Here is an excellent reminder from the JustSell.com newsletter:

How long was your last presentation? What could be trimmed?

Over the next couple weeks (outside the money hours, of course), invest some time examining the brevity of your sales presentations (both your formal and informal versions). For every point ask, €œWhy is this needed for my presentation?€ If you’re unsure of the reason, cut it — lean and effective is your goal (review the presentation checklist here).

If you don’t have it written, planned, and practiced, commit to doing it within the month. The chances of rambling skyrocket without a formally developed presentation.

Time is money and decision makers who take action know it. Improve your results and respect the time€¦ their time and yours.

Tic toc€¦

(that was 212 words)

We see this time and again with respondents with whom we conduct a phone screen. We once asked a simple question asking for a 1 minute overview of a respondent’s resume. 15 minutes later, the guy finally reached the end of his 1 minute overview.

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Selling Power offers a quick article titled Successful Phone Interviews (the headline writer must have had the day off). I’m not aligned with all of the suggestions, but I cannot stress this one item enough:

She also says to pay close attention to candidates’ phone manners €“ especially if they’re going to be using the phone on the job. How does their voice and tone sound? Do they project energy and enthusiasm or do they ramble on, putting you to sleep? How do they answer the phone?

The key here is to talk less than the candidate. If you are talking, you are not qualifying. Paying attention to the candidate’s “manners” is important in any sale. Paying attention to their answers, drilling down for clarification and matching the pressure of your typical sales call are even more important.

We provided some helpful hints in our Process-Driven Hiring series from a couple years ago:

The key point in this step is to ensure that the call is not too easy for the applicant. The purpose is to make the applicant reveal their selling skills as they attempt to persuade you that they are the best candidate for the position. The call will be unsuccessful if you allow them to regurgitate their pre-canned interview responses. Get them off their game with your abrupt style and make sure you are the one asking the questions.

This approach can be difficult for some hiring managers or HR personnel since it runs against the grain of stereotypical hiring. Yet, sales is different so it requires a unique approach. Use unexpected questions, don’t allow them the comfort of reciting common responses, challenge them to see their strength.

Much can be gleaned from a well-crafted phone screen so don’t focus on confirming resume information. Use techniques to see the candidate in action.

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I have been working through many phone screens and phone interviews over the past few weeks. These interactions are tough for the candidate and for the interviewer. I was at a communication conference this past weekend that restated something I already knew – 55% of all communication is non-verbal. This fact is never more obvious than during a phone interview.

So SellingPower.com has an article in their latest hiring newsletter that caught my eye – Three, Two, One, Action. The article discusses video-conference interviewing. I am currently working on national positions in every region except the Southeast. Video conferencing would make this task much easier.

Some points:

Rooms can cost between $150 and $300 per hour, but that far outweighs the cost of airfare and hotel. Rooms also have equipment variances that can include multiple monitors, VCR or DVD players, or connections that allow computer content to be presented. Some rooms even have catering services available.
Another advantage of video interviewing is how far it can reach. For example, if you need to bring in a panel of interviewers from all over the nation or world, they can all go into separate public rooms and interview the candidate €“ either all at once or InterCall can bring them in every 15 minutes.

These advantages are hard to ignore and I think ones that will certainly lead to a shift in sourcing/interviewing activities. The technology could crash during an interview which would be an obvious problem, but I suspect these locations have redundancies built into them.

One line that made me laugh:

While there are advantages to video interviewing, there are some disadvantages. For one, it can be intimidating for a candidate to walk into a strange room all alone and talk with someone who isn’t really there.

That may be true, but I would find a video interview far less intimidating than walking into a room with 3 or 4 directors sitting on the other side of the table.

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We never, ever phone screen a sales candidate without asking some form of this question:

Why are you looking for a new opportunity?

This question is revealing especially if you drill down a bit on their initial response.  You will learn much about the candidate.  We also ask it of previous positions – why did they decide to leave those positions.  Listen closely to their response.

Just in time comes this line from an email cover (emphasis mine):

The company is closing their doors in Minnesota and abolishing all positions. Therefore that is why I am seeking new employment.

Dramatic.  This respondent certainly gets right to the point on the above question.  Yet, I think this may be a case of overusing a thesaurus to sound like the Queen’s English in the letter.

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I’m working through another week consisting of one phone screen after another. There are few things that are more revealing than spending time on the phone with sales candidates.

One topic I enjoy hearing is a candidate who clearly has experience building a territory from nothing to a significant revenue level. This ability is highly valuable and it doesn’t take long to discover if the candidate has truly done it or not. The candidates who have done it have detailed accounts of successes and failures in growing the revenue. Drill down a level or two on their responses and you will hear either past-tense experiences or theoretical strategies. Listen for the experiences.

The only thing better than growing a territory from nothing is a sales candidate who turned around an underperforming territory. Typically these salespeople have had to overcome forces working against their success (bad reputation, upset customers, ignored prospects and so forth). I focus on the obstacles they have overcome and how permanent their recent success is. Did they close one big deal or have they built it up through many smaller successes? Either way will work, it is just good to know how they did it.

Listen for these specific details next time you phone screen a sales candidate.

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I’m working through many phone screens today and came across a respondent who displayed one of the hallmarks of a schmoozer. A question I often like to lead with is some variation of this:

“Give me an overview of your skills and how they would fit into this position based on the ad that you read.”

A simple question that assumes they are familiar with the ad. Yet, you would be surprised how often the candidate does not have the ad in front of them or how little they remember from the ad. Some respondents are wise enough to state they don’t have the ad in front of them so could I clarify the question a bit. Many simply try to talk through it in broad, unrelated strokes.

One respondent today simply started talking about his skills which didn’t even approach the traits we listed in our ad. This behavior is often indicative of a schmoozer salesperson or sales manager. This guy’s resume looked good and his initial contact on the phone was excellent. However, once I started peeling away some of the veneer, it became obvious that he was not the right candidate for this position.

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The title of this post is a statement often offered by my father. The statement can be slightly aggravating in certain situations, but there is much truth in it. Who? What? Where? When? How? and Why? When phone screening or interviewing salespeople, one of those 5 words should be the lead-in to your question. Yes, I crossed out “Why” for a specific reason that we will get to shortly.

We have covered this technique before but it is immeasurably important when screening sales candidates. Do not ask questions that leave you “boxed” in a corner. Those questions tend to have a structure that leads with a verb and always elicits a yes/no answer from the candidate. Some simplistic examples to make my point:

-Did you make your sales quota last year?

-Are you a good communicator?

-Have you ever sold to a corporate Vice President?

Boxed in. Dead end. Now you are forced to ask a follow up question that may be as weak as these questions. Notice on the third question how you have tipped your hand regarding your target prospect? If I am a clever salesperson, I’m adjusting my answers on the fly to reference the VP-level sales I have ever closed (even if it has been 5 years since I closed one).

Often you will see these types of questions listed with a follow up question that simply states, “Why or why not?” Avoid this. Here is the reason – the word “why” is frequently associated with a critical parent. This association typically has negative connotations.

Think about when you were younger and got in trouble for your actions (I have many examples in case you are lacking). I suspect every reader of this post heard some form of “Why did you do that?” Yes, I’ll give extra credit to parents who used the curveball “What were you thinking?” I guarantee even those parents used “why” at some point in their interrogation.

The 5 words listed above will cover all the bases without invoking any subconscious, negative emotions. These words will also lead you to more revealing responses from the candidates without revealing your desired response. Rewrite your interview questions if needed. Avoid starting your question with a verb or the word why. Instead, use one of the five investigative words to get a better answer from your sales candidates.

BONUS: This question format is just as important for salespeople to use when qualifying prospects. Keep your ear tuned to sales candidates who take this approach when qualifying the position.

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I have read numerous article over the past few weeks about phone interviewing or screening sales candidates and every one of them miss the mark. Instead of going at what is wrong with each of these articles, I will give you some essentials that make this an effective step in our hiring process. These are the steps we incorporate into each recruitment process we run for our clients. These techniques have been developed through conducting thousands of sales interviews and phone screens over the past few years.

1. What are the main requirements of the job? I am not talking about the job description. Instead, think about a wish list, so to speak, of what you need this person to be good at to close business for you. Do they need to be good on the phone? Do they need to be solutions-based in their approach rather than product based? Is this a business development role or an account management position? Chances are you are not going to find all of these skills in one person so pick the top 2-3 things from this wish list you know they must possess.
2. Formulate questions to measure the candidates’ competency in these 2 or 3 requirements. Here is where a number of these articles fell down. Don’t ask simple questions like: How many accounts do you presently manage or how many times have you exceeded quota? You may be thinking that these are important to the job requirements and they may be – to a point. Let’s say this is an account manager position and you have been hit extremely hard by the competition in this territory. So these 2 questions do have some relevancy, but there are more pertinent questions to ask. More than likely their resume will reveal which years they exceeded quotas. If they have exceeded quota 2 of the last 4 years, which years did they meet it and, more importantly, why did they not meet it the other 2 years. So drill down – ask them why they did not meet quota. Looking back, what, if anything, could they have done differently? That will help you understand their ability to retain accounts.
3. Use multiple filters throughout your hiring process. Think about the responses you need to hear in order for them to move on to the next filter. After you are done with each candidate’s phone screen answer this question – Were they strong enough to make it to the next step? Don’t get caught up in questioning an earlier decision. Don’t feel the need to compare candidates on a point-by-point basis. The only thing you should be doing is making a determination if this candidate will be making it to the next step.
4. The last phone screen essential is to know (ahead of time) what the next step is in your process. I would recommend that you objectively assess each candidate before moving to the face-to-face interview. A simple reason – even bad salespeople can be adept at building rapport. In fact, they can be so good that an experienced hiring manager can get drawn in by their persona. I submit to you these 2 posts (Salespeople Are Professional Actors and The Unsaid Often Says It All) to illustrate why we assess all candidates before the in-person interview.

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We’re working through some sales candidate sourcing activities this week for some new customers and uncovering some strong salespeople. There are many reasons why we incorporate a screening step in our recruiting process, but one of the most important reasons is the questions posed by the candidates.

A crucial component of selling is asking the right questions. I laugh as I write this because a saying my father uses came to my mind – “If you want a better answer, ask a better question.” The question content, the question pattern and the follow-up questions are all highly revealing of the quality of sales candidate.

A real-life example from one candidate this week:

What markets do they pursue and where are they positioned in those markets?

Why this company vs. the other competitors in their market?

What niches/verticals are they looking to expand into?

Why is this position open?

What abilities are needed to be successful in this position?

What are the benchmarks for success in this position (including timeframe)?

Some of these questions were offered up by him during an initial email dialogue and the rest on a subsequent phone screen. You can see that he is qualifying the position, the market and the company. Remember the context – we are questioning him on specific topics and his experience in a somewhat stressful situation (for him). There are few moments for him to ask his questions while we are controlling the discussion topics. This type of questioning ability is usually indicative of sales skills that will be every bit as strong.

(We assessed him later and indeed his sales skills were extremely strong)

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We’re sourcing for an outside sales position in a sunny climate (not here in Minnesota) and had a candidate respond to an ad. He has tremendous industry experience and was good on the phone screen. He was quite inquisitive and asked strong questions about our customer and their market position. He did his due diligence in researching the company which led to his questions. As is our process, we asked him to complete the online assessments as the next step.

The candidate paused. He did not complete them. Instead, he decided to research sales assessments and then contacted us to run through his questions on this topic. We answered some of the questions but not all of them since they may have influenced his answers.

We asked him again to complete the assessments. He said he would get to them that day. 2 days later he finally completed them. By this point, we had moved on to other stronger candidates. Unfortunately for him, this position requires a strong business development ability. There is research to be done in targeting accounts, but there is also a pressing need to simply contact the accounts. Before even assessing this candidate, we knew this area would be a struggle for him. You can research a topic forever. At some point you have to pick up the phone and contact them.

His assessments revealed extreme weakness in 3 aptitudes that revealed this weakness – sense of timing, initiative and self-starting ability. 3 strikes – he’s out.

Some times you don’t need an online assessment and that is precisely why we use phone and email screens. Even if you are not using an assessment tool today (you should be), the screen will still reveal specific sales traits of an external candidate. That information alone may spare you the lost dollars of hiring the wrong salesperson.

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