Whenever I speak to companies and leaders, I share with them the Sales Success Traits and why they are the most important thing to focus on when hiring a new person for your team.

The Common Hiring Mistake: Prioritizing Experience

Most hiring managers/teams default to selecting for sales experience, maybe hoping someone has specific industry knowledge and skills. Thinking that if they can find the right person who can just show up and sell as quickly as possible, that it will solve their revenue woes.

Typically, a company has hired and fired (or had them quit before getting let go) enough salespeople to learn that a) experience isn’t the key indicator of future success and b) they have no idea how to select the “right” candidate.

The Real Focus: Sales Success Traits Over Experience

That’s because most companies are focused on the wrong things. Instead of experience and what feels like a good conversation with a salesperson, they should instead focus on the Sales Success Traits. These are mindsets and types of behaviors. They are not listed on a resume, which means your HR department or your inexperienced manager who does the interviews will not know how to find them.

But my goal with this article series is to help you with ways to identify and select the people who will be a good fit for you and your team.

What we are really selecting for is company and group cultural fit. How well someone integrates and works with you and your team is actually more vital than experience.

Sales Success Trait #1: Openness

The first Sales Success Trait that we want to look and select for is Openness. You can read these articles about what it means for your salespeople [LINK] and for your leaders [LINK].

For Openness, it’s really about someone who has a mindset of being open to new ideas, ways of doing things, different tools, etc.

Questions to Gauge Openness

First, you would want to set up a series of questions to find out:

• What types of sales tools have they used before? (CRM, phone system, etc.)
• How did they feel about those tools? How do they feel about the CRM? (Note – most salespeople will say how much they dislike it…you don’t want them on your team. You want someone who understands the value and power of your sales ops tech stack.)
• What types of changes in their sales process, requirements, etc. did they have to deal with? (And…you want to listen closely to how they felt about those changes. Okay with them? Understanding of the WHY behind them? Or frustrated by them?)
• How do they specifically feel about scripts? Especially when new? (this will be important down below)

Understanding Responses: Openness vs. Resistance

Your goal is to ask questions and listen closely to their responses that will indicate if they have a mindset of Openness or not. Are they a “I don’t need a CRM, script, structure, rules, accountability – just let me talk to people and close deals” types of salespeople? I bet you have hired some like that already, and you have learned that they are completely unmanageable and typically dangerous for your organization – they don’t close as many deals as they think they should, the ones they close aren’t very good and probably cancel/refund anyway, and your online reputation could take a hit.

Instead of the “tell me about a big sale that you lost, and what you learned from that experience?” type of standard issue sales interview questions, focus more on the ones above.

The Script Challenge: Testing Openness Directly

Now, back to scripts. If you want to test the mindset and nature of the person you are putting through your hiring process, give them my Script Challenge.

I will give the challenge after the second interview (and message me for more details, I will share what I do in the first and second interviews), by providing the candidate with a portion of the script used during the sales process.

Note – this means you have to actually have a sales process and a script. And I know – “salespeople” hate scripts, but they are wrong. Don’t hire them if they say that.

Put together a half page portion of some of your scripting – introduction portions work well. No more than a few paragraphs. We are testing and observing for two things, but not that they can memorize pages and pages and pages (mostly because I can’t memorize great, so I wouldn’t give anyone a test I would fail).

Setting the Script Challenge Parameters

At the end of the second interview, give them the script portion with the instructions: “So the next step is that I want you to take this script part and memorize it. You can take as long as you need. When you feel you have it memorized, call me back and we will set up the next interview.”

Basically, I am putting the ball in their court. They will gladly accept the challenge and return at some point. Or they will dismiss it in my face and say they won’t do it. Or they will take the script and never contact me again. I am happy with all three outcomes.

Evaluating Candidates' Responses to the Challenge

The ones I want to move forward with are the ones who have that Open mindset where they will do whatever is needed to get the job and succeed in the role. I tell them that we have scripts, and the goal isn’t to read them, but they are guides until you know what to sale during the sales process. I want people who are excited to have a tool like that.

I have had people leave the office, come back 15 minutes later after sitting in their car and nail it. I had people call back two days later. I have had a ton of people vanish.

To me it’s not the speed of which they can do the memorizing. It’s the attitude, the willingness, the Openness.

When they do contact me for that next interview, I start off with them reciting the scripted portion to me from memory, without reading it. Then we move forward with the third interview.

Conclusion

I promise the above steps will help you find better candidates that will fit in with our organizational culture and should lead to better results on the team.