Hiring and Retaining Top Talent Blog

Hiring sales people seems to be one of the most difficult positions companies seem to face. They are used to selling, they always have the answer, some are so smooth and the best are so friendly. So how do you separate the the best sales person from the ones that are embellishing and just good actors.

You can do this with just one question. No different from any interview, you have to challenge and probe deep enough with clarifying questions. Accepting generalities is the biggest problem. Interviewers accept 18 months, instead of June 2006 thru December 2007, they accept last year instead of asking for dates, they accept percentages instead of asking how did you arrive at the percent.

That is how you have to interview sales people. Has a sales resume ever been written that doesn’t have “increase sales by X%.” Usually some big number. Often the total amount the company’s sales actually grew. Sales people just hear that and think “while I’m in sales so that is what I did.” So how do you pin that down. All you have to do is ask “What two numbers did you divide to get that percent.” Most don’t know. They just made it up.

So don’t accept vague numbers, probe how they actually calculated those numbers.

If you hire sales people give us your thoughts on this. What are some of the stories sales people tell you? We want to hear from you.

For more on interviewing go to our site at www.impacthiringsolutions.com.

2008 Copyright All Rights Reserved.

:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!