2 Questions to Ask Sales People
One of the most frequent questions we get on hiring is, “What do I ask sales people to get past the BS?”
For many, hiring sales people is difficult. The fact is most sales people think they can sell anything, when in fact the sales processes are so different, many don’t actually sell as much as take orders.
Here are two screening questions I use to at least eliminate sales people that embellish and claim to be hard charging.
1) “Give me an example of where you demonstrated high initiative?” Seems to me like a simple question, yet most sales people can’t answer it because most sales people don’t take high initiative. So often I get one of two answers. One is that they tell me about a sale they made where they had to call on the customer 5 or 6 times to get the deal. WOW. Doesn’t every salesperson have to do this? Isn’t that just part of the job? I don’t consider this high initiative and if they do I’m not impressed. The second common answer is that they go back three or four jobs for the example. So what have you done for me lately? They don’t consistently demonstrate high initiative.
2) Every sales person has on their resume a bullet that reads in one way or another, “Increased sales by X%.” Usually some figure between 30 and 60 percent. The obvious question to me is, “What two numbers did you divide to get that percentage?” I find 1 in 10 can answer this question. Not because they made it up (although I don’t rule that out), but because they take the position the company grew by X% and I’m in sales, so I did it.
For me, these are phone screening questions I like to ask. It does eliminate a lot of candidates, that in the past, I might have presented to one of my clients and for hiring managers desperate to hire a sales person. It is tough to eliminate candidates, but I have found the ones that can answer these two question have been successful.
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We welcome your comments and thoughts.
Brad Remillard
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Tags: Interview Questions, Interview Techniques, Interviewing
Interviewing, Phone Interviewing | bradremillard October 29, 2009
About the Author
Brad Remillard is a founding Partner of IMPACT Hiring Solutions, co-author of "You're NOT the Person I Hired", and "This is NOT the Position I Accepted". Brad is an award-winning international speaker, retained executive recruiter, and expert on hiring and retaining top talent, and executive job search.
1 Comment to “2 Questions to Ask Sales People”
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By Will Noble, October 29, 2009 @ 11:52 am
You are not going to like this comment.
I actually had someone ask me that question (“What two numbers did you divide to get that percentage?”) I laughed. I apologized; but it was genuine and spontaneous.
I went on to explain – “You don’t ‘divide’ two numbers. You divide ONE number; by another. And, you can reach a better answer with a multiplier – but that’s another topic.
Any company worth its weight in reporting provides its salespeople with aggregate sales reports by quarter. I take the aggregate number from a start point and divide it by the ending number. That gives me a percentage-of-difference. My HP 14B from twenty years ago does pretty well at that.”
I didn’t get the job – and that was fine; anyone who’d ask for that information in that manner isn’t the sharpest bulb in the box…..