Here are ten great tips from fellow Sandler Trainer Take a look and see if this gives you any ideas?
Hiring Salespeople: 10 Questions You Must Ask & Get Good Answers To
You are not interviewing salespeople to make friends but to hire a winner. Don't go in wearing your happy ears. You're about to hire someone who is going to cost you the price of a small mortgage every year, has your future in their hands and could easily go out and upset your customers, who you have spent time and a lot of money acquiring.
You want James Bond, not his cousin, Basildon when s/he gets on to your payroll.
What do you call conversation where both sides are lying through their teeth?
..... A job interview!
Stop wasting your time focusing on housekeeping questions around skills, historical experience and historical results. They are all backward looking (lag indicators, once happened, can't be changed or affected) and are only really useful at helping you separate between 2 equally good candidates who have scored highly in the predictors of success:
- Habit - what you do repeatedly in the past, you will do repeatedly in the future e.g. prospecting, calling high, selling past "No!"
- Cognitive skills - how you have learned on the hoof and adapted to changing conditions in the past tells me how you are likely to do the same in the future
- Attitudes & Beliefs - your beliefs around selling, the customer and money, around your own self-concept
At the start of the interview, I like to open with, "Bob, we've been looking forward to meeting you very much. OK. Over to you?" And then I shut up and gesture towards them so they can take over from here.
I want to see how they respond. Do they go to pieces? Do they take the bull by the horns and take the opportunity they've been gifted to manage the "sale" of the interview? Or do they ask weak questions and falter like a damp fuse?
This list in by no means exhaustive but it's a start:
At the start of the final interview I like to lead early with "I'm not offering you the job, but suppose I did, and it was in the region of £XX,XXXX basic, OTE of £XXX,XXX with X weeks holiday, pension at XX%, car and X,XXX stock options is there any reason you wouldn't accept it?" I don't want to waste my time or theirs if there is a problem with the offer they are likely to get. It also allows me to see how well they handle the money conversation, and how they control the interview. If they can't control an interview with me, chances are they aren't going to be able to control one with a gnarly old CFO or self important CEO, are they? And if they drop early, unilaterally or without trying to get something of equal or greater value back in return, they tell me how they handle discounting conversations.
1. Tell me, what does your prospecting habit look like? What do you do on a daily, (weekly, monthly) basis to keep your pipeline full all the time? Take me through your current pipeline and explain how you have qualified each of them? Based on what evidence? Why do you take these actions?
2. Tell me about the last 6 sales you have closed that came from self-generated leads; take me through each of their life-cycles, how did you discover them and tell me what you learned to help you improve your performance in the future as you progressed through each sale?
3. In your current position, take me through your most recent 5 or 6 losses. Where did you go wrong and what have you done to prevent yourself from making the same mistake again in the future? How did you share these insights?
4. What process do you go through to disqualify out a "no bid" situation quickly today? Give me half a dozen examples of where you have disqualified out non-prospects recently and why? What were the red flags that told you a no bid was the best response?
5. What are your beliefs about the customer? e.g. The customer is king? The buyer is always right? The man with the gold makes the rules? The customer is never more than my equal? They're in control because they have the money?
6. How do you create parity between you and the buyer up front at the start of a call or meeting? Give me some examples of how you have done this in recent sales whether you won or lost. How did you maintain parity throughout the sale?
7. Why aren't you a better salesperson? (Shut up, watch carefully and listen hard for excuses, blaming, trying clumsily to wriggle out of the question)
8. If I told you I was going to recommend we don't offer you the job, what would you say to me? (I want to know I'm hiring someone who gets to qualified decisions, yes or no, and can sell past "no", don't I?)
9. What have you done regularly to improve your performance in the last 6 months? Evidence? Examples? How is that working out for you?
10. Take me through 5 or 6 examples of where you have had a sale stall. What specifically did you do to identify the real cause of the road block and how did you manage to work your way past or around the obstacle? Whose help did you have to enlist to help you get past it? Win or lose, what lessons did you learn?
Remember an interview should not be a pleasant experience for the candidate.
The person they become under pressure is the one you will end up hiring. Make sure you find that out before you put them on your payroll or you will fall foul of the old proverb:
Hire in haste (or because you like the chap) and repent at leisure.
Want to learn more? Give us a call- Eric - 920-819-4186