DEI Principles
Salespeople are not trained like other professionals. Very often, they are not trained at all — or, to be more accurate, they are primarily SELF-trained. It’s what they’ve already trained themselves to do, and how they’ve trained themselves to think about selling, that you want to uncover, because you are not very likely to change their existing modes of thinking.
Some salespeople have trained themselves to be receptive to the idea of selling under a process-driven, target-driven, metrics-driven selling system. They will be curious about how to put such a system to work in their ongoing, lifelong mission to improve their personal bottom line. They will happily share with a sales manager, or anyone else, the number of total dials they made during a given day, or the number of new appointments they set.
Other salespeople, however, have trained themselves to be inherently distrustful of any attempt from the sales manager to pry confidential information from them about what they actually do all day long. Not only do they consider such data private; they believe that even recording it in the first place would threaten their personal style and their ability to achieve.
Which group is “right” is not our concern here. Our goal is to find someone whose activity you can actually manage on a daily basis. What I want to suggest in terms of interview strategy, is that you use the initial discussion with prospective salespeople to determine which selling culture the person ALREADY belongs to: the process-driven, metrics-driven culture, or the get-out-of-my-face-and-let-me-work-my-special-magic culture. You can establish this with startling ease, simply by asking the applicant, for instance, how many face-to-face appointments it typically takes him or her to generate a sale and how they came up with that number.
You’re not necessarily looking for an instant, hard-and-fast numerical answer to that kind of question (although it’s a wonderful sign if you get one), but you definitely are looking for willingness to participate in the discussion with you. Will the applicant interact constructively with you to identify, collaboratively. a realistic appointments-to-sale ratio – a ratio that could be tested against activity in the real world?
Or … will the applicant stare at you as though you’d begun speaking a foreign language?
Any evidence of a willingness to engage with you in a real-world discussion about how one measurable activity under the salesperson’s control connects to an equally measurable outcome is a sign that you’re talking to someone who has already self-trained to operate within a metrics-driven, process-driven sales culture. This is someone to whom you want to keep speaking. Any brisk dismissal of your question (such as, “As many as it takes”), followed by an attempt to change the subject, should be cause for concern. This person doesn’t “get it,” and will see all attempts to coach his or her daily activity – which is, after all what makes deals possible – as unacceptable meddling and “micromanaging.” No matter how charismatic the applicant is, if you want to run a process-driven shop as a sales manager (and I’m hoping you do), you are probably well advised to take a pass on this person. It will be a long and painful uphill climb trying to get this person to accept, and work under, your process.
Just as concerning, perhaps, is the situation where the candidate “lies” in response to your question. I don’t mean dark, malicious lies; I mean the “white lies” that happen when people play games with you, hoping to give you an answer that fits, but that has nothing, really, to do with their actual experience. These answers are slightly less obvious attempts to change the subject – but only slightly less. “I’d say it takes me 6.2 appointments to deliver one sale. Next question, please.” The person is maintaining an “I have all the answers” demeanor, but the information is really not that credible. It’s unlikely that the person is a good match for your team.
No matter what you ask in an interview, or how well you filter or select the salesperson ahead of time, no-one actually knows how they’ll react until they are in the job. Taking on a sales position is, in this sense, a little like opting to major in Greek at college: Neither you nor the professor knows how you’ll react until you’re actually studying it. Your job as the interviewing manager is to make it absolutely clear to the people who DO seem to match up with your numbers-based, process-based approach, that there are terms on which you will part company. Make it clear to them not only “what makes you successful around here,” but also “what gets you fired around here.”
Sales is, at the end of the day, a performance-based role. Salaries have to be paid. The numbers have to add up. The forecasts have to be accurate. So let candidates who “make the cut” know what your reasonable, numbers-based expectations are in two key areas:
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The daily numbers that matter (dials, appointments, active prospects, etc.).
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The timeframe that will apply for hitting specific income targets
Let your new salespeople know that their initial goal should not be to exceed your expectations in these areas, but simply to meet them. That will be sufficient for a good start at your company. Send the clear message to your new hires that reasonable people strive for reasonable things, and unreasonable people don’t.
Hire slow. Fire fast.
DEI Sales System, 6-9 Trinity Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel: +353-1-6177890
