During one of our management training classes, one manager said, Im not comfortable asking these personal questions. The most recent exercise we had done in class was to study why employees fail. When we looked at the chart paper around the room, the irony was that 80 percent of their failures had to do with character issues, yet they werent interviewing in that area.
What skills, experience, intelligence level, behavior traits, etc. will predict success? The answer is unique to you and your organization.
Your Sales Process Should Drive Your Talent Profile
The first step is to define your best-practices sales cycle the template for an ideal sale in your industry segment. Then the next step is to work backwards to the activities, information, and strategies needed for each phase of your sales cycle.
FIGURE 41 Best-practice sales cycle competency model.
Then work into the skills, competencies, behaviors, and experience needed to effectively execute each of these activities for each of the roles on your sales team (see Figure 41). The last step is to create the interview questions that help you to discover these traitsor their absenceand compare them to your profile.
One of the best books in this area is Don Clifton and Marcus Buckinghams book «Now, Discover Your Strengths». This is an excellent approach to identifying the characteristics that predict success.
When we used Dons company in the past, we did a study of our most successful reps hunters in the high-tech software industry and were able to identify the most important traits to look for. In our profile, the must haves were that sales reps be competitive , have big egos that result in drive and ambition, and have the courage to overcome obstacles and initiate action from a blank piece of paper every day. We found that being smart also was critical. Such people make things happen rather than watch and wonder.
Other traits were either like to haves or fell in the category of compensating strengths and weaknesses. However, if we didnt have the four must haves, we knew that the person probably was not going to be successful and that the cost of hiring such a person was going to be high. We have found this to be true, by the way, of most hunters in most organizations. The four must have traits are necessary for competitive evaluation hunters, as we described in Hope Is Not A Strategy.
Hiring Assessments
To find out whether or not people have these traits, a number of companies offer assessments or surveys. Basic intelligence tests and personality style assessments are fundamental and inexpensive for first-tier screening. For complex sales of big-ticket items to committees in competitive situations, however, much more is needed.
One of the best people at defining selection profiles is Ross Rich of Chicago-based Selection Strategies, Inc. He not only knows what to look for, but he also has created a structured two-hour phone interview that listens to what the candidate says and also to what he or she doesnt say. Although these processes are not 100 percent perfect, they do help to raise red flags for your finalists. This phone interview and interpretation are fairly extensive, so most companies use them for finalists only, but they will show you the weak spotswhere you should drill down deeperbefore you make the expensive decision to hire a candidate.
As we mentioned, most people look at personality and performance, but there are potential flaws in both these areas. First of all, its hard to judge past performance. How quotas are set differs from company to company. Thus, when a résumé says, I made quota at this other company, what does that really mean?
One of our principals, Joe Southworth, tells a story of when he was a sales manager at a large software
company:
There was a candidate who I really wanted to hire. He looked great on paperhe had blown away his quota the previous year. I went into the VP of sales office, excited about this new candidate, and told him about how he had exceeded his quota last year.Has he made quota every year for the last three years? the VP asked me.
Well, hes been selling for 10 years, I said.
But does that mean he has 10 years of experience or one year of experience 10 times? he asked. Were looking for consistency and improvement. What you really want to know is, is he getting better every year or is he just doing the same thing year in, year out.
1. How did you compare to your peers?
2. Which percentile was your sales performance in each year?
You also should get specifics on how they overcame challenges. Take the groomed references they give you and ask for referrals to other, unsolicited references and teammates who may have worked with the candidate on deals. Their perspective on the reps contribution and competency is usually very enlightening. Often their silence or faint praise speaks volumes.
Another important question to ask is what percentage of the reps at your past employer made quota every year? Many salespeople made their quota from 1995 to 2000 because they were reacting to demand in a hot market. If you didnt make quota, you were considered a failure. In other companies, only 50 percent of the salespeople made it every year. Having this metric gives you some sort of a benchmark to compare quotas.