When looking to fill sales positions it will take more than looking through sparkling resumes or even strong recommendations from your existing staff. Once all of the applications and resumes have been sorted, with some filed for later consideration, it’s time for the face-to-face interview process. Some company owners and hiring managers see this process as a necessary evil, almost complaining about the time it takes, but it should be an exciting time when you are hiring salespeople.

To begin with, you are going to have more than one person to interview for the position. If one is all you have you will have nothing to compare them to and even with the right sales personality will likely end up with the wrong person in the position. There should be a minimum of three candidates interviewed for each open position.

One interview is not going to be enough for you, even knowing how to conduct an interview to get an honest picture of the candidate. They have probably done their homework they know what the company does and have probably put together some stock answers in an attempt to impress you with their knowledge. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t provide a complete picture. Like selling in the field some clients will throw them a curve ball during a sales call and how they can handle the pitch will determine if they strike out or hit a home run.

You will want to put them in the hot seat at least three more time. You should never hire someone on less than three interviews and four will give you a better picture of the job candidate. It is also helpful to have different people that know how to conduct an interview. You are going to ask the same questions in the same order and if you do it all yourself they may question if you were paying attention during the previous interview. Having different people conduct the interviews also keeps emotions out of the process and then comparing the answers will give you the best indication of whether they are suited for the position or not.

Always take notes about the answers because you won’t remember what they said or who said it. You can also grade their answers A to F for example, or on a number scale and at the end of all interviews grade each of the candidates to determine which one scored the highest and is the most qualified for the sales position you are trying to fill.

Now that the economy finally seems to be improving, many companies are looking to improve sales again by hiring the right people to build their sales teams.  After a long, dry spell, they’re picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, and asking themselves,  “Where will I find the greatest salespeople?”

Following a recession, the sales climate becomes an entirely different animal. Families don’t have the net worth that they enjoyed in better days, so they are more careful about making buying decisions.  Evidence of this new cautious attitude can be seen in the improved credit scores—consumers want to be assured of getting value before they pull out the plastic, the checkbook, or the cash.

Building sales in this climate is a challenge, and you want to be just as cautious in your sales hiring as the consumers are in committing to a purchase. You can’t depend on your product to speak for itself, because too many potential customers just aren’t listening. When you hire salespeople, you want to be sure they will be committed to relating to customers  and communicating a passion for your product that will be contagious. But where do you begin to find the candidate that fits the ideal salesperson profile?

Some companies turn to recruiters to find the perfect candidate. The problem with that is that many recruiters may lack integrity, coaching candidates about what to say and what to hide during an interview. Of course, not all recruiters are underhanded, but you won’t usually recognize the bad ones  until you’ve made a bad hire based on their recommendations. Instead of getting the better sales that you were counting on, you have a new problem to deal with.

No, hiring salespeople involves a process—just like selling does. You expect your salesmen to follow every step of the selling process, so why would you want to skip any important steps when you hire sales people for your own company? Starting with your targeted advertising to attract the candidates most likely to fit your criteria, you move on to the DiSC assessment or some type of sales personality test, and eventually work up to the interview process. Satisfied customers of the Advanced Hiring System have reported that these steps have  delivered their highest level of hiring success.

 It does take some time to go through all the steps, but the process enables you to weed out the  prospective bad apples.  Depending on your sales cycle, it could take as much as a year of paying a salary, training expenses, and the other incidental costs of employee management before you realize that  your new salesmen can’t cut the muster. To avoid risking a year’s worth of lackluster performance and lost opportunities, there shouldn’t be any margin for error in your hiring process.

You can’t afford it.

When you’re a sales manager, you generally wear a lot of different hats, but you wish you could leave your sales hiring hat it the closet. You have to develop and implement marketing strategies, prepare action plans, oversee sales tactics, keep an eye on expenses, monitor goals and profitability, and provide feedback to your salesmen. And that’s just the short list!

Your job keeps you running hither and yon, doing this and that, with barely enough time to catch your breath. That’s why many sales managers consider sales hiring to be an intrusion on their routine. And, if the new sales hire doesn’t work out for some reason, you end up with more work than if you had never made the hire in the first place.

Granted, using the Advanced Hiring System to hire sales people takes some time if you do it right, but consider this: the success rate of old-fashioned methods of sales hiring is only 1 successful hire out of 4. Isn’t it worth it to invest a little more time in a process that will bring you 3 successful hires out of 4? When you have that kind of success rate you can concentrate on getting your job done, instead of running around putting out the fires started by a bad hire.

Of course, no hiring system is perfect; if it were, the success rate for sales hiring would be 4 out of 4! When you make the effort to follow the path laid out by AHS and do the right kind of targeted recruiting, use a sales personality test to screen the applicants for candidates that fit the salesperson profile, and conduct a scripted interview using your “engineer persona,” you will be rewarded with salesmen who are energetic, focused, and creative. Moreover, they will be quick thinkers who can solve problems for themselves, instead of running to the sales manager. . . you . . . at   every little bump in the road.

The truth is, a bad hire costs more than your time and effort. If someone is not pulling his weight, it seems that the salary, training expenses, and benefits package he receives are just money tossed out the window. That amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. Factor in lost customers and sales opportunities, and the figure can soar upward to the triple digits. If you decide to un-hire a bad hire, there is the problem of an increase in your company’s unemployment rate to make this misstep even more expensive. PLUS, you have to begin the sales hiring process all over again. There’s just no way that anyone can win with a bad hire.