I come across this often \u2013 a company wants to hire a superstar salesperson and the hiring manager\u2019s first instinct is to find a loquacious talker.\u00a0 Perhaps you have seen this approach too?\u00a0 Clearly no readers of the Hire Sense would administer this approach in their hiring.<\/p>\n
Right?<\/p>\n
Ok, maybe not.\u00a0 The point is that smooth talkers are not categorically the best salespeople.\u00a0 I am appreciative of good communicators, but being good at talking is the lesser part of communication.\u00a0 Being an active listener is more important.\u00a0 This fact is often overlooked in sales hiring.<\/p>\n
The reason this ability is important is that is supports the foundation of successful selling \u2013 qualifying.\u00a0 Salesopedia.com is featuring an article this week by Kelley Robertson<\/a> that addresses this point (my bold):<\/p>\n The most common mistake sales people make is to immediately launch into a product presentation or \u201cpitch\u201d when they first meet their prospect. They extol the virtues of what they sell and tell the prospective buyer how good, fast, reliable, inexpensive or easy to use their product is. They talk, talk, and talk hoping they\u2019ll convince the buyer that their product or service is of value.<\/p>\n The problem with this approach is that the \u201cpitch\u201d seldom addresses the issues or concerns of the buyer. Because their needs have not been addressed, there is no compelling reason for them to consider using your machines or to change vendors. If you really want to give prospects a reason to buy from you, you need to give them a reason. One of the most effective ways to do this is to ask a few well thought-out questions to uncover what is important to the prospect.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Exactly right.\u00a0 One of the more overlooked aspects of a sales interview is to pay attention to a candidate\u2019s questions, both the content and the sequence.\u00a0 I try to write all of them down in an interview to review them afterwards.\u00a0 The candidate\u2019s questions in the interview provides a glimpse into their qualifying ability without asking the candidate about it.\u00a0 It is most important that you, the hiring manager, observe this ability closely both on a phone screen and during a face-to-face interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I come across this often \u2013 a company wants to hire a superstar salesperson and the hiring manager\u2019s first instinct is to find a loquacious talker.\u00a0 Perhaps you have seen this approach too?\u00a0 Clearly no readers of the Hire Sense would administer this approach in their hiring. Right? Ok, maybe not.\u00a0 The point is that smooth talkers are not categorically the best salespeople.\u00a0 I am appreciative of good communicators, but being good at talking is the lesser part of communication.\u00a0 Being an active listener is more important.\u00a0 This fact is often overlooked in sales hiring. The reason this ability is important is that is supports the foundation of successful selling… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,9],"tags":[1393,212,330,446,1394,211,142],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-xX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2106,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions\/2106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}