Principles
In matters of principle, stand like a rock. In matters of taste, swim with the current.
Principles are values acted on. They are shaped by an individual’s personal and professional experiences. You need to know the unwritten rules that drive an individual’s behavior so that you’ll have an idea what they will do when you aren’t watching. Does the person have a moral compass? Circumstances and temptations reveal a person’s character. Is the person consistently trustworthy or completely situational? This also helps you to understand how the person wants to be managed.
This is a good place to ask the person an ethical situation question to see how they would respond. Another good question is how the person responds to problem-solving situations. What internal rules guide the person’s decisionmaking process?
Plan
It’s not the plan that is important; it’s the planning.
Some people live life; others let life live them. To achieve sustainable success, attention to detail and a high activity level must be personal habits. Are your candidates consistent in their work habits? How organized are they? Can they handle multiple tasks at a high rate of speed?
Do they know where they want to be? Do they know where they are today on that plan? Can they articulate their plans to get to where they want to be?
It has been said that “if they are failing to plan, they are planning to fail.” Plans change, but how will they manage their territory and their accounts if they have no plan for themselves?
Preparation
The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.
Preparation includes education and past employment from the candidate’s résumé. When I ask candidates, “What have you done to prepare yourself for leadership?” I often get a blank stare. Sales is a leadership job: you have to be able to get people who don’t work for you to follow you.
How well your candidates have researched and prepared for the interview is one of the best indicators of how well they research and prepare for sales calls. Do they know your company’s history, culture, financials, and issues? Did they at least read your website?
Passion
If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.
Passion represents enthusiasm for the work itself, for service, or for the people or organization and its vision. The first sale must be in the salesperson’s heart. If they don’t buy it, they can’t sell it. If they don’t have a contagious conviction about what they are selling, neither will the buyer.
At some point candidates need to pick up the special nature of your company and turn from buyer to seller. If they don’t, they are not passionate about working for your company or not passionate at all. “If you think this is just another place to work, you should just work at another place.”
Performance
The closest a person comes to perfection is when he fills out a job application.
No one works in isolation in today’s business environment. Ask about the source of the candidate’s past sales success. How important was the product? Was the market hot or not? Did the candidate rely on other members of their team to carry them? Are they used to one big deal or several small ones? How closely did they work with their manager? Was the candidate a team leader or a loner? Some people are better at different types of sales. This is why a salesperson can be good in one company and not another.
For salespeople, quota performance is an arbitrary measure. Two questions to help put this in perspective are
1. What percentage of the sales force made quota every year?
2. How do you compare with the rest of the sales force? Top half? Top 10 percent?
Personality
Be yourself is the worst advice you can give some people.
People buy from people they like and people they trust. Will their interpersonal skills and chemistry wear well over time in your industry and with your clients? Are they sincere? Empathy is a necessary component of consultative selling. The people they interact with over time will be able to tell if they are sincere.
Will they fit in with your team culture? Ask yourself, “Would I like working with them?” Also consider their presence, image, and the way they dress. We make choices when we put on different clothes. It is important that they know how to dress when dealing with clients in different industries — especially if they are going to be selling to executives.
Ken Cornelius, president of Siemens One, says that he and his executive team have a simple test that many prospective hires who did well in the initial interviews fail in the end:
“After the interview rounds, we ask each other:
1. Would you like to be stuck on a deserted island with this person?
2. Would you leave this person alone with your CEO for an hour?
If the answer to either of these is ‘No,’ we don’t hire them.”
Clients and prospects can discriminate for whatever reason they choose, and they’ll never tell you the reason. Remember that most candidates can sell a one-hour interview. Look past the charm to the character.
Several years ago, we were thinking about adding a new principal to our firm and had zeroed-in on one particular candidate.
Everything checked out. He had a great résumé and a great personality, but one of our principals — Liz McCune — sensed something “phony” about him, though she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Our president, Brad Childress, and I decided to have a get-together by playing golf with this guy all afternoon. We had a wonderful time.
But afterwards, at dinner, his personality changed dramatically. He was abusive to the wait staff, being very short and rude when he spoke to them.
We realized that—in a social setting — this particular candidate had a hard time getting along with people he considered to be lower on the totem pole. The only way we could find this out was to get him in a situation where his guard was down.
He passed all of the one-hour interviews. He was very good at peer-to-peer relationships. But only in a social setting did we see that he was unable to interact with people lower in the organization than he was.
And in a complex selling environment, you have to be able to get along with everyone.
Practical Intelligence
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
Howard Gardner, who developed theories on multiple intelligences, says that there are at least seven kinds of smart. Practical intelligence extends beyond the amount of education and training the candidate has. Although knowledge is important, being able to apply it — through mental quickness, political savvy, and common sense — is essential.
Cultural literacy — knowing a little about a lot — is also necessary to be able to communicate with all types of people with varying interests. A critical type of intelligence for salespeople is discernment — the ability to assess multiple complex situations and determine priorities of action. Like the old vaudeville routine, can they keep multiple plates spinning in the air without dropping any?
Several years ago, Carolyn, the wife of one of our principals, Joe Terry, was studying to learn American Sign Language (ASL). One night, Joe was helping her review by calling out words for her to sign. When he called out the word smart, she signed several words. When Joe asked why there were so many signs for this one word, she explained, “In sign language, smart is actually three different words.”
The amount of education or training someone has, or book smarts, is represented by one sign. Street smarts, which indicates that someone has common sense and can build relationships with a wide range of people, is represented by a different sign. And the word wisdom is a third, completely different sign.