Interviewing

Sales Recruitng: The Intelligent Interview Sequence

It amazes me that so many sales managers think they can wing it in a hiring interview and get a quality salesperson.

Will not happen.

If you’re not prepared with the right attitude and the right questions you will waste your time and waste the applicants’ and only if you get darn lucky will you hire a quality performer.

Just because the applicant passed our profiles and has years of experience in you industry does not mean you hire them.

Yeah they definitely have the heart in the blood of a salesperson if they passed both AHS profiles: CORE Values and CORE Styles, but heart and blood don’t mean much if they won’t take consistent directed action.

Your purpose in the interviews to find out about that.

You can screen them like crazy, spot the faker and sales wannabes and get rid of those people right off the bat, but if your interview is weak you’re still going to end up with a team full of duds.

Our Advanced Hiring System FST Intelligence Interview Sequence is where you find out whether your application has taken their powerful talents and actually achieved something.

Most people squander their natural Talent. This is the norm. Thoreau said “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I say, the sales personality is more likely than others to squander their talents and skills.

Selling is hard work, good salespeople who work hard use their natural talents to put themselves in situations to find business.

Weak salespeople use their natural talents to sell you in the interview and after they are hired they’ll continue to do it –selling you on how hard they’re working.

You’ve seen in before dozens of times it you’ve been a sales manager for a while.

Our Advanced Hiring System FST Intelligence Interview Sequence requires 3 to 4 separate interviews. People say, 3-4 interviews that’s crazy. No it’s not crazy.

You’ve got to outlast them.

Interview 1 is a throw away. They’ve got their guard up. Interview 2 you still don’t get high quality information. But by the third and fourth interview the applicant tells you things they only share with people that they have a relationship with.

Your goal is to discover whether they have stick to it ness, follow through and the ability to overcome adversity.

Can handle setbacks? The good news is you can keep those three to four interviews to a total of 2 hours if you do all four.

Most interviewers waste time with stupid questions like “Tell me about yourself? or “It says on your resume you hit 200% of quota at XYZ Companny.”

Don’t waste your time. Ask questions that are in the Advanced Hiring System FST Intelligence Interview Sequence. Be friendly but don’t sell. You just want the facts.

And that’s how you hire quality salespeople who’ll pick up the phone and do they work.

We’ve put together a short quiz that helps Sales Managers figure out the best way to hire quality salespeople. Click the button and take the short survey. It will take you less than a minute to complete. And based on the average deal size we’ll give you our recommendations on the best way to hire salespeople who do the work. Go ahead and click the button now and see for yourself what we’d recommend you do to hire quality sellers,

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Talent Acquisition

Hiring Quality Salespeople in the New Year

Anyone who feels unaffected by the Covid Crisis this year has missed the point. This was the year for us all to look inside ourselves, figure out what we stand for, and work at discarding the rest.

For Advanced Hiring it’s been a good year. Revenues were solid, but most of all we’ve been able to help you, our valued clients, find super talent.

Clients who’ve jumped into the fray have said they got talent they had never been able to find before.

One of our clients and good friends, Cameron Robinson, described a hire we found as “like dating way out of my league.” She of course was being overly modest, as she and her company is an example of people and a company that cares, but you get the point.

The amount of high-quality sales talent available is amazing. You owe it to yourself to upgrade the quality of your sales team now.

Years ago I was a very active stock trader. I specialized in down markets. But one rule I learned the hard way is the economy is more optimistic than pessimistic. After a downturn things always come back. I expect we’ll see a revitalization of small and medium sized businesses soon.

If you need help getting starting using the System, please reach out. We’re here to help.

Best wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year from all of us here at Advanced Hiring System to all of you!

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Uncategorized

Sales Best Practices During Pandemic

A near complete shutdown of the economy is an unprecedented event. This did not happen during the great depression, not as a result of any world war, nor ever before as a response to a contagious illness. But here we are. Focusing on the important big stuff and developing some best practices will go a long way to helping your sales organization survive, if not thrive, during the pandemic.

The World is Closed
Photographer: Edwin Hooper | Source: Unsplash

A solid sales team is important to any business. We typically devote most of our time to helping companies build great sales teams. If you’re in need of building your team, click HERE to learn more about what we do.

We do, however, talk with some of our larger clients about issues outside the scope of our sales recruitment coaching. I have included some ideas on best practices during a pandemic that we have discussed over the last few weeks.

  • Focus on customer relationships. Retaining your base of regular customers will prove lifesaving for your business. Of course you need to get new business and your competitors who are not focusing on their customer relationships might well be a good target for getting it. Strengthen your customer relationships to make them a tough target for your competitor.
  • Adjust your pitching process. Adapt your offerings to address specific pain points of your prospects. They likely have more time now and perhaps product demonstrations or free trial periods might attract interest. When things return to normal, these prospects might want to keep a valuable product you’ve introduced.
  • Offer flexible terms. Money is tight for most businesses, likely including yours. Minimizing the pain of more drains on cashflow will not only help your prospects, it will also let them know you’re trying to shepherd them through the current environment.

Selling is a challenging profession even in good times. COVID19 is making it an increasingly tricky game. Helping your sales team develop new best practices will go a long way toward recovering the ground lost to the shutdown.

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