Secrets To Uncover The Sales Studs!
Bruce Berman, Sales Hiring Secrets
So let’s be honest. The last few months, for most businesses, have been absolutely awful. Heading into the end of Q1, most of us were looking at solid performance and some decent momentum. Then the economy stopped. Many businesses found themselves in the position of have to let some or even most of their employees go, just to keep the lights on and the rent paid. Enough of the painful remembrance.
As things start to open slowly, you need to be making sure your business is well staffed with the people who are going to turn the whole thing around for you. Sellers. I don’t mean order takers, but really talented, driven, and productive sellers who can work with you to focus on the best opportunities to get the sales pipeline filled up and flowing again. Quickly.
With 30 plus million jobs vanishing in a couple of weeks, there are a lot of great sellers looking for their next opportunity. There is a long term opportunity here for your business. Unfortunately, there are a ton of sales duds looking for work as well and your ability to recognize both the studs and the duds will decrease greatly the chances of making a hiring mistake.
For the moment, let’s focus on the interview element of a well thought out sales hiring strategy. This does not mean that filling your pipeline with applicants and having a way to filter through them doesn’t matter. It is also critical and we’ll talk about that another time.
One of the most common mistakes we see hiring managers do is to allow their “gut” to play too much into the interview and the process as a whole. Let your “gut” tell you when you’re hungry, not which candidate is the best for a job. Allowing your emotions to get involved at the interview stage can bias your impressions of candidates to the ones you like and prevent you from being able to make good comparisons of the strengths and weaknesses of the group you’ve interviewed. This will sometimes also make you waste time trying to sell the candidate you like.
To minimize the chances of emotional, “gut,” interference in your interview process, have a set list of questions you ask of all candidates interviewed. Take notes on how each responds and score each candidate’s interviews. No that’s not a typo, do a series of at least three interviews, all scripted and the same for each candidate. Compare the candidates’ scores when you’re done and make your decision.
Hiring mistakes are always costly. Right now, they could be fatal.
