Yes, the title is a bit quirky, but it is true.  A significant portion of successful hiring involves being a good detective.  I have always taken that approach when helping our customers find the right salesperson for their position.  To be a good detective, you need to be a bit skeptical.

Sales candidates blow sunshine.  Few have ever missed quota, most state their primary weakness is being a workaholic and all have earned everything they have accomplished.  Right.  In reality, most have missed their sales quota at some point, many have real weaknesses discussing money and handling rejection and most have benefited from somewhere be it marketing, territory, company market share, etc.

Sales hiring is the most difficult hiring in which to succeed in that the candidates have interpersonal skills that disarm hiring managers.  In a way, this is a good thing since you want your salespeople to have this ability when qualifying prospects.  However, the hiring manager needs to focus like a detective during the hiring process.

I’m an old Hill Street Blues fan.  I watched almost every episode of NYPD Blue (it got weird at the end).  Even Magnum PI had some interesting tips.  Here are a few tips based on techniques incorporated by these detectives:

–Drill down – do not accept the candidate’s first answer as the complete answer.  Too often I see hiring managers accept theoretical answers to direct questions.  Ask for specific examples and then ask follow-up questions that require more detail from the candidate.  This approach will be most enlightening in regards to understanding if the candidate is being truthful or not.

–Interrupt – ok, don’t be a jerk, but interrupt the candidate gently.  The goal here is to shake them out of a canned, memorized response.  Prospects do this in sales calls.  I always do this in an interview.  Interviews should not be easy for sales candidates because selling isn’t easy.  This approach will show you how quick the candidate is on their feet.

–Wait – there is nothing quite like an awkward, pregnant pause to add some pressure to a discussion.  Silence is fine as it forces the candidate to work.  Their job is to impress you enough to continue in the hiring process.  Your job is not to make them completely comfortable.  At ease, yes; comfortable, no.  Use silence at times to force the candidate into a longer answer.  This approach will reveal how disciplined they are at controlling a conversation.

These are just a few techniques I incorporate.  Of course, one great tool for guiding you through an interview is a sales assessment.  If you aren’t using any such tool today, please contact us at your earliest convenience.  We’ll show you just what you are missing in making your hiring decision.

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This article from Yahoo’s Hot Jobs contains 5 hiring myths designed to help candidates perform better in an interview.  Myth #1 is excellent for the hiring manager:

Myth #1: Be prepared with a list of questions to ask at the close of the interview.

There is some truth in this common piece of advice: You should always be prepared, and that usually includes developing questions related to the job. The myth here is that you must wait until it is “your turn” to speak.

By waiting until the interviewer asks you if you have any questions, “it becomes an interrogation instead of a conversation,” says Greene.

Greene recommends that you think of an interview as a sales call. You are the product and you are selling yourself to the employer. “You can’t be passive in a sales call or you aren’t going to sell your product.”

How true!  We always treat an interview (either phone or in-person) as a sales call.  As a hiring manager for a sales position, the interview is a natural sales situation.  The interview is the perfect opportunity to play the role of the prospect to watch how the sales candidate qualifies and closes you.

This approach, using the interview to see the sales candidate in action, is the foundation for repeatable, successful sales hiring.  Salespeople are naturally good at…selling!  Granted, some are not, but they eventually get broomed.  The problem is that many hiring managers are not adept at being the disinterested prospect in an interview.

Many hiring managers (including many sales managers) are inexperienced interviewers.  Their preparation may consist of nothing more than pulling out a resume 5 min. before the interview and then asking the candidate to walk them through their resume.  This approach reveals nothing more than the candidate’s pre-canned talk about their mostly unverifiable past.  We’re they really the top salesperson?  Did they truly turn around an under-performing territory?  Did they close 50 new accounts?

No, the better approach is to treat the interview as a sales call and put some pressure on the candidate – see how they handle it.  Interrupt them (graciously, of course) and change topics quickly.  Can they move with the discussion?  Question some of their statistics and look for visible signs of emotions.  These unexpected moves knock them off of their script and if you have been in sales you know it is impossible to script a sales call.  Ideally, the candidate can handle your “objections” and respond with good qualifying questions.  Now you can actually see the candidate in action which will reveal more about their abilities than any resume.

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Don’t flame me on the title, there is a method to this madness.  I like cliché questions for sales interviews.  There, I admitted it.  Now, I should clarify, I’m not talking about an entire interview of these questions, but rather some strategic ones sprinkled into your question list.

Here is why – if the question is cliché, the candidate should have a sparkling answer.  Their answer may be well-rehearsed – that is fine.  You, as the interviewer, simply need to drill down on their response to get to the unvarnished truth.

However, the catch to this approach is when they don’t have a strong answer.  I am always concerned about candidates who provide weak answers to expected questions.  They should have expected some of these questions and, more importantly, should have prepared for them.  This lack of preparation is often indicative of how they will prepare for an initial meeting with a prospect.

Here is one I often incorporate, “Tell me about a time when you had to go well beyond your normal responsibilities to close a deal.”  Simple, cliché, but here is why it works – I want to hear a good, real example.  I’m looking for what they perceive as being a stretch for their role.  There is much to be learned in their response.

There are many sales prima donnas who have a high maintenance attitude.  Some tasks, in their opinion, are beneath them.  I’m always looking for where they draw the line in that I don’t want a salesperson who tries to do everything themselves either.  There is a happy medium that works for your position.  My experience has shown that smaller companies expect salespeople to do more tasks while larger companies expect more specialization.

Keep those cliché questions handy next time you interview a strong sales candidate.

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Clearly the greatest song from the Eagles and a key to discovering lies in an interview.  Forbes.com covers fascinating topic with a startling point at the beginning of the article:

…they only work about 80% of the time, according to the American Polygraph Association.

That is far lower than I expected.  Clearly, it is probably better than the vast majority of people, but I thought the number would be north of 90% for sure.

Ah, but here are the fun “tells” for interviewers to use:

Liars often give short or one-word responses to questions, while truth tellers are more likely to flesh out their answers.

And this:

Skilled liars don’t break a sweat, but the rest of us get a little fidgety. Four possible giveaways: shifty eyes, higher vocal pitch, perspiration and heavier breathing.

Here is a great read:

Liars are often reluctant to admit ordinary storytelling mistakes. When honest people tell stories, they may realize partway through that they left out some details and would unselfconsciously backtrack to fill in holes. They also may realize a previous statement wasn’t quite right, and go back and explain further. Liars, on the other hand, “are worried that someone might catch them in a lie and are reluctant to admit to such ordinary imperfections,” says DePaulo.

Lastly:

Yet another clue: imprecise pronouns. To psychologically distance themselves from a lie, people often pepper their tales with second- and third-person pronouns like “you,” “we” and “they,” says Hancock. Liars are also more likely to ask that questions be repeated and begin responses with phrases like, “to tell you the truth,” and “to be perfectly honest,” says Reid.

May I suggest you read the entire article?

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If you (hiring manager) are talking, you’re not interviewing.  I know, simple in concept, but for some it is difficult in practice.  I sat through an interview recently that involved a sales manager who spoke for 75-85% of the time!  The candidate was simply caught in his wake for the entire interview.

My take on the interview was that we learned next to nothing about the candidate and his fit to the position.  He may have been strong – we’ll never know.  What we did learn is the frantic, scattered approach of the sales manager makes for an interview that did not go deep on any topic.

The fault here lies with me in that the sales manager should have been better prepped.  He would do well with a set list of questions and a note reminding him to listen first.  I made the assumption that he knew this and I paid for it in a strong candidate being passed.

It is a good reminder to do the simple things well before moving to the advanced topics.

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Selling Power’s Hiring One of the Team focuses on finding superstar salespeople that will fit into your existing team.  Clearly that is the goal for all sales hiring and this article supplies some sound advice.  Other parts of it I will leave to your judgment.

Here is a quote I enjoyed (emphasis mine):

“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.“– Dee Hock, founder of VISA Credit Card Corporation.

That is spot on, especially the experience piece.  If you have read this blog for any length of time you know that we battle experience-based hiring.  A sales candidate with a well-crafted resume and industry experience often blinds the hiring manager.  The hiring manager becomes enamored with the experience and does not focus on the fit, ability or potential of the candidate.

“A true team player has to be able to set aside his or her ego and be able to do things for the benefit of the team,” says Gregory. “Use behavior profiles to assess this and then during the interview process ask questions such as, ‘Give me an example of when you felt you were not a team player. What did you do once you realized it?’ Look for sincerity in their answers. Did they admit they were wrong? Did they apologize?”

I like the approach and agree with the assessment part (not surprising, is it?), but behavior profiles alone are not as effective as a full assessment.  The behavioral assessment needs to be part of a motivational, aptitudes and skills assessment.  Simply hiring extroverts will not lead to a cohesive team.  A noisy team yes, cohesive, not necessarily.

Lastly, I wouldn’t recommend this:

Other members of the team (it doesn’t have to be everyone) should also interview the candidate. Gregory suggests that each of them ask the candidate the same question to see how the candidate responds. Meet with everyone to see if the person’s answers correlate. Then find out if the candidate was enthusiastic through all of the interviews or did he or she get irritated being asked the exact same question?

I don’t see that serving any purpose.  If you want to see how irritated they become, interrupt them during the interview.  Pressure them, confront them mildly, ask “why” questions – this approach will reveal more to you than a repeated question that will probably generate a canned response.

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Remember the old joke, you can tell when they are lying because their lips are moving?  Selling Power provides this article which opens with this statement:

Did you know that 50 percent of candidates lie on their resumes? (This includes people who omit things, stretch the truth, and those who outright lie.)

That seems optimistic to me.  This lying problem is rampant in hiring as we have seen first-hand.  I think candidates believe they can state things that are difficult to verify with the legal restrictions in this country.  How can you verify that they turned around a territory?  How do you know they were the lead person on a large account?  There are ways, but it takes more time and effort than most hiring managers are willing to expend.

I did like this suggestion from the author:

Another way to encourage and check honesty is to conduct comparative interviews with the candidates. Using this process allows you to get many different viewpoints about candidates. Let candidates know upfront that several people will interview them and compare notes. After the interviews, look for any discrepancies, overstatements, omissions, or lies about work experience.

This is the right approach since it is difficult even for the most cunning liars to maintain their stories over multiple sessions and people.  We always encourage multiple people participating in interviews from group interviews to follow-up individual interviews.  Do not underestimate the value of this approach.

Lastly, I personally prefer this approach:

Finally, Halford says to state questions like you would “essay” questions, not “interrogation” questions. “When you get someone to just talk, you will learn more about him or her,” he explains. “You will gain more from asking four ‘essay-like,’ open-ended questions than 20 closed-ended or interrogative questions.”

I have seen many interrogations and they are absolute rapport killers.  I take the approach of building rapport so you can have a more open discussion.  If the candidate is comfortable, they will talk more openly and, in effect, more honestly.  Don’t drill them with rapid-fire, cold questions.  Find some common ground, share a personal story and start with an open-ended question.

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CareerBuilder.com has a post regarding an overuse of perfume and cologne by employees.  The author asks a good question:

Apart from sharing the story, I’m writing this to ask how you think managers should handle “strong fragrance” issues in the workplace. It seems like a sensitive issue because people wearing the cologne or perfume must not realize that it is SO noticeable for the people around them.

Let me be a little crass – I heard a funny story from a sales manager we met with yesterday.  He used to work for a company where he was a sales manager for one territory and there was another gentleman who handled the other territory.  This other sales manager had a relatively cold office so he tended to keep his door shut to warm it up.

Well, one day our guy is interviewing a woman for a salesperson position and when he is done, he walks her down to the other sales manager’s office so that he can interview her too.  The door is closed so our guy knocks and then walks in with the sales candidate.

It took a second, but then the overwhelming funk from the other sales manager’s flatulence hit both our guy and the woman candidate.  They both stopped in their tracks while the sales manager turned beat red.

Our guy, ever quick on his feet, said, “Ok, let’s do this interview in the conference room.”

Classic.

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In first reading this I thought I was reading a line from one of Jeff Foxworthy’s jokes, “You know you are a redneck if you write on your resume, “hobbies include sitting on the levee at night watching alligators.”  Nope, this is one of many odd resume inclusions from an article on CareerBuilder.  If you have ever run a recruiting process you probably can come up with your own list, but CareerBuilder has put together some beauties:

• Candidate included that he spent summers on his family’s yacht in Grand Cayman.
• Candidate attached a letter from her mother.
• Candidate used pale blue paper with teddy bears around the border.
• Candidate explained a gap in employment by saying it was because he was getting over the death of his cat for three months.
• Candidate specified that his availability was limited because Friday, Saturday and Sunday was “drinkin’ time.”
• Candidate included a picture of herself in a cheerleading uniform.
• Candidate drew a picture of a car on the outside of the envelope and said it was the hiring manager’s gift.
• Candidate included the fact that her sister once won a strawberry eating contest.
• Candidate explained that he works well nude.
• Candidate explained an arrest by stating, “We stole a pig, but it was a really small pig.”
• Candidate included family medical history.

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Behavioral-based interviewing has been the buzz in hiring for the past few years and rightly so.  This technique brings real-world clarity to a sales interview as opposed to theoretical, positional answers.  Selling Power provides a good article to assist you in your interview strategy.

In order to ensure you are using a behavioral-based approach (emphasis mine):

“A lot of people think that they are conducting behavioral-based interviewing when they’re really not,” says Wolf, who defines behavioral-based questions as questions that allow candidates to relate real situations and demonstrate how their strengths and weaknesses are exhibited on the job. “Many times hiring managers are asking theoretical questions, such as, ‘How would you handle this situation?’ Or, ‘If you were faced with this situation, what would you do?’ A behavioral-based question is phrased differently, such as, ‘Can you tell me about a situation where you…’ A true behavioral question may not even be a question. For example, ‘Tell me how you handled a client objection.’ The whole premise that past behavior predicts future behavior falls flat unless you are really getting examples of past behavior.”

I am partial to using a statement as opposed to a question in the interview.  I find this approach focuses the candidate and allows less room for theoretical answers.  Here are a few suggestions from the author:

Wolf shares a few best practices of behavioral-based interviewing to help you garner the most information from your candidates:

1. Have a valid interview guide. “Start with a job analysis because every question you ask in an interview has to be job relevant,” says Wolf. “Questions have to be linked to the tasks performed on the job – that’s critical. For example, if the job requires the ability to overcome objections, you need to specifically ask about a time when a candidate overcame an objection.
2. Be familiar with your information. “Just like you wouldn’t go into a sales call without researching the company, don’t go into the interview without some knowledge about the candidate,” says Wolf. Review the resume, check out social networks, and review the candidate’s company Website.
3. Be a practiced interviewer. Seek training and role-play because interviewing is a skill, says Wolf.

“The most difficult things about doing behavioral-based interviews are balancing the timing and pace of the interview, while managing the experience that the candidate is getting,” says Wolf. “You need to get the information by getting enough detail, but not too much. At the same time, you need to get that detail without making the candidate feel as if you are drilling them – you need to have empathy. It takes a lot of practice and training.”

That last paragraph is filled with wisdom.  If you overdo it the interview becomes something of a scene from a crime drama interrogation.  One thing we always remind our hiring managers – you are selling the candidate also…don’t forget that fact.

However, we always recommend that you model the interview after a sales call.  You can be a little standoffish and disconnected to see how the candidate handles the situation.  The best way to see a salesperson’s talents is to see them selling.  You can model your hiring process after your typical sale to see which candidates can handle the different situations, pressures and processes.

If you need help in this area we would welcome the chance to talk to you about your sales hiring process.

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