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How to Hire Better Sales People
It Only Takes Two Questions If You Know What You're Looking For

By Lou Adler, August 23, 2006

Let's start this article with two BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals). The first one - reduce turnover of all newly hired sales people by 50%. The second one - reduce by half the time for all newly hired sales reps to achieve quota. Imagine the impact that would have on your company's performance. If you do these three things before you hire another sales person, these BHAGs are in the bag:

1. Make sure everyone who is interviewing the candidate knows what it takes to be a successful salesperson at your company.


2. All interviewers must learn and ask my two favorite interview questions. In this article, I'll present one of them and give you a link to the other one.


3. Disenfranchise the voting procedures at your company.

First, some background is in order. In the past few years alone we've conducted in-depth studies of the sales processes at two international financial institutions, a major retailer, one of the largest auto dealership consortiums in the world, a large outbound call center, a Fortune 100 insurance company, and an international software supplier. Most had implemented behavioral interviewing in some form and all were in the process of trying to figure out why it wasn't helping them hire better sales people (Note: email me if you'd like to find out more on these studies or talk to the people involved). In every situation, the root-cause problems were not attributed to bad interviewing skills, although just about every manager was weak at this, so this seemed the obvious solution. However, digging a little deeper revealed the real problems.

The first one was pretty obvious: most managers didn't understand the real sales process at their companies, although they all thought they did. The second was far less obvious, but far more onerous: each company was using a flawed interviewing and assessment process. This consisted of a quick decision made in a few minutes or less, based largely on presentation skills ("sales people must make good first impressions") and equivalent industry experience. This was followed up with a series of questions that were clearly asked to gather information to confirm the manager's initial biased decision. Finally, everyone provided a yes/no vote before sharing information or debating, with one no vote frequently eliminating strong candidates who didn't have exactly the correct experience. Surprisingly, many managers trained in behavioral interviewing only used these techniques when they wanted to prove a candidate was bad, but used more emotional and intuitive approaches when describing candidates they liked.

Now the solution.

Step One: Map out your company's sales process and determine the drivers for success.

Whether you're selling widgets from a catalogue or a piece of high-tech customized equipment, every sales process has a number of basic steps. These typically consist of the following:

• Lead development


• Customer contact


• Product presentation and/or development


• Proposal preparation and pricing


• Negotiation and closing


• Follow-up and customer support

Typically it only takes an hour or so to prepare the basic sales process map, but what takes place after you've validated the process determines the key to hiring better sales people. The problem with the basic map is that it changes based on the maturity of the territory, the sales manager, the quality of the marketing support, the quality of the product and support infrastructure and the training provided, to name the most obvious. To get a quick handle on these variables ask your best sales managers the following questions:

1. What do the best sales reps do differently than average sales reps?


2. What's the hardest aspect of the job?


3. Why do most sales reps fall short of expectations?

You also might want to ask your weakest sales managers these same questions. The answers will surprise you.

For the call center, the best reps weren't the friendliest, or those with the best phone presence, or even those who had the best product knowledge. Instead, the best call center reps were the ones that wouldn't let the customer hang up when they made their first pitch. At the software supplier, it was intense product knowledge combined with the ability to hunt for C-level technical buyers in undeveloped territories. Sales people at the sporting goods retailer were required to engage with customers to determine their skill levels, then offer a package of appropriate products. Surprisingly, most of the companies in our studies had competency models, but none were specific enough to uncover the true success drivers.

Based on our studies, it is apparent that every sales position has two to three deal breakers like these that determine success or failure. Contact us if you'd like us to show you how to prepare a Performance Profile for one of your sales positions.

Step Two: Use two basic questions to match the sales rep candidate to the critical success factors.

Once you have the basic sales process mapped out with the critical success drivers defined, it only takes two questions to determine if the candidate is both competent and motivated to do the work. The first one involves asking the candidate to describe his or her greatest sales success. The follow-up is the critical part of this question. You need to find out how the lead was developed, how the customer was contacted, who the customer was, how needs were understood, how the product was learned and how it was presented, how long it took to close, what support the person had in presenting and closing the deal, the role the person's manager played, how the negotiations took place, what the big challenges and objections were and how these were handled, and finally, find out what recognition the person received for doing such a great job. Great sales people always get recognition, so this is important confirmation. Now do this same thing again for a number of different sales experiences. Pretty soon a pattern and trend will emerge. Specifically look at the situations where the person excelled or went the extra mile. Then compare these to the success drivers identified earlier. Now hire only those sales reps that show great tenacity, or strong hints of it, in the areas where you must have great tenacity.

Here's an article that describes the second question. This question involves getting into a give-and-take dialogue about a realistic job-related problem.

To put any doubting minds at ease, SHRM has validated this as an effective alternative behavioral interviewing methodology, as has the third largest labor law firm in the U.S, the PhD program at UCLA and Charles Handler, too. More importantly, each of the companies noted above have implemented it successfully.

Step Three: Change the voting procedure - disenfranchise your managers.

Now the bad news. Even if you do all of the above, you still won't get the results you want. The problem is human nature. The decide-collect-vote procedure described earlier can't be trained out of managers, but it can be systematized out. Here's how: don't give managers a yes/no vote. Instead, conduct a formal, collective debriefing session for each candidate where the interviewing team shares information before voting. Then use the detailed information collected using the two-questions described above to rank the candidates on at least these factors:

1. Ability to successfully meet the critical success drivers determined in step one.


2. Demonstrated tenacity in meeting comparable performance objectives required for success.


3. The ability to learn and present the product line.


4. The ability to thrive in the culture, sales situation and with the available infrastructure support that exists at your company (Some people need more support, some less).


5. Demonstrated success working with a manager like the person will work for at your company (Some need more hands-on support, some don't want any).


6. The ability to handle comparable job-related problems.

We actually use a few more factors, but you get the picture. (Here is an article for more on this.) The real point to be made here is to implement a formal debriefing process forcing the interviewers to share information before voting. This results in a more accurate, balanced and unbiased assessment by evaluating candidates across a broad range of skills and competencies using comparable performance as the benchmark.

There are probably other ways to reduce new sales rep turnover by 50% and get newly hired sales reps achieving quota in half the time, but it's unlikely there are any easier than this three-step process. Just consider the potential ROI from these changes. This alone should be enough to get any VP of Sales to justify a small pilot study involving a few sales managers hiring 10-15 sales reps. Within 90 days you'll know if this program is worth rolling out throughout the company. Better still - this is a great way for HR/Recruiting to prove they can make a bottom-line difference. Now imagine the difference that would make.