DIY Tip #1: Sales Hiring Tip

• Gaurav Rastogi
• 28 Aug. 2017

Last month, I spoke with a CEO who was struggling with his sales team. He had such a low opinion of their ability to have a client conversation that he had bought an iPad pre-loaded with their demos, and had told the sales teams to just shut up and play the iPad video to the clients. Any prizes for guessing if the company was making any sales?

Sales hiring is one of the most important choices you'll be making for your team.

If your sales team cannot talk intelligently with a client, how will they build trust, elicit information about client needs, and position your product?

They can't. You'll be looking for an iPad video maker yourself. Through my career I have interviewed more than three hundred salespeople, using a variety of techniques. In this note I will describe the technique that's a must for any sales hire, irrespective of any other techniques your HR team might insist on. Don’t hire without this, ever.

Resumes are not indicative of a great sales guy. Doing a "tell me about yourself" doesn't work much as a screening mechanism, because even a half-assed sales will have their personal script worked out. These are things your recruitment screener can look for and eliminate the improbables early on.

Aliquam mollis, lorem ut elementum sagittis, ligula nulla ornare lorem, in pulvinar nulla turpis ac massa. Fusce imperdiet ullamcorper lacus non condimentum. Etiam ante magna, posuere sit amet quam id, ultricies cursus nisl. Vivamus maximus lorem in augue vulputate accumsan vel sed erat. Nullam quis sapien fermentum, sagittis est vel, commodo lectus.

In a client sitting, the sales person isn’t showing off their resume, or blah-ing about themselves and their accomplishments. These are useless in a sales situation. So why would you interview for excellence in skills they won’t need to be successful? What skills are you looking for in a sales person? You’re looking for someone who’s intelligent, can ask penetrating questions, listen carefully, compose their thoughts, and lead you patiently through their presentation and bring you over to their point of view. At the minimum, they will be expected to make a presentation to clients.That’s the minimum you should look for. Here’s what I have found very useful. I ask the sales person to make a presentation to me on “a subject of their choosing”. The presentation needs to be for thirty minutes, including 15 minutes for Q&A. It works like a charm.

Some candidates balk at these fuzzy directions. Why should they have to pick a subject. Why can’t I (the interviewer) assign them a topic? These candidates I reject right away. If they can’t handle the discomfort of picking their own topic (and the risk that comes with picking a bad topic), then they should not be in sales.

Some candidates pick a boring topic, and then go on to make a sad, ugly, and uncoordinated presentation. These are easy to eliminate too, because if they can’t put their thoughts together to save their lives, then perhaps they should not be in sales.

The ones that go through this process are those that can be passionate and can inspire passion in me, as their listener, in their subject. If they can convey this energy in their body language, their words, their slide-ware...then you know you can get them to be passionate about your product as well.

Alas! Most candidates fail. They are used to outsourcing their presentation making to other people. You don’t need them. Some use sad looking templates and make just a boring list of bullets. Come on!

Sales is an energy game.

If your new hire can’t get enough energy on a topic of their own choosing, they will need a coffee-drip to work on your product. Toss this one out and save yourself an iPad.