5 Tips to Secure a Great Sales Hire

Past experience tells us that in order to hire just one A-Player candidate, you need to select from 200 applicants and disqualify 199 to find that hidden gem. Hiring great salespeople is one of the hardest tasks you’ll face in developing your business.  

Getting this wrong is possibly the highest hidden cost in any business and will only lead to a number of repercussions that, trust me, you will not want to face. Consider the lifetime cost to your business of making the wrong sales hire who goes on to a territory and loses you your best customers and damages your reputation.  

1. NEVER Compromise on Recruitment 

Do not take a punt and hire someone just to fill a chair. That’s just stupid. Recruitment should never be seen a half-hearted effort or chore. Bad hires today are tomorrow’s management headaches. 

2. NEVER Make the Interview a Comfortable Experience for the Candidate 

Always interview objectively and don’t hire someone just because you like them. Hire them because they are the right person for your job, right now. Make them feel uncomfortable in the interview so you know they can handle the inevitable uncomfortable situations they’ll face in your sales role. It’s how they handle themselves in the interview that will give you an insight into how they’ll act in your job.  

3. Interview for and Identify Habits  

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. What we do repeatedly in the past, we’re likely to do repeatedly in the future.  

Habits are a leading indicator, something that will show you what is likely to happen in the future and can help predict someone’s future behaviour. Lag indicators (such as skills, experience and performance) focus on past experience, telling you what has already happened but not necessarily what is going to happen again… 

If you want someone who will prospect regularly, ask in the interview and find evidence about their prospecting habit. If they don’t have one, then why would you even consider hiring them? You don’t want someone who was just lucky or being carried in their last role, you want someone who does this as a matter of habit. 

4. Interview for Cognitive Skills – their Ability to Adjust and Thrive Based on Current Work Conditions 

Cognitive skills are another leading indicator you should be looking out for. Test how coachable they are during the interview. Do a role play that mirrors your real-life sales environment. Find out how they really take constructive criticism. Do they feel there is room for improvement? If not, and they tell you they are “God’s Gift”, you probably haven’t got someone who is coachable. But if they pick their sale apart, ask for advice and are curious as to how they can improve – that’s a plus and shows they have the intellectual humility to take direction, rather than letting their big fat ego get in the way. 

5. Interview for Attitudes and Beliefs That Will See Them Succeed in Your Role 

Attitudes towards the company? Towards the Customer? Their money concept? Being held accountable for mistakes? Taking personal responsibility? Taking criticism? Adapting to changing markets? Work ethic? Ambition and drive.  

Do you know what good actually looks like when you see it? Consider the types of ideal answers that you’re hoping to hear, so you can distinguish between the weak and the great. The ability to recognise these answers is crucial in finding your A-Players. 

Look for people who aren’t afraid of hard work yet understand that working harder at things that don’t work is a fool’s errand. This is where adaptability and high intelligence come to play. You don’t want them to overthink the problem and get paralysed looking for the perfect solution. Perfectionists are not what you should be looking for. Too much time wasted on the last 2% often means other genuine opportunities get missed. 

Do they accept personal responsibility for hitting their targets and goals? Do they take decisive action, or wait to be shoved into action by their manager?  

Use these 5 tips wisely, refer back to them consistently and don’t slack on recruitment!