In Part 1 and Part 2, we discussed why hiring salespeople is so difficult, and what to look for when reviewing a sales resume.  Here, I’ll share with you the “rubber meeting the road” part of the process - the interview.

Sales interviews are a challenge to run if you’re not sure what to ask.  That’s why I recommend coming armed with a pre-defined interview script that lays out everything that you’ll want to ask prior to sitting down with your candidate.  It’ll keep you on track, ensure you don’t skip critical items, and enable you to relax and focus on listening to what’s being said.

[author's note / shameless plug] : my company, Ionix, has compiled an In-Person Interview Guide that’s available for purchase on our online store.  If you’ve ever made a bad hiring decision, you know that even one week’s salary for a bad hire can cost you thousands of dollars.  At $399 this guide will pay for itself the first time you use it.]

So what do you need to focus on to run a great in-person sales interview?

Focus on the candidate’s job environment. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed that great salespeople are a product of their environment as much as they are a product of great selling skills.  Great sales skills + bad environment = a big performance handicap.  If you’re interviewing a salesperson who is making their numbers but is doing so despite a sub-par work environment, you’re looking at a truly great candidate.  On the other hand, if your company has weak sales and marketing support and very little process, then the candidate who has succeeded in a company with a solid support system will struggle mightily when working for you.

That’s why I teach managers to focus on the “how” more than the “what” when it comes to interviewing candidates.  How did they get their job done?  What were the obstacles that needed to be overcome?  How much support did they get?  The answers to these questions will give you the context needed to make a smart hiring choice.

Compare the candidate to their peers. Your candidate has just told you that they were the top salesperson at their company.  Ok, fantastic.  “How many salespeople were on your team?”  Two?  Not as strong a statement.  300?  Now that’s impressive.

Make sure you’re getting the context of this candidate’s results in conjunction with the data.  Being the top salesperson on a two-person team, while important, is not very predictive of future performance.  As interviewers, we’re trying to build a narrative about each candidate so that we can determine whether or not their story can fit into ours.  Have you ever tried hiring a salesperson from IBM to work for your start-up?  Every tried slotting a salesperson who’s never worked within a big company structure to fit in at a company like Oracle?  While both cases may work out, you’re taking huge risks, in my opinion, barring outstanding sales management and coaching.

It’s not enough to know the data.  You have to get the context, because it’s the context of a candidates success that matters.

Dig into their sales activity. Behind any salesperson’s performance history is a matrix of sales activity.  The number of calls made each day.  The number of appointments set and kept each week.  The number of proposals sent out the door each month.  Any revenue generated is a product of these activities.  It all starts with a call, and the more calls a salesperson makes, the more sales they have.  If your company has no marketing support, no inside sales team, and no appointment-setting support, then hiring a salesperson who hasn’t made cold calls in the last three years will result in your wasting a ton of money and time on someone who never should have been hired.

Great salespeople know their numbers and sales ratios, and every industry is different.  Let’s take the recruiting industry, as an example.  I know that an executive recruiter is going to have to make at least ten calls to get two or three prospective candidates on the phone, and those two or three contacts will typically yield one potential lead.  10:1.  If I want my recruiter to get 50 potential candidates, they need to make a minimum of 500 calls.

The implication is that my research team needs to produce 500 names for my recruiter to call.  Let’s refer back to my comments on environment and support.  If I don’t have the research support to deliver 500 names, then my A-List executive recruiter is going to spend all of their time searching for people to call instead of actually making calls.  They’ll miss their performance target because they’re wasting time chasing down names.  Does that make them a bad salesperson?  Nope, it just makes me a bad manager.

That’s why you have to dig into your sales candidate’s activity to find out if their process for achieving success is anywhere near the process that you currently support.  If not, you may want to move on to another candidate.  The other option which sometimes works is to be brutally honest with your candidate and tell them where you company needs to improve.  Tell them you can’t offer them all the support that they’re currently getting, but, with their guidance, they can have a huge impact on the future of the firm.

In the fourth and final installment of this series on hiring salespeople, we’ll discuss making offers, verifying compensation, and ensure that your new hire’s firs 90 days set them up for success.

To continue with the fourth and final article in our series on hiring salespeople, click here.

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