INTERVIEWING SALES CANDIDATES
Interviewing sales candidates is the most critical phase of sales recruiting. Here are some important recruiting tips for interviewing sales candidates from the CNI Recruiting team.
1. Multiple Interviews And Interviewers
Many hiring managers will “cut corners” during the recruiting process by not having a sufficient number of interviews and/or interviewers. No matter how urgently you need to fill a position it is best to take the time required for at least three interviews with at least two interviewers. Hiring the wrong candidate is much worse than the problems that result from having an open position.
2. Past Performance
A candidate’s past performance is the most important indicator of future performance. Accordingly, review every previous job with candidates or at least the last three jobs. Discuss personal sales vs. quotas (and team sales vs. quotas if appropriate). Ask about candidate successes and how they achieved them. Probe candidate challenges and how they overcame them. Determine what candidates liked and didn’t like about their jobs. Ask about their relationships with peers, supervisors, prospects and customers.
3.Tenure
Job tenure is a critical component of your evaluations. You do not want to spend the time and money ramping up a new candidate who will leave after a short period. So, discuss why candidates left each previous job and any extended gaps between jobs. Be sure to obtain tenures of all previous jobs in months and years if resumes do not include them.
4. Prospecting
Discuss the methods candidates use to prospect and determine the percentage of leads converted to prospects and the percentage of prospects converted to sales. Ask how they move past gatekeepers. Also ask about their most difficult prospecting experience and the outcome.
5. Test Candidates
Invite candidates to “sell” you their current solutions. During the “sale” ask questions and raise objections. Grade candidates on communications, establishing trust, relationship building, engagement, obtaining requirements, matching requirements with solution strengths, overcoming objections, subject matter expertise, competitive knowledge, positioning, confidence, competence and closing.
6. Why?
Ask candidates probing questions. Answers to questions will lead to follow-up questions, which can be as simple as “why?”
7. Commitment
Ask candidates if they will do whatever it takes within reason to make a sale and request examples of this level of commitment.
About CNI Recruiting And Best Recruiting
CNI Recruiting and our subsidiary Best Recruiting provide a nine-month guarantee in the event our candidates resign or are terminated for any reason. Our fee is 20% of candidate first year base salary including Executive Searches. There are no advertising, subscription or other charges and you pay our fee only if you hire our candidate. Our offices are in New Jersey and we recruit throughout the U.S.
National Recruitment Database
We leverage a recruitment database of over 120,000 talented candidates. This allows us to quickly refer candidates who are qualified for your job, culture and budget, which results in a significant reduction in your recruiting effort, turnover, and related costs.
We Would Like To Get To Know You
Whatever search terms you use to find a recruiter to fill your jobs, i.e. recruiter, recruiting, recruitment, national recruiter, best recruiter, sales recruiter, IT recruiter or headhunter, you will find that CNI Recruiting or Best Recruiting is the right recruitment firm for you. Please call (908) 868-7724, email us at [email protected], or fill out our contact form today.
Fred Neufeld
President, CNI Recruiting
(908) 874-6148
[email protected]
www.cnirecruiting.com
