Trust But Verify - Hiring A New Salesperson

Hiring a new salesperson is like buying a shiny new gadget. 

When you buy a new product you want to be excited about yourpurchase. But you also spend a lot of time and energy trying to convinceyourself that you aren’t making a mistake. The reason people have a hard timemaking decisions is not because they can’t make up their minds which productthey want more. What holds up a decision is that they can't decide whichproduct has the biggest downside risk in case they make a mistake.

So it is with hiring salespeople. The hiring manager is not tornso much over which candidate will do a better job as much as deciding which oneis least likely to fail (and make them look bad in the process.) As anyone whohas hired a salesperson knows, it is risky business in the best ofcircumstances and the cost of making a mistake is very high.

Everyone should approach hiring with the same goal, which is toeliminate as much of the guesswork and risk from hiring salespeople aspossible. The way to do this is to eliminate as much of the subjectivity fromthe process as you possibly can. Then you’ll be in a better position to make afully informed hiring decision.

Here are 5 practical tips to reduce your risk when hiringsalespeople:

1. Trust but Verify

President Reagan famously used this expression in answer toreporters’ questions about monitoring the provisions of a strategic armsreduction treaty he had negotiated with the Soviet Union. An interview is noplace for trust; that comes after you hire the person. As hiring managers youhave to use that same standard for validating the claims of candidates andensuring that their skills match your requirements. Every fact that is on aresume, or that a candidate claims during an interview, should be verified. Ifa fact can't be validated then don't use it in your decision-making process aboutthat candidate. And, if a candidate has fudged even just a little on their pasttrack record then they need to be disqualified. You can't afford the risk thatthey would fudge the truth with your customers.

I had a discussion recently with the talented VP of Sales of abrand-name company. He was expanding his sales force fairly rapidly so I askedhim if he ever hired a salesperson who had not achieved 100% of quota at theirprior job. He said no. I asked if any of the resumes he reviewed from candidatesever showed the person achieving less than quota in their prior jobs. He saidno. I asked if he had seen the study that showed that fewer than 50% ofsalespeople achieve quota each year. He said yes. So, I asked if he assumedthat he had only interviewed and hired people that had been in the 50% who hadmade quota. Long pause. Even the smart people aren't doing diligence as theyshould.

2. Pay Attention to Detail

I recently read a blog posting that made fun of employers whodisqualify candidates based on seemingly trivial reasons such as misplacedpunctuation on their resume. That writer had it all wrong. Employers shouldalways look for objective criteria they can use to make hiring decision, nomatter how minor. For instance, it is not a misplaced expectation thatcandidates will have a clean resume. If they don’t care what impression theymake on a potential employer with a resume that has errors on it, then it issafe to assume they will exhibit the same level of carelessness and disregardfor detail with potential customers.

3. Sideline the Subjectivity and Focus on Facts

Stop relying on interview questions of candidates that requireopinions instead of fact-based answers. Refrain from asking the usual questionsthat yield no reliable information, like "What are your strengths andweaknesses?" Too many managers make their hiring decisions based onconclusions that are largely drawn from subjective answers supplied by thecandidate themselves. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Instead focus your interview on questions that have fact-basedanswers that you can verify. This is one of the most overlooked elements of aninterview for a sales person. You want to hire the A players and the only wayto verify the identity and qualifications of the A players is throughindependent verification of their past performance.

I have my clients give each candidate a simple Sales Achievementform to complete as part of his or her application. Ask for the following datapoints for each position they held in the previous 10 years: Position,territory, quota, quota % attained, Average Order Size, Team Sale or IndividualSale (meaning who really did the work,) Manager, Manager Contact Info. Once youhave that information, go through it line-by-line and number by number with thecandidate. You’ll quickly know if they are being honest. Then go to #5 below.

4. Test the Required Skills

You definitely want to hire someone with in-depth productknowledge and industry sales experience. If the candidate you are interviewingclaims to have that specific industry expertise then you have to test it. Forexample, in preparation for the interview process develop a list of 15-20 keyquestions about your industry that will test a candidate's market and industryknowledge. If you are in a technical field, make the candidate take a test oftheir technical knowledge. Any testing should be completed before anyoneinterviews the candidate. If they don't pass, no interview.

I had a client in a technical field that was searching for aDirector of Sales. We had all the candidates for that slot take the same testwe gave engineering candidates. They didn't need to pass but we developed afirm understanding of what they really knew. Similarly the job required theDirector of Sales to be in the field presenting to prospects without the helpof a Sales Engineer. I devised a test where we put the candidate in aconference room with a laptop and a product datasheet for one of the customer'sproducts and gave them 15 minutes to create an effective 3 slide sales pitch onthe product. Almost all the candidates, who were senior sales people withsubstantial experience, were completely freaked out by this testing and were unableto complete either test. The testing was a great way to weed out the weakcandidates and find the right person.

5. Check a candidate's references BEFORE you make a decision

Hiring managers usually call a candidate's reference AFTER theyhave already made the decision to hire the person. At that point in time themanager is not really interested in information that will derail the hiringdecision. Of course, that is completely backwards. Reference calls are notmeant to be a validation of your hiring decision. They should be another stepon the process of qualifying your candidates.

A major problem with reference calls these days is thatreferences are so concerned about the liabilities of being truthful with apotential employer that it is hard to get any meaningful information from them.As a way to work around that reluctance, do not ask a reference any questionthat requires an opinion as an answer. Stick to yes/no questions about thecandidates past sales performance as reflected on his or her resume. 'John saidon his resume that he achieved 105% of quota in 2011. Is that correct, yes orno?' 'Julie said that she managed a sales team of 15 people and her groupachieved 115% of quota. Is that correct, yes or no?" Previous employershave little problem confirming or denying facts that candidates represent ontheir resumes or applications.

Use a Little Patience At The Plate To Improve Your Sales Hiring 

Think back to your days in Little League baseball or softball.Among all the coaching advice you received from the various baseball dads whocoached your team was this nugget: Never swing at the first pitch. The idea wasthat you could learn something about the tendencies and capabilities of thepitcher you faced if you sat with the bat on your shoulder and watched thefirst pitch cross the plate.

If you listen to radio or TV broadcasts of baseball, you’lloften hear the color commentary guy talk about a batter in a slightlycondescending manner, describing him as “a first pitch hitter.” The implicationis that the batter is being unwise by not being patient and not “working thecount” until they see a pitch that they like.

We could fill a book arguing about whether the accepted wisdomof not swinging on a 0-0 count is a good strategy or just recycled baseballfolklore that is unsupported by the statistics. For better or worse, it hasbecome a de facto standard of play for batters in baseball.

I recommend that 'never swing at the first pitch' should be thestandard you should apply to hiring salespeople as well.

It has been my experience that hiring managers typically are notvery effective evaluators of sales talent and often default to taking the pathof least resistance with sales candidates. They usually employ one of thefollowing three standards for hiring:

#1: The Love at First Sight Standard: The hiring manager finds the process of hiring asalesperson so uncomfortable that he or she hires the first warm body thatwalks through the door.

#2: The Armani Suit Standard: The hiring manager only has a generic, formulaic, Momand apple pie description of the skill sets his company is looking for in asalesperson. Instead of hiring work experience directly tied to his business,he hires generalists, slick sales professionals who dress extremely well andpresent themselves with a breezy air of self-confidence. They make him feelgood about himself but he is later left to wonder why they never work out whenthey look so “qualified” on paper, and in person.

#3: The Not Good Enough for my Daughter Standard: This hiring manager harbors a range of emotions fromslight ambivalence to outright hostility to the idea of hiring a salesperson.He agrees that sales people are a necessary evil but is so risk averse andappalled at the idea of making a mistake and paying good money to someone whomight never produce, that no one ever is good enough to fit his expectations.

Identifying and qualifying (that's right, just like selling) the best candidate who can do the job you need done and integrate smoothly into your sales team should be the goal of your hiring efforts. Come back tomorrow and I'll talk about 5 steps you can take to improve the effectiveness of your sales hiring process.

In Never Swing At The First Pitch - Part 1 we discussed the need for patience in the sales hiring process. And, we identified three unproductive personas that hiring managers adopt when interviewing sales candidates and the need to exercise some patience when . 

Today we will talk about 5 tips you can use to help you to abetter job of identifying and qualifying (that's right, qualifying, just likeselling) the best candidate who can do the job you need done and integratesmoothly into your sales team. This should be the goal of your hiring efforts.

1. The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth - Write anaccurate, honest job description.

The temptation is to write too broad of a job description,alluding to unspecified opportunities and responsibilities, hoping to entice abetter level of talent to the company. The reality is that you do not want tohire potential. You want to hire product expertise, industry knowledge and asuccessful sales experience.

2. Never Swing at the First Pitch - Do in-depthevaluations of multiple qualified candidates.

You have to wait for the pitch across the fat part of the plate.What does this have to do with hiring? It means that you need to evaluate morethan one qualified person for every job opening you have. It means that nomatter how much you like the first person you interview, you have to doin-depth interviews and reference checks of at least two other candidatesbefore you can make the decision who to hire.

3. Take Them Home to Meet Mom - Interview widely amongyour management team.

If you're reluctant to have the rest of your team meet yourfavorite candidate then you have a problem. (Just like the time you hesitatedto take your heavily tattooed girlfriend or boyfriend with the nose ring hometo meet Mom.) Selling is a team sport. Hiring should be a team sport as well.The final decision will rest with the CEO or VP of Sales but the company shouldmake certain to take advantage of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ effect by havingmultiple people from multiple departments interview all qualified candidates.Make sure that sales candidates are interviewed by all of your seniormanagement team. Sales touches every part of your organization and everyone whoworks with sales should have input into the hiring of a sales person.

4. Expose Everything to the Light of Day - Test allskills and verify all resume information.

This means reducing the probability of making an error in thehiring process. Errors in hiring a sales person are very expensive. It is notjust the time and money you invest internally to interview yet another set ofcandidates but it is the cost of lost orders with new customers that is reallyexpensive. Testing candidates on the required technical/product knowledge andsales skills that you specified in the job description is absolutely essential.

5. Take a Look Under the Hood - Recruit internally

The best place to recruit new salespeople is inside your owncompany. If your company is in a technical field, then recruit technicallycapable salespeople from within your engineering and product development departments.Look for the engineers who have exhibited a special knack for customer supportor the engineer that every sales person wants to use as a technical resource ona sales call. This person is already spending a chunk of their time selling andis a person you should target to recruit into sales. Recruit customer supportpeople who have been supporting customers with their product issues and whoknow the product and its uses inside and out.