Hiring Salespeople Who Perform Well After the Interview

Have you hired too many salespeople who were great during the interview, but who failed? Were you sure during the interview they were “handling themselves so well”, that they just had to be the one? Did you feel yourself sold on them in the interview?

Allowing yourself to sell or be sold in the interview is a fatal mistake.

Pretend You’re an Engineer – Adopt the “Engineer Persona”

It’s tough for us sales managers not to get fired up in the interview. Our enthusiasm and natural persuasiveness got us to where we are.

Selling is our “default setting.”

But to do well in sales hiring, you’ve got to get out of the “Salesperson Head.”  Instead, the best mindset to use in interviewing is the “Engineer Head.”

What a 62 Year Old Engineer Taught Me About Making Good Decisions

When I was first in sales, my customers came from many backgrounds. One in particular, Jacque, controlled a large ad budget for a technology company. Jacque was an engineer.

I wanted to get a hunk of his budget for our Rock and Roll radio station.  I knew our audience would respond to his offer and I knew I needed a big budget to make it work. No one had come close to cracking the account.

While I was presenting, he was impossible to read. I was sure I was getting nowhere with him during my presentation. He kept looking down at his desk. He seemed bored.

You know what THAT feels like in a sales presentation. I wanted to stop in the middle, because I “knew” he wasn’t buying.

I got to the end. Silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Finally he looked up and said that it sounded good.  And he bought. And that is how I sold Jacque and brought in the largest annual contract ever.

I was 22 years old and I learned an important lesson. 

Jacque taught me why it is so important to stay clear on your goal. And don’t let your emotions control the decision process.

Too many sales managers make the fatal mistake of turning the interview into a sales call.

Stop getting tricked in the interview by scripting your interview. Break your interview down to sections. Each section needs to cover a key personality characteristic.

• Stick-to-it-iveness
• Entrepreneurialism
• Ability to overcome adversity

We’ve put together a video. Watch it and see how to construct an interview that gets you salespeople who perform.

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Video Rant #1

You know what I hear a lot from sales managers? They tell me they’ve had a stable sales team for YEARS.

And you know what I think when I hear THAT? “Does this guy have ANY IDEA he’s got ZERO account innovation going on?”

I guarantee you, a stable sales team means that a HUGE percentage of your sales team members are calling on the SAME prospects and clients, month after month after month. There is a WAY bigger potential market out there for your company. But unfortunately, NOBODY on your team is touching it!

Thirty years ago, I started a company called Radio Profits Corporation. I had a lot of experience inside radio sales departments at several radio stations. And every place I had worked, I saw radio salespeople calling on the SAME ACCOUNTS, month in and month out.

You know what that means? EVERYBODY in sales was just staying in their comfort zone. NOBODY was actually prospecting, because prospecting is a lot of work!

So I created Radio Profits Corporation to call on non-traditional advertisers who were looking for new business.

And of course, we found a TON of them, over and over and over.

The point is NOT what we did at Radio Profits. The point is that the MOMENT a sales manager stops bringing in aggressive NEW salespeople, you START creating a stale culture.

You have a vast market of potential NEW clients out there. But your stable sales team will ALWAYS tend to stay in their comfort zone. And the hard work of prospecting is NOT in that comfort zone.

The ONLY way to bring in a consistent stream of NEW business every month is to build a system to bring in a constant flow of aggressive new salespeople. THOSE people will go out and bring in that new business for you.

Your smartest and most profitable next step is to use Advanced Hiring System to help you set up a system to consistently boost your sales team with NEW superstars.

This is Alan Fendrich at Advanced Hiring System. Give me a call.

It’s pretty obvious, but few in HR get it. Unless you’re offering a monstrous signing bonus, remove the line “previous sales experience.” It should not appear in your ad.

Yesterday I was talking with a client, Chris, we’ve worked his with Financial Services company for more than 6 years. I called him because his sales applicant volume had doubled. What had he done to cause such an explosion in applicants?

He chucked, “I was finally able to convince the powers that be to try your advice. We finally dropped ‘previous sales experience required.'”

To boot, more stars are applying as a percentage than before the change. (We can see the quality of his applicants in Member Area stats.)

You can find out more here 

Here’s why you should remove “previous sales experience” from your ad:

Ask any experienced sales manager to count his best hires. Most have no previous sales experience. Our stats show less than 10%. Most of the greatest sales hires have a burning desire to make money and are willing to do what it takes. You are 9x more likely to find a star without previous experience.

Top performers in sales are making money and getting all the good leads where they are. Unless their current company is a disaster, good salespeople are on track to make more if they stay put. Good comp plans reward longevity.

Great training exists for newbies if you’re not up for the job of training. If you need a list of the real trainers, contact me and I’ll give you my list. We’ve been working with sales trainers for 16 years. Most are a waste of time. The good ones are worth getting to know.

We’ve got a checklist you can use to improve your sales hiring results here