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Rule #9: Don’t get smoked in the interview.
Search for the right candidate. What’s don’t get smoked in the interview mean? Well, sometimes the best sales call that a salesperson would make is on you, during the interview. You had this movie star sitting in front of you during an interview. Cold calling machine. Closing machine. Number one. They’re on somebody else’s payroll. They’re interviewing you now. They’re a professional interviewer. You hire them; they’re on your payroll; they can’t get out of their own way. I mean, a train wreck.
How did that happen? Well, you got smoked. Why? Because you have no process during an interview. So there are two things that I want you to think about. One, do you have a job profile? What would this person be doing? Is it hunting? Is it farming? What types of buyers are they calling on? What’s the selling cycle? What’s the dollar value that you’re going to be using for this? That matters because if you’re going to look for somebody, you want to make sure that if you’re looking for somebody with a long selling cycle, selling multi-million dollar pieces of equipment to executives, you’re not going to hire somebody that’s on a two-week selling cycle for a thousand dollars that calls on purchasing agents. Complete disconnect. But, without this first step, everybody that sits in front of you looks like a movie star.
Once you have your job profile, second, you need to have a candidate profile. Who’s the magic person that would fit my job profile? To uncover this, we use an acronym called search, skills, experience, attitude, results, cognitive skills, and habits. Once you can identify what skills would this person need to be 100% successful on the job profile? What experience should they have in order to be great in my job? What’s their mindset, their attitude? What are the results, their cognitive skills, and habits? Once you’ve identified this is my optimal candidate, then when people sit in front of you, you ask laser guided questions to make sure they have these skills, these experiences, and these results to succeed at your job.
Mis-hires are costly. It costs five times the amount of payroll. If it were your money, I would bet my bottom dollar you would have a job profile and a search. We know, here at Sandler, those two best practices will take your hiring game to the next level.
THE SANDLER RULES FOR SALES LEADERS details a sales management process that works. It offers 49 timeless, proven principles for effective sales leadership, based on the Sandler Selling System. The book is the sequel to the Wall Street Journal bestseller THE SANDLER RULES, also authored by David Mattson.
