Sales Managers Mastermind: Micro-Learning

The Interview as a Sales Call

Hey, it's Jody from Sandler Keystone. In this video I'm going to be talking about interviewing sales candidates. This video is important because many sales managers don't have a structure for interviewing sales candidates other than having a conversation. But there's much more to an effective interview, especially with a sales candidate, and I want to share some of the best practices I've learned.

Over the years I've seen many sales managers who fell in love with a candidate's background, or with someone who just has really good rapport skills. They hire them and they don't work out. When we do a debrief and ask what happened, I find that managers many times become too emotionally involved in the process. They're not using a testing tool to have an objective look at the person, and overall the interview doesn't have a lot of structure or strategy to it.

Typically what managers are looking for is rapport-building skills, which is important. But what they're not looking for is how effective this salesperson is at challenging them — the way you'd want them to challenge a prospect. Are they asking you questions as a manager, or are they just talking about their experience? Are they trying to close you on a next step?

As a sales manager, I want you to look at your interview process as one big test in selling. How do they approach you? Because how they approach you is how they approach a prospect. Do they ask questions? Do they actively listen? Do they try to close you at the end of the meeting to get a next step? Those are all things you'd want a salesperson to do. The problem is managers aren't looking for that in an interview — they're looking for a conversation, or they go through the resume and ask about experience. I want you to view it as one big sales call. Every single thing the candidate does in the conversation, take it through the lens of: that's the way they'd interact with a customer, client, or prospect.

Testing Starts Before the Interview

If you view the interview process as one big test on how a salesperson engages with customers and prospects, then the test begins with the very first outreach. When you get that first email from someone saying they're interested in your company, I would not respond — because prospects rarely do. It takes twelve attempts for most salespeople to get a prospect to respond. So when a salesperson sends me that first message, I am not responding. If they're any good, they are going to figure out a second attempt. It might not be an email. They may leave a voicemail, send something on LinkedIn, or shoot you a text if they're resourceful enough to find your cell number.

A lot of managers ask, "Why are they texting me?" That is an amazing test. If they're smart enough to figure out how to find your mobile number and send you a message, you should be all over looking into that person.

Part of the reason I talk about all of this is that mediocre salespeople are good interviewers in the traditional interview process. Someone who has been in sales for fifteen years but isn't a top performer has figured out one thing: how to build rapport and have a conversation. But that doesn't mean they're a closer, a prospector, or someone who can deal with rejection. The traditional interview plays right into their strengths.

Adapting the Test for Virtual Selling

Because of the environment we've been in since the pandemic, people are doing hybrid selling. They're using Teams and Zoom, pre-recorded video, texting, LinkedIn, video in LinkedIn. So now I want to figure out: can a candidate use all these different communication channels to effectively communicate?

When you look at your interviewing, are you building in elements of that one-big-test philosophy at every step? Are you seeing how they interact with you the way a prospect would? How are they at reaching out on LinkedIn? Here's a great question to ask: "Do you use LinkedIn to prep for meetings?" Many candidates will say yes, because they know it's the right interview answer. The next question you always ask is: "When you looked at my profile before this meeting, what did you learn about me?" You very quickly smoke out the BS. If they really use LinkedIn, they will rattle off videos you've posted, your job history, details about your company. If they're a poser, they'll say something like, "I've been really busy and haven't gotten to yours yet." For me, that's code for: we're done.

One thing to be careful of is that many sales managers become cheerleaders for their company. They go into recruiting mode — telling the candidate how great the culture is, how good the marketing is, how many qualified leads they get. At some point, the manager is doing the selling. Here's what I know: if you're a manager, you've already proven you can sell. What you need to figure out in the interview is whether they can sell. Of course you'll recruit a bit and tell them how great the company is, but in the early stages, don't get into recruiting mode. Figure out if they can sell you first. The rule is simple: don't blue-sky the job early in the process.

When it comes to the virtual environment specifically, pay attention to things as simple as their background, lighting, and audio. It sounds basic, but you'd be surprised how many candidates can't figure out how to avoid having an open closet behind them, or have audio you can barely hear, or have their camera so low you can hardly see their face. View the image they're projecting as the image they'd put forward to your customers and prospects.

In part of the interview, I always ask the candidate to pull up their capabilities deck and do a quick role play — just two or three minutes walking through a slide as if I'm a prospect. I want to see how they communicate in a virtual environment. If they can't find the deck, if they're clunky sharing a screen, if they clearly don't whiteboard or aren't comfortable with these tools, I'd be very careful. At this point in the evolution of virtual selling, I don't want to hire someone who doesn't know the basics — screen sharing, whiteboards, showing a video, going in and out of screen share, keeping someone engaged in an easily distractible environment.

Asking Tough Questions and Demanding Specifics

When you're asking questions of a candidate, there are fifty questions you could ask — but it's not so much which question you ask, it's your ability to ask tough questions with the demeanor of a prospect. Not a lot of smiling. Be very direct and listen for BS responses versus real responses.

Ask the first question, and then keep following up to get to the tactics. People will give interview answers. For example, ask: "Tell me about your system for prospecting." They say, "I get leads, I make my calls, and then I have first meetings." You follow up: "How specifically do you get leads?" "I go online." "Where online?" "LinkedIn and Google." "Okay, pull up your screen right now and show me how you do that. Can you share a lead list you've developed and walk me through how you manage it?"

Or ask: "What are the key questions you ask in a first meeting?" They say, "I like to ask open-ended questions and discover pain points." That's where you drill down. "Give me four or five questions right now. Let's role play — you're asking me questions, I'm the prospect. Go." That's what I want you to do in the interview: many role plays. Let's hear them actually do it. There's so much theory in interviews, and it sounds good — but your BS meter should be going off. Make them prove it.