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How to Make Sure Your Sales Reps Stay Balanced

Sales rep burnout is a possibility on any sales team and this is especially true if you are driving hard towards big sales goals. If your reps become exhausted, they will lose interest in their work, stop producing and/or leave your team, which will have an impact on the overall sales numbers.

Over the years, I have discovered several great ways of ensuring my sales reps have a work-life balance which increases sales output and prevents burnout:

1. Perspective

A career is a critical part of someone’s life and success, however it is not the only part of a happy life and it is certainly not more important than some things like overall health and happiness. Reps who see their job as part of a bigger vision of success will be able to pace themselves more effectively, so emphasize the importance of keeping a career in perspective. Encourage your reps to enjoy life, relationships and hobbies. Endorse volunteering for community projects as this develops the helping attitude that is critical in providing great customer service.

2. Fun

A rep who is smiling sells more than one who is frowning. Enthusiasm is contagious so a rep with a happy disposition will make more friends and have an easier time developing relationships with prospects and customers than a rep who is not in great spirits. Furthermore, a sales team that is happy is unlikely to have issues attracting or retaining great sales talent, so be sure to find ways to get people laughing and having fun while they work hard to hit tough goals. If someone is not happy, talk to them about why and if it is obvious that they belong somewhere else, help them move on.

3. Health and Fitness

Many in the business world neglect their health, but sales can be physically grueling due to long hours and travel, not to mention the fact that mental stress can also take a physical toll. Even younger sales people who take their health for granted can suffer from poor physical conditioning. These issues can be mitigated with a healthy diet and exercise regime which keep the body and mind sharp and energy high over longer periods of time. Promote the importance of health and wellness and set a good example by eating well and staying fit.

4. Rest

To be able to think clearly, be creative and work at a high level, the body and brain need to be well rested. Reps who don’t get enough sleep or don’t take vacations seldom get the rest they need and are seldom able to produce consistently. Encourage your reps to rest properly and take breaks.

I have learned through experience, that if you do these things to actively help your sales reps achieve a good balance between work and life, then you will enjoy higher overall sales.

To your success!

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Great Sales Management vs. Bad Sales Management / Micromanagement

Bad Sales ManagementMany sales managers, particularly new sales managers, have trouble striking the right balance between managing reps and letting them do their jobs. Too often there is micromanagement and not enough of the right kind of management.

Poor Sales Management and Micromanagement 

Early in my own career as a sales manager, I would spend a lot of time going over the numbers and reminding my reps where they were at in terms of the quarter. I would regularly tell them what they need to do in order to hit their numbers including making specific calls and when, and what to say to close sales. My old habits as a sales person were hard to break and I was talking to my reps as if I was talking to my former self as a sales person (see The Differences Between Hiring A Sales Manager vs. Sales Producer).  I quickly learned that I was adding little useful value, when one of my reps chastised me for telling them what they already knew.

Great Sales Management

It took a while, but over time I learned that if I hired good sales people and provided the right level of management, I could let them do their jobs and provide support where required. By this point, my main areas of focus were:

1. Accountability  – Setting goals and holding reps accountable (See more on accountability here –  Accountability – the Key to Success in Managing Sales Reps

2. Systems and Structure – Sales processes, protocols for customer and prospect engagement, and rules for tracking and reporting (See more on structure here –
7 Habits of Highly Effective Selling Orgs)

3. Coaching and Communication – Helping your reps develop and be successful requires regular interaction and constructive feedback (See more on interacting with reps –
Habits of Highly Effective Sales Leaders)

Along the way I also learned ways for our team to have fun while we were driving hard towards our sales goals – this prevented burnout and made sure that I never had a problem attracting or retaining great sales people.

To your success!

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles | Freedigitalphotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Finding the Perfect Sales Person – And Why You Shouldn’t Try

Unicorn in field Often times employers will approach Peak with a desire to hire sales people with very specific sales experience, who in theory will leverage this experience to produce superior sales. The approach makes a sense in theory and would be a convenient way to identify superior sales people but hiring based on experience seldom works in practice.

Looking for the Orange Striped Unicorn in China that Speaks Spanish
Many employers like to think if someone has perfect resume, then they will be the perfect sales person. As the theory goes, someone with the right industry experience, selling the exact same product to the right people will be able to quickly produce great sales results – and this may in fact be the case, but there are a couple of reasons why this approach is more likely to fail than succeed:

DNA – Behavioral traits play a larger role in the success of sales people than experience. By placing the largest emphasis on experience, a hiring manager is likely to be overlooking many highly capable sales people that are more likely to succeed than a person with the right resume.

Pool of Talent – by defining the qualifications so tightly, an employer is often vastly reducing the number of people that are eilligible, in many cases down to single digits even in larger geographies. For a variety of reasons, a very small talent pool becomes problematic (there may be no eligible AND available candidates, and/or the employer must pay a large premium due to scarcity)

Time – It is not impossible to find the person with the a highly specific combination of experiences, but it takes time. This usually means months and/or years of waiting until the right person becomes available, during which time sales are not being made. Meanwhile a competitor is making sales. An employer has to weight the opportunity cost of waiting for the perfect rep.

Finding a sales person that is the equivalent of an orange striped unicorn is sometimes possible, but it takes a considerable amount of time and effort, will likely require premium compensation, and often leads to a short circuit of the hiring process which in turn leads to an inferior sales hire.

 Settling- In many cases, an employer will begin searching for the perfect rep only to realize how long it takes and then, under the pressure to fill a vacant sales position, settle on someone who perhaps has some of the right experience, but lacks the right DNA or who has been poorly assessed and lacks even the right experiences. This is fixing a bad plan with a bad plan and a recipe for failure. Discipline in the hiring process is critical, so settling on a hire should not be an option unless the employer is settling on the right sales person for the right reasons.

Redefining Perfect- There are no perfect sales people. Even perennial overachievers have weaknesses, however they  typically share several important success traits such as an inner desire to succeed, competitiveness, confidence, sense of urgency, optimism, resilience and ability to interact and influence others.

Experience– Experience is in fact very important, but sales managers with a track record of success in hiring sales people, look for reps that have demonstrated the right behaviors and success working in similar environments (past relevant behavior is the best predictor of future behavior and success).

Putting it all Together
There is aways a balance between quality and time in sales recruiting and hiring. You need to get the right rep, but you also need someone on-board and selling as quickly as possible. By searching for the right DNA and relevant experience, and by focussing on someone that can do the job rather than someone with the right resume,  a sales hiring manager can increase their chances of quickly hiring a  sales person who will be a consistent over achiever.

To your success!

 

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

The use of SPIFFS in sales compensation and impact on performance

Use of SPIFFS in Sales CompensationSpiffs represent a method of incentivizing certain kinds of sales rep behaviors and outcomes. Also known as a Sales Performance Incentive Fund, the Spiff is a concept dating back to as early as the mid 1800s and used by manufacturers as sort of kickback program to retailers that sell higher volumes of certain product lines. Since then, the concept evolved into very popular sales performance tool within sales teams.

Usually Spiffs are tied to performance and outcomes such as sales revenues, contracts, accounts or units sold, but they can also be tied to activities such number of calls or meetings.

In my experience cash is king and highly motivating for sales reps, but there can be instances where non-monetary prizes are used in Spiff competitions, such as vacation, trips, and retail products and services. Cash prizes are commonly in the range of 3-5% of base salary or 5-10% of variable.

Some best practices suggest that spiffs make up a small percentage of overall compensation, should be tied to driving sales of new products only and and that they should not be used to spike performance during a period, but I have had success using Spiffs with my reps as a boost during a quarter when it seems like energy levels were dropping and reps needed an excuse to get pumped up.

They key thing is to reward outcomes that are desirable to the sales organization, so be sure not to create a Spiff that might detract energy and focus on the overall sales targets.

Other factors to consider in designing a spiff program are the specific performance criteria, measurement program, duration of contest, eligibility of reps to participate, prizes and schedule for payouts.

A contest for within a contest
While sales team members are competing to be at the top of the company leaderboard, Spiff contests can be a fun side game and in my experience, as long as spiffs are not used too often, they can have a noticeable impact on overall sales.

To your success!

Photo Credit: nist6dh via Compfight cc

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Accountability – the Key to Success in Managing Sales Reps

AccountabilityDuring a coaching call with a CEO yesterday, I was asked for my thoughts on some of the best ways to get sales reps to perform. We discussed the elements of effective sales management from strategy, goal setting, communication, coaching and training. Amongst these tactics, holding reps accountable is arguably the most powerful tool for getting reps to perform.

Accountability – the key to success in managing sales reps

In my experience as a sales manager, successfully holding sales reps accountable involves five things:

1. Clearly Defining Goals – The first rule of goal achievement is having some in the first place. At the beginning of each reporting period, be sure to document and communicate the goals that the rep must achieve. Include revenues, sales wins, activities and whatever expectations the rep must meet, but keep it simple so that there is never any confusion about goals or conflicting priorities that might prevent the rep from staying focussed.

2. Regular Feedback and Communication – Few reps manage themselves. They need regular guidance and direction to be effective so make sure you are speaking at least once a week. I liked to meet with my reps every Monday am to go through forecast, discuss activities, set goals for the week, and address any team issues and then have ad-hoc meetings in between to discuss account plans, address challenges and to provide coaching. Some reps need more communication and some less – you will know the balance – but most need plenty and there is no such thing as over-communicating.

3. Measurement – Sales reps are metrics driven and excited by numbers (at least the the good ones are), so don’t make them guess where they are at vs their numbers. Make sure stats are easily accessible via some sort of dashboard and if the team works out of the same office,  a scoreboard with live data can be very powerful. Tap into the competitive nature of reps and create good energy on your team by showing the numbers for each and every rep side by side. Reps will naturally work harder to be at the top of the leader board.

4. Consequences – Many companies are afraid to let go of a poor performing rep, either because there is no replacement for them or the company feels they have made too big an investment in the rep to part ways , but this breeds complacency. There needs to be a sense that achieving the sales goal is not optional. This doesn’t mean that you terminate someone that doesn’t hit their targets once, but it does mean that you might have to accept a loss and part ways if someone is perennially under-performing and you have tried to work with them on developing skills and the right behaviours.

5. Fun – Hitting big sales numbers is tough work so in between all the hard work and grinding to achieve targets, take every opportunity to laugh and have fun. This will keep energy and morale high and make your team a great place to be.

To your success!

 

Image courtesy of basketman | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Patience is a Virtue in On-Boarding New Sales Hires

On-Boarding New Sales HiresThere aren’t too many instances when a new sales hire produces sales immediately upon joining a new company. I wish this weren’t the case, but with the exception of short sales cycles and call centers, most new sales people need time to learn how to sell a new offering and to start building and converting a pipeline of new business. But results aren’t guaranteed.

Many years ago, as a young sales manager, I hired a rep and provided them with an annual sales quota, and then foolishly failed to assign the rep any shorter term goals such as a 90 day target. I had no real way of evaluating the progress of the new rep, and was under a lot of pressure to deliver sales results myself. As a result, I simply transferred that pressure to the rep by constantly asking them why we weren’t seeing results a few weeks into their time with us. I wanted to be patient, but I hadn’t thought through how long it would take to develop a pipeline and realistic forecast. I created a ton of needless stress for the rep and myself. 

One of my mentors at the time took me aside and suggested that I cool my jets. “Give the new rep time to develop” he said. “Pressure is not a bad thing, but it has to be the right kind of pressure and if you keep busting his chops, he won’t be in the right frame of mind to deliver what you want.” Very important words indeed.

Things would have been easier had I had the forethought to map out how long it would take the rep to make sales after making the first calls or had I planned out the first 90 days in terms of exposure to our products, sales training, customer visits, calls, and check ins with me. I did not do these things but as luck would have it the rep was experienced enough to figure some things out on their own and produce sales in time, but I was not in control.

Actively Patient

Hope is not a good strategy and it is always better to be in control of your sales force. Therefore, the moral of this story is to have a plan for on-boarding a new rep that is just as comprehensive as the plan you have a plan for managing existing reps. Map out the first 90 days (at least) with a new sales rep in day by day detail, determine the right level of support over the course of this timeframe, provide this support and know you are doing everything you can to make a new rep successful so that you can patiently let the right results unfold.

To your success!

Image courtesy of  digitalart | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

How Valuable is a Book of Business in Sales?

Book of BusinessOften prospective employers will call us seeking to hire a candidate that has a “solid book of business”, or a list of former and/or current clients in which the candidate has key contacts. As the thinking goes, this will allow the rep to quickly generate considerable sales upon joining the new employer. I like the optimism and I can’t blame any sales manager for trying to get a leg up on the competition in acquiring and developing new accounts….unless the requirement to hire someone with a book of business means putting little or no emphasis on hiring someone with the experience and DNA required to be successful in the new role.

Reasons Why a “Book of Business” is Less Important Than it Might Seem

1. Expiration Date – In many sectors, people change jobs regularly, so having a handful of buying contacts today might be completely value-less in 6 or 12 months. Once a buyer moves to a new role or employer, there may be other existing vendor relationships already in place, or their purchase requirements may have changed.

2. Company Loyalty – Often times, a buyer is equally loyal to the vendor and the salesperson, so the buyer-salesperson relationship is effectively compromised once the sales person switches employers.

3. Difficult to Quantify – When interviewing, candidates will often drop names and tout the value of their “extensive rolodex”, but in a lot of cases, the past business volume has more to do with being in the right place at the right time and filling orders than actively generating business. How much business will come their way this year. In most sectors where demand is unpredictable, forecasting sales based on relationships is virtually impossible.

4. Non-Competes – When a rep departs from one employer, there may be residual obligations in their employment contract which prevent them from being able to pursue opportunities and contacts that they were exposed to in their previous employment, which obviously diminishes the value of these contacts and associated opportunities.

5. Old School – Sales has changed a lot since the Mad Men days when a salesperson could call a customer and lean on their relationship or twist an arm with an old “friend” to close a sale. Nowadays customers perform more research before making each purchase – even repetitive purchases – and they want the best deal each time. They are more inclined than ever to try new vendors to get what they want. This is particularly true with business buyers who may be required by company policy to hold a fair and transparent competition for every purchase. Prior relationships may matter very little in such cases.

You Can Bank on the Abilities and Traits

Perhaps the most risky aspect of hiring someone based primarily on their relationships is that they won’t actually have the right DNA to actually sell in the new role (See the The Pitfalls of Hiring Sales People Based on Experience). Sales people who are perennially successful, have sold at the right volume in an environment similar to yours, and possess all the other requisite abilities will develop the right relationships and locate the opportunities required to meet or exceed sales goals. To exclude these candidates from your sales recruiting efforts would be a risky strategy, but chances are your competitors are doing just this.

The most successful sales managers don’t fall into this trap.

To your success!

Image Courtesy of  digitalart | freedigitalphotos.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Why Market Sales Compensation May Not Be Useful in Your Hiring Efforts

It is well known that you have to pay at, or more likely a bit above market levels in order to attract the best sales talent in the business. There are numerous surveys that indicate what sales reps are getting paid and there is always anecdotal feedback that comes to an employer either via its own sales reps or through candidates in the interviewing process.

But all this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There are several reasons why the market may be wrong and why your compensation plan may need to be different. We take a brief look at each of these reasons.

The Numbers are Inflated – Reps have a tendency and, when making a career change, a direct incentive, to overstate earnings. So often there is lot of misinformation about who is making what compensation in any sector.

Different Compensation Models – There is the concept of total target income (the amount a rep will earn in base and commissions at target), but without holding a competitor’s compensation plan in your hand, it can be tricky to reverse engineer to know how total compensation is earned. Different companies pay different ratios of base vs commission, the commission rates may be different for different types of deals and there may also be achievement accelerators and spiffs. All of which have varying levels of attainment difficulty. The skill set and effort required to earn $X in one company may be completely different in another.

Different Business Models – While the compensation plans are different across different companies, so too are the business models which ultimately dictate the selling activities and abilities and traits that reps must possess in order to be successful.  One company may sell direct while another may sell primarily through channels. Even small differences in business model can have a huge impact on the profile of the successful rep and the compensation model.

Non-Monetary Incentives Matter – Sales people value various rewards besides the cash compensation. Career growth, company culture, vacation and flexible hours, for instance can offset a lower compensation.  Even the culture or values of the company can play as significant factor as compensation in the career choices of sales people. Just as much as sales people want to optimize earnings, they want to work in jobs they like for companies they admire.

Company size – In most sectors, the largest companies are able to pay more than smaller companies (with some exceptions such as the market leaders who leverage name brand to attract talent while paying slightly less than competitors). While the best sales people in the business gravitate to successful companies that pay more, often it is a different breed of sales person that belongs in a large company versus a small company so it can be like comparing apples to oranges.

Figuring out the meaning of market compensation can be tricky in sales and in the end it often comes down to what you have to pay in order to get the candidates you want.

To your success!

Image courtesy of  jesadaphorn | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

Interview Tactics that Make or Break Your Sales Hiring and Sales Results

Interview TacticsInterviewing sales people is just like interviewing candidates for any other position in your company. Right? Wrong.

Sales professionals are wired to project a positive image since that is how they succeed – it is a key part of the profession that they chose. They are interviewed everyday by potential customers, and the good ones, at least, are quick on their feet. Candidates have their brain picked and grilled by customers, and are either intrinsically immune to the pressure associated with tough questions or trained to be so. As a result, they are prepared for the run-of-the-mill questions your HR department will probably ask and are ready to respond with a clever or witty responses.

Organizations that are serious about looking for top sales performers know that it is not good enough to approach interviews with a simple approach that involves:

A) taking sales interview answers at face value, and/or

B) relying on common questions in the first place.

The interviewer must elicit meaningful and insightful responses from sales candidates. It is therefore important to identify some of the best questions to ask candidates since it could save your organization .

The selection of top sales performers is largely determined by the types of interview questions asked and one of the main tactics that Peak promotes to its clients is to have the candidate interviewed by multiple people who will be overseeing and working with the candidate. That’s often the easy part – the hard part is deciding on what to ask the candidate. Many hiring departments will rely on these basic questions: Are you comfortable making cold calls? Are you comfortable presenting in front of target accounts? Do you prefer a long or short sales cycle? What are some of your strengths and weaknesses? What type of company do you want to work for? What is your Ideal work environment? All of these types of questions are easy for all candidates to answer positively. “Am I comfortable with making cold calls? Yes absolutely.” “What kind of company do I want to work for? Yours.” These questions will not separate good from bad candidates, let alone the good from great.

Peak recommends several tactics for effective interviewing and assessments:

  • Structured interview process – Well scripted set of steps that throughly and objectively assess each candidate’s ability to perform against a set of performance objectives.
  • Behavioral interviewing – Ask candidates not would they would do, but what they have done in relevant sales environments and customer situations. Ask a mix of open and closed ended questions and the same questions in different ways so it is less easy to predict the answer required to secure the role.
  • Interviews with multiple stakeholders – have the candidate meet with several members of the management and sales team that they will be working with. Collect detailed notes and make a committee decision on the candidate’s score against the criteria.
  • Reference and background checks – Conduct through, scripted, behaviorally oriented  references calls with former managers and background checks to cross-reference the claims of the candidate and the observations of your own assessment team.
  • Third Party Testing – Psychometric testing and other types of benchmarked sales competency tests can provide valuable insight to augment your own observations and assessments.

No two sales roles are identical, so the ideal set of interview questions must be tailored to the unique position you are hiring for and the specific situations the rep will be in if employed by your organization. If you decide on asking a list of static, predictable questions, they must be framed in a way that the candidate cannot provide one word answers.

For instance if you are hiring for a new business development role, you might be inclined to ask questions such as: Are you comfortable making cold calls? To get a better assessment of the candidate rephrase the interview question so that you get the information you are really looking for: Describe your most difficult type of cold calls in your last role? How did you structure your day so that you were able to make all the calls required? How did you ensure the effectiveness of each cold call? How did you deal with the high level of rejection associated with cold calling?

Posing the question as open ended where the onus is on the interviewee to demonstrate the degree to which they are familiar and comfortable with cold calling will allow you to determine if they have the ability to fulfill one of the most basic requirements of the position for which you are hiring. In order to dig even deeper, ask for specific instances where cold calling opened a door to a large deal – and ask the candidate to demonstrate how they approach a cold call. By mixing in situational and behavioural based interview questions that are tailored to your unique hiring requirements, you give your organization the best opportunity to avoid costly hiring mistakes and hire a candidate who will meet or exceed your sales targets.

Here are other examples of behavioral type questions you may want to ask:

  • Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a complex customer strategy?
  • Have you ever had to make a sale based on analysis of data? Describe the process in detail.
  • Give an example of a situation in which you had to make a decision when you didn’t have all facts available. What process do you follow for making decisions for these different circumstances and were you satisfied with the results?
  • How do you go about opening doors in the C-suite? Is there a specific process you follow? How heavily do you rely on your ability to develop relationships?

To your success!

Image courtesy of artur84 | freedigitalphotos.net

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

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The value of IQ tests in sales hiring

We don’t use IQ tests to evaluate sales people (we are more interested in predicting how they will behave and produce in certain situations), but we know that being smart usually is not a liability if a sales person has good sales DNA.

I was curious to see who is using IQ tests in sales hiring so I jumped on google and and didn’t find much. If anyone is using IQ in sales, they are not publishing their results.

IQ tests have been a popular way of testing intelligence since they were first introduced in the early 1900’s, in spite of the criticisms that they are not accurate. According to the American Psychological Association: “intelligence testing has also been accused of unfairly stratifying test-takers by race, gender, class and culture; of minimizing the importance of creativity, character and practical know-how; and of propagating the idea that people are born with an unchangeable endowment of intellectual potential that determines their success in life.” According to the Association, although the tests have evolved over the years, the consensus is that IQ tests should not be relied upon and while it may be logical to assume that people with higher IQ’s earn more, the research to support this theory is cloudy. Research scientist Jay Zagorsky has shown there does seem to be a correlation between IQ and income, but there seems to be no correlation between IQ and wealth – as if to say smart people can earn more, but don’t know what to do with their money.

According to wikipedia a 2002 study by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis concluded that an individual’s location, inherited wealth, race, and schooling are more important as factors in determining income than IQ. That said many companies still use IQ tests and there are literally hundreds of tests available online.

Anyone thinking about using any of these online tests may want to take a look at this article in the Guardian about one person’s own experiences using online IQ tests. To make a long story short, blogger Dean Burnett took several tests which all indicated that he had very high or genius level intelligence which makes sense since he has a Phd in neuroscience. This would be a good endorsement for the ability of these tests to measure intelligence except for the fact that when he took the tests (all multiple choice), he selected answers entirely at random and very quickly (which triggers bonus points), so either his random responses were either surprisingly correct or the tests are probably useless in predicting anything.

To your success!

Sources:

Online IQ tests: are they valid?

American Psychological Association – Intelligent intelligence testing

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)