Hiring Sales People 101
Hiring sales people is a tricky business. Sales is a valuable skill for two very obvious reasons— firstly, no business can survive without sales and without the revenue that comes with it and secondly, in this jaded and overstimulated marketplace, it can be harder than ever to sell.
Because it’s a skill that is highly in demand, it is frequently overstated on CV’s. Many people consider it to be like Excel skills (I’ll google it later and figure it out). Unfortunately, it’s not really something you can wing and some of the best sales people honed those skills over years of trial and error. But how do you then do you separate the wheat from the chaff— avoiding those heavy recruitment costs and the opportunity costs of ramping up someone who will ultimately not help you meet your business objectives?
When you are interviewing, there are a few tools you can use in order to increase the precision of your sales hires that i’ll outline for you below. They are tried and tested methods that have yielded high-performing sales teams in Kenya.
Wheat From the Chaff
This is an often overlooked aspect of a sales person’s background. Most hiring managers will only look for any sales positions held, but rarely register how long they were at those roles and whether any moves were lateral or increasing in responsibility over time. Unfortunately, there is a lot of turnover in sales teams where sales executives will not perform in one company and be let go for not meeting targets only to be hired in a similar position at another company… and on and on and on. High-performing sales team members will be given additional territory, responsibility of higher value verticals, or even management responsibilities for a team. This is a good indicator of whether they met or likely exceeded sales goals.
Sell Me This Pencil
Ok, please don’t do the “sell me this pencil” test. It’s great you are a “Wolf of Wall Street” fan, but a more relevant and less dated version of this interview question would be to ask them to pitch their company’s product. I’ll give them a few soft ball questions that they are likely to expect (“tell me a little about yourself”) then shift over to the pitching question. You want to gauge the following:
- Pitching— do they understand their company’s value proposition? do they seem genuinely excited/ enthusiastic or is it robotic?
- Adaptability— did they get flustered? if so, did they bounce back rather quickly?
- Tailored approach— did they engage you? did they adapt the pitch to the audience (you, the interviewer)
Eye of the Tiger
The most important thing you’re looking for, above all is, is someone who is hungry. As even the most seasoned sales person will know, sales is hard. Some days are thankless, grudging, Sisyphean pursuit that will leave you drained and wondering why you ever decided to pick such a masochistic career. The most extroverted, most methodical, most organized professionals will, on occasion, feel this way. The holy grail is to be able to come back the next morning with renewed energy, to not take “no” for an answer and to refuse to give excuses. This is our ideal sales team member.
“Why did you choose to get into sales?” Is it because they can’t stand to not win or is it because they heard from their cousin’s university flatmate that sales people make good money? You want to understand from anyone you hire why they want to sell because on the worst days, that’s the thing they’ll need to tell themselves, no excuses.
