you need to be doubly sharp
to pick up on all the candidate’s personal nuances so you get the most accurate
picture of who they really are.
So within each interview there is a structure to follow so that you continue to
evaluate each candidate on an equal plane. This way you can objectively
evaluate each candidate on their won merits. You can achieve that objectivity
when you conduct your interviews all within the same format as follows:
1. Make ‘Em Comfy
2. Pre-Interview
3. “The Resume Walk” (First Interview only)
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4. “The Funnel”
5. Q and A
6. Next Steps
1. Make ‘Em Comfy
When you first meet your interview candidate, your real first goal in the interview
is to make them as comfortable as you possibly can. A lot of interviewers will tell
you that you should immediately put an interview candidate on the defensive and
make them defend themselves at every step of the interview process.
Don’t do this!
There is a very good reason why and that’s because:
A comfortable, relaxed interview candidate reveals so much more than one who’s
up-tight and nervous!
Unless you’re a masochist, it’s a whole lot more fun to talk to someone who is at
ease than one who’s nervous or intimidated. This way you really get to know
them for who they are as opposed to who they think they should be as long as
you make them comfortable.
Don’t do this because you’re a nice guy or gal…forget that. Do it because it’s the
single most effective way to get to the heart of who they really are. You want
them to be the star of the show, the one who is relaxed and alert – because only
then do you get them to let their guard down so that you can discover what
they’re really all about!
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Here is a logical sequence of events to make ‘em comfy:
•
As they are entering the interview room, make pleasant chit chat at first,
where they were coming from, ask them about where they live, how was
the parking, traffic, the weather, anything to get them at ease right off the
bat. We will analyze this conversation in later lessons – and this
interaction is a very important one in the end when deciding on which
candidates to hire – but for right now, just focus on making them feel at
ease.
•
Another great way to start off is to make them even more comfortable by
asking them if they want a drink of water, offer that they take off their
jacket, anything that allows them to feel at ease. This will immediately set
the tone of relaxation and make a far more welcoming interview
environment.
•
Make a good first impression; notify the front desk personnel at your
company that the candidate is coming. Give the receptionist the
candidates name and a way to reach you when they arrive. Remember
that the tension a candidate feels at this time can be blown out of
proportion by a poor reception at your company. If you can, make sure
that every staff member who comes in contact with the candidate in the
hallways, next door offices and the like are apprised of the candidate’s
arrival and even provide them with names, if possible.
•
The same goes for you as well. It’s possible you may want to impress the
candidate with your status and level of importance by sending one of your
minions to fetch the candidate and lead him back to your castle. It’s done
all the time of course…but don’t do it. Meet the candidate in the lobby
yourself and offer them a sincere welcome. Look them in the eye and give
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them a firm handshake. It will go a longer way in setting them at ease by
simply being genuine and real.
•
A lot has been written about the interview environment, including many
experts touting that you should “set a relaxed environment – don’t
interview across from a desk. Instead sit on easy chairs on a low coffee
table…” Unless you’ve decided to carry out all your interviews in the café
at the local Starbucks, chances are that you don’t have any of this. Forget
all that. Privacy is really the main thing here. Secure an interview room
with a door that can be closed. Also, tell your staff not to disturb you if at
all possible. After all, very little can happen of huge significance in the
hour it takes to do an interview. If there are calls for you, advise your staff
to take a message. Frequent interruptions in an interview are just rude –
but most importantly, these distractions unnerve candidates as well. This
counteracts your goal of making them comfortable to extract the
maximum, if not truthful information from them. The most important thing
here is that you make both a good impression as well as a highly
professional one.
•
Since you have a time frame on each of the steps of the interview
process, you want to keep an eye on the clock to stay on schedule so you
can interview each candidate objectively. If you’re on the first interview –
you want it to last no longer than an hour. To keep yourself on schedule,
position your seat so that you are directly facing a clock. You should never
look at your watch while they are answering a question – its just plain
rude. However, you can look at your watch while you’re talking…but the
problem is that you won’t be doing much of that – especially in the first
interview. To stay on schedule just interview in a room with a clock and
have your chair facing the clock. That way you keep them comfy while
staying on schedule.
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Remember that your biggest job at this stage is to make the candidate very
comfortable so that they reveal the truth behind the resume, so to speak.
2. The “Pre-Interview”
Most rookie sales interviewers immediately start the first interview with
“interrogation-style” questions to the interviewee as soon as he takes a seat.
This is a big mistake.
Whatever you do…DO NOT launch right into questions as soon as they sit down.
Instead, let them “ease into the interview” by letting them hear you talk for a
minute or two (no longer) on exactly what the position is all about. This invariably
lessens the “interview jitters” that occur with most candidates.
Remember that you are trying to get the candidate as comfortable as possible so
that you can get maximum cooperation to gain the maximum insight. Creating an
environment of professional respect is critical to this occurring.
Also, remember that a candidate who has been treated with respect from the getgo will be far more likely to accept a job offer later on.
Critical to this is first asking them what they know about the position itself, this
can include what the recruiter has told them or maybe what they know about the
position (who, what and where) in their research. This is real basic stuff on which
the entire conversation is based.
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After you ask them what they know about the position, you can then fill in the
gaps by briefly detailing the aspects of the job that they are not familiar with.
•
Most interview candidates are extremely nervous at this opening stage,
thinking that they immediately have to launch right into why they are the
best candidate for the job, so take the pressure off by gently asking them
what they have been told or know about the job so far. Also mention that
you’ll fill in any details they may have either omitted or their recruiter had
failed to mention. This immediately disarms them and allows you a few
minutes to do some light talking which takes “the pressure to perform” off
of them. This never fails to relax candidates, while serving the purpose of
clarifying the exact job duties, requirements and territory for the position. It
gets you and them singing from the same sheet of music.
•
Briefly describe for them the job territory, the description of the job, maybe
throw in a little history of the position, how it has done historically. You’ll
want to include here:
o
The exact physical geography of the sales territory
o What their selling roles and responsibilities will be - (i.e. to manage
and upsell existing accounts, create lead generation, generate
brand new business from start to finish)
•
Tell the candidate why the sales territory is open. For years, I did not
reveal to candidates why the territory was open, but I always do now. This
is because every candidate wants to know why the position is open. Was
the previous person fired? Were they promoted? Were they laid off? Is this
an expansion? Did they leave and go elsewhere? If so why?
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Candidates are dying to know this…so as long as this divulsion is in line
with your Human Resources policies, I recommend you just tell them.
And why not? There’s no harm in divulging this whatsoever. If the opening
is due to someone getting fired for performance, it is completely okay to
tell them that the previous salesperson was “not the right match and could
not meet our performance standards”. It’s also okay to tell them that the
previous salesperson was “promoted to upper management as a result of
their tremendous sales track record”. These are all perfectly okay to say.
Furthermore, this kind of refreshing honesty sets the expectation of
honesty and trust – which hopefully translates to them reciprocating this
honesty in their answers to you.
•
Next up, add in a few words about when you started at the company, what
your responsibilities are, your boss, your district or area. Keep it brief.
•
Make sure you don’t reveal too much, but don’t be too vague, just give
them the facts.
Whatever you do in this “pre-interview” section, don’t say a word to them about
“what attributes you are looking for in an ideal candidate”!
This is a HUGE mistake, so don’t make it! If you let it slip, then you should
probably end the interview, because you’ll never get a real answer from them for
the rest of the time you are with them.
Why? That’s because if you do get into that sort of detail of “what you’re looking
for”, the smart interviewer will immediately pick up on those clues, then gear all of
his or her answers towards the character attributes you revealed in your intro.
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They’ll be so busy trying to match your stated traits that you’ll never get to who
they really are. The interview will be a complete waste of time.
Here’s what happens, the interviewer says: “we’re an aggressive organization
that’s growing fast and we’re looking for a person who puts the customer first,
drives new sales growth, has fun, works hard and is highly motivated”. He then
asks the interview candidate: “So how would you describe yourself?”
Of course, the candidate turns right around and says “I’m extremely aggressive,
thrive in a fast-growing environment, extremely motivated and consider the
customer most important. Also, I like to work hard and have fun too”.
See what I mean? They’ll give it right back to you every time – and oftentimes the
hiring sales manager loves it and eats it up because they love hearing their own
words repeated back to them and they come away form the interview saying
“boy that guy was great, its like we were exactly on the same page!”
Trust me, I’ve made this mistake on several occasions and it was painful.
The key is for you to tell them VERY LITTLE about what you’re looking for, but
get them to tell you about WHOLE LOT ABOUT WHO THEY ARE. You will
determine if it’s the right match, without them ever knowing what it is you are
looking for. You hold all the cards here; they hold none at all - so don’t show
yours too soon.
At this point however, DO NOT let them ask any questions… that time will come
at the end of the interview.
Start the sales interview with a “just the facts” mentality. I can not tell you how
many average sales manager interviews I witnessed with a sales manager who
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started the interview asking the candidate if they had any questions on the
position. Why would you do this? Why in the world would you give them all the
answers to the questions you will be asking them in just a few minutes?
Remember…if you end up hiring them, these first interactive statements could be
the very first deposits you make in the “Trust Account”…so be mindful of that fact
from the get-go.
Bottom line is this, no matter whether you hire the person or not, you want them
to walk away with a good feeling about you as well as that of the company. This
is just good karma. You never know, maybe that very same person you interview
today could be interviewing you some time later in life.
So to start the interview in summary:
1. Ask them what they know about the position
2. Help them out by “filling in the gaps”
3. Tell them briefly about you
4. Tell them why the territory is open
5. Don’t let them ask questions yet
That’s it. No more, no less. Brevity is the key here.
Your next step is getting right into the interview itself.
\
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3. “The Resume Walk” (First Interview Only)
The goal of the first interview is to do one and only one thing:
Determine if you want them to come back for the next interview!
That is your only goal in interview number one.
The way you do this is get them talking a lot and the best way to do this is get
them to take a trip down memory lane…talking about themselves.
So using “The Funnel” interview style as your guide, it is best to get to the core of
who they are by prompting them to first take you through the most basic of
interview questioning, namely “The Resume Walk”.
People love talking about themselves - and salespeople are typically a pretty
chatty bunch. So in the interest of both “making em comfy” and getting the vital
data you need to make an excellent hiring decision, make them extremely
comfortable by getting them talking up their (and everyone’s) favorite subject:
themselves!
When you actually start the interview questioning, the first question you’ll need to
ask the candidate should be use “The Funnel” exactly; start wide and broad and
end narrow and specific.
However, you don’t want to have them blindly start telling you “about themselves”
– set some ground rules for what you want them to tell you, while using “The
Funnel” at the same time.
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When you first ask them to talk you through their resume by taking “The Resume
Walk”; your question should begin something like this:
“Take me through your resume from college to present, moving from job to
job – however, what I am particularly interested in is
Why the “why you made the decisions you made in your career" part?
It’s simple. You’re getting two things here. You get to see them talking (all
salespeople need to do this) – where you can measure articulation,
persuasiveness and logical flow of information. But even more importantly, you’ll
witness them articulating their desires.
Since actions reveal a whole lot more about a person than just what they say, the
“job change” part of the story will tell you within the context of their career, what
they truly desire.
Let me explain.
You’ve heard the expression: “show me don’t tell me”? Well, truer words were
never spoken when it comes to interviewing. There will be loads of bull flying
around during your interview, but the no bull is when they show you and reveal to
you what they actually did. Getting them to tell you about why they made those
decisions cuts to the core of their character.
Here’s why. Big decisions require lots and lots of thought and this kind of
introspective thought can only come one place: deep inside.
If you really want to uncover what they are all about deep inside, and not just on
a surface level, then ask them about the big, heavy decisions they made. Then
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further drill it down to an even more granular level by asking them why they made
those decisions…this always bubbles up to the surface the reason behind their
answer.
Take notes here. Their answers to these “big decision” questions will give you
plenty of fodder for follow-up questions (as long as you write it in your resume
margins) for the second interview…
Let’s take a step back.
If you think about the biggest decisions you’ve made in your life – what would
they be? You could maybe list a few (this is not all inclusive):
1. What college you went to
2. Who you married
3. What house you bought
4. What jobs you took
These are all big, life-altering decisions, and isn’t each and every one of them
just loaded with stories of exactly who you really are?
How you chose your spouse is so intertwined with what it is that you were looking
for in a partner in life that it speaks volumes about who you are, what you are
and maybe even where you’re deficient (don’t worry I won’t ask him or her). If
somebody asked you why you married the person you are now married to,
wouldn’t that answer be a “mini-narrative” on who you are as a person?
It’s the same thing when understanding salespeople’s career choices.
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The biggest decisions they made in their career can also be asked with even
more revealing, soul-baring questions attached like this:
1. What career path they chose:
“Why are you in sales?”
2. Why and how did they choose the company they chose to pursue that
career path:
“Of all the fabulous metal detector companies to work for, what was
it about Metallica Metal Detectors, Inc. that made you want to work
for them?”
Layer even more questions on top; probe deep into those decisions they made
for both 1 and 2 above. You’ll uncover the candidate’s true nature the more
follow up questions you ask.
While the candidate is going through the resume walk, remember to take notes in
the margin on anything in particular that stands out.
Remember that you’re looking for any broad generalizations, any “throw away”
side comments that may be interesting; just take lots of notes. Like we said
before, just jot them down on the resume – and circle them so that you can refer
to them later.
Don’t forget to notate broad general statements they make like “I really knew that
sales was the job for me” and “I did really well that year” or “I learned the
products pretty well”. Make note of these broad statements, you’ll be using them
later as you swirl them around the middle of “The Funnel”, when used to
formulate follow up questions.
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4. “The Funnel”
As you may know, a funnel is a large conical structure that is wide at the top and
extremely narrow at the bottom. A large volume of liquid is poured into the top of
the funnel, the liquid compresses and swirls around the tapered edges, while
gravity pulls the substance inexorably towards the narrow hole at the bottom,
finally releasing its contents in an unbroken band, streaming out the bottom
opening in a tightly concentrated, viscous thread.
When you interview sales candidates, think of your interviewing style as a large
funnel, but the liquid is the line of questioning you use to uncover the true nature
of the candidate. In our funnel analogy, start them off with some large, wide,
broad sweeping questions, lulling them into a comfortable rhythm, making them
comfortable and at ease. As the interview progresses, over time, you ask for
more and more specifics, narrowing your focus and field of questioning to exact
instances and examples until you get a steady strand of tightly worded and
specific questions that will ultimately reveal a wormhole into the soul of your
candidate.
I’m being a bit melodramatic, but the idea is really simple:
Start with big broad questions, then using a step-wise approach; ask more and
more specific questions, drilling down to get the “answer behind the answer”.
It’s really just that simple to explain. It’s harder to actually do, but Ill show you
how in the next sections.
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Get drunk off of “The Funnel”
A favorite college pastime is doing “the funnel”, this along with “the kegstand” are
two of the more intellectually challenging, yet extremely effective ways in which
to consume massive amounts of alcohol in a notably short period of time. By
pouring cans of beer inside a plastic funnel, the imbiber of said malted beverage
can quickly consume two or three beers inside of ten to fifteen seconds, when
under normal circumstances those same beers would be consumed over a
longer duration of time.
So if you want to get really loaded, really fast…try either one and you’ll
immediately know what I mean, (Ill explaining the full benefits of the kegstand in
later lessons).
Like the college beer funnel, the interview funnel does in essence the same
thing. You get a ton of incredibly important information in a very short period of
time, loading you up with vital information that you can immediately use to
assess the candidates viability for the job at hand. This technique is especially
effective if you vigilantly keep them on track as we’ll instruct you to do, even
interrupting their rambling if necessary.
Make sure you remember to phrase your questions from very broad to very
specific. The funnel is a questioning technique you need to use at almost every
stage of the interview with the exception of the first pass on The Resume Walk.
The Resume Walk is where you get your late lines of questioning, by taking
notes and jotting down broad statements that you can then question all the way
through the funnel until you reveal a narrow stream of character traits that you
can then match to the pre-requisites of the position.
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So after the candidate has done the resume walk, you are probably now into the
half hour mark in the interview. If you’ve done a good job at keeping the
candidate on track, as well as shelving most of your questions by writing them in
the margin now is the time to refer back to some of these notes.
Keep your “Fabulous Five” as well as your hiring criteria in mind; begin asking
particulars on some of the initial comments. A good tip is to use their exact words
stated back to them. Although they may not say it, the candidate will be
impressed with your attention to detail on this. Likewise, this tells them
immediately that you’re on the ball and it may be difficult to pull the wool over
your eyes. This small detail heightens the intensity of the whole interchange.
For example, let’s say that the interviewee divulged that when describing one of
their previous jobs he said he “really liked” selling that product. An example of a
funnel question would be as follows:
“When you were at Moshi’s Oriental Rugs in 2007, you said that you
‘really liked selling oriental rugs’ that year, tell me more about that”
When he tells you more, you can then ask even more specific questions around
his aptitude at selling rugs in that year. You may ask him:
“Tell me about a really huge rug sale that year that you were particularly
proud of”
Then ask him even more specifics, using names if possible:
“What sales strategy did you take with Mr. Magdi to make the sale?”
You’ll then want to go even further:
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“Tell me about that sale to Mr. Magdi and how exactly you did it.”
Maybe then layer another related question on top of that by asking:
“Out of all the parts of a sales call, which part is most important?”
Then ask:
“What makes you so good at selling?”
You could follow that up with a more introspective question such as:
“How does being successful selling rugs make you feel?”
This is an extreme example of “funnel” interviewing.
Do you see how one single point from the initial interview “Resume Walk” led to
six or seven follow up questions?
This is purposeful, because the more detail you can get on a single event, tells
you not only that it is not “made up” (I cannot imagine!), but it also tells you the
specifics you need to assess if the candidate is a good fit for your sale.
This is classic “Resume Walk” funneling:
•
Focus on one broad statement made in the “resume walk” phase of the
interview
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•
Pick that vague comment apart until you have a very specific instance of
the candidate selling in action
•
Ask them to comment on their own skills in an introspective manner.
This kind of technique does not allow for bull; however it does get to the heart of
the salesman and reveals who he really is. And then, in turn allows you to make
the correct hire.
Get to the “whys”
Get them talking, but ask them to focus on the “whys” behind the decisions they
made in their life. The answers to those questions will give you insights into who
they really are. Everyone is the sum of all the decisions they have made in their
lives. Ask them about those decisions.
In asking them “why did they do what they did?” questions, you are cutting to the
core of their nature. Taking a new job is a huge event in someone’s life, these
decisions/thought processes are “windows into their true character”. Ask them
about the decisions they made and the “whys” behind each decision. When you
got married wasn't it one of the biggest decisions you ever made in your personal
life?
The spouse you decided to marry tells a lot about you like a “marriage” to
another company tells tons about who that person is.
“Why did you leave Paychex to go work at AT&T? What were you hoping to
accomplish?”
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My personal favorite:
“What was missing from your current situation at Paulie’s Walnuts Inc.?”
Find out the “whys” behind this question and you have a window into their soul,
then probe into each decision. Get specific. Have them give you examples.
The more specific the examples they give the better it is for you.
5. Q & A
At about the half-hour mark, right about the time the candidate has gone through
the full resume walk in the first interview, you most likely are getting a pretty good
idea whether you want to interview the candidate again. Since sales candidates
have a tendency to talk, you must carefully watch your clock at this mark, it’s at
this time point that you will need to start thinking about your exit strategy for the
interview.
If you’re not sure that you like the candidate enough to bring them back for the
second interview, then you’ll probably want to interview them again anyway, just
to be sure.
So no matter what, with fifteen minutes left before the hour mark, stop your
questions, close your dossier, put down your pen and ask the interviewee:
“So, what kind of questions do you have for me?”
If you were on the fence about this candidate, now is the time to find out both
how smart they are as well as how prepared they are for the interview. The First
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interview Q & A section will surely tell you whether they did five minutes of
research on your company or five hours of research on your company. In fact,
the questions they ask will tell you a ton about what’s most important to them,
their level of tact, as well as their level of preparedness.
“Good” questions may be job-responsibility questions, questions about the
company, or specific questions on the products or services. In fact, any question
that is thought-provoking would be considered a positive for the candidate.
The Q & A part of the interview is really more about smoking out whether the
candidate has a tendency to ask “bad” or obvious questions which could hurt
their standing. Or in the extreme, not asking any questions at all - which always
floors me when this happens. For those sales candidates who do not ask any
questions, you can write them off completely.
In the “bad question” category, there are a few that you do need to watch out for.
The first are questions on salary and commissions. If the candidate asks this
question on the first interview, and asks it less than tactfully, this could be a
detractor. However, if the question is raised, you should ask the candidate what
they have been told on this issue. If you are using a recruiter, you want to make
sure that you and the recruiter are on the same page and you want to clear up
any misperceptions the candidate may have regarding the compensation
package your company offers.
Whatever you do, make sure that you don’t answer first when this question
comes up. If you answer too hastily, this could affect your salary negotiations
later on. What you want to do is find out what they know and then give them a
general idea as to the accuracy. On compensation questions at the end of the
first interview; the more vague and general, the better. At this stage, you don’t
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want to give specific numbers, but rather give a range of salary. After all, if you
have a variable commission or base salary plan, at this early stage you most
likely have no real idea as to what salary or commission plan they may qualify
for.
However, if you are at the end of the second interview and the candidate is one
that you are seriously considering hiring or you’re at the end of the first interview
and are seriously considering bringing them back for a second interview, then
now is the time to “sell the company” on the financial benefits of your company’s
compensation program. This also may be the time to ramp up your selling of the
company in general – a topic your interviews have largely been devoid up to this
point. This is largely your call here, because the degree to which your
compensation plan can “sell” the candidate will be largely dependent on how
competitive it is versus competing sales organizations.
As a general rule though, when it comes to giving information on compensation,
ask them what they know first, and then fill in the details with ranges and nonspecific amounts. If anything, shoot for the low side and couch it with this
comment:
“I know other companies claim that their sales reps make X amount, but I want to
give you a realistic idea of what our sales reps make. The bottom line is that here
it’s all about how well you produce – and the more you sell the more you make,
its just that simple.”
When it comes to talking about money and bonus, especially in the first interview,
you just need to use your best judgment.
However, one of the most lame interview questions of all includes the most overasked question in sales interview history, namely: “What is your training like?”
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Why on earth would a competent candidate ask this kind of question before you
even get the job? What does it matter? This question always signals that the
candidate has put somewhere between zero and nil thought or research into the
position in question.
Or an even better one: “What holidays do you have off?” or “How much vacation
time do I get?” Always a crowd-pleaser to ask your potential future boss how
many days you won’t be working in the next year. I usually answer this question
with a kind of snide response saying something like: “None – because I haven’t
hired you yet…”
You may want to soften your response a bit however…
Remember in your responses that you should not under any circumstances
“show your hand”, meaning - giving away the answers that will taint their answers
to get the job. However, at the end of the second interview, you can be far more
liberal in your answers to questions like: “What are the most important attributes
of a successful salesperson who works for your company?”
The general rule here is: the later you are in the interview process, the more
liberally you can answer this question.
Remember to be very wary of giving too much “show your hand’ information –
especially if you’re in the first interview and you intend on bringing the candidate
back for the second interview.
While answering this one, parse your words. After all, you still want to keep them
a bit in the dark so they answer your primary interview questions most
authentically.
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6. Next Steps
Lastly, you need to indentify the next steps in the interview process for the
candidate. By this point in the interview, if you have determined that you want to
see the candidate again for a second interview, then you can schedule it now –
but be careful. If you’ve only seen two candidates so far in the day and you still
have yet to see five more that day, your best bet is to just hold off in scheduling
any further interviews. As a rule, you shouldn’t schedule any next interviews until
you have seen the entire day’s schedule of candidates. Even then, still give
yourself some time to think it all over to make the best decision.
However, salespeople in job interviews have been known to be very pushy,
especially when they come to the realization that this may be the last time they
may have to lay it all on the line. I wouldn’t categorize this as a bad thing, for if a
candidate is a little bit pushy here, it just shows you that they either really want
the job or are genuinely aggressive. Possessing either or both of these attributes
makes a very positive case for hiring.
However, if the candidate really keeps pushing you for an answer simply state:
“First, I really appreciate your persistence. We have a lot of other candidates to
interview and it’s my responsibility to make sure that I make the correct match
between the job responsibilities and the job description so that the match works
in the long run. I can’t do that quite yet because I have not seen all the potential
candidate choices. Suffice to say, you have represented yourself extremely well
here today – and you’re obviously well qualified - we will be in touch with you to
let you know the direction in which we will be proceeding”
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This answer usually tells them that they aren’t getting an answer today – so don’t
keep trying. In fact, I’ve never seen it not work to effectively end the interview.
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Masterful Takeaways
For each interview there is a structure to follow so that you continue to
evaluate each candidate objectively. You can achieve that objectivity when
you conduct your interviews all within the same format as follows:
1. Make ‘Em Comfy – the more comfortable the candidate is, the more
accurate your answers will be
2. Pre-Interview – give a brief overview of the position and your
background
3. “The Resume Walk” (First Interview only) – have the candidate run
through his resume pausing to give reasons as to why he moved from
job to job
4. “The Funnel” – structure your questions broad to narrow
5. Q and A – give them an opportunity to ask you questions, but don’t give
away any company secrets
6. Next Steps – outline for them the next step in the hiring process
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Step 4: The Second Interview
Killer Questions to Uncover the Fabulous Five…and More
Now that you have the first interview under your belt, its time to start thinking
about who you want to bring back for the second and possibly final, interview.
In most organization, to make sales hire, there is usually some other department
or your boss that needs to get involved before a sales candidate is hired. This is
perfectly understandable and expected in today’s corporate environment. But
make one thing very clear to all who want to come in on your interviews: this is
YOUR show.
Not that other opinions don’t matter, it’s just the simple fact that YOUR opinion
matters most. This is because the candidate will be reporting to you – nobody
else - either putting money in your pocket (most hopefully) or taking money out of
your pocket (hopefully not).
As the hiring manager, you should conduct the first interview by yourself, with the
second interview potentially attended by one of your superiors, if needed. If there
are too many people involved, (HR, VP of Sales, Operations Director, etc), then
the whole process just gets diluted in a muddle of corporate bureaucracy. All you
want is to hire a sales superstar…you are not splitting the atom here.
Interviewing and hiring by committee is a waste of time. You need to be sold on
the candidate more than anyone else. Your opinion matters most, not the
opinions of others who only have a scarce interest in the candidate’s success.
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On to the Second Interview…
There’s a good chance that if you were using the techniques from the previous
lesson, you got to the hour mark of the first interview very quickly. Once you’ve
“resume walked” and started to “funnel” the candidate one time through, your
next step is to go back and probe deeper into your notes that you have diligently
taken on the margin of the resume.
Once again the importance of note-taking here is critical because sometimes
weeks go by before you get to interview a candidate for second time. If you don’t
have any prior specific knowledge of what you had discussed in the first meeting
then the second meeting will be a waste of time just reviewing what was already
discussed weeks before.
Do yourself a big favor and take good notes like we discussed in Lesson 4! Make
special note of any kind of questionable phrases or comments that they made
and delve into them even deeper, while helping to further uncover if they are in
possession of the “Fabulous Five”.
In this lesson we’ll get into even more in-depth questions to ask in order to
deeply uncover the true nature of the sales candidate. Using the first interview’s
questions as a guide, there are some specific questions you need to ask in order
to uncover the Fabulous Five - as well as some other secondary traits and talents
that are essential to sales success. So here we go.
As a review, the Fabulous Five are the following:
1. Drive to Succeed
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2. Strong Work Ethic
3. High Self Confidence, Charisma and Humility
4. Emotional Intelligence
5. Intellectual Horsepower
There are also five secondary traits that are not as essential for a good sales
hire, but if they hope to succeed in your organization, the candidate should
possess in great quantities. These are:
6. Strong interpersonal / oral communication skills
7. Strong sales ability and skills
8. Entrepreneurial aptitude
9. Determination / perseverance
10. Strong organizational / prioritization skills
If you can find a prospect that has all ten of these critical talents, then you are
really in for a treat. The chances are slim that any one sales candidate would
have all ten of them, but you may get lucky.
Far too often, sales managers depend on gut-level reactions when interviewing.
Unfortunately when managers do this, they fail to get to know the candidate deep
enough in order to make a strong hiring decision.
Typically, this mistake occurs due to a weak questioning component of the
interview.
The key to all this is to ask the right questions that demand detailed answers
while avoiding the “yes / no” answer trap. If you cut through the flowery
responses with tough follow up questions, then there is a far greater likelihood
that you’ll be able to uncover the key characteristics for success on the job.
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Then simply hire the best prospects available which closely match the ten key
attributes to be successful.
These following interview questions are your starting point for uncovering the
Fabulous Five, remember to add follow up questions to all these that allow you to
uncover more than just the normal “yes” or “no”. Layer your questions and drill
down to specifics, the more specific the better.
1. Drive to Succeed
a. What motivates you?
b. What does THEIR ANSWER get you?
c. What gets you out of bed in the morning?
d. Where does that drive come from?
e. Why are you driven like that?
f. What does “success” mean to you?
g. What achievement are you most proud of and why?
h. What was your best sales year? What did you do that year that
made it so special? Give me an example of a big sales you made
that year that you were most proud of?
2. Strong Work Ethic
a. Describe for me a typical day for you
b. Give me an example of your work ethic
c. What does it mean to you when you say you have done a good
job?
d. What is it that you are searching for in your professional life?
e. What’s missing from your current situation?
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f. What have you done that you are most proud of? Take me through
the steps that got you there.
3. High Self Confidence, Charisma and Humility
a. Our prospects have very little time to meet with sales
representatives, they are often double-booked, behind schedule
and understaffed. Given this hectic environment, why would a
prospect want to spend ten minutes of his day with you?
b. What are you most proud of in your sales career? Tell me what you
did that year to get the results you did? Now tell me a specific sales
call that year that most contributed to your success.
c. How do you feel about your progress to date?
d. Do you consider yourself successful?
e. How do you rank among your peers?
4. Emotional Intelligence
a. Describe a difficult situation in your past, although you weren’t sure
what to do, but you did the right thing? Explain the thought process
you went through.
b. What is “good judgment”?
c. Describe for me your definition of “common sense”. Give me an
example of when you showed that quality.
d. What have you learned from the different sales jobs you’ve had?
e. Tell me about a time when you came up with a new sales idea.
How did you get it approved and implemented?
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5. Intellectual Horsepower
a. Describe a difficult situation in your past; although you may have
asked for help, you solved a complex problem on your own?
Explain the process you went through.
b. Tell me how you figured out that problem and how the solution
increased sales.
c. Describe for me how you are going to become a product expert in
the field of (your industry).
d. Some company processes are more difficult to understand than
others. Could you share with me a more difficult process that was
introduced to you in the workplace? What made it so difficult and
how did you go about developing your comfort with it?
e. How do you deal with complex problems at your current job? Give
me an example of how you worked through one that was
particularly complex.
f. Tell me about a time when you came up with a new method or
sales process idea. How did you come up with it and how did it get
approved and implemented?
For your secondary characteristics, enclosed is a sample of some of the
questions you should ask to draw out these characteristics as well.
6. Strong interpersonal / oral communication skills
a. How would you introduce yourself and your product to a group of
potential customers in less than two minutes?
Make note of their diction in the interview
b. Tell me how you made an “impossible” sale
c. Tell me about a time when your timing was bad
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d. What business situations make you feel awkward?
7. Strong sales ability and skills
a. Tell me how you were able to increase sales in your previous
(present) job.
b. Give me some examples / techniques of how you got a really tough
prospect to buy your product? What did you say?
c. What is your “sales philosophy”? Give me an example when you
exemplified that.
d. Sell me this pen (hand the pen to them).
e. How do you feel when you get rejected?
8. Entrepreneurial aptitude
a. If you weren’t in sales what would you do for work?
b. Have you ever thought about opening your own business? Why
have you not done that?
c. Why are you in sales?
d. What does “good business (man/woman)” mean to you?
9. Determination / perseverance
a. Describe a sales situation in your past, no matter what you tried;
you could not get the prospect to purchase your product. Explain
the process you went through.
b. What does it mean “to persevere”?
c. Tell me about your most difficult sale. Give specifics.
d. What makes you think you can sell consistently?
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10. Strong organizational / prioritization skills
a. How do you plan your day / week / month?
b. How do you get the most out of your day?
c. Describe for me a typical day for you.
d. Tell me about some of your long-term working goals and how you
are setting to achieve them.
e. Tell me about the planning you did for an important project or sale.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list; however it does cover the vast majority
of excellent sales questions to ask in a sales interview.
Make sure that you do not ask these questions in isolation of each other - in fact,
make sure that you layer specific example-related follow up questions on top of
these questions here. Such follow-up questions as “Give me an example of
when you…” are always good follow-up add-on questions.
There is one final series of questions which you absolutely must ask a candidate,
especially at the tail end of the last interview and those are next.
Manageability and Motivation Questions
You can do everything right in all your questions leading up to the actual offer,
but if you don’t address this question prior to making the offer, you will wish you
had. If you hire a sales superstar but you cannot manage, lead, motivate or least
of all to a degree have a measure of control over them, then none of the other
stuff really matters.
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In this section we find out how to avoid this pitfall so that you hire both a sales
superstar that sells tons of product for you, but also one who operates in
harmony with your managerial style and approach.
A word of caution here though. Asking manageability questions are easy to do,
but more far important than just the asking these questions is your interpretation
of the answers to the questions. Only you can tell whether their answers are
harmonious with your personal management style. So the question of how
manageable the candidate will be is largely dependent on your inherent
leadership level and competency.
Also, when asking these questions, you can also find out exactly how you should
best manage and motivate them in order to extract the maximum performance
from them once they’re on board.
While these questions will help you to understand whether or not the potential
behaviors and motivations of a candidate will be a cohesive influence, they
cannot help you to get a very honest understanding of yourself as a manager –
this is strictly up to you.
The plain fact is that very few of us personify the manager we read about in the
management books. So there is little point in hiring candidates who can be
managed by these fictitious creatures. The most important thing is for you to hire
sales people that YOU can manage, and that does take some self-introspection.
For example, if you’re a “let ‘em run on their own” kind of manager, you shouldn’t
hire sales candidates who have an obvious need for constant supervision.
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If on the other side of the equation, you’re a bit more of an autocratic, dictatorial
type of manager, then you most likely shouldn’t hire a bunch of free-spirited
salespeople that just want to be left alone and make their own decisions.
Only when you know yourself - your unique personality and management style
will have an understanding of what the “right” answers are for these questions
are. Also bear in mind that these questions are a total accumulation of data that
you must assemble together - so that you can draw your own conclusions.
OK, here goes:
•
Who did you report to at (fill in company name at last sales job)?
•
What do you think of that boss?
•
How did your boss get the best out of you?
•
Describe the best sales manager you ever had – what made him or her so
good?
•
How did (name of sales manager from above question) get the best out of
you?
(This will tell you exactly how to motivate them – this one’s more for
you than for them)
•
What made (him or her) stand out so much?
•
Who was you worst boss?
•
What made (him or her) so bad?
(This will tell you exactly how not to manage them – yet again; this
one’s more for you than for them)
•
How do you take direction?
•
Have you ever been in a situation in which people overruled you? What
did you do to resolve it?
•
What kind of person do you get along with best?
•
What are some things that your (best boss / worst boss) disagreed upon?
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•
What do you do when there is a decision to be made and no procedure
exists? What did you do in that case?
Final words before the offer stage – “Knockouts”
You’re almost there. If you’ve completed all the steps in the six-step hiring
system up to this point, you probably have a pretty good idea of whom you will
offer the position. You’ve had him do his resume walk, taken him through a
battery of funnels, written your notes to questionable follow up issues and asked
those questions, noticed all the non-verbals cues, diligently answered all his
questions and you now feel like you may have your new sales superstar.
Before we go to the final steps in the process however, there are a few other
issues that you need to bear in mind before you finalize everything. These final
interview check-offs we call “knockouts” are extremely important and could be
the deciding factor as to whether you hire a sales superstar or a sales dud. We
call them knockouts, because if they are not answered in favor of hiring they may
be issues that will knock them out of the running.
1. Are they selling you?
Since you’re a hiring sales manager, you have a couple of advantages versus
other types of managers that can give you further insight into the projected
success or failure of the candidate. One of those advantages is that you
actually get to witness first-hand the candidate in action, doing what they
would be doing should you hire them. In most management hiring situations,
you simply don’t have that luxury.
And what a luxury it is.
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Let’s say you’re a manufacturing operations manager and you’re trying to find
a new assembly line worker, you can’t really tell how well the candidate will
perform on the manufacturing floor in a simple job interview. Or let’s say
you’re and engineering manager, you can’t tell from an interview exactly how
a candidate designs a new piece of equipment from a live interview.
However, as a sales manager you can actually see in the interview itself how
well the candidate sells the most important product they possess, one more
important than any product they could ever peddle. And that product that
they’re selling is themselves.
Think about it. If the candidate cannot successfully convince you to “buy”
them – then how on earth could they possibly convince your customers to buy
your product? On top of that, considering the extensive “product knowledge”
that they possess on this product (themselves), wouldn’t you figure they
would know all the features and benefits inside and out to make a very
convincing argument for you to “buy”?
So one of your final considerations is to gauge how well the candidate sells
you on them.
If they do it convincingly and with great flair, then that’s how they’ll sell your
product. If they convince you with humor, personal humility and excellent
features and benefits, then that’s how they’ll sell your product. If they
persuade you very seriously, using incontrovertible facts, highlighting past
achievements and projecting those achievements onto you and your
company, then that’s exactly how they’ll sell your product.
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However, if after all the interviewing you still have reservations because they
haven’t convincingly sold you at all on the value of themselves…then you
should look elsewhere.
2. Are they the right “selling style” match for your product and company?
Equally important, you’ll also have to consider how well the candidate’s
personal selling style and personality match your product or service. If you hit
this just right, you’ll be in sales management nirvana. If you miss this one,
you’ll end up in sales management hell.
For example, if your product is highly technical and demands great amounts
of intellectual horsepower to understand and verbalize the concepts within the
sales message, then you’ll need to find a candidate’s whose style matches
that style of selling. Or perhaps your product is sold more by building rapport
and trust, then gently convincing with marketing materials and “soft-sell”
tactics, then find candidates that match with these selling qualities.
You can hire the greatest hard-core salesperson and think you’re an
absolutely genius in doing so, but if your product is not sold by “hard-core”
selling methods, then the match will never work. The candidate will simply be
a bad match for your product and your customers will be infinitely frustrated
because of the misalignment between the two.
The only one who knows this however, is you. Only you can gauge how well
the candidate matches your product and company. And when you do this, be
honest. Don’t try to fit the “square peg in the round hole”, no matter how hard
you may push to force it to work, it just never will.
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3. Do they close you?
So much has been made of this one. So many sales managers are utterly
convinced that how a salesperson “closes” a sales interview is the sole predetermining factor to future sales success. Although important, this is not
nearly as important as most “experts” claim it to be.
A far more important metric to gauge how well the candidate will do for you
are all the other checkmarks in the previous sections - even including which
kinds of questions they pose to you at the end of the interview series. All of
these factors are far more relevant in predicting future success.
Having said that, this is a sales interview after all. And in a sales interview,
whether it’s for a job or for the adoption of your product, there needs to be
next steps clearly articulated at the conclusion of the meeting so that each
party knows where the other stands. This is frequently accomplished during
the close.
It still amazes me to this day the number of sales interview candidates,
knowing full well the degree of importance hiring sales managers place on
“closing”, yet omit this important factor. After all, if you’re a sales candidate
and you know “the ability to close” is an important and even somewhat
overstated ingredient in the anatomy of a sales call, why wouldn’t you do it
anyway just for show?
The truth is that: better than half of all sales interview candidates never ask
for the job at the end of the interview!
This is a dismal percentage. And even when they do, it’s usually forced and
awkward.
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However, if you find one that does close you with great ease, without being
overly pushy, then this is a very positive sign.
At the very least “the close” should be a mutually agreed upon destination
that both parties consent to. It should also be a natural next step in the
evolution of the meeting.
But more importantly, when used correctly, it should serve to bring to light
your possible objections why you may not invite them to the next step of the
interviewing process. The really good interview candidates do this to uncover
objections to your potential decision and then use this information to convince
you otherwise.
The best example of a “great close” at the conclusion of a sales interview is
this:
“Based upon everything we’ve discussed today, is there any reason that
would prevent me from taking the next step in the interview process /
receiving an offer?”
Do you see what this closing question does? The candidate closes you, but
also gently asks you for your objections to the sale. Both of these issues can
then be addressed afterward, directly based upon the answers you provide.
Even better though, is if the candidate further isolates the objection once you
give your answer, saying something like this:
“Aside from (whatever the objection” you provide), is there any other reason
that would, in your mind prevent me from taking the next step?”
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This is another all too common objection handling exercise that you’ll most
likely recognize. The candidate is isolating the “objection” which they in turn
overcome by utilizing your words to re-sell you on their validity as a
candidate. If your candidate has done this, then this too is a very favorable
check mark in their favor.
If they close you in a sales interview, don’t you think that there’s a greater
likelihood that they’ll close your customers as well?
4. Do you like them?
Okay, this is kind of a soft one, I know. The six-step hiring system is an
extremely objective way to hire salespeople and we pride ourselves on using
this system to make objective decisions. However, this one’s purely
subjective.
Please don’t misunderstand, this doesn’t mean that because you like them,
you should hire them. Not at all. But you have to, at the very least, not be
repulsed by them.
If you think about it, you’re most likely going to spend a lot of time with this
person. And if, based upon all the objective factors in our criteria they may be
the “ideal candidate”, you just inherently find them incredibly annoying…then
the whole thing just won’t work.
This doesn’t mean that you should only hire salespeople that are just like you,
talk like you, have the same sense of humor as you, and even look like you.
Chances are those are the candidates you’re probably going to have a
special bond with. However, they may not be able to sell a whiff of your
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stuff…ever. And if you hire them just because you like them, then you’re on
your own on that one.
My point here is that you should hire people that you genuinely like as a
preferred rule, but it’s not an absolute essential for success. It’s a “knockout”
if you are repulsed by them. I’ve done it both ways and it’s worked in both
cases. However, if you can hire for all the criteria we teach here AND you like
them enormously, then kudos to you. In doing so, you’ve not only just made
yourself a lot of money, but you’ve also greatly enhanced your own quality of
life.
I’ve certainly interviewed my fair share of candidates who, in spite of stellar
resumes, extraordinary accolades, and profoundly excellent sales skills, I’ve
passed on solely because I just couldn’t stand them!
I don’t find this objectionable one bit. You have to figure that you’re going to
spend a ton of time with this person in the coming weeks, months and
possibly even years – so why not make it enjoyable? Let’s never forget that to
a certain degree, hiring is a purely selfish activity. You’re hiring them to make
you more money after all – so why not hire so you can enjoy their company in
the process? It just makes sense.
And like all the other tips included in this section, only you have the answer to
this one for yourself.
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Masterful Musings
•
Does all this sound like a lot to digest? It’s OK, there’s a lot here. There are
many components that need to work together to achieve a successful interview
process. Don’t worry though, you don’t have to do them all at once starting
tomorrow.
•
However, of all the parts of the six step hiring system, which of the steps do you
agree with the most?
•
Of the six steps, which one of them do you consistently do?
•
Can you see why doing all of them is crucial to hiring correctly?
•
Can you think of a personal candidate measuring system to help you manage
and rate candidates while adhering to the “Six Steps”?
•
Look to the action guide for specific methods to implement a successful
interview.
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Masterful Takeaways
•
Use killer questions during interviews to encourage critical thinking and
uncover the authentic individual under the interviewee
•
Sample questions to determine if they possess the Fabulous 5:
o Drive to succeed: What motivates you?
o Work ethic: Describe a typical day
o High self-confidence, charisma and humility: What are you most
proud of?
o Emotional intelligence: What is your definition of common
sense?
o Intellectual horsepower: Describe a difficult situation and the
methods as a remedy.
•
More questions that the 5 secondary traits that you should be looking
for
o Strong interpersonal and communication skills: How would you
introduce yourself to a large group?
o Strong sales ability: What is your sales philosophy?
o Entrepreneurial aptitude: Why are you in sales? Have you ever
wanted to start your own business?
o Determination and perseverance: Tell me about your most
difficult sale
o Organizational skills: How do you plan your day?
•
The Knockouts: - after the critical thinking, thinking about the basics:
o Are they selling you?
o Are their selling styles a match for your product and your
company?
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Inc. All rights reserved.
o ©
Did
they
close Enterprises,
you?
o Do you like them?
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Step 5: Background and Reference Checks
How to Make Sure Your Offer Sticks
You’ve done lots of interviews, you’ve asked your ‘knockouts” and you’re at long
last, down to the next to final step in the process. Now its time to move onto the
decision making process and make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse.
Hold on, not so fast. We first need to make sure that they will actually accept
your offer when you make it.
So how do you know if the candidate you want will actually accept? How can you
safeguard against a bidding war with their present employer?
The short answer is that you never really know what will happen once you make
an offer. After all, everyone in this world, no matter how nice and honest they
may seem in an interview, will always do what is best for them.
This is worthy of reiterating, because no matter how many safeguards or tactics
you employ to maximize your chances that the candidate you’ve decided upon
will accept an offer from you, there are always going to be circumstances that are
out of your control. Be realistic in your expectations here and don’t get frustrated
if it doesn’t work out. Because remember, in the end people ultimately do what’s
best for them. And “what’s best for them” may or may not include accepting an
offer from you.
Having said all that, there are a number of techniques you can embrace in the
second or final interview that will minimize your chances of having your potential
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offer either rejected or deferred due to a counter-offer from their present
employer. To employ these questions effectively you’ll need to refer back to your
copious notes on questions such as “what is missing form your current situation”
and other questions revolving around why they are currently looking for work
elsewhere.
Although some of these techniques may use some sneaky reverse psychology,
they are extremely effective in uncovering whether or not the candidate will
accept an offer from you. Here are a couple of questions that you can ask right
after your “manageability” questions:
•
“You’re obviously an extremely qualified candidate for employment here.
Someone of your considerable skills must be sought after by other
companies – are there any other opportunities that you are currently
pursuing?”
•
“Are you interviewing with any other companies in (your industry) at
present?”
•
“You surely must be interviewing with other companies - what other
employment opportunities are you looking at? How far along in the
process are you? How does that opportunity compare to this one? If you
were offered jobs by both – which would you accept?”
(This highly layered question is a real good one – you can continue to
add more funnel layers to it to get even deeper insight)
•
“You said that you were interested in (making more money) – what would
you do if you got another job and your then your boss offered you (more
money) to stay?
(This question must be used in conjunction to their answer to the
question “what is missing from your current situation” from the previous
lesson).
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•
“You said that you are primarily looking to ‘advance your career’, what
would you do if your current company had offered you a promotion a few
months ago…would you be sitting here right now talking to me?”
•
“What if I were to offer you the job right now…would you accept?”
•
“Under what conditions would you accept a job offer from us?”
If you had forgotten to ask any of these questions in the final interview, fear not.
There’s a lot going on and it can slip by.
If that situation occurs however, you can easily ask these questions in a separate
phone call to the candidate after the final interview as well. If that’s the case, just
call them and fire away.
Another tactic that gets them excited as well as tests their readiness to accept is
to tell them that you are “working on an offer” or “finalizing your decision” and
wanted to call them to see “where they stood”. If the offer process at your
company is a particularly cumbersome one, with multiple signoffs and
bureaucratic approvals, then you’ll be well served to ask this anyway, far before
you take the time to go through the whole transaction with them.
Background and Reference Checking
Depending on your company’s policy, reference-checking is always a good thing
to do prior to making the offer. Many companies do the reference checks after
the offer has been tendered. In my experience it’s far better to check references
prior to the actual offer.
Background checks are also sometimes required and are oftentimes conducted
by third-party sources to allow you to inexpensively verify a person’s education
history, criminal record, credit history, driving record and so on. This is a good
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precaution to take, especially since it can provide some good protection for you
and your company in the event of a lawsuit.
Most companies have a formalized policy about these sorts of checks and in
most instances it’s done by the HR department. However, I highly recommend
that you get personally involved in the checking of personal references –
especially those from previous managers. If you don’t have a requirement for at
least two previous management references, then I highly suggest you implement
this policy.
What you may read on a written report is far less insightful than what you can
gather in a personal one-on-one conversation with a management peer. In a live
conversation, you can pick up intonation and aural subtleties that can greatly
influence your decision as to the sincerity and truthfulness of the reference. Most
people would never give a reference that they felt would be less than over the top
outstanding, so be mindful of any references (especially the management ones)
that rate any less than the top of your scale. This could be a cue as to the
accuracy of the response.
Many companies have a policy of not providing references beyond confirming
dates of employment and leaving salary. Companies have done this to minimize
lawsuits. In cases like this, the odds of you getting any meaningful and actionable
information is remote at best. At the very least you’ll want to check with your HR
or legal counsel to make sure you aren’t treading on any privacy laws.
However, this is a very important final step to complete. You absolutely want to
check past manager references at the very least. The “personal” references are
far less revealing, especially if they include the candidate’s mother, sister or
great-aunt Mabel. Given the appropriate permission, this is an extremely valuable
step to making sure you hire your sales superstar.
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Here are a few questions to ask when calling on references:
•
“This is (your name), (candidate) put you down as a personal reference as
part of our hiring process I was hoping you had a moment to discuss
(candidate’s name) period of employment with you?”
•
“When did (candidate) work for you?”
•
“How would you rank (candidate’s) skills in (pick any of the Fabulous Five
or other critical job functions)?”
•
“How would you describe (candidate’s) work record with you?”
•
“(Candidate) said they won (some pronounced accolade from their resume
in the year they won it) – is that accurate? What other awards did they
win?”
•
“What would you say was (candidate’s) greatest strength?”
•
“What would you say was (candidate’s) greatest weakness?”
•
“What parts of the job did (candidate) have the hardest time with?”
•
“How did you as a manager, get the best out of (candidate)?”
•
“If given the opportunity, would you hire (candidate) again? Why?”
•
“What made (candidate) particularly effective in their role?”
•
“What advice would you give me as a manager of (candidate)?”
Although getting answers to these questions will get you vital information on the
candidate’s suitability for the job, make sure you listen carefully to the intonation
and how the reference answers the questions you pose. What’s most important
here is not what they answer but how they answer – so make sure you are
situated in a place where you can carefully monitor for this.
By the same token, if you get an answer that sounds less than truthful, ask the
reference to further clarify their answer. This may lead to further questions and a
road you may not have planned on going down. However the information you
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garner in these sorts of side conversations could ultimately be the sole
determining factor as to whether you have found your sales superstar…or not.
However if you have employed the lesson you have learned here in this course,
you will have most likely uncovered any skeletons in the closet long before this.
Your main goal in checking references should be to verify what you have already
uncovered in the interview, not necessarily to gather brand new information. At
the very least, the reference checking part of the hiring system is to give you
renewed peace of mind that you have in fact, chosen wisely and are about to hire
your next sales superstar.
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Masterful Takeaways
•
To make sure your offer sticks, ask the candidate questions revolving
around other options they may be considering.
•
Remember that people ultimately do what’s best for them. And “what’s
best for them” may or may not include accepting an offer from you. So
be realistic.
•
Reference-checking is always a good thing to do prior to making the
offer.
•
Make sure you call a previous manager to make the most of this check.
•
Ask them questions about where they rank versus their peers and
manageability questions. Do your best to verify rankings.
•
A less than overwhelmingly positive reference may indicate weakness
of the candidate. Pick up auditory clues to determine the sincerity.
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Step 6: The Offer
You’re Still Interviewing!
Now you’re really ready. You’ve completed all the steps necessary to hire a sales
superstar; you’ve gone through all the interviews to uncover the Fabulous Five,
you’ve done your reference checks and now you just have to reel them in with a
good offer and get them off and running in their new career.
You’re feeling pretty good right about now…and you should be. However, don’t
get too cocky. You are still interviewing.
Huh? Yep, it’s true - until the candidate signs the formal offer, you are still in the
interview stage with them!
Look at it this way, everything leading up to the day they start with you, they are
still in the interview process. So make sure you treat the offer stage as just
another form of interview questioning, although now instead of just talking, they
are now forced to act. They are now in a position to show you how much they
want to work for you not just tell you how much they want to work for you. They
show you by their actions – either acceptance or rejection of the offer in question.
And if you’re not careful, you could lose them here, so beware.
As we discussed in the very first course, the offer phase of the hiring process is
an excellent time to both set the tone with a positive first impression of you and
your company, but also to make some hefty deposits in “The Trust Account” at
the very same time as well. This little extra bit of effort on your part will be
extremely powerful in setting the right tone for your nascent relationship with your
new hire.
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In most cases the one thing that stands between a new sales hire and taking the
offer is money and compensation, so here we will discuss some salary and
commission-based techniques to help guide your through this process.
The important part of all these techniques is to "under-promise and over-deliver",
primarily because the candidate just doesn’t expect it. Everyone likes a pleasant
surprise to the upside – and that element of “surprise” if you will is at play here.
If you really think about it though, wouldn’t you be absolutely pumped to work for
a new boss if she got you MORE money than you were originally expecting? I
know I would. It happened to me in my very last sales job where the hiring
manager did exactly this technique on me. I have never worked harder for
anyone in my life. I felt like I owed him, just because he went above and beyond
what I ever expected he would do for me.
You want to create that same sensation with your new hires
When I was promoted (by him) to be a sales manager a year or so later, he
revealed to me this fantastic technique and told me he had used it on me…and
boy did it work!
People don't expect this kind of treatment...that's why these techniques are so
effective in creating trust right at the onset of your relationship with the candidate.
Here are four proven techniques we touched on in “The Trust Account” course,
but the concepts here re used to not only gain trust, but most importantly make
an offer that both works for the candidate as well as for you. Here they are:
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1. Set the base salary slightly lower from the start
This technique involves making every effort to get the candidate a little bit more
on the base salary than they may have been expecting.
When speaking to the candidate initially, take the average base pay of your
company and then simply knock off a few thousand dollars. Purposely set this
expectation with the recruiter as well. Typically a few thousand dollars won’t
make much difference in the types of candidates you may attract, but this simple
technique will go a long way when she comes on board.
By setting the base salary slightly below where your company typically starts its
salary range, the expectation to the candidate has been set early on in the hiring
process. When it comes time to negotiate base pay and hire, it’s been clear all
along what the expectation is. This fact can now be leveraged to successfully
make a “trust account” deposit.
For example say your base pay package is between $45,000 and $55,000,
depending on experience, track record and the like. However when you first meet
with your candidate, tell them the base pay package is between $45,000 and
$50,000 (note the lower amount on the high end). Make it clear to them all
through the interview process that the base package is between $45,000 and
$50,000 depending on experience.
When you identify your candidate and are ready to make your offer, and you offer
them $55,000 - the candidate will be stunned. Most importantly, you have
immediately set the tone for your relationship with them - which will pay big
dividends in the future. You have set a clear message to them that you are their
advocate and will do what it takes to go to the wall for them.
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When negotiating salary, another approach you may want to take is say: “I’m not
sure if I can do this and I don’t want to promise anything, but let me see what I
can do”.
When you come back and tell them that you got them $5,000 over the amount
the company typically pays, this will have two magical effects:
1) The candidate will feel extremely important (everyone likes this)
2) The candidate will think: “They want me so bad they overpaid to get me
to work for them, I must be pretty special”.
It also makes the candidate feel deeply indebted to you, leaving them with a
strong desire to produce for “the boss who got me a little extra”. You are now the
lucky recipient of an extremely thankful, indebted and motivated sales person in
an excellent position to produce superior results for you.
Some may say that this form of “trust building” may appear deceptive – I disagree
and here’s why. Remember, your job is to hire the right person and secure the
“right match” for your opening. Remember as we said before, the offer stage is
all a continuing part of the interviewing process.
Remember, the interview doesn’t end after the final face to face sit-down, rather
it continues all the way to the signed offer letter (and even until the first day on
the job). Even though most people say they move from one company to another
based solely on money, study after study shows that this is actually not the case.
Money, as a reason for job changing, is universally listed at the bottom of every
top ten list for why people leave their jobs. Because the top reason people leave
their jobs is because of their boss.
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By withholding the higher levels of base pay information from the candidate, you
are merely extending the interviewing process to help screen for the best
candidate. The thought is that if someone really wants to work for you at
$50,000/year, then they REALLY want to work for you for $55,000. This
technique enables you to gauge exactly how committed they are in coming to
work for you, even if you had to pay them less money to do so.
2. Use sign-on bonuses
If making exceptions to your company base pay ranges are more difficult to
advocate for, another very effective offer technique is used.
When you first meet with the candidate, instruct them that the base salary is
between $45,000 and $55,000 as it is. However, in the background do a little
negotiating with your Human Resources department or your boss ahead of time
to set the stage. Make the case that in times when you have high performers
with solid track records at the ready for hire, you can give some of those
individuals a sign on bonus of say $5,000.
Your business case is that $5,000 will be a small one time fee to pay and not a
recurring cost to the company. This bonus helps the candidate get ‘over the
hump’ if they currently have a base above your salary range. If this is thrown in
at the end of the salary negotiations, this little extra one-time bonus will have the
same uplifting effects as Technique #1 and will make the candidate all too happy
to come to work for you.
3. Use guarantees
If one of the other salary scenarios is not possible, can you get your company to
guarantee the candidate’s first bonus payment or two? If the ‘ramp up’ period to
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produce new sales is say six months on average, make the case to get them a
two quarter guarantee.
The most important part of all these techniques is to not let the candidate in on
this at any time during the interviewing process. Make this a “bonus” for them at
the very end. If they have never suspected it and it comes as a complete
surprise to them, then there is a very low likelihood that they’ll refuse your offer.
4. Over-deliver on base salary
On the opposite end of the salary spectrum, if the candidates’ current base is
$35,000 and your company’s range is $45,000 to $55,000, tell them the actual
range up-front, but inform them that “salaries are calculated by HR based on
experience and previous base salary”. A word of caution here: the candidate will
remember this range exactly as you say it, so make sure you use accurate
figures!
When you make the offer, don’t offer $45,000 no matter what. This is a very big
mistake because everyone has a high opinion of themselves when it comes to
self worth. So in this case, tell them the range, but then make your offer between
$46,000 and $47,000. Validate it to your boss and to HR that the extra thousand
dollars on the base is negligible over the long haul. Bringing someone on board
“at the minimum” typically produces results that are “at the minimum”.
If you get internal resistance, reduce your case to “the ridiculous” by reminding
them that an extra $1,000 over 26 pay periods (or however frequently you are
paid) is merely $38.46/week. Say “Wouldn’t you agree that we can afford $38.46
a week to get a high quality highly motivated salesperson on board?”
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These techniques work primarily because they activate one of the most powerful
laws of human nature which you’ve learned about in previous lessons, namely
the “Law of Reciprocity”. Its human nature for people to feel a strong tendency to
want to do something nice in return for someone who has done something nice
for them.
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Masterful Takeaways
•
When making the offer, use four tried and true methods that both build
trust as well as assist you in a smooth landing for your newly hired
salesperson:
1. Set salary base lower from the start, so when you make the actual
offer, the candidate feels privileged to have been offered more
2. Use sign on bonuses – again, make them feel that you are going to
bat for them
3. Use guarantees
4. Over deliver on your base salary
.
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Final Thoughts
When in Doubt…Keep Looking
“I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”
Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Chief Executive
As one of the top executives in the last half-century, Jeff Bezos knows a thing or
two about hiring good people, having created one of the single most successful
online business in the past twenty years.
Likewise, the top-performing sales manager doesn’t fold under “the pressure to
hire”, they know that the ultimate throttle on sales growth is in direct relation to
the ability to get and then keep the right salespeople.
Maybe you’ve been interviewing a while, maybe even for a few months and in
spite of having employed all the techniques in these courses, you’ve been unable
to find your next sales superstar, I’ve been there. Maybe your boss is breathing
down your neck, with his boss breathing down his neck and everyone saying:
“when is that picky sales manager finally gonna hire someone?” Suffice to say,
you’re feeling the pressure.
You just want to get a warm body in the position and be done with it, you think.
So it brings up the question: at what point do you compromise?
You don’t compromise; you find another way to get through until you find the right
person!
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Fight that strong urge to “just to get somebody hired” - even when the open
territory quota is eating you alive. Although your urge is to just get a body in there
selling, this is actually the WORST thing you can do.
If you “just hire someone”, you will pay for your sin of impatience ten fold later on
down the line. Ten times worse than the territory going open. Yes, you may
occasionally get lucky and happen upon someone who works out. The chances
of this occurring however, are rare...
Remember: if you hire the right person, nothing else matters – meaning: all will
be right and life is good.
However, if you hire the wrong person, nothing else matters. You have just
multiplied your “open territory” problems ten-fold. Unfortunately, I have some
experience in this area...and it couldn’t be truer.
Remember that the pain of making a weak hire is ten times worse that the
territory being unproductive. But there are a few things you can do to resolve this
dilemma, which we will discuss here.
Coverage mitigates the bleeding
If possible, gaining coverage to split up the open territory between other
salespeople will mitigate the losses in revenue you may be experiencing. One
solution is to perhaps divide up the open territory by town or by zip code. If any of
those salespeople close any business in the time it takes you to re-hire, then they
keep the sales credit. When you do hire, give the coverage salespeople a 90-day
window in which they can close pre-selected accounts.
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Prior to the arrival of the new salesperson, ask your coverage salespeople for a
list of 10-20 prospects that are not closed, but those that they are close to
closing. They can then call on those prospects for 90 days (or a suitable time
period for your business). If they close it within that time period, the sales credit
simply goes to them. If they don’t close the account in the allotted time frame,
then the prospect simply goes back into the newly hired salesperson’s bucket.
In setting up this arrangement you kill two birds with the proverbial one stone:
you generate sales from a latent territory while not giving in to the pressure of
“just hiring”. Propose this idea to your boss, because if your business is set up so
this can be arranged, it’s a win-win for all.
Discuss your hiring criteria with the recruiter
Oftentimes, the reason why you may be getting snake-bit in your attempts to hire
is because there’s misalignment in your screening process. You just may not be
getting the right kind of candidates to begin with. If that’s the case, then you’ll
need to talk with your recruiter to find out why that is. Oftentimes, the recruiter is
unwittingly screening out the exact kind of candidates that you want to “screen
in”. Or perhaps they are finding that not many candidates are accepting the offer
to interview or at least submit their resumes because there is something in your
compensation package or your company itself that may be unattractive.
Either way, you need to discuss this with your recruiter and find out why you’re
not getting the kind of candidates that you need. Here are a few tips:
1. Re-review “The Fabulous Five” hiring criteria with your recruiter
Go through the series of questions they are asking candidates on their initial
screens. Better yet, if they are making cold calls on voicemails or cell phones,
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have them go through their “pitch” to you and tweak it for any inaccuracies
they may unwittingly be stating. You can also critique their “pitch” and make
suggestions for modifying their pitch so that it casts your organization in the
best light possible. Sometimes just a few suggestions here re-open the
floodgates with top-quality candidates.
2. Re-evaluate your salary or package requirements
One of the main reasons that candidates do not interview with other
organizations is because they are happy where they currently work. These
kinds of candidates are the most attractive for you, but they are also the most
challenging to lure away from where they currently work. Sometimes the main
reason is because of your base pay standards or your bonus/commission
plan estimates. If you find out from your recruiter that this is the case, then
you should make a strong case to upper management that in your market you
will need to request an exception to extend the salary cap a bit in order to
gain access to top level talent. Sometimes this involves jumping through
some corporate hoops, but the effort is often worth it in the end. If you can
bend the ear of one of your top-level executives, then all the better – although
this may require a little political wrangling on your part.
Remember that you are doing all this to help the organization grow and meet
its aggressive sales goals – and if you phrase your request like this to upper
management, it may be the trigger that ascertains your request...
3. Seek other recruiters
Sometimes, although your recruiters are compensated based upon their
success rate in help you hire, they may need additional help to widen the net.
If this is the case, then seek additional recruiting houses that specialize in
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your area of sales recruiting. There are tons of firms out there that can assist
and they do not need to be local. National firms do just as good of a job
recruiting as do local ones.
Like we mentioned earlier, there are two firms who we recommend at The
Sales Management Mastery Academy for all our sales recruiting needs, and
they are: www.treeline-inc.com and www.bfisearch.com Both firms have
excellent individual recruiters who attend to your every need, have a wealth of
experience in both nationwide sales force expansions and start-ups as well
they both have a tremendous amount of experience in singular searches. We
have used them both on multiple occasions, as they both understand our
hiring criteria extremely well and have completed many successful sales
searches on our behalf.
A Final Note
A common myth in corporate America states that as soon as someone
promoted into sales management, you somehow, magically become endowed
with the innate ability to hire and manage salespeople. The real truth is that
management and specifically hiring skills don’t just fall from the sky as soon
as you are promoted to a position of authority. Instead they come from
relentless study, effort and application of skills and talents.
As we’ve stated before, it’s extremely difficult to lead, motivate and manage
effectively without first hiring effectively, and that skill is innate to your
continued success as a sales manager.
In these courses on How to Hire a Sales Superstar, you’ve learned that
recruitment, interviewing and selection isn’t rocket science, it’s merely a
series of logical steps and sensible techniques that enable you to make
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consistently good sales hires. Although no step-by-step system for anything is
100% fool-proof - and a few mistake hires are bound to fall between the
cracks, I can assure you that if you carefully follow the steps outlined in these
courses, you will surely hire far more sales superstars than you’ll hire sales
duds.
I hope this course will prove most helpful to you over your years of sales
hiring, I wish you ultimate success in recruiting, interviewing and hiring your
very own team of sales superstars.
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Masterful Takeaways
•
If, after the whole interview process, you have not found the right
person for the job, don’t settle! Keep looking instead.
•
You’ll spend far less time and aggravation continuing the employee
search than you will by just filling the position.
•
Use coverage mitigation get other sales reps can tentatively cover
unfulfilled territories
•
Discuss hiring criteria with your recruiter:
o Review the “Fabulous 5” – is the recruiter making the right
pitch for your company?
o Re-evaluate your salary or package requirements – are they
competitive?
o Seek other recruiters
•
Take the time and use any resources available to hone your hiring
techniques. Most importantly, follow these techniques and you will
find your sales superstar.
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Course 7 Masterful Actions
How to Hire a Sales Superstar – Interviewing, Checks and
the Offer
ACTION GUIDE
• “The Funnel” In Action
As we learned, “The Funnel” is used in an interview to help the interviewer get a
deeper, below the surface of understanding of the sales candidate. There is a
“craft” to developing this line of questioning. It can be arduous task to create the
different tiers of questioning to get to the desired end. However, with practice,
the logical sequence of these questions becomes more natural.
To really think this process through, let’s create “funnel” line of questioning to
obtain a more sophisticated understanding of your candidate.
1. Create a mock interview situation.
2. Fill in the diagram below with “broad” interview question, then complete
each block of the diagram to observe the results and natural progression
that more in-depth questioning.
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Broad question here:
Out of all of the components of the
sales call, which part is most
important to you?
Possible answer:
Trust building
2nd level question:
What are your top 3 typical methods
for establishing trust with a client?
2nd level question:
What strategies do you use with a
cynical client?
Possible 2nd level answer:
I typically try to establish some
personal dialogue with customers. I
keep very good notes of b-days,
hobbies, families, etc.
Possible 2nd level answer:
My strategy is to emphasize not only
benefits of the product/service, but
also to verbalize my commitment to
them as a client
3rd level question:
When do you know when to draw the
line between “chatter” and getting
down to business?
3rd level question:
How do you avoid making promises
that you cannot deliver?
Possible answer:
I couldn’t pick one element as they
are all inter-dependent, but I believe
that a successful “close” is key to
success
2nd level question:
How do you handle the resistant client
who just wants to call you back at a
later time?
2nd level question:
Could you give me an example of
how you would close a client that has
told you that he wants to “shop the
competition”?
Possible answer:
I usually try to take the ball in my
court and let the client feel that I have
taken the pressure of them, and that
I’ll handle any follow-up
Possible answer:
Mr. B, when you inquire about other
products, just remember that our
product does x, y, z, and keep in mind
our unbeatable service.
Level 3 question:
Here’s the scenario your client
appears to be “too busy” for
discussion, provide me with some
dialogue that you would utilize.
Level 3 question:
Do you typically discuss “the
competition” with accounts?
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• Bringing It All Together:
Note-taking, “The Resume Walk” and “The Funnel”
During a resume walk with a candidate, you made a notation about one of
these criteria:
•
General statements – i.e. “I always have been a…” “I enjoy the direct
sale…”
•
Emphatic statements – i.e. “I really loved selling granite tombstones”.
•
Contradictory statements – something that contradicts something else
they had stated previously – i.e. “I was ranked number one in 2007”
after earlier saying “I had a YTD quota attainment of 100.3%” (the two
statements don’t really seem to jive, right?)
•
“In between words” – “I pick things up pretty quickly” or “this is kind of a
better role for me”
•
False platitudes – “I’ve always been able to do really well wherever I’ve
gone…” “I’ve always been a really good salesperson…”
•
Ambiguous statements – i.e. “I was one of the top salespeople that
year…” “
After you make the notation on the resume, later on in the interview
process, you come back to that notation. And from that initial notation, you
develop a line of funnel questioning.
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Here’s an example:
Notation:
In the interview, Tom said that his sales figures for Merck “exceeded quota every
quarter of 2009” but there is no notation on the resume to indicate this. You wrote
this down on the margin of the resume and circled it.
Your Broad Question:
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Example: “You said you exceeded quota every quarter in 2009, to what
specifically do you credit this success?”
Follow-up Question 1:
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Example: “So tell me, what sales methods you executed particularly well that
year? “
Follow-up Question 2:
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Example: “Why do you think that these sales strategies are so successful for
you?”
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Follow-up Question 3:
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Example: “Tell me about a sale that year that you are particularly proud of. Give
me the specifics on how the sale occurred.”
• Your Funnel Exercise
Now, develop your own line of “Funnel” questions based on “Resume Walk”
answers that fulfill the criteria set above.
Fill in the diagram below:
Resume Walk notation:
Level 1 question:
Level 2 question:
Level 3 question:
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Resume Walk notation:
Level 1 question:
Level 2 question:
Level 3 question:
Resume Walk notation:
Level 1 question:
Level 2 question:
Level 3 question:
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The Six Step Hiring System
Interview Checklist
Step
Action
Date Completed
1. Determine Your Hiring Criteria Job Posting
Fabulous Five
2. Screening
Informed Recruiter of Fabulous Five
Screening Sales Resume – 18 steps
3. First Interview
Interview Guidelines – take notes
Resume Walk
The Funnel
Fabulous Five Questions
4. Second Interview
Secondary Fabulous Five
“Knockouts”
Manageability/Motivation Questions
“Make An Offer That Sticks”
Questions
5. Background Checks
Consult with Previous Manager
6. The Offer
Four Offer Techniques
\
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Sales Candidate Rating Worksheet
Applicant Name_____________________________________________________ Date ____________
Interviewer ___________________________________________
Please read each question and select the best answer. Write the points associated with each of
your answers in the “points” column. A score of “100” is a perfect score.
Determine Your Hiring Criteria: Choose one of the following:
Points
Yes, candidate meets all criteria
5
The candidate meets most of the criteria
3
No, the candidate does not meet criteria ***
0
*** If no, disregard candidate, they do not qualify for the position
Rate the resume from The 18 Steps to Screen a Sales Resume: Choose one of the following:
Points
Resume is strong and included accolades
10
listed in priority positioning
Resume is strong and included accolades
8
listed in low priority positioning
Resume is average and included some
5
accolades
Resume is average but does not list
3
accolades
Resume is weak
0
Rating the Fabulous Five
5 = very strong 4= strong 3= adequate
2= sometimes apparent 1= weak
0= none
Points
Drive to succeed
Strong Work Ethic
High self confidence, charisma, and humility
Emotional Intelligence
Intellectual Horse Power
Rate the “Knockouts”
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5 = definitely
4 = strong
3 = somewhat
2 = at times
1= weak
0 = no
Points
Are they manageable?
Did they sell you?
Are they the right selling style for your company?
Did they close you?
Do you like them?
Rate the Secondary Fabulous Five
5 = very strong 4= strong 3= adequate
2= sometimes apparent 1= weak
0= none
Points
Interpersonal skills
Entrepreneurial aptitude
Sales skills
Determination
Organization
Based on the background check: Select one of the following:
Points
Previous boss gave “glowing” reference
5
Previous boss gave an “okay” reference
3
Couldn’t contact previous boss
0
TOTAL NUMBER OF POINTS
__________
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Sales Interview Cheat Sheet
•
Interview Guidelines
1. Statements you need to write down in the margin:
9 General statements – i.e. “I always have been a…” “I enjoy the direct
sale…”
9 Emphatic statements – i.e. “I really loved selling granite tombstones”.
9 Contradictory statements – something that contradicts something else
they had stated previously – i.e. “I was ranked number one in 2007”
after earlier saying “I had a YTD quota attainment of 100.3%” (the two
statements don’t really seem to jive, right?)
9 Write down the “in between words” – “I pick things up pretty quickly” or
“this is kind of a better role for me”
9 False platitudes – “I’ve always been able to do really well wherever I’ve
gone…” “I’ve always been a really good salesperson…”
9 Ambiguous statements – i.e. “I was one of the top salespeople that
year…” “
2. Shut Up!
3. NEVER Show Your Hand!
4. Uncomfortable Silences Are Your Best Friend
5. Always notice the fidget
6. Don’t lead the witness
7. Watch for hesitation
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•
Resume Walk and Funnel Questions
9 “Take me through your resume from college to present, moving from
job to job – however, what I am particularly interested in is the reasons
why you went from company to company.”
9 “Why did you leave ________ to go work at _____? What were you
hoping to accomplish?”
9 What’s missing from your (current) situation?
9 What career path they chose: “Why are you in sales?”
9 Why and how did they choose the company they chose to pursue that
career path: “Of all the companies to work for, what was it about
____________________, Inc. that made you want to work for them?”
•
Fabulous Five and the Secondary Fabulous Five Questions
1. Drive to Succeed
9 What motivates you?
9 What does THEIR ANSWER get you?
9 What gets you out of bed in the morning?
9 Where does that drive come from?
9 Why are you driven like that?
9 What does “success” mean to you?
9 What achievement are you most proud of and why?
9 What was your best sales year? What did you do that year that
made it so special? Give me an example of a big sales you made
that year that you were most proud of?
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2. Strong Work Ethic
9 Describe for me a typical day for you
9 Give me an example of your work ethic
9 What does it mean to you when you say you have done a good
job?
9 What is it that you are searching for in your professional life?
9 What’s missing from your current situation?
9 What have you done that you are most proud of? Take me through
the steps that got you there.
3. High Self Confidence, Charisma and Humility
9 Our prospects have very little time to meet with sales
representatives, they are often double-booked, behind schedule
and understaffed. Given this hectic environment, why would a
prospect want to spend ten minutes of his day with you?
9 What are you most proud of in your sales career? Tell me what you
did that year to get the results you did? Now tell me a specific sales
call that year that most contributed to your success.
9 How do you feel about your progress to date?
9 Do you consider yourself successful?
9 How do you rank among your peers?
4. Emotional Intelligence
9 Describe a difficult situation in your past, although you weren’t sure
what to do, but you did the right thing? Explain the thought process
you went through.
9 What is “good judgment”?
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9 Describe for me your definition of “common sense”. Give me an
example of when you showed that quality.
9 What have you learned from the different sales jobs you’ve had?
9 Tell me about a time when you came up with a new sales idea.
How did you get it approved and implemented?
5. Intellectual Horsepower
9 Describe a difficult situation in your past; although you may have
asked for help, you solved a complex problem on your own?
Explain the process you went through.
9 Tell me how you figured out that problem and how the solution
increased sales.
9 Describe for me how you are going to become a product expert in
the field of (your industry).
9 Some company processes are more difficult to understand than
others. Could you share with me a more difficult process that was
introduced to you in the workplace? What made it so difficult and
how did you go about developing your comfort with it?
9 How do you deal with complex problems at your current job? Give
me an example of how you worked through one that was
particularly complex.
9 Tell me about a time when you came up with a new method or
sales process idea. How did you come up with it and how did it get
approved and implemented?
6. Strong interpersonal / oral communication skills
9 How would you introduce yourself and your product to a group
of potential customers in less than two minutes?
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9 Make note of their diction in the interview
9 Tell me how you made an “impossible” sale
9 Tell me about a time when your timing was bad
9 What business situations make you feel awkward?
7. Strong sales ability and skills
9 Tell me how you were able to increase sales in your previous
(present) job.
9 Give me some examples / techniques of how you got a really tough
prospect to buy your product? What did you say?
9 What is your “sales philosophy”? Give me an example when you
exemplified that.
9 Sell me this pen (hand the pen to them).
9 How do you feel when you get rejected?
8. Entrepreneurial aptitude
9 If you weren’t in sales what would you do for work?
9 Have you ever thought about opening your own business? Why
have you not done that?
9 Why are you in sales?
9 What does “good business (man/woman)” mean to you?
9. Determination / perseverance
9 Describe a sales situation in your past, no matter what you tried;
you could not get the prospect to purchase your product. Explain
the process you went through.
9 What does it mean “to persevere”?
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9 Tell me about your most difficult sale. Give specifics.
9 What makes you think you can sell consistently?
10. Strong organizational / prioritization skills
9 How do you plan your day / week / month?
9 How do you get the most out of your day?
9 Describe for me a typical day for you.
9 Tell me about some of your long-term working goals and how you
are setting to achieve them.
9 Tell me about the planning you did for an important project or sale.
•
Manageability and Motivation Questions
9 Who did you report to at (fill in company name at last sales job)?
9 What do you think of that boss?
9 How did your boss get the best out of you?
9 Describe the best sales manager you ever had – what made him or
her so good?
9 How did (name of sales manager from above question) get the best
out of you?
9 (This will tell you exactly how to motivate them – this one’s more for
you than for them)
9 What made (him or her) stand out so much?
9 Who was you worst boss?
9 What made (him or her) so bad?
9 (This will tell you exactly how not to manage them – yet again; this
one’s more for you than for them)
9 How do you take direction?
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9 Have you ever been in a situation in which people overruled you?
What did you do to resolve it?
9 What kind of person do you get along with best?
9 What are some things that your (best boss / worst boss) disagreed
upon?
9 What do you do when there is a decision to be made and no
procedure exists? What did you do in that case?
•
“Make Sure Your Offer Sticks” Questions
9 “You’re obviously an extremely qualified candidate for employment
here. Someone of your considerable skills must be sought after by
other companies – are there any other opportunities that you are
currently pursuing?”
9 “Are you interviewing with any other companies in (your industry) at
present?”
9 “You surely must be interviewing with other companies - what other
employment opportunities are you looking at? How far along in the
process are you? How does that opportunity compare to this one? If
you were offered jobs by both – which would you accept?”
o (This highly layered question is a real good one – you can
continue to add more funnel layers to it to get even deeper
insight)
9 “You said that you were interested in (making more money) – what
would you do if you got another job and your then your boss offered
you (more money) to stay?
o (This question must be used in conjunction to their answer to
the question “what is missing from your current situation” from
the previous lesson).
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9 “You said that you are primarily looking to ‘advance your career’, what
would you do if your current company had offered you a promotion a
few months ago…would you be sitting here right now talking to me?”
9 “What if I were to offer you the job right now…would you accept?”
9 “Under what conditions would you accept a job offer from us?”
•
Reference Questions
9 “This is (your name), (candidate) put you down as a personal reference
as part of our hiring process I was hoping you had a moment to
discuss (candidate’s name) period of employment with you?”
9 “When did (candidate) work for you?”
9 “How would you rank (candidate’s) skills in (pick any of the Fabulous
Five or other critical job functions)?”
9 “How would you describe (candidate’s) work record with you?”
9 “(Candidate) said they won (some pronounced accolade from their
resume in the year they won it) – is that accurate? What other awards
did they win?”
9 “What would you say was (candidate’s) greatest strength?”
9 “What would you say was (candidate’s) greatest weakness?”
9 “What parts of the job did (candidate) have the hardest time with?”
9 “How did you as a manager, get the best out of (candidate)?”
9 “If given the opportunity, would you hire (candidate) again? Why?”
9 “What made (candidate) particularly effective in their role?”
9 “What advice would you give me as a manager of (candidate)?”
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•
Offer Tactics
1. Set salary base lower from the start, so when you make the actual
offer, the candidate feels privileged to have been offered more
2. Use sign on bonuses – again, make them feel that you are going to
bat for them
3. Use guarantees
4. Over deliver on your base salary
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The Six-Step Hiring System Mind Map
Q&A
How did they
perform?
Did you gain more
insight from
funnel questions?
Your gut instinct:
What is your knee
jerk reaction to
them?
Do you like them?
Did they sell you????
Did they:
Build trust?
Investigate?
Make the pitch?
Close the deal?
Fab 5?
Resume:
Drive to succeed?
Work ethic?
High self –confidence?
Charisma? Humility?
Emotional intelligence?
Intellectural Horsepower?
Layout?
Power words?
Accolades?
GPA?
Advanced degree?
Rating the
Candidate
Presence of the
secondary 5?
Are they
manageable? Can
you motivate
them?
Interpersonal skills?
Entrepreneurial aptitude?
Sales skills?
Determination?
Organization?
Accolades?
How many accolades
are listed?
Where are they listed?
Are the accolades
consistent?
Background Checks:
Discussion with
former employer?
Checking references
Do they meet all
necessary criteria?
Do they have all the
background/experienc
e required in the job
listing?
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