How to Interview and Identify Top Sales Champions and Avoid the Costly Mis-Hires
Apr 28, 2009 Business Advice, Business Tools, Career Advice, Communication, Executive Coaching, HR issues, Hiring and recruiting, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Sales Management, accountability, career coaching, coaching for managers, management tips, training for managers
“I know how to interview. I’ve been doing it for years.” I hear this from practically every manager or HR executive I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching or training. And today, when speaking to one of my favorite clients, a VP of HR, this statement was echoed once again.
And it’s not like these managers or those responsible for making a hiring decision are doing it all wrong. Many are quite good at interviewing people, finding the right candidates and screening out the ones that just don’t fit. I’ve just observed over the years some key areas that many people are missing the mark on when conducting an interview and determining who the best candidate for the position truly is.
Especially when it comes to topgrading and rebuilding your sales team, getting the right candidate in the right position in the most expedient way possible is more critical than ever. The cost of not doing so can be severe. And this cost is compounded when companies onboard the wrong person. Just pick up any newspaper and read about another company closing their doors or missing their sales goals to exemplify how much of a priority this is today for any organization.
Below, I’ve listed some very key questions in order to reduce mis-hires and bring on the right people. If asked and asked correctly, these questions will reduce mis-hires by about 80% or more. Yes, that’s how powerful these questions can be. I would strongly suggest weaving these questions into your interviewing process. And keep in mind, most of these questions will apply to any position. Notice that I’ve also broken down these questions by category, as well as some additional categories that you can use to build out further interviewing questions.
Granted, you may already be using some of these questions during an interview. And keep in mind, this list can be built out even further. However, it’s the collective use of all the questions that are going to have the deeper, more positive impact when choosing the right hire.
Moving beyond simply the questions that you could ask, what other things are you doing to ensure you make the best hiring decision? Keep in mind, the interviewing process is multi-dimensional. To build off this, lets look at how you manage or facilitate a simulation or a role play. Many interviewers ask questions like, “How would you handle this if you were in this situation” or “Tell me what steps you would take before calling on a key account” or even “Walk me through a strategy you would use to build your pipeline.”
While these are all great questions, they are still falling short of one critical element. That is, the language this candidate would be using to facilitate the type of conversation described in these simulations. To go deeper in determining this person’s acumen or ability, it’s critical you’re able to evaluate how they communicate, as well as their overall communication strategy that would be embedded in each of these situations I’ve described in the prior questions.
The most successful salespeople realize that sales, just like leadership and coaching, is truly a language and a way of communicating. Therefore, it’s imperative you uncover not only how they think strategically and the processes they may use but how effective this person could be when you send them out to connect with your new and existing customers. Anyone can talk a good game regarding processes and approach from the hundred foot viewpoint. But how they deliver the message in a variety of different situations is something that can’t be faked during an interview.
When these questions and the simulation exercise are used correctly, you’ll find that the need to topgrade your sales team will diminish because you’ve fixed the breakdown in your overall hiring and retention strategy; the broken component that exists in your system and where it all starts, your interviewing process.
Interviewing Questions:
Work History:
1. What were your responsibilities in your last position?
2. We all make mistakes. What would you say were a couple of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your last job?
3. If you could go back in time and fix that, what would you do differently?
4. What would you prior supervisor say if asked what your strengths and weaknesses were?
5. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and were able to overcome?
6. What were your successes? What are you most proud of? How did you achieve that?
7. What circumstances contributed to your leaving?
8. What was your supervisors name and title? Where is that person now?
9. Would your boss hire you back? Why?
10. What were his or her strengths and weaker points from your perspective?
11. Would you be willing to arrange for us to talk with him or her?
Next Position:
1. What criteria are most important to you in your next job?
2. Describe your ideal position?
3. How close does this opportunity fit your ideal position?
Excellence and Development:
1. How to you better your best?
2. How do you raise the bar on yourself and others around you?
3. How do you develop yourself and your skills?
4. How important is it to you to be the best at what you do?
5. How do you assure that happens?
6. How do/did you keep your edge in such a competitive environment/marketplace?
Accountability:
1. What does personal accountability mean to you?
2. What areas in your life/career are you most accountable? Least?
3. Give me an example of how becoming more accountable has contributed to your success?
4. Where do you feel you need to become more accountable (in an area in your life or career)?
Decision Making and Problem Solving:
1. How do you solve problems?
2. How do you go about making decisions?
3. Give me one problem or challenge you had and walk me through how you solved it using that model.
4. How do you go about making a career decision? What factors do you measure? Your approach?
5. What were a couple of the most difficult or challenging decisions you’ve made recently?
6. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you’ve made over the last year or so?
Creativity and Solution Development:
1. How creative are you?
2. How important is creativity in relation to your overall selling approach and strategy?
3. Can you provide an example how you were creative in your last position that led to solving a problem or closing a sale?
Integrity:
1. What are some of the values you have that you refuse to compromise?
2. Describe a situation where you were pressured or challenged to compromise your integrity and what you felt was best and right? How did you handle it?
Self Discipline, Time Management and Organization:
1. How do you go about organizing your schedule and your day?
2. Do you live by a set of best practices? How? What are they? (in selling, organization, etc.)
3. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline? What happened?
4. Everyone procrastinates at one point or another. Can you share the kind of things that you have a tendency to procrastinate?
5. How much guidance and supervision do you feel you need?
Self Management/State/Stress:
1. What stresses you out?
2. What do you when that happens?
3. How do you eliminate it? How do you handle it?
Openness and Self Awareness:
1. What were the most difficult criticisms for you to hear and accept?
Resourcefulness:
1. What actions would you feel you would need to take during the first few weeks here in your new position if you were to join our organization?
2. What obstacles did you face during your present/last position and how did you handle those?
3. What would you be mindful of needing to do and the resources and training you would need to secure your success here?
Tactical Sales Oriented Questions to Recruit at a Deeper Level:
You can find these questions and more on my prior blog post here:
1.What was the average size of each sale? (Dollar amount, cost of goods/services sold.)
2. What type of appointments were you scheduling when prospecting or cold calling? What was the goal here?
3. Where the appointments on site/face to face with each prospect or via the phone?
4. When actually closing a sale, did you actually sell over the phone or did you have to meet each prospect in person?
5. Did you sell a product, a service or both? (Describe how you sold each product and why there was a different approach.)
6. Did you handle the entire sales process from start to finish, including the deliverable? (Was there an account executive who you worked with, was it a team oriented approach to selling, were you only responsible for certain aspects of the sale?)
7. Describe to me the products or services you’ve sold? (Complicated or simple?)
8. Did you sell something that had an online component? Was it strictly a service? (Where they selling the tangible or the intangible?)
9. Was your product/service a “nice to have,” a “want to have” (luxury, added benefit) or a
need to have?” (Was it a necessity, i.e. gasoline, telecom, office supplies, utilities, mobile phones, insurance, etc.)
10. What do you consider ‘prospecting’ and ‘cold calling’ to be? How do you feel about having to engage in this activity? (We’re looking to uncover how they think and feel about prospecting; their perception of it.)
11. What type of prospecting and cold calling did you do? How much cold calling did you do each day/week? (Number of calls made.) How many calls did you have to make to (get an appointment, close a sale, uncover a new prospect, etc.)?
12. Please share with me what your typical approach would be when cold calling. (Describe not only your process but exactly what you said when you were making a cold call.)
13. Who was your target audience/prospect? (B2b, b2c, C level executives, business owners, sole practitioners, were you dealing with only one decision maker or did you have to coordinate with several decision makers, influencers, committees, board members, etc.)
14. When were you calling on them? (Time, day, frequency of calls, etc.)
15. What was the average size of the company you called on?
16. What markets did you focus on? (Type of company, industry, vertical, etc.)
17. How did you get your leads/uncover your prospects? Where the cold calls you made totally cold or were you getting them from another source and then following up with them? (These would be warmer leads from trade shows, web inquiries, referrals, call-ins, direct mail and marketing efforts, etc.)
18. What were the concerns or objections that you typically encountered with your prospects? (What stalled your sales efforts?)
19. How long was your average sales cycle? (From the time you connected with a qualified prospect up until the time when you converted that prospect into a client.)
20. Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP’s, etc.?
Simulations and Role Plays:
1. If you had to make a call to a prospect who you have never spoken to, what would be the steps you would take before making that call?
2. What would that cold call sound like?
3. If you were following up with a customer to explore and uncover additional selling opportunities, what would your approach sound like?
4. Lets say you just delivered the final product/service to your new customer. They called you the next day with a major problem. They were frustrated and irate. Lets say I’m the customer in this situation. How would you facilitate that conversation? What would that dialogue sound like?
5. There’s a prospect you’ve been calling on for months. They’re finally ready to make a decision to buy and you just found out that there are two more venders now involved in this bid for their business. What would be your strategy to position yourself as the vender of choice? (What would you say, questions asked, etc.)
6. How many times do you call on a prospect before putting them on your do not call list? How do you determine that? What would your approach be? Why?
7. You’re about to visit a new potential client for the first time. What preliminary work would you do? How would you craft your presentation and set the expectations of the meeting? (What would your presentation sound like?)
8. You’ve been handed a client list of approximately 100 accounts to call on. You’ve noticed after several months, their monthly spending with you has slowly diminished. How would you handle this? What would you say?
Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:
• Persuasion
• Communication
• Presentation
• Assertiveness
• Team player
• Conflict management
• Motivation and passion
• Tenacity, commitment, perseverance
• Education
Tags: avoid mis-hires, avoid mishires, Executive Coaching, hiring, hiring salespeople, how to interview, interview process, interviewing, Interviews, management training, onboarding, recruiting, recruiting salespeople, screening candidates, topgrading
Be My Guest for Tomorrow’s Webinar: The Leadership Imperative. Tuition is Free! A Must For All Sales Managers
Apr 22, 2009 Executive Coaching, Live Events, Sales Management, coaching for managers, podcast, training for managers, webinar
Important webinar below for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to retain customers and bring in more business and more sales today.
I know it’s last minute but I just got the blessing to be able to offer my webinar scheduled tomorrow at 1pm EST to you and I’M ABLE TO WAIVE THE COST OF REGISTRATION! That’s right. No fee for you to attend so come as my guest! All you have to do is sign up and log in and enjoy a very timely webinar that is a must for any sales leader and manager. (And if you’re a salesperson, send this to your manager!)
Finally, make sure you’re also following all my latest announcements and posts on Twitter at twitter.com/keithrosen. This 45 minute webinar is for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to bring in more business and more sales today by getting their sales team to perform now.
The Sales Leadership Imperative! Webinar for Sales Managers Who Need To Get Their Sales Team Selling More Today
DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009
TIME: 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time
LOCATION: Your Phone or Computer – Live Webinar!
Presented by: Jonathan Farrington & Keith Rosen
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.
For more information or to register click here.
NOTE: Following registration please ignore the redirect page AND the fees, as it will ask you to pay $60.00 and I am offering you this AT NO COST. Just register and that’s it!
FACT: There has never been a more critical time for sales managers to impact sales and lead from the front.
FACT: The majority of sales managers are simply not equipped with the right skills and tools to do so.
Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. And as some look ahead, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed – possibly forever.
Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.
Join me and Jonathan Farrington, one of the foremost sales team development experts in the world – for this hard-hitting session. This event has been created specifically for sales leaders who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales team to a whole new level so they can start selling more today.
We will highlight how you can:
• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days.
For more information or to register click here.
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.
NOTE: Following registration please ignore the redirect page AND the fees, as it will ask you to pay $60.00 and I am offering you this AT NO COST. Just register and that’s it!
Tags: coaching for managers, Executive Coaching, leadership training, management training, training for managers, webinar, webinars
Live Event! Win More Prospects Today: How to Dramatically Increase Your Selling Opportunities to Boost Your Sales
Apr 17, 2009 Cold Calling Tips, How To Sell and Sales Tips, Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching, cold calling, podcast, tele-sales, tele-workshop, telesales, webinar
Concerned about how to find new and profitable prospects to develop and maintain your customer base? Then stop stressing over how to do it and attend this live, 60-minute Audio Conference that I’m delivering in two weeks and learn how to cold call and prospect like a sales champion. Below are the details.
TITLE: Win More Prospects Today: Dramatically Increase Your Selling Opportunities to Boost Your Sales
DATE: Thursday, April 30, 2009
TIME: 1:00-2:00 p.m. EASTERN STANDARD TIME
LOCATION: Your Phone
PRESENTER: Keith Rosen
Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.
SUMMARY
Prospecting in this tough economy can leave salespeople banging their heads against their desks. However, finding new and profitable business has never been so important. You must find new prospects and develop great relationships today so you and your company will be thriving and well positioned in your industry when the economy turns around.
Join us for this 60-minute conference where you and your colleagues will get the tools to:
• Learn lead generating ideas to keep your pipeline filled all year
• How to get past the toughest gatekeepers and straight to the decision maker
• Follow up strategies that grab attention without the pestering
• Ways to handle “I’m not Interested” – Overcome any objection
PROGRAM BENEFITS
This practical 60-minute, audio conference will provide you and your colleagues with the skills needed to prospect effectively and efficiently over the telephone to increase sales and boost revenue.
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
How to Make the Gatekeeper & Voice Mails Your Ally
• Learn what to say to get you in the door – and get your calls returned
• How to build instant rapport with gatekeepers – get them on your side
• Must know fatal cold calling mistakes every salesperson makes
Heat up Your Cold Call & Pump Up Your Prospecting
• How to find customers who ARE buying and avoid ones who aren’t
• Learn opening statements that will keep prospects from hanging up
• Successfully overcome your fear of cold calling. (It doesn’t have to be painful!)
Understand Your Most Valuable Proposition
• Increase sales opportunities with crafted prospecting templates
• How to ask the right questions- get the prospect to reveal their pain
• Be aware of words that work & words that destroy selling opportunities
Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.
Hosted by Progressive Business Publications, a leader in fast-read actionable advice on workplace issues, the audio conference gives you the opportunity to add immediate, impact to your prospecting efforts in a manner that is:
FAST - No wasted time here. Get right to the heart of the matter in a 1-hour block designed to easily fit into your busy schedule.
CONVENIENT - No airlines. No travel. No time out of the office. Listen from the comfort and convenience of your desk.
EASY - A telephone is all the equipment you need. Just dial in, punch in your access code, and you’re in. That’s it. Follow along with the audio conference handout that will be provided in advance.
ACTIONABLE - Our audio conferences provide money-saving tactics you can start using right when you hang up the phone.
IDEAL FOR MULTIPLE LISTENERS - Use a speakerphone and as many people as you want can listen in – at no extra cost to you. Many professionals use these sessions as a cost-efficient, time-efficient means of training supervisors, managers, and staff and reinforcing key issues in a fresh new manner that they will remember and act on.
AFFORDABLE - Priced at $199, it is a fraction of the cost of travel and attendance fees for other high-priced conferences or seminars.
Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.
Tags: cold calling, cold calling training, get leads, prospecting, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, telesales
Where Do Buyers Go When They Say, “I’ll call you back?”
Apr 17, 2009 Books, Sales Training, sales tips, sales tools
Where do buyers go when they say, “I’ll call you back?”
Why do buyers seem so foolish through our eyes for not making a buying decision, when it’s obvious that they have a need that our solution can resolve?
The sales model only handles half of the buying decision – the solution resolution phase. But it has never managed the buying decision phase – that place that buyers go when they go inside, figure out the internal issues they must manage to bring in a new solution, and make sure that there is buy-in for adopting a new solution. And the internal issues are not necessarily related to what we think of as the Identified Problem, or ‘need’. It might involve an historic fight between two departments that have duplicated staffing rather than clean up the fight. It might involve a set of rules that render your solution prohibitive, regardless of the need. It’s the sort of knowledge that only insiders can handle because it’s idiosyncratic to the culture. And as outsiders, we are not privy to it.
Indeed, a buyer’s need sits within a tangle of elements that have created the Identified Problem over a period of time, hold it in place daily, and fight hard to maintain the status quo because otherwise the system would be out of integrity. Think of an iceberg that has a problem with the tip: until the entire iceberg gets engaged, no change will happen. And in the process, it will fight hard to maintain all of itself rather than be diminished or changed.
Sales hasn’t known how to go inside a buyer’s environment and help manage all of those issues. It’s pure systems theory: systems fight to maintain themselves rather than change. And until or unless the system is able to manage the elements that would threaten the rest of the system, no change can happen. That’s why we don’t close 100% of our obvious sales; that’s where buyers go.
And even though we understand the area around our buyer’s Identified Problem, we have had no way of making sense of those idiosyncratic issues that are outside of our solution space and awareness. And until buyers manage these issues, they cannot make a decision.
My friend and colleague, Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the NY Times Business Bestseller “Selling with Integrity” and 6 other books on her ground-breaking Buying Facilitation Method, has developed a model that gives sellers the tools to help buyers recognize, align, and manage all of those elements within a buyer’s environment that need to be addressed before they can make a purchase. It’s the area that sellers have never been able to influence until now. Through books and guided study programs, Buying Facilitation is available to learn. Consider adding it to the skills you already sell with. Not only will it help your buyer make sound, quick buying decisions, but it will make you a true Servant Leader to your buyer, working together to match their values and align their criteria so they discover the solutions that their cultures will accept.
After my conversation with Sharon Drew just yesterday, I strongly suggest making this part of your skill set as well as your mind set that’s going to offer you a competitive selling edge that you may never have considered before. You can learn more about Sharon Drew Morgen, her programs and incredible books at newsalesparadigm.com and buyingfacilitation.com.
The Sales Leadership Imperative! Webinar for Sales Managers Who Need To Increase Sales Today
Apr 10, 2009 All About Selling, Career Advice, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, accountability, coaching for managers, management tips, podcast, tele-sales, tele-workshop, webinar
Important webinar below for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to retain customers and bring in more business and more sales today.
The Sales Leadership Imperative! Webinar for Sales Managers Who Need To Get Their Sales Team Selling More Today
DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009
TIME: 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time
LOCATION: Your Phone or Computer – Live Webinar!
Presented by: Jonathan Farrington & Keith Rosen
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.
For more information or to register click here.
FACT: There has never been a more critical time for sales managers to impact sales and lead from the front.
FACT: The majority of sales managers are simply not equipped with the right skills and tools to do so.
Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. And as some look ahead, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed – possibly forever.
Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.
Join me and Jonathan Farrington, one of the foremost sales team development experts in the world – for this hard-hitting session. This event has been created specifically for sales leaders who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales team to a whole new level so they can start selling more today.
We will highlight how you can:
• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days.
For more information or to register click here.
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.
Tags: leadership, sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, selling, webinar, webinars
Where to Look For A New Job? Check Out These Industry Recession Winners
Apr 6, 2009 Business Coaching, Career Advice, career coaching
Top 10 Biggest Recession Winners
IBISWorld Announces Industries To Perform Best in 2009
The recession is crippling businesses across the nation, but several industries will remain unscathed by the current economic strife, according to recent Recession Updates published by industry research firm IBISWorld. As one of the nation’s most respected independent publishers of business intelligence research reports, IBISWorld today announced the top 10 industries expected to have the largest revenue growth in 2009:
INDUSTRY AND REVENUE GROWTH 2009
1. Voice Over Internet Protocol Providers (VoIP) 20.1 percent
2. ecommerce & Online Auctions 12.6 percent
3. Biotechnology 10.3 percent
4. Engine, Turbine & Power Transmission Equipment Manufacturing 10.0 percent
5. Scheduled Bus Service 9.2 percent
6. Court Reporting Services 7.7 percent
7. Community Housing Services 7.5 percent
8. Search Engines 6.5 percent
9. Family Counseling 6.1 percent
10. Video Games 5.8 percent
“Emerging industries remain well represented and continue to benefit from technological innovation and cost advantages,” explained George Van Horn, senior analyst with IBISWorld. “Unfortunately, the impact of the recession is equally pronounced among sectors directly benefitting from the social and financial stress associated with the downturn.”
While only five percent of all U.S. industries are fortunate enough to be positively impacted by the recession, IBISWorld research estimates that nearly 60 percent of all industries are negatively impacted or worse.
About Recession Updates
On January 15, 2009, IBISWorld published a set of Recession Updates on its website that includes quarterly forecasted growth, an in-depth look at the shifting business landscape and its immediate repercussions on each U.S. industry. Also published was a macroeconomic recession briefing, entitled Economic Crisis: When Will It End?, created by the company’s senior analysts and Chief Economist, Dr. Richard Buczynski.
For more information visit ibisworld.com
Tags: career advice, career coaching
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