• How would you respond to the question: What’s your sales type?
• Why you should never "swing at the first pitch."
• The 5 Steps to Find and Hire The Best Sales Candidates
• BONUS: 2 Tips to Conduct Effective Reference Checks.

How would you respond to the question: What’s your sales type?

I recently read that thecost of a bad sales hire is 7 times (7x) the annual salary of that position.You would think that such a stiff penalty would provide sufficient incentivefor hiring managers to do a much better job of specifying their requirements foran open sales slot, as well as identifying and hiring the right candidates. Andyet, sales managers and CEOs repeat the same sales hiring mistakes time andtime again.

The problem usuallyresides with the hiring manager, whether that is a CEO, owner, or salesmanager. While the job description for a sales opening might say all the rightthings about the skills, experience, and personal qualities the candidate needsto have, the CEO and sales manager usually have the list boiled down to a fewstereotypical qualities:

1. Hunter
2. Closer
3. Outgoing
4. Aggressive

In the January/February2013 issue of the Harvard Business Review,Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, was quoted as follows: "Wedon't make money when we sell things; we make money when we help people makepurchase decisions."

To me, that statementsimply and accurately says what selling is. And from that description I canidentify 4 personal characteristics of a salesperson that help their prospectsmake good purchase decisions:

1. Curiosity
2. Empathy
3. Problem-solving skills
4. Responsiveness

Now let's review that list of characteristics that hiring managers typically have in mind while they are looking to hire a salesperson: Hunter, Closer, Outgoing, Aggressive. Which of those qualities helps customers make purchase decisions? Any of them? Of course not.

Never Swing At The First Pitch

Using a Little Patience at the Plate Will Improve Your Sales Hiring

Think back to your daysin Little League baseball or softball. You probably got this nugget of advicefrom the baseball dads who coached your team: Never swing at the first pitch.The idea was that you could learn something about the tendencies and capabilitiesof the pitcher if you just watched the first pitch cross the plate.

On radio and TV baseballbroadcasts the color commentary guy sometimes talks about the batter in aslightly condescending manner, describing him as “a first-pitch hitter.” Theimplication is that the batter should be patient and  “work the count” until he sees a pitch thathe likes. We could argue ad nauseam about whether not swinging on a 0-0 countis a good strategy or just recycled baseball folklore. But for better or worse,it has become a de facto standard of play for batters in baseball.

I recommend that “neverswing at the first pitch” should be the standard you apply to hiringsalespeople as well. In my experience, hiring managers typically are not veryeffective evaluators of sales talent and often take the path of leastresistance with sales candidates, using one of the following three standardsfor hiring:

1. The “Love at First Sight” Standard

The hiring manager finds the process of hiring a salesperson so unpleasant that he or she hires the first warm body that walks through the door.

2. The “Armani Suit” Standard

The hiring manager has a formulaic Mom-and-apple-pie list of the skills his company is looking for in a salesperson. Instead of hiring someone with work experience directly tied to his business, he hires generalists, slick sales professionals who dress well and present themselves with a breezy air of self-confidence. They make him feel good about himself, but he is later left to wonder why they don’t work out when they seem so “qualified” on paper, and in person.

3. The “Not Good Enough for my Daughter” Standard

This hiring manager never finds a candidate that meets his or her expectations and harbors a range of emotions, from slight ambivalence to outright hostility to the idea of hiring a salesperson. He knows that salespeople are a necessary evil, but is risk averse and afraid to make a mistake by hiring someone who doesn’t produce.

The goal of your hiring efforts should be to identify and qualify (that's right, just like selling) the best candidate for the job you need done and to integrate him or her smoothly into your sales team.

5 Steps to Find and Hire The Best Candidates for Sales

Here are 5 tips to helpyou do a better job of identifying and qualifying the best candidate for yoursales team.

1. Write an accurate, honest job description

The temptation is towrite too broad a job description, alluding to unspecified opportunities andresponsibilities, hoping to entice a higher level of talent to the company. Thereality is that you do not want to hire onlypotential. You want to hire someone with product expertise, industry knowledge,and successful sales experience.

2. Do in-depth evaluations of multiple qualified candidates

Wait for the pitchacross the fat part of the plate. In hiring a salesperson, this means that youneed to evaluate more than one qualified person for every job opening. It meansthat no matter how much you like the first person you interview, you must doin-depth interviews and reference checks of at least two other candidatesbefore you decide who to hire.

3. Have your entire management team interview candidates

If you're reluctant tohave the rest of your peers meet your favorite candidate, then you have aproblem. (Just like the time you hesitated to take your tattooed girlfriend orboyfriend with the nose ring home to meet Mom.) Selling is a team sport. Hiringshould be a team sport as well. The final decision will rest with the CEO or VPof Sales, but the company should take advantage of the “wisdom of crowds” byhaving people from multiple departments interview all of the qualifiedcandidates. Make sure that sales candidates are interviewed by all of yoursenior management team. Sales touches every part of your organization, andeveryone who works with sales should have input into the hiring of asalesperson.

4. Test all skills and verify all résumé information

Hiring the wrongsalesperson can be very expensive. If you test and verify skills andexperience, you’ll reduce the probability of making an error in the hiringprocess. You’ll avoid the cost of interviewing yet another set of candidates,as well as the cost of lost orders from new customers. Testing candidates’technical/product knowledge and sales skills is absolutely essential.

5. Recruit internally

The best place to recruit new salespeople is inside your own company. If your company is in a technical field, then recruit technically capable salespeople from within your engineering and product development departments. Look for the engineers who have exhibited a special knack for customer support or the engineer that every salesperson wants to use as a technical resource on a sales call. This person is already spending a chunk of his or her time selling and is someone you should consider for sales.

BONUS: Two Tips to Conduct Effective Reference Checks.

When do you check the referencesfor a sales candidate you want to hire? Do you wait until you have made up yourmind to hire someone? That’s what most sales hiring managers do. And it is thewrong thing to do. References should be checked before you’ve narrowed yourchoice down to one candidate.

Think about the typicalsales hiring process. You post an open position and do a preliminary screeningof candidates’ résumés. You develop a small pool of candidates and conductpreliminary phone or video interviews. You then invite the best candidates forin-person interviews. From those, you decide that two or three are worthy ofdeeper consideration and bring them back for a series of interviews with othersin the company. At that point one candidate stands out from the rest, and you decideto hire him or her if their references check out.

Here’s the problem withthat scenario: If you’re like most hiring managers, you check your favoritecandidate's references only afteryou’ve decided to hire him or her. Isn't that backwards? References shouldbe a source of important data that are factored into the hiring decision. Theyare not meant to be a validation of a decision you have already made.

Here are two concretesteps to take to improve your reference checks:

1. Conduct Reference Checks on Your Final Three Candidates

Take the time tothoroughly check the references (and qualifications) of each finalist beforeinvesting time and manpower company-wide interviews. Do this before you fall inlove with one candidate and become blinded to their potential shortcomings. Usefact-based questioning to dig into and verify the claims on each candidate'srésumé.

2. Sideline the Subjectivity: Ask More Fact-based Questions of References

How can you get the mostout of reference calls? Simple. Don't rely on questions that require opinionsfor answers. References are increasingly reluctant to provide any meaningful,subjective information by phone or in writing. Therefore you should ask questionsthat have factual answers. For example, your candidate states on his résuméthat he achieved 120% of quota last year. Ask the reference to verify thatfact. Or a candidate claims that she made President's Club for 3 years in arow. Ask if that is correct. Use references to verify what the candidate tellsyou. If you find that a candidate has lied or fudged the truth, you shoulddisqualify him or her.

I recently met with a VPof Sales for a growing start-up. We talked about his hiring process. I askedhim how many people in his large and growing sales force he had hired who hadnot achieved at least 100% of quota at their prior sales job? He confidentlysaid none. I asked if he had fact-checked the sales achievement claims on theirrésumés. There was a pause. A long pause. Here was a fairly sophisticated salesmanagement executive who was still taking sales candidates’ performance claimsat face value.

Hiring is a riskybusiness in the best of circumstances. But sales is one of the few professionswhere past performance can be an objective and transparent measure of acandidate's ability and future capabilities. Take advantage of this built-inadvantage and stop hiring backwards.