Salespeople Can Sell Themselves – So How Do You Really Interview Them?
Having worked in sales recruitment for nearly 20 years, I've been lucky enough to support businesses at every stage of their sales journey – from recruiting a client's very first salesperson, through to returning years later to appoint their Sales Director as the business has grown.
And one thing I've learnt along the way is that a great interview doesn't always mean a great salesperson.
After all, salespeople can sell – and sometimes the thing they're best at selling in an interview is themselves!
I was reminded of this recently when I sat in on a series of sales interviews with one of my clients. Rather than relying on the usual interview questions, we really drilled down into the detail behind each candidate's experience.
If someone said they were successful at new business, we wanted to know how. Where did their leads come from? What did they generate themselves? What were their targets? What did they actually achieve? What did their sales cycle look like?
We also talked about the less successful moments – the deals they'd lost, the targets they'd missed and, importantly, what they did when things weren't going their way.
Over the years, I've also learnt that there isn't one type of great salesperson. I've recruited brilliant new business hunters who love nothing more than opening doors and winning new customers, and equally successful account managers who excel at building relationships and growing existing business. The important part is understanding what the business actually needs rather than simply looking for someone who is “good at sales”.
And that's where really getting under the skin of a role makes such a difference. A salesperson can have fantastic figures and a great track record, but if they've succeeded with warm inbound leads and your role requires them to build a territory from scratch, it could be a very different story. It's about understanding how they've achieved their success, not just what the numbers on their CV say.
What was really interesting in those recent interviews was that this approach allowed us to look beyond who simply interviewed well and understand who could actually succeed in that particular sales environment.
And it worked.
By interviewing together, challenging the answers and really understanding what success needed to look like, we identified the right person and successfully made the hire.
For me, that's where good sales recruitment goes beyond simply sending a CV. It's about understanding the candidate, understanding the business and knowing the right questions to ask to establish whether the two really fit.
Because a salesperson's job is to sell.
And in an interview, the first thing they're selling is themselves.
Written by Amy Jayne Elvestad – Sales & Marketing Recruitment Specialist
