In previous articles, I have talked about the things you should do during the hiring process to improve your success when sourcing sales talent. Today, I will specifically address things you should refrain from doing during the interviewing process.
The interview is probably the 3rd most critical part of the hiring process. Two other areas set the stage for a successful hire that I will cover later:
- Making an offer
- Onboarding your new hire
But for now, let’s stick with the interview process. Interviewing, in most cases, involves more than just one meeting, and it should be considered a process rather than a singular event. In other words, the process should include but is not be limited to:
- Pre-planning for your interview
- Using data from the OMG pre-hire assessment, interview guides, and resumes to frame your meeting
- The pre-interview conversation you had with the candidate to make sure they know what to bring or expect
- Objective checklist for post-interview review and sharing
- Ending the process with a candidate or preparing them for the next step
Within this process, there are several “deadly sins” committed that I will highlight here.
11 Deadly Interviewing Sins
- Not preparing the candidate. There are two things your candidate should bring or be able to validate in the interview:
• Proven sales success (the best way to do this is for them to validate their income)
• Sharing or being able to describe to you their calendar of appointments over the last 30 days and the next 30 day - Selling the position, opportunity, or the company. Now is not the time for you or your interviewing staff to be selling
- Failing to understand that the candidate has one objective in mind: convince you that they are perfect for the job. This candidate will not look, sound, or act any better than they do when they show up
- Taking away the most important thing a salesperson must do: quickly establishing bonding, rapport, confidence, and trust. The meeting, after a cordial hello, should start with, “have a seat and let’s get started”
- Failing to have an objective list of questions you should answer when you review the interview with others:
• Do I trust this person? (Would you trust them with your money, company, or family)
• Would I meet with them again if I were a prospect?
• Would I want to compete against this person in the market (your answer should be no)?
• Would I buy from them? - Eliminating the candidate immediately when you know they are not a fit. Just because you schedule an hour for the interview does not mean it needs to last that long. I assure you that you know when you know, and you should end the interview at that time.
- Make sure that you tell the candidate to book 90 minutes to 2 hours in-case it goes well. While you have them in the office, take them straight into the 2nd interview if they passed the first interview.
- Have a series of must-pass criteria:
• Did they establish rapport?
• Did they get rattled when I asked them difficult questions?
• Did they ask questions?
• How well did they tell stories, use analogies or metaphors?
• Did they close me for the next step?
• Did they prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, their sales and hunting success? - Asking behavior-based questions and believing the answers. Again, they are there to convince you of how good they are. Salespeople are skillful at selling themselves, so you have to investigate further to uncover the truth
- Forgetting that this is an audition. Make the candidate roleplay:
• Their opening phone call
• The start of a discovery meeting
• Dealing with objections, questions, and stalls
• Asking for the business - Forgetting that salespeople are different than the rest of the positions you hire. Your interviewer MUST be great at specifically interviewing salespeople.
Effective interviewing is an art and a science, and often we rely on our own biases, tendencies, likes, and dislikes when conducting interviews. Make sure you have some objective systems and processes established to take the emotion out of the decision. Make sure that these systems and processes allow you to compare candidates based on scorecards and checklists. Finally, make sure you are not desperate. Vince Lombardi stated that “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” The same is true with interviewing. Not having a pipeline of potential candidates will make cowards of us all.
