When an applicant comes through the door if they are truly interested in the advertised position they will be fully prepared to answer all of your questions. Conversely, as a hiring manager you should also be prepared with an established set of interview questions for sales people to let them know you are ready to hire the most qualified candidate. If you appear unprepared or not interested in the sales hiring process you could chase away the best qualified candidate.

Remember that everyone being interviewed must have already scored well on a sales aptitude test and shows promise, but that doesn’t always mean they will fit into your organization. Each of the candidates interviewed should be asked the same questions. As they move along in the hiring process the interview questions for sales people should result in different levels of response. The better sales candidates will be able to maintain a high level of answers while some of the lesser qualified candidates, feeling they are looking better to you since they are advancing through the process, become more lax in their responses.

This is where the abilities of the interviewer will come into play during the sales hiring process. Notice the phrase hiring process, as it is a process and not any special technique. Although it takes a certain amount of knowledge to hire properly, sales hiring is a process and the successful candidates will move through it, with you gaining more confidence in their abilities with each step they take.

Too many sales managers have an inflated opinion of their ability to evaluate how a candidate was able to sell themselves. The better sales candidates will know when they have made a mistake in an interview and be able to right their wrong and keep moving through the process. This is the part of the sales hiring process that many managers are unfamiliar with and a sales aptitude test will most often reveal.

Even if a candidate has never been involved in sales before that doesn’t mean they aren’t qualified for the position. During the sales hiring process if they have demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit, can overcome adversity and can manage their emotions they may be a better hire than those with years of experience. When considering someone for a sales position it may be better to look beyond a lack of experience that can be replaced with the traits that make the best sales people.

When you hire salespeople for your company, you probably don’t realize that there’s a philanthropic spirit behind the goal-oriented, driven, ambitious people that you have recruited. After all, when you ask the typical man-on-the-street to give you the characteristics of good salesmen, altruism isn’t at the top of the list. But you might be surprised.

According to the Advanced Hiring System Values Matrix, the best salesmen are motivated by a desire for money and power. For that reason, many people think that that’s all good salesmen care about. When you really get to know some of them, though, you’ll discover that what motivates them is just a small part of who they are; because of salesmen, the world is a much better place.

Let’s consider the facts: while a desire for money and power may be the primary force that drives good salesmen, they’re not usually just out for themselves. What about the customer? By selling your product to Mrs. X, your salesman—we’ll call him Sam—is making a sincere effort to improve or enhance some part of her life. Oh sure, there are those out there who really don’t care about the customer—those are the ones who have created those unpleasant stereotypes that plague all the good salesmen. Those are also the ones you hope you don’t have on your sales team.

When Mrs. X is delighted with both your product and the way she was treated, she will tell Mrs. Y and Mrs. Z, who will undoubtedly request Sam to help them purchase your product because he made the experience so enjoyable for Mrs. X. Now Sam has helped three people, and who knows how far the word of mouth will go? All because he’s motivated by money and power? Maybe, but now we can see that there’s another whole dimension to Sam.

Now, as Sam is helping Mrs. X, Y, and Z, your growth charts begin to rise. As more people buy your product from Sam, your profits grow, and your company is getting stronger. All because of Sam? Hmm. Just because he’s collecting a commission doesn’t mean that it’s not important to him to do what he can to help ensure
your company’s success.

Taking the whole idea a step further, good salesmen help the economy. Sam takes his commissions and spends money on products and services in your community. As businesses thrive, employment rises, and more products and services become available, and so on, and so on. And now that your business is also thriving, you have to hire salespeople again, and the cycle continues.

Okay, maybe you can’t really save the world just because you hire salespeople. But now you can see how one good hire can help a lot of people, including you. It’s all about money, power–and humanity.

I know, sometimes it seems that applicants for salesmen just seem to fall from the sky. It becomes especially noticeable during hard times—people lose their job due to downsizing or whatever, and they think, “I’ll try sales; anyone can do that.”

What makes them think this way? It’s probably their own attitude toward salesmen. All they can see is a person who’s good at schmoozing; they don’t know what’s behind the smile. All they know is that sales-oriented companies need to try a little harder to stay afloat during difficult economic times, so they are likely interested in adding to their sales forces. That’s when they fall from the sky.

The problem is, most of these sky-fallers make the worst  salesmen. They don’t have the qualities that make a person a top performer, an A player. That’s why you need to brush off most of these possibilities and focus aggressively on your sales recruiting. To do that, you need to get the word out that you’re looking, and you need to get it out consistently, and to as broad an audience as possible.

Fortunately, we live in a time where it’s easy to reach masses of people through the internet. Sure, you can do all your sales recruiting locally if you want to, but there may be top salesmen out there who are dying to work in your area, and since most of today’s job applicants begin their search online,  why limit your possibilities?

First off, how’s your website landing page? Does it tell all of the top salesmen out there that your company is the one that they should work for? Do you have a page for applicants to contact you? That should be your first step.

Next, you can go through the different web opportunities for recruitment: the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can give you a lot of exposure that you might not get by going through the “normal” channels. You can position your company on these sites to establish yourself as a viable employer and give yourself the kind of credibility and appeal that will attract exactly the type of salesmen you want to have working for you.

After you’ve established your presence on the social networks, it’s time to go ahead and post your job offerings on one or more of the internet job boards. The best-known are CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com, Indeed.com, and SimplyHired.com; but there are many more out there that you might want to investigate.

Here’s where you want to shine: don’t fall into the old routine of just ticking off the qualifications of the person you’re looking to hire. That’s about as appealing as a limp handshake. Of course you want to mention what you’re looking for, but you also want your prospects to know that you have what they are looking for.

That’s the first thing that the Advanced Hiring System does to help you. It not only takes you through the step-by-step process of designing the perfect ads for your sales recruiting, but it also gives you the opportunity to have your ads reviewed and get suggestions on how to improve them. After all, if you miss the first step, it’s a long way down.