Using Behavioural Interviews to employ the perfect salesperson

Interviews can be a costly business for any business manger and so it is well worth preparing thoroughly beforehand to ensure the whole process does not end up being repeated because the chosen candidate does not step up to the mark once they are in post. Many experienced interviewers are thwarted by clever interviewees who know well how to talk the talk, but cannot deal with the job description in reality. The biggest disappointment for the employer is the persona that shone through so gloriously in the interview room just seems to vanish into thin air when the work needs to be done.

A good way to confront this issue is to use behavioural interview techniques. This works especially well with sales candidates. Often it does not really matter how many GCSE’s a candidate has, or how much they were earning in their last post. What really matters with sales employees is their overall attitude persona and sales technique, and that is not always easy to verify in a normal interview situation.

Instead of drilling down too much into where the job candidate has worked, how many leads they gained and overall salary it is worthwhile spending time placing them in scenarios they are likely to meet doing the selling tasks in your company. As much as a candidate can prepare for concrete yes or no questions or questions where he/she can elaborate on the obvious, these types of questions force the interviewee to think on his feet. As the scenario is obviously not something that could have been prepared for, the employer will be able to see clearly how a candidate tends to respond outside of the walls of the interview room.

This is doubly useful in the sense that a good salesperson has to be reactive. They have to be able to respond to a situation immediately, and turn it to their own advantage. So by confronting the interviewee with a suitable vignette you will view what techniques this candidate has to call on, and how they would normally behave in the field. How they deal with the question alone will give you an idea as to how they respond to unexpected but potentially positive situations.

The main point about this type of questioning is the questions are set in the future not the past. For instance a traditional question would be:

“Give me an example of a time when you obtained a customer through cold calling and prospecting. How did you approach the customer?”
This type of question only asks for the candidate to recite back what they have already experienced. If the question is posed like this:
“You have a good experience of cold calling and prospecting. Imagine the situation where you are calling door to door selling our product. Tell me how you will approach the prospective customer?”
the interviewee is placed straight into an element of the job.

You start by complimenting the candidate by using information from their application form. This will give them more confidence to answer a more difficult question. From their reply you will be able to get a much clearer idea about future behavior rather than a situation where you are hearing information regurgitated and elaborated upon from their application form.