How to Conduct an Interview – Two Sales Interview Goals You Are Looking to Achieve

If you are reading this after having selected applicants by reading resumes and want to know how to interview them — sorry, you need to go back to square one. Using resumes as a strategy for picking sales applicants in the words of Richard Milhous Nixon is “as useful as a pot of warm spit.”

Resumes are “BS” squared — they are too inaccurate to use as a selection tool. Look here for a better strategy for selecting applicants to interview.

Warning aside, once you have at least three applicants who have passed a scientifically validated profile, interviewing them right is the key to making great hires.

The purpose of the interview is two-fold:

1. You are looking to determine if you applicant has applied their natural talents. What have they accomplished in life? Where have they shown follow-through?. What adversities have they successfully overcome? Have they demonstrated an entrepreneurial style?

You’ve determined from the profile they have a natural talent toward sales.. Yet, sadly, most people never do anything with their natural talents. (Or maybe among “sales types” they sell themselves on not doing the work.)

2. You want to find out if the applicant will fit in your “corporate culture.” Each of our companies has a “culture” based on what we produce, the type of people who work in our company and the kind of people who buy our product. Determining whether the applicant will fit is key.

You want this decision to be a good permanent solution, not some quick fix — get more sales in here thing. Good salespeople become more valuable to you over time. Ask yourself whether they belong in your type of organization.

To ascertain what sales hiring method is right for you so you don’t waste time and money on profiling tools that don’t work, Take our FREE Survey here to get your sales hiring scorecard.

Quick. Which are the highest paying jobs?

According to Wiki, right behind Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers and Airline Pilots, Sales and Marketing are the highest paid jobs.

In our society (even if governments of every stripe have screwed things up royally in the economy), people still want to make more money. Overall, as a society, we value it. We ooh and aah at the Bill Gates and Warren Buffets because they’ve made a lot of it.

Those who weren’t willing to sit for an extra four to eight years in school to become Doctors, Dentists or Lawyers, can still make tons of dough in sales.

Sales has a proven track record to making serious money!

Why Money in Sales Hiring Is the Problem

The desire to make a lot of money is important for success in sales, but it’s not enough of  a qualifier. Just because your applicant wants to make a lot of money is not enough.

Applicants for jobs as Doctors need certain diplomas as a condition to being hired. We’ve shown our clients that there are also certain  “diplomas” you must require of your sales applicants.

These “diplomas” for successful salespeople have to do with your applicants’ personality styles. Make that, too, a requirement for joining your sales team and watch your sale hiring successes rocket!

I thank you for the time and patience in getting us on board!  Process worked beautifully and my new hire  is most certainly a keeper.  I can see how the time and effort paid off already!

Nationwide Evaluations

My youngest is now 16, so its been a long time since I’ve read children’s stories to anyone.

One of my four kid’s favorite stories was about the wise man who was approached by the Roman Emperor with a deal. Teach the Emperor all of wisdom while he stood on one leg and he would be allowed to live, if not “off with his head.” The wise man quickly said, “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is simply commentary.”

In successful sales hiring there are also simple “truths.” You can learn them while standing on one leg.

The simple truth is that the more applicants you really review in the initial stages of the search, the more likely you’ll pick a good one. You must glean your list of applicants down to the best three applicants and interview each of them intensively.

Most sales hirers make a serious strategic error in the very beginning when applicants start applying.

We get overwhelmed with resumes — especially in today’s environment where it is so easy to submit a resume. So we quickly flip through resumes, looking for previous sales experience or, even better, previous sales experience in our industry.  Huge mistake.

A much better way is to go through your applicants looking for indications of personal values and personality characteristics sales winners exhibit.

Your best applicants exhibit these personality characteristics:

• highly practical values,
• stick-to-it-iveness,
• follow through,
• ability to overcome adversity and
• ability to manage their internal state.

To find these qualities more accurately and quickly, use technology tools founded in validated personality profiles. These tools  have been refined to a high degree of accuracy today and have an amazingly high ROI in the 2000% range and more!