Five Steps to Successfully Hire Salespeople August 01, 2008
By Theresa Gale and Wally Olson
Hiring salespeople is more of an art than a science, and too often business owners want to know the quick-and-easy formula for hiring the right salesperson. But truth be told, you'll have to devote some time upfront to developing an effective hiring strategy for your particular business to be successful. Here are some guidelines:
1. Have a clearly defined position description. Most descriptions are too vague and lack specific measurable outcomes. Your position description should include success criteria—specific behaviors or results expected for the position. All employees, especially salespeople, need to know how their performance will be measured and what constitutes "success" in the job.
2. Develop behavior-based interview questions. These inquiries gather information about the candidate using his/her past performance as an indicator of their future success. Examples include: "Describe for me a typical day at your last company," or "Describe the sales process you used in your last position." Remember: During an interview a candidate should be doing 80% of the talking. It is his job to "sell" you on why he should be hired, not yours to convince him why working for your company is in his best interest.
3. Be clear as to what performance expectations you have of the successful candidate, and be honest as to what the challenges might be. Ask candidates how they would overcome those challenges if they were in the position. Listen closely for their responses and probe deeper to uncover what really drives them to be successful. Relate their responses back to past positions and ask them to give you examples of what they did then and what results they got. Listen for excuses—blaming the company, their manager, or, even worse, the economy.
4. Assess sales skills before you hire. Hiring and screening software applications are amazing tools. They tell you if your candidate "can" sell, "will" sell and/or is "trainable." They also can denote whether you should hire a particular candidate, based on a profile matching system you establish ahead of time about your sales environment. With this information, you know exactly what you are getting and what training you need to do from day one.
5. Establish a 90-day training plan for new sales hires and commit to investing time upfront to train and observe the new hire in action. Expect desired behaviors from the start and set expectations for what should be accomplished by the first 30, 60 and 90 days.
Theresa Gale is co-owner of Transform, Inc. and co-author of Wake Up and Sell. Wally Olson is a Sales Development Expert who works with Transform, Inc.'s clients to help them build and grow sales and leadership teams.
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