The Sales Interview Technique That  Makes a Real Difference

The worst thing you can do is to interview salespeople based on them talking through their CV, telling them about the job (first), or asking them vague questions about why they work in selling.

The most effective way to interview sales people is by making the process Competency Based.

Before the interview work out what the competencies are that the job requires. See PRE4M™ Competencies for more details on building a sales competence framework.

What you can then do is construct a set of questions based on those competencies. For instance, if the role requires customer focus and one of the behavioural indicators is 'Constantly examines their customer face-time seeking to optimise its effectiveness', you can ask the following question:

"Can you give me examples of how you seek to optimise the time you spend with customers?"

Working in this structured way you will illicit answers that show (or not) if the prospective sales person has experience that aligns with the required competence profile.  If you want to sophisticate the process you can build role-play scenarios rather than simple questions based on the behavioural indicators.

What this technique seeks to establish is evidence that people have done the required things before, because predictive analysis is the most effective way to establish the likelihood of a given result, i.e. someone who has constantly achieved ahead of target performance is more likely to do something similar. Linking success outcomes to the behavioral inputs that are grouped as competencies will give you a simple, direct and verifiable process for examining sales potential.

Claudine McClean
T:  01789 734400
E: claudinem@salespathways.com

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