Hire A Sales Superstar

When you first meet your interview candidate, your real first goal in the interview is to make them comfortable, because a comfortable candidate reveals so much more than one who’s up tight and nervous. It’s a whole lot more fun to talk to someone who is at ease.

Your next step so as to take the pressure off them, ask them what they have been told about the job so far and that you’ll fill in any details they may have either omitted or their recruiter had failed to mention to them. This immediately disarms them and allows you a few minutes to do some talking which takes “the pressure to perform” off 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. 

Describe the job territory, the description of the job, maybe throw in a little history of the position, how it has done historically, why its open, maybe add in a few words about when you started at the company. Keep your comments brief and succinct. Don’t reveal too much, but don’t be too vague, just give them the facts.  Don’t say a word to them “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. That’s because if you do get into that sort of detail, 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. 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. 

Trust me, Ive 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.

Like I mentioned before, accolades being on the resume is important, but where they are located on the resume is almost as important.

Are they listed first under their job title (preferred) or are they listed under their lame description of what they sold, what their responsibilities were, etc? The where is a good indicator of how important accolade are to them. The higher, the more important and ostensibly, the more driven an individual they are.

Typically, if you are making a list of things, you list items in order of importance. If you’re going to the supermarket, the first item on your list is the thing you want to make sure you don’t forget, right? Therefore that item is listed first – it’s most important. It’s the same with resumes.

If rankings are listed last, then they are not as important to the person whose accolades are listed first. You want someone working for you who what they care about most is achievement. The presence (or lack thereof) of achievements and the location of said achievements on the resume tells you a lot about who you are interviewing.

As a top-performing sales manager who sets the bar extremely high, you care most about RESULTS. Does this person have the inherent DRIVE TO SUCCEED that will rocket them out of bed early, push them to stay out late, do whatever it takes, learn whatever it takes to make things happen and produce superior sales results? The candidate who has lots of accolades, listed high on the paragraph is ten times more likely to do perform in this fashion than one who does not.

Post a comment and tell me how do you consider an applicant’s accolades in a resume.

I always think of the mutual fund industry when I talk about accolades when it says “past performance is not an indication of future performance”. I always think that if that is the case, then why are the most popular mutual funds those with four and five-star three, five and ten-year ratings on Morningstar?

Its because past performance is a very good indicator of future success. Just like in the mutual fund industry, people buy into performance. You as a top-performing sales manager want a full team of “four and five star” performers. And as a result, accolades are a “must have” in any sales hire. They represent Exhibit A that shows you what the salesperson can do. The beauty is that accolades, when they are consistent and multiple, the talents needed to produce those accolades transcend the industry.

I would submit that if a sales rep can sell boxes from a box factory in excess of his peer group and do it consistently over a three to five year period, then with a little training, she could sell biologicals just as well.

My point is this: don’t focus on the nice, carefully written paragraphs that describe what products they sold at Marshmallows Unlimited. What they sold doesn’t really matter – what matters most is how effective were they in selling it. Ignore the descriptions of job responsibilities completely, what do you really care what they sold? For a sales person, activity does not sell anything. Results are the only thing that matters.

Remember: It doesn’t necessarily matter what they sold, what matters most is how well they sold it versus their peers. If they have no rankings, accolades, awards listed, then don’t bother with the interview – you’re wasting your time! Go find resumes chock full of accolades, rankings and awards won. This is the earmark of an individual who cares most about results. And if those results are superior, then you’re getting closer to hiring your new sales salesperson.

Post a comment and tell me if you have Mutual Fund Industry-like-standard when hiring a sales person.

Having said that, with postings like this in the corporate world which are completely constructed by people in Human resources, suffice it to say that you’ll need to do most of the work yourself. Better yet, hire a sales recruiter do it for you. You’ll save hours of needless work by hiring an outside source to screen and recruit suitable candidates for you and you’ll get a whole lot more talent to interview in half the time.

Once you get a recruiter to screen candidates for you, you’ll need to give them some criteria with which to work with. They can then use that criteria as a screening tool to eliminate the lion’s share of poor and ill-suited resumes from even making it to your desk.

The easiest place to start is to give your recruiter a list of the “Essential Seven” and tell them, simply that you want these seven criteria. Ask the recruiter what kinds of questions they ask in the screening and then see what you get. You’ll still have to do a fair amount of screening prior to your actual interviews. That all starts by learning how to read a resume like a pro.

The best way to screen someone is to match the bare minimum criteria of a candidate and match it to the resume that you have before you. In looking for a number of different attributes on the resume, you begin to get a sense as to what the candidate is all about. A resume is a very good initial guide to the who, what and where of a sales candidate. And how it is laid out, what is says and where it says it speaks volumes about the candidate’s character attributes.

Post a comment and tell me about your list of criteria you give to your recruiter.

With the hundreds of resumes you will likely screen for the position that you have oopen, you need a methodical way to look at a resume and get the sense of what this person is all about.   

The first real step is to indentify what your hiring criteria really is.

Like many companies, you most likely have a job posting somewhere on your company’s website for all to view to the world. It may go a little something like this:

Currently, we seek an Sales Executive in our East Bay, California territory. 

As part of our highly visible sales team, Sales Executives target and secure profitable new business to build relationships as aligned with regional and national marketing strategies. You will provide overall support and expertise to new accounts to ensure the highest level of quality service and provide customer education on ABC Corporation’s processes and procedures.

We Require:

• A Bachelors degree in Business, Marketing or the Life Sciences
• 5 years successful front line sales experience including strong “closing” skills
• Knowledge of the healthcare industry and the general economics of business
• Ability to develop and sustain strong customer relationships
• Strong business planning and organizational skills
• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills
• Solid PC skills including knowledge of Microsoft Software
• A valid drivers license 

In addition to base salary and commissions, ABC Corporation. offers an excellent benefits package which includes medical, dental, 401K, tuition reimbursement, prescription and a flex spending account.

We provide our sales professionals with a company vehicle, cellular phone and laptop computer.    

Well there you go, all you need to do is find all that and you’re on your way to Sales Management Mastery!

Hardly. The problem is that with most postings looking like this, there is really nothing in the posting that will help you to screen out the resumes you don’t want and help you bring in the ones you do want. Nor does it give you any indication of the types of talents that you are actually looking for.

Post a comment and tell me what are your hiring criteria in hiring a sales person.