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Hello, I am Steve Suggs, sales recruiting expert and author of the book, Can They Sell. Welcome to my sales recruitment video blog where you learn to hire the best salespeople.
In this video today, I’ll be talking about how to measure, during the interview, the candidate’s ability to conduct a fact-finding interview in order to discover the prospect’s need for your product.
In my last video blog, I talked about my mentor Ron and his great sales skills. Ron taught me that the sale was made during the fact-finder. He said that if we can get the prospect talking enough about their pain and challenges, the prospect subconsciously believes that we can solve their problems. Ron was a master at transitioning from the initial small talk into getting the prospect to open up their life and talk all about their problems.
There were three ingredients in Ron’s success.
- He had a set of open-ended questions that led the prospect to talk about their situation and needs.
- He was very confident while asking each and every question. He didn’t hesitate to ask sensitive questions, but he was very skillful at putting the prospect at ease. He was also very good at keeping the sales call into a very tight time frame.
- He disciplined himself to listen 80% of the time throughout the fact-finding process.
How do we discover these three dimensions while interviewing salespeople?
1. To measure the candidate’s willingness to follow your sales process of using open-ended questions, ask this question,
- “If you were trying to discover my need for the last product that you sold, what are a couple of questions you would ask me during the fact-finding process?”
Top candidates will quickly ask you a couple of open-ended questions. Weak candidates will struggle and begin to tell you benefits of their last product.
2. We have to measure the hardwired personality traits of:
- social assertiveness
- desire to direct
These two hardwired traits helped Ron confidently ask each and every question and helped him to control the fact-finding process into a tight timeframe.
3. Measure work ethic and discipline.
The third secret to Ron’s fact-finding success was in his discipline to listen effectively. Ron was like most successful salespeople. He was wired to work at a very fast pace, so he had to discipline himself to slow down and listen more than he talked. This discipline is part of the character trait of work ethic.
The best salespeople discipline themselves to do the things they are not naturally hardwired to do in order to be effective during the sales process.
We measure work ethic and discipline with questions like this,
- “Who had the greatest impact on you in your life?”
- “What did they teach you about discipline and work ethic?”
- “How has their teaching about work ethic impacted your career?”
The strongest candidates will be able to tell you about a specific person in their life and tell you a strong story about how this person taught them discipline and work ethic and ways it has helped them be successful in their career.
To summarize…
During the sales interview, we measure the candidate’s ability to conduct an effective fact-finding process by looking at their previous pattern of the way they conducted interviews in the past, measure for the personality traits of social assertiveness and desire to direct, and finally, the character trait of disciplined work ethic.
Thank you for joining me. See you next time on the Can They Sell video blog for more sales job recruitment training. As always, please leave your comments below and forward this video to anyone who will benefit. Now go enjoy recruiting the best, and use this knowledge and interview questions to measure your candidate’s ability to conduct an effective fact-finder.
Learn more about the following:
• Where to find sales people, where to find sale reps
• What to look for while recruiting salespeople – 5 Dimensions of the Best Salesperson Profile Hiring sales, hire salespeople, hire sales people, hiring sales people, hiring sales reps, IT sales recruitment, recruiting sales people, sales job recruitment
• How to look for the 5 Dimensions – get questionnaires – interview questions for sales, interview questions for salespeople, sales interview, interview questions for sales people
- Sales test, sales assessment, CPQ, Craft Personality Questionnaire (now the CTS Sales Profile personality questionnaire)
- Sales interview tips
- Sales job description – page 79, Can They Sell book
- Tips for screening resumes – Chapter 13, Can They Sell book
To YOUR Success,
Steve Suggs
SalesManage.com/Recruiting
CanTheySell.com