Assessing sales candidates: Two questions to ask

When you are recruiting for top sales professionals, it can be easy to slip into hiring similar types of people with the same level of experience. Unconscious bias in a hiring process is damaging, and not challenging these biases will stunt diversity within your business in the future. This will cause you to miss chances to hire experienced, new, and junior professionals that you can develop in your team.

So, why should you be hiring professionals at different levels, and what are the benefits of doing so?

The importance of hiring professionals at different levels

Having a healthy variety of experience levels throughout your team allows for the organic development or more junior staff, as well as encouraging your senior members to develop into leadership roles in the future. This organic development allows a natural hierarchy to form, allowing internal progression and making sure that future leaders are developing the skills they need early, to show that they’re prepared for the next stage in their career.

The benefit of embedding training and development in your culture

Some may believe that it is more beneficial or more important to hire experienced sales professionals to the business. However, here are some of the benefits of hiring junior-level candidates to your sales vacancies:

• New sales professionals or recent graduates make great professionals as you can develop them right from the start and help shape them into top performers.  
• Financially, hiring professionals at a junior level will mean that you are paying less basic salaries, whilst developing them to become more experienced. Not to mention that training and developing this talent is an investment in itself.
• Sales techniques can be taught to junior professionals, which means you can develop your teams to fit with how you want your business to work.
   

Personality traits to look out for in sales candidates

Sales is a very turbulent industry to work in. Therefore, it is important to recognise the traits needed in a professional during the interview stage to see whether or not they are suitable for a career in your business. Here are some of the top personality traits to look for in sales professionals:

• Drive, motivation, and the ability to be adaptable at short notice. 
• The ability to mentally adjust from one day to another. Whether that’s beginning a new quarter from scratch or having a sale fall through at the final hurdle, which can be tough.
• Resilience is the most important quality in salespeople, yet often the most difficult to ascertain. 
   

Interviewing sales professionals 

Most sales companies will interview differently because the skills and requirements needed to work in a sales role from company to company will change depending on the job that they are hiring for. For example, if you’re hiring for a field sales role, you can go for prolonged periods without seeing one of your colleagues. For one of these roles, ask questions like, “How do you organise yourself when you are deprived of any external input?” This can help to test their lone-working capabilities.

Secondly, if you are recruiting for a creative sales role, you could ask: “What’s worse: making your target by upsetting your manager, or missing target but keeping the boss happy?” There is no correct answer to this question, but it will be good to see how they react. You will be able to gauge what sort of person that they are and determine if they are a good fit for your culture and current team.

Become desirable to top sales professionals.

Attracting the top junior sales talent is important in developing your business of the future. Investment in the process is everything. If you are finding that you are losing your favourite candidates at the last hurdle of your recruitment process, it is important to question yourself on why this is happening. Usually, it is something to do with your process and how you are interviewing these candidates that may give off the wrong impression. If you are putting them through psychometric testing before they’ve met their potential manager, they will likely feel like a data-point, and it is likely your competitors are being more personable throughout their process and connecting with the candidate more successfully.

Big brand businesses assume that everyone wants to work for them, but in reality, there is so much choice in today’s market that it is no longer the case. Interviews need to be recognised as a two-way process, and candidates should be nurtured throughout the process.

Businesses should be going above and beyond to attract the best people. Offering company perks such as flexible working, gym memberships, early finishes on a Friday, and high performer awards can make all the difference. If a company is seen to be investing in their staff, they can expect the same respect in return. 

If you are interested in hiring top professionals to your sales business, get in touch with one of our specialist recruitment consultants for a confidential discussion. Alternatively, if you are looking for a new opportunity, create a MyPage account to make the best use of our matching technology, or explore our current sales vacancies here.

Angus Bulger
Consultant, Michael Page Sales