How to Hire Salespeople
What works, what doesn’t, and how to make sure you pick the
right person for the job
By: Adam Robinson | Chief Hireologist / CEO
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How to Hire Salespeople
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Why is hiring salespeople so difficult?
Business managers, particularly entrepreneurs and small business owners, have a downright awful track
record when it comes to hiring sales talent. When you hire the right sales resource, you see instant results and
amazing things begin to happen. On the other hand, when you hire a mediocre (or worse) salesperson, you
shell out paycheck after paycheck and begin to feel like you’re running a corporate welfare program.
So, why is sales hiring so hard? Most of the issues that create difficulty during the hiring and
selection process are due to one of the following:
Great salespeople are always in demand. Problem is, there are so darn few of them. That means
that for you, the hiring manager, the market for the most productive business development resources
is always tight. Even in the midst of the current economic
slowdown, with millions of layoffs across the planet, topproducing sales staff are virtually downsize-proof, for
obvious reasons.
This supply-side constraint forces you as a manager to
do make one of two choices. Your first choice is to up
your recruiting and interviewing game to be able to locate
and hire the top resources away from your competitors.
Your second choice is to fish in the pond stocked with
mediocre sales talent because that’s who’s on the market
and easy to pick off. If you’re reading this and feel like
Choice #2 is somewhat autobiographical, then keep reading..
Mediocre salespeople are A-Players when it comes to selling themselves. If only they sold your
products and services as well as they sold themselves in that interview, right? Most sales candidates
are fairly adept at talking about the act of selling – what to do, what to say, how to act, and the other
common tools of the trade. But did they actually do any of it? If they haven’t made plan for the past
three years, it doesn’t matter what they tell you in an interview. They didn’t cut it.
The beautiful thing about judging sales performance is that all you have to do is look at the
scoreboard. Did they make the number? Have they consistently made the number? Can they prove
it? All the bloviating in the world won’t change their prior results. Don’t be taken by smooth-talking
sales candidates who proclaim to move mountains. Check the math (and their prior 3 years’ W2s).
Great salespeople are a product of environment. A recent study found that when salespeople
classified as “top performers” by their employers left their position to work at another firm, they were
classified as “top performers” by their new employers less than 50% of the time. The study went on
to show that the reasons for sales success have as much to do with environment as their sales ability.
You need both to be successful.
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Take Bob Superstar, who’s worked at Cloudco Software for the last 5 years, and was their top
producer for the last 3 years. Cloudco has an outstanding marketing department and is a wildly
profitable company. It’s managed well, and customers love them. Bob is wooed by Startup Inc and
leaves his job for a new gig that pays twice as much base salary. Startup Inc has no marketing
department to speak of, has client delivery issues, and is not yet a profitable firm. Bob struggles
mightily at Startup Inc. and quits after 18 months of beating his head against the wall.
Is Bob a bad salesperson? The point is this: you could hire the best salesperson in the universe, but
if you have bad processes, weak support, and unreferenceable customers, then no amount of sales
talent is going to get you where you need to be.
We’re desperate! The manager screams at his recruiter, “We need a new salesperson, NOW! Just
find me someone! Anyone! No, I don’t have time to actually write a detailed Job Profile that explains
what results they’ll actually be accountable for…just find me someone!”
You might as well carry around a mirror in your back pocket and screen sales candidates using the
Fog Test. That’s what you’re doing when you blow through the pre-hiring process of analyzing and
deciding what you really need. The solution isn’t to hurry, the solution is to plan ahead so you don’t
keep finding yourself in the same jam.
How do you know what skills and behavioral traits to look for in a candidate?
Know What To Look For
The process of hiring a great salesperson begins with an analysis of the job you’re trying to fill. Do
you have a complex selling cycle, or a one-call close?
Do salespeople have to generate their own leads? Do
you mandate CRM use by your reps? Are daily activities
(calls per day, appointments set, meetings held, etc)
actively monitored and measured? The answers to
these questions dictate the kind of candidate who will
succeed in your role.
All managers have made at least one sales hiring
mistake at one time or another. The solution is to
conduct a structured, behavior-based interview and selection process, but interviews involve an
investment of your time. There’s nothing worse than settling into an interview scheduled to last an
hour and knowing in the first 5 minutes that the candidate is a no-go.
To be absolutely sure that you’re not wasting your time with a sales candidate, you need to review the
candidate’s resume thoroughly, and think through the framework outlined below. The vast majority of
hiring mistakes can be nipped in the bud at the resume review.
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There are a number of things to consider when reviewing a sales resume:
Resumes are marketing documents. Some managers assume that resumes contain the gospel
truth when it comes to a candidate’s background and experience. The truth of the matter is that
resumes are engineered to highlight (even embellish) strengths and accomplishments while omitting
clear and obvious failures. Think about it – have you ever seen a resume that read, “Hit 56% of
target sales target due to my inability to set appointments and unwillingness to consistently make cold
calls”?
Treat resumes like your would any other piece of marketing collateral. They serve to tell you
the features and benefits, but come up short on the deficiencies. That’s where a keen eye and
experience come into play.
It takes a B2B salesperson 6 months to become productive. With rare exceptions, expect a
six-month ramp-up period when hiring new B2B sales staff. The first 90 days are a write-off from
a production standpoint, and the next three should yield slow but steadily increasing progress. By
month 6, they should be in full-on selling mode. This time line affects the lens through which a
manager should look at a sales resume.
For example, if a salesperson has been at their current employer for less than 6 months and is
looking for work, that’s a major red flag. What that tells you is that either this person is failing
miserably and knows it, or they made a huge mistake in accepting the position and they want out.
People make mistakes, great candidates have taken a job only to realize that their new employer is
headquartered in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Most of the time I find that the reason they’re leaving is
because the feel like they’ll fail in the job, and are cutting their losses early.
No matter the reason, what a duration of less than 6 months on a resume tells you is that the
salesperson didn’t do enough fact-finding during the interview process to make a good decision, or
that they’re not cutting it and are afraid for their job (or were fired). Both insights tell me that they’re
not at the top of the game, and that I should keep looking. You can make some exceptions to this
rule, but only after really digging into the facts.
Are you so desperate to throw your company’s money at a salesperson that you’d hire someone
whose resume creates doubt before they’re even in the job? Someone better is out there, with less
baggage (read: less risk).
Great salespeople don’t leave jobs where they’re making money. It’s pure human nature. If
you’re knocking down $250,000 a year selling WidgetSoft Systems and crushing your sales goals
in the process, chances are that you’re a hero at your company. Praise flows freely, and you get
sent on trips where you sit on a beach with your family and drink rum cocktails. You’re probably very
happy.
What you emphatically don’t do is actively look for another job. Said differently – great salespeople
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don’t leave great jobs. Great salespeople leave that great job when the company decides to cap
their earnings, or because they get acquired and the new regime wrecks what was working. They
don’t want to start over working for you and your giant question mark without a major upgrade to
compensation potential.
Here’s what it all means for you as the hiring manager with regards to the resume review:
If a salesperson is looking for a job, that should immediately make you wary. If this person has stints
of less than 6 months on their resume, that’s a warning that there’s something more to the story.
Why? Because it takes at least 6 months for even a great salesperson to get to a consistent, quotareaching level of production. Make sure you know why they’re looking for a new gig. The answer,
“because I’m looking for more opportunity” typically translates to “I’m not making my number.” You
need to find out why. [Author’s note: in most cases, I recommend flagging a resume where any of the
jobs listed were less than 18 months’ duration]
These are a few of the major themes when reviewing a sales resume. When you’re looking at a
sales resume that looks too good to be true, it probably is. Understand that resumes are just another
form of marketing collateral, and that the job durations tell a big part of the story. Focus you attention
not on the words, but on the time frames. And remember – salespeople who make great money
because they’re great at their job typically do not leave unless something fundamental changes about
their employer.
It’s tough, this business of hiring salespeople. Let’s look at the “rubber meeting the road” part
of the process – the interview.
Running a Sales Interview
Sales interviews are a challenge to run if you’re not sure what to ask. That’s why you should come
armed with a pre-defined interview script that lays out everything that you’ll want to ask prior to sitting
down with your candidate. It’ll keep you on track, ensure
you don’t skip critical items, and enable you to relax and
focus on listening to what’s being said.
What do you need to focus on to run a great inperson sales interview?
Focus on the candidate’s job environment. Remember
that great salespeople are a product of their environment
as much as they are a product of great selling skills. In
other words, “Great sales skills + bad environment =
a big performance handicap.” If you’re interviewing a
salesperson who is making their numbers but is doing so despite a sub-par work environment, you’re
looking at a truly great candidate. On the other hand, if your company has weak sales and marketing
support and very little process, then the candidate who has succeeded in a company with a solid
support system will probably struggle mightily when working for you.
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That’s why you should focus on the “how” more than the “what” when it comes to interviewing
candidates. How did they get their job done? How did they overcome obstacles? The answers to
these questions will give you the context needed to make a smart hiring choice.
Compare the candidate to their peers. Your candidate has just told you that they were the top
salesperson at their company. OK, fantastic. “How many salespeople were on your team?” Two?
Not as strong a statement. 300? Now that’s impressive.
Make sure you’re getting the context of this candidate’s results in conjunction with the data. Being the
top salesperson on a two-person team is not very predictive of future performance. As interviewers,
we’re trying to build a narrative about each candidate so that we can determine whether or not their
story can fit into our hiring needs. Can a top software salesperson from IBM succeed at your startup? Can a salesperson who’s never worked within a big company structure be successful at a
company like Oracle? While both answers can be ‘yes,’ you’re taking huge risks, in my opinion, trying
to cross-pollinate sales resources without some serious in-house sales management.
It’s not enough to know the data. You have to get the context, because it’s the context of a
candidate’s success that matters.
Understand the nature of sales activity. Behind any salesperson’s performance history is a matrix
of sales activity. The number of calls made each day. The number of appointments set and kept
each week. The number of proposals sent out the door each month. Any revenue generated is a
product of these activities.
In B2B selling, it all starts with a call, and, generally speaking, the more calls a salesperson makes,
the more sales they have. If your company has no marketing support, no inside sales team, and no
appointment-setting support, then hiring a salesperson who hasn’t made cold calls in the last three
years will result in your wasting a ton of money and time on someone who never should have been
hired.
One thing to look for when interviewing sales candidates: do they know their numbers at a high level
of detail? Great salespeople know their numbers and sales ratios down to a gnat’s behind. If they
don’t know have a command of their numbers, they’re much less likely to have actually done what
they’re telling you they did.
Let’s take the IT services industry, as an example. If a salesperson has a target of two phone
contacts, they’re going to have to make at least 10 calls. Those two contacts will typically yield one
closeable lead. That ratio is 10 calls : 1 lead. If you want your new salesperson to get 25 potential
leads a week, they need to make a minimum of 250 calls.
The implication is that your marketing team needs to produce 250 names for your salesperson
to call. Let’s refer back to earlier comments on environment and support: if you don’t have the
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marketing support to deliver 250 names a week, then your newly-recruited A-List sales pro is going to
spend all of their time searching for people to call instead of actually making calls. They’ll miss their
performance target because they’re spending time chasing down names. Does that make them a
bad salesperson? Nope, it just makes you a bad manager.
That’s why you have to dig into your sales candidate’s activity to find out if their process for achieving
success is anywhere near the process that you currently support. If not, you may want to move
on to another candidate. (The other option that sometimes works is to be brutally honest with your
candidate and tell them where you company needs to improve. Tell them you can’t offer them all the
support that they’re currently getting, but, with their guidance, they can have a huge impact on the
future of the firm.)
Making the Right Choice
You’ve finally identified a sales candidate that you’d like to hire, and now it’s time to make an offer.
Make sure you’ve completed the following checklist prior to sealing the deal:
[ ] You’ve seen their W2′s for the past three
years. When you’re hiring salespeople, the W2
the ultimate reference check. Why? Because the
candidate’s past employers can’t lie to the tax man. If
they’ve earned the money, it’ll show up in the W2. If it’s
not in the W2, they didn’t earn it during that year. Period.
End of story. If the candidate told you that they had a
$150,000 year last year, here’s where you find out beyond
any shred of doubt. If you don’t check W2′s, then caveat
emptor, my friend.
is
[ ] You’ve talked to every sales manager / boss they’ve had at each job going back at least
10 years. Do the reference checks. Do the reference checks yourself. Don’t pawn them off on
an HR generalist or some 3rd party automatic reference-checking service. You’ll get a worthless
confirmation of dates of employment, and that tells you squat about whether or not they’re the
superstar you think they are. Instead, say this to your candidate: “I’d like for you to set me up with a
call with your boss at Software Inc, sometime this week after 5pm. Will you be able to do that?” Any
answer other than “sure” is a huge red flag. You now also avoid the meaningless dates verification
conversation with that company’s HR department.
[ ] You’ve given them the 30-60-90 Day Homework Assignment. Ask final candidates to
complete an abbreviated 30-60-90 Day Plan and present it to me. Ask them to “put a plan together
to show me how you’ll spend your first 90 days” This process will give you a real look into the mind
of your candidate, revealing how they think, how they approach a new sales job, and how they set
expectations for themselves. You’ll also get to see their presentation skills when they explain the plan
to you and answer questions that you have. It’s a critical step in the process, and you need to add it
to your sales hiring process immediately.
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[ ] Be ready to fire fast. You’ve just asked them to complete a 90-day plan, and you’ve worked
through it with them to define outcomes that will make you a happy employer. Now it’s up to
them to deliver. If they miss their 90-Day Plan, it’s decision time. Perhaps they deserve a second
shot. But in most cases you’re dealing with a mediocre sales hire, and, if you don’t cut them fast,
mediocre salespeople will drain more cash from your company than you realize. Make sure that
your offer letter includes language in the offer that stipulates that “the first 90 days of employment
are considered a probationary period. Employment after 90 days is contingent upon your successful
completion of all objectives outlined in the 90 Day Plan.” (disclaimer: this is not legal advice nor
should be construed as such. Check with an attorney before using this language in your offer letters
because labor laws vary from state to state. )
[ ] You’re prepared for their first day on the job. Please, don’t be the employer who doesn’t
have your new employee’s business cards available on the first day. Don’t make them wait for IT to
configure their laptop or telephone extension. Don’t make them feel like they’ve just joined the wrong
company because the spend Day 1 reading a manual because you don’t have anything else planned.
Be prepared, and only hire people when you can commit the time to get them started on the right foot.
Pair them with a “buddy,” or set up a mentor program.
Congratulations! You’ve officially graduated from our short course on hiring salespeople.
Download another one of our great content pieces below....
How to Hire Salespeople
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--About the Author
Adam founded Hireology (www.Hireology.com) with the mission to help growing companies make better hiring
decisions. Previously, Adam was the co-founder and CEO of illuma, a leader in high-volume recruitment
outsourcing solutions, and the creator of the Ionix Hiring System, a full suite of interview and assessment tools.
Adam is passionate about entrepreneurship, donating time to a number of organizations that support
the entrepreneurial cause. He serves on the Board of Directors for Entrepreneurs Organization, where
he helped to develop and launch a national program that teaches core business skills to early-stage
entrepreneurs (http://accelerator.eonetwork.org). Adam is also on the Board of Advisors for DePaul University’s
Coleman Entrepreneurship Center, where he serves as both a resource and speaker for this top-ranked
Entrepreneurship program.
Adam completed his undergraduate study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received his
MBA from DePaul University in Chicago, IL. He lives in Chicago’s Edgewater community with his wife, Anna,
and their three sons.
To book Adam as a speaker or panelist at your next event, please contact Hireology at 888-900-4846.
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