
What to Look for When Interviewing Salespeople
Matt Lopez
Hiring salespeople is hard. Even after years of experience and hundreds of hires, if I bat 80-90%, I am happy. It is easy to spot the ones that would never work in a sales role, and rock stars can be few and far between. Finding the talent that’s stuck somewhere in the middle is where hiring gets tricky. The A+’s and F’s are obvious, but how do you find your B and C players?
Many people look at sales as a role they could not be good at because they aren’t outgoing enough. On the flip side, many people go into sales because their friends/family say their personality makes them a great fit. This creates a group of overenthusiastic junior and mid-level sales people who show the characteristics that non-sales leaders attribute to sales success. How do you get past this and to the real details that separate the middle from the top and bottom? How do you identify the high potentials from the mediocre masses?
Remove emotion from the process
This can be tough while interviewing for sales. Most candidates think their personality makes them a fit, so they really turn it on in the interview, and become very likable. They can also show a level of healthy aggression and interest in really wanting the job. This is easy to mistake as a sample of their ability to ask for the business and close.
The only way to remove emotion from the process is to have a regimented system that scores candidates similarly. We teach a method called the four quadrants which forces you to pick four key skills for the role, develop 5-15 questions for each quadrant, and then assign quadrants to specific people involved in the interview process.
The quadrants that we find most effective more mid-level sales hires are:
– Past experience – Is their experience relevant? Were they successful? What would their previous boss say needs improvement? Other non-sales experience that may add to their ability to do the job.
– Passion/charisma – Removing emotion from evaluating does not mean it’s not important and you shouldn’t test for this skill. How would people describe your sales style? What are you passionate about in life? The key here is to listen how they talk about these things as opposed to just the content.
– Intelligence and critical thinking – This is one of the most important characteristics that many processes do not address. Intelligent people not only learn quicker, but can adjust and implement feedback – two skills critical for success within sales.
– Integrity/Leadership – The competitive nature of sales opens can sometimes open the door for less than stellar behaviors. You need to know if getting ahead is more important to your candidate than doing the right thing. When have they had to make a tough call they knew would hurt their numbers? How would their peers describe them?
Role-play is non-negotiable
Before buying a car, you always take it for a test drive. You need to see your candidate’s skills in action to get a good idea of how successful they will be. In order to get this right, I like to make sure of a few key pieces.
Be sure everyone role-plays the same scenario. We send candidates a case study followed by a 15 min coaching session before the interview. The coaching session is important because it details what you expect. Some companies want candidates to just “figure it out”, but I have found a little coaching ahead of time goes a long way in improving the quality of the role-play. Often times, we will do a second role-play within a day of the first, to see if they can implement additional feedback.
Another important rule: no more than 3-4 people in the room or on the role play call. This creates a “too many cooks in the kitchen.” Too many opinions often make the feedback effective internally.
Drive group think out of the process
Group think can be a problem when reviewing candidates in any environment, but this is especially true in startups. The company is usually made up of junior people with little to no formal training in how to interview. Their opinions on candidates are based off who they “like” or who they “think they would be good” instead of the skills described in the four quadrants.
Additionally, discussing the candidates as a team can muddy the waters of what each candidate actually thinks; the loudest or highest ranking person will typically win out. The hiring manager or person in charge of the interview process should talk to each person individually after they meet with the candidate. This will expose true opinions and make for a more accurate assessment. Force your people to interview and form opinions based on skill. You must try to keep your people focused on specific skills and ensure they do not taint their co-workers to eliminate group think.
Interviewing for salespeople is not a hard science but the more scientific you can make it, the better off you will be. Every time I go back to the unsuccessful hires I have made, I can typically attribute the misstep to one of these factors. An organization that makes metrics driven decisions for accessing skills and then evaluates culture as a part of that hiring will make fewer missteps than their less structured counterparts.