Look behind numbers when hiring sales candidates

The current unemployment rate in Denver hovers around 4 percent, which means that hiring a productive salesperson can be a competitive endeavor if not downright difficult.

Salespeople tend to be outgoing and engaging. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’ve found the right person for the job simply because they are likeable. Before interviewing any sales candidate, make an objective list of what kind of salesperson is an ideal fit. Construct questions to uncover whether a likeable sales candidate really matches up well or not.

For example, we interviewed a sales candidate for a client of ours. The candidate, Chuck, claimed to have generated millions of dollars in revenue for the last five years for a large technology company. He had meticulously laid out the numbers for us to see. It looked very impressive until I asked, “Chuck, these numbers look great, but are they a lot for your previous company? Were you exceeding projections?” Chuck admitted that his numbers were about in line with projections. After doing a little research, we found that it was actually an underperformance by several hundred thousand dollars. Chuck had been let go from his previous employer for missing quota four years in a row. He primarily missed quota because he sold virtually no new clients, but rather had renewal and up-sell deals.

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The person that ended up being hired, Dennis, had numbers that looked much less impressive. His best year was $500,000. But when taking a deeper look at the performance, Dennis was much better suited to the job. He had built his sales up from about $100,000 to $500,000. Further, the increases were steady, with at least a 20 percent increase every year. Given the fact that the sales position required developing a new territory, Dennis was clearly a better fit.

Be careful not to let numbers taint how you perceive sales candidates. It takes some careful questioning to get a proper perspective on how impressive – or not – a salesperson’s previous performance was.

Impressive-looking numbers and likeability do not make a candidate the right person for the job. One of the biggest sales-hiring mistakes we see with our clients is that they fall in love with a candidate without an objective check on things such as an assessment of behavioral competencies, communication style and, most importantly, a thorough vetting of real productivity/ performance metrics.

Make sure to gauge what the numbers really mean and that the sales candidate’s past experience lends itself to the unique needs of your business. An interviewing manager with this skill has the ability to be curious, skeptical and detached from the outcome – not necessarily common interviewing skills.

Bob Bolak is president of Sandler Training. Contact him at bbolak@sandler.com or 303-579-1939.