From Theory to Practice: Applying Sales Characteristics in Hiring

Implementing a Strategic Approach to Matching Candidates with Your Key Characteristics

Last time, we discussed the key sales characteristics we look for when hiring a sales rep.

We did this by identifying the characteristics we observed in our top producers that we deemed critical to their success, and therefore crucial for anyone we might hire.

Then, we divided them into teachable and non-teachable qualities.

Remember, the qualities or characteristics critical to one company or sales team MIGHT be different from another's. It's essential to identify the qualities that indicate success for YOUR team and YOUR company.

To recap here's what we came up with:

Things we can't teach:

- Optimism

- Need for achievement / personal motivation

- Curiosity / Listening

- Self-awareness / coachability

- Initiative / Resourcefulness

Things we can teach:

- Organization / Prioritization

- Communication skills

- Being a team player

- Developing initial relationships

For each quality, we more clearly articulated what it specifically means to us in a few descriptive statements.

Then, we outlined questions that might give us more insight into whether a candidate might possess that characteristic or not.

Here's how that turned out (we are interchangeably using quality and characteristic):

Non-Teachable

Quality: Optimism

Does not take defeat / rejection personally, ability to move forward in the midst of rejection, can see the one win among the many defeats.

1. Describe a sale (or time) where persistence paid off.

2. Tell me about your cold calling experience.

3. What kinds of sales are easiest for you? Hardest? (for more experienced salespeople)

4. Tell me about a time when you persisted when others gave up.

5. How do you get through a day full of rejections?

Quality: Need for achievement / personal motivation

Ambitious, disciplined, willing to do things others aren't to achieve their goals.

1. What's the biggest goal you've set for yourself that you have achieved? Do you plan on setting a bigger goal? What was your motivation to achieve it?

2. What do you feel driven to prove?

3. How would your manager rank you on your team in competitiveness? Why do you think that is?

Quality: Curious / listening

Asks deep questions, tunes into people's needs, patient, empathetic, lets others speak.

1. Give me a recent example of using active listening with a prospect. Describe the flow of the conversation.

2. Tell me about a time when you discovered a prospect might not be a good fit for your services. What questions did you ask to discover that?

Quality: Self-awareness / coachability

Open to and seeks out feedback on how to improve. Recognizes one's strengths and areas for improvement. Does not get defensive when given feedback. Implements feedback immediately.

1. Tell me about a time when you received constructive feedback from a manager or leader. What did you do with the information?

2. How much feedback do you like and in what form?

3. What would your bosses or peers say your shortcomings are? What are you doing to address them?

4. Tell me about a time when you missed a sales goal. What was the root cause in your opinion?

5. Tell me about a time when a customer/prospect relationship turned sour. How did you handle it?

What are some of the things you were asked to work on in your last performance review? What have you done with that information since?

Quality: Initiative / resourcefulness

Finds ways around obstacles to achieve success. Creates positive action, doesn't wait for others to initiate. Seeks out opportunities. Action-oriented.

1. What sort of obstacles have you faced in your current job, and how did you overcome them?

2. Give some recent examples where you've had to figure things out on your own.

3. Tell me about a time when you felt you were extremely resourceful to get a deal done or project complete.

4. Tell me about a time when you took action without explicit permission.

5. Give an example of a situation where you had to work with minimal supervision. What was the result?

Teachable

Quality: Organization / Prioritization

Plans, focuses on key priorities, manages personal time well, disciplined with time, attention to detail.

1. How do you organize your workday? Your prospecting time?

2. Specifically, how do you juggle the multiple opportunities in your pipeline? (specifics not generalities)

3. Tell me about a time when you had to juggle multiple priorities at once. How did you approach it? What worked? What didn't? What was the result?

Quality: Communication Skills

Communicates clearly in person, over the phone and in writing. Quick on your feet. Keeps people informed.

1. Tell me about feedback you get from your previous managers about your communication skills? Both positive and negative.

2. Give me an example of a time with a prospect you felt your communication skills were on point. How did you know?

Quality: Being a team player

Approachable, establishes collaborative relationships with peers, reaches out to teammates, and shares information.

1. If I interviewed your past work peers, how would they describe you as a teammate?

2. What's the highest functioning team you've been a part of? What made it successful?

3. Describe the most difficult person you've had to work with.

4. What has been your role on teams you've been a part of? (not position titles, what role did you play to help the team move forward, what intangible besides a specific predefined role)

Quality: Developing initial relationships

Creates favorable first impressions, puts people at ease, believes it's better to be respected than liked with regards to customers/prospects.

1. Tell me about some of your more creative tactics to engage in conversation with a prospect?

2. Give me an example of when you created a relationship with a prospect as a trusted advisor (not a friend)?

3. Tell me about a recent conversation with a qualified prospect? How did you leave the call?

4. What have you done in the last 30 days to create relationships with new prospects?

We are now assigning people on the team in the interview process specific characteristics to ask questions around and give feedback on the candidate.

I’ve learned the hard way that the best practice is to hire slowly and fire fast. This process is helping us slow down the hiring process to make sure we are matching the right candidates with the right qualities that will put them in the best position to be successful.

Next time, we’ll look at the scorecard we created for our candidates so that we can objectively compare candidates against what qualities we believe are the most important.

Reach out if you have questions!

-Joe