Understanding the Sales Force

I interviewed two candidates for a client yesterday.  Candidate #1 had great people skills and didn’t answer a single question head on.  In other words, he heard the question and answered something completely different than what I asked.  Why? He didn’t have a good answer for what I asked so he chose a story he was comfortable with instead.  It’s a good strategy but I can see through it.  Can you?  The stories were great and show the candidate in a wonderful light, but do the stories you are told in the interview really answer your questions?  Always inspect the answers and when they aren’t answers to the question you asked, point it out and ask again.

There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t get an email or a call from someone, attempting to hire salespeople, where they are complaining about either the lack of candidates or the lack of hirable candidates. This week, rather than advising clients, I conducted a turn-key recruiting project myself.  Here are the results for the first 4 days:

The microphone went dead.  That forced him to come out from behind the podium and, with no microphone, he relaxed, and suddenly had a lot more to say, about a lot more subjects and went on for another 45 minutes.

Seth Godin had a great post today on trade shows selling/marketing.  While Seth talked about creating buzz, it’s important to stress another point about exhibiting at trade shows.  Most companies don’t have realistic goals for trade show appearances, while others have the wrong goal for their trade show events.

It may be a one call close, the need to call on the CEO, the amount of money your salespeople must ask for, the number of competitors, or a host of other factors. A strong candidate has already had success selling with those challenges.

Some salespeople don’t appear at the top of their company’s charts because they are new, don’t have the best territories or are starting territories from scratch, may be great performers, doing all the right things on a daily basis, but don’t get the recognition they deserve.