By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
I do not put myself forward as a sales recruiter, I have done my share of hiring and firing, and as you may have guessed, have opinions on the subject, but it is not what I do. There are times when a client will ask me to sit down with some people on their short list of candidates, or sit in with a hiring manager while interviewing potential sales reps, as I did a little while back.
The manager had been in the role for a few years, had a good track record vis-à-vis revenue goals, and while the turnover on the team was in line, there were concerns about her hiring skills. Going into the interview, I asked her what her game plan was for the interview. She told me she had a set of questions that she used, and based on the answers she was able to narrow her choices.
The candidate arrived, niceties exchanged, the basic warm up question: why are you looking for a new position; why are you considering us; a few other why’s and the main event begins.
“How do you feel about prospecting for new clients?”
“Do you think it is the role of marketing to generate leads?”
“What do you feel is the best way to manage you?”
When we were done, I asked the manager if she liked the candidate. She indicated that she was ok with him. I asked how much she felt she knew about him, his ability to sell, and his fit with the team. She said he was a good fit with the group, had the basics that could start him off well, but would benefit from training once he came onboard.
“What do you base that on?” I asked; “based on how he answered the questions we asked” (what do you mean we…). I suggested to her that she was in no position to answer my questions based on the questions she asked the candidate. She was puzzled, sat for a minute and asked the obvious, “why not, I asked him what he thought about prospecting, how he felt about marketing’s role, how he felt he needed to be managed, and he felt about having to both hunt and manage existing accounts, so I base it on that.” All while trying to suppress her disdain for my observation.
“You know I never really hired sales people based on how they feel” I said, “I much prefer to focus on what and how they DO. Frankly, it is nice that he felt prospecting was part of the job, my concern is can he and has he done it effectively in the past; and we do not know that based on the interview.”
To her credit, rather than rationalizing she asked, “Well what would you suggest instead?” I shared with her what I was taught, which is to focus on explicit experiences. Knowing what the position calls for, ask question that go to the specifics strategies and tactics for executing. “Tell me about how you prospect for new clients, and what your conversion rate is from lead to prospect?” Or “Tell me about a situation where you had to tell a client about a delay in the project.” This allows for quantitative, qualitative and anecdotal to surface. You can then add, “What did you do in response to or to manage the situation? What was the outcome? What did you learn from the experience and incorporate into your selling moving forward?” This allows you to see what they have done in real life situations, and how they learn and incorporate the lessons. You can also learn other elements, for instance, if they go back to the same sale/story for each question, you have a dud; but if they can give you different instances for different questions, you take it as a sign of having lived it.
The “feely” questions work well for the “relationship” types, but for the execution minded, experience is much more practical. There are a lot of great books and blogs out there that will give answers to the “feely” questions, “where do you see yourself in five years?” and that whole lot of questions; but to answer experience questions you normally have to have had the experience (or related experience). Of course, if someone is a good faker, and gets past this, there is still the old truth of “hire slow, fire fast”.
Again, to her credit, the manager didn’t spend time telling me how she felt about the approach I shared with her, but the next round of interviews had revamped her interview questions to focus on experience required to succeed on her team.