Recruiting great salespeople is complex.
In 2010 I launched Groupon Belgium and spent the next years building similar companies around the world. German billionaire entrepreneur Oliver Samwer expanded CityDeal to 80 cities across 16 countries before he sold it to Groupon for $267.3MM. An amazing sales achievement for 6 months of work.
To persuade local merchants of the benefits of high discount offers, as a new market entrant required a great sales pitch by great salespeople. In this article I'll share the interview approach to help me identify them.
But first, what does research say are the qualities of great salespeople?
Top Sales People Characteristics
In 2011 Steve W. Martin presented the most important salesperson attributes from his interviews and personality tests with 1000s of sales agents. Check out Steve's historical study for more detail.
His top 5 attributes:
1. Modesty
91% of top sales people had medium to high scores for modesty and humility. Rather than focusing on themselves they focus on the support team such as pre-sales, engineers, consultants, and management as the most important part.
2. Conscientiousness
85% had a strong sense of duty, responsibility and reliability. They took their job very seriously and felt deeply responsible for the result. Instead of operating under the direction of the customer or competitor they take control of the sales cycle.
3. Achievement
84% are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measuring their performance vs. those goals. They focus on the client’s decision-making process and try to influence it rather than on the products and their functionality.
4. Curiosity
82% of them had a strong hunger for knowledge and information. This means an active presence during sales calls asking the customer difficult and uncomfortable questions to close information gaps. They seek the truth as early as possible.
5. Low Gregariousness
Gregariousness is friendliness with people to which top performers scored low. Instead they cultivated dominance from customers to follow their advice and recommendations. This was difficult to achieve for those who were too close to the customer.
In 2010 I lacked the benefit of his study to help with my startup recruiting. However, I've personally hired hundreds of sales people through many hundreds of interviews. I've also worked with great teams of recruiters, whose members I led and trained. I'm excited to share what I looked for in candidates and how I tested them.
Crafting the Perfect Startup Recruiting Sales Interview
To identify great salespeople in a 15 minute interview took many trials and errors. I used feedback mechanisms to continuously hone my approach with the goal to identify the best candidates in the most efficient way. This is how it happened.
The Revelation
In May 2010 I and my business partner Shehryar Piracha were interviewing a sales candidate. Marc-Alexander Christ was visiting from Berlin. He had been the sales director for CityDeal Germany. After 10 minutes, to our bewilderment, Marc left the room. Sherry, I and the candidate continued the interview for another 30 minutes.
After the interview we asked Marc. Why did you leave? He explained that the candidate was terrible and we were never going to hire him. We wasted our time. Both Sherry and I had reached the same conclusion but felt it was necessary to ‘give the candidate a fair shot’ through a full 45 min interview. But Marc was right. We had wasted all our time enforcing this idea.
1.5 years later Marc would go on to co-found global payment provider unicorn SumUp in London which, as of late 2023, was valued at $8.6BN.
This was the genesis for my recruitment method. I spent the next months rethinking and refining how to do interviews.
The Methodology
My basic interview rules can be summed up as:
Talk little, listen a lot: I only learn about the candidates when they speak.
Only test 3 qualities: Test many qualities is time consuming and hard.
Prioritize personal qualities: Changing personality is hard, learning skills easier.
Only evaluate what is demonstrated in the interview: The CV was good enough to get a phone interview, which was good enough to get an in-person interview but the candidate must impress at each stage.
Value logical, insightful, and problem-resolving questions: Asking great questions is the best way to gain valuable insight.
These rules aimed to curb common interviewer mistakes. I've seen some interviewers speak a lot, hardly letting the candidate speak, thus spoiling the opportunity to learn what makes this person a great or a terrible fit for the role.
Sometimes interviewers are unsure what to look for, or they look for too many qualities. Using a football analogy I focus on qualities that make excel in their role. Lack of clarity results in unstructured questions and, worse, different interviewers with different assessments of the same candidate from the same interview. Few important qualities address this.
I believe anybody can learn anything if they are motivated. So I prefer candidates who are curious and driven over those who believe they know everything already. Hiring people who are driven and curious makes learning easier.
An efficient process looks for unique insights at each stage. I don't waste precious interview time on information gained from the CV. I prioritize insights best gained in person. Similarly a great educational pedigree or a famous previous employer won't compensate for a lackluster interview performance.
Some candidates try to resist answering questions with ‘I need more information’. My retort is 'what do you need to know'. This simulates the working environment. I’ll answer their questions and judge them based on how relevant each question is and how my answers impact their answer. Good candidates use great questions to give insightful answers.
Finally I use a feedback loop to test how well my rating of evaluated qualities match later assessments post hire to refine the questions. I also consider the priority of qualities to be successful in each role to modify my list.
Top 3 Salesperson Candidate Qualities
My recruitment process is a funnel. Each step tests different qualities uniquely suited for that step. So the CV review may test educational background and years of experience, if those are important, but once the candidate meets the minimum criteria these factors are no longer considered.
Sales team interview evaluation qualities:
Passion
Sales capability
Ambition
I work best with people who have a strong drive. It compensates for lack of experience. Long experience without passion makes it hard to deliver a great performance. Using a sport analogy we don't use years of training to predict the winner of a tennis tournament.
Capability is harder to test than duration of experience but the upside relies on the fact that two candidates with the same length of experience may have very different capabilities. Thus I prioritize results over tenure.
Ambition helps me understand our alignment of interest. The best candidates want what I can offer in terms of career and development opportunities. They are more motivated team members with long term potential. They are easier to sell the opportunity on. Conversely, I have coached great candidates to other opportunities when I believed we were not a good fit.
The interview worked as a funnel. I spent a maximum 5 minutes on each part and failure to meet the standard in 5 minutes led to me stopping the interview. The longest unsuccessful interview was 15 minutes, the shortest 5.
Testing Salesperson Qualities in the Interview
All well and said, but how to test these qualities?
In interviews candidates and employees are on their best behavior. And it's hard to test for true candidate nature. Compounding this are ineffective or lazy ways to test candidates. In addition, in Asia there's a high cost to be wrong compared to a small upside to be right. Employees will choose the safe route to save their own ass. We don't fault employees for this. We get the behavior we incentivize so leaders who want to innovate must encourage risk taking.
Being the CEO and interviewer I was in a unique position. I had no agency conflict, my personal interests were aligned with the organization, and little fear of retribution, I was only answering to my investors who cared about results.
So I looked for questions to reveal the candidate's passion, competence and ambition, and asking for these directly are terrible choices.
So what did I ask?
Testing Passion
To test their passion I asked: Tell me about my company.
This served 2 purposes.
First, It demonstrated the preparation and experience with my company before the interview. The best candidates could talk in detail and at length about the business, sharing personal experiences with the brand, about which they spoke enthusiastically.
Second, it saved time. I would correct misunderstandings and fill understanding gaps instead of giving them the whole spiel depriving me of learning what they knew.
If they couldn’t tell me anything I politely explained that I did not want to waste their time or mine on the interview if they were unfamiliar with what we did. A better use of their time would be to learn what we do and then contact me if they were interested. I don’t recall any great salesperson who did.
Then I asked: What is the value proposition for our merchants?
Beyond passion this showed how well they understood our model, their logic, and smarts. You can argue that these are additional qualities outside my top 3 but I was also happy with candidates who did not understand our model well but who through pertinent questions would gain a clear understanding during the interview.
Testing Competence
To test competence I asked them: Explain your past sales success.
I looked for clear examples qualifying their achievements supported by quantitative data. They could explain their most impressive accomplishments, their best compensation structures, and anecdotes about how they won specific customers.
Then I asked: Roleplay selling to me. I'm a merchant.
Before starting I would ask them if they have any questions. Good candidates would ask enough to clarify the value proposition and get a deal. This was demonstrated in the exercise along with their sales techniques.
Testing Ambition
To test ambition I asked: What do you look for in your next career move?
For candidates with a good fit I would spend time selling the opportunity. For candidates with a poor fit I invested time coaching them on better opportunities. I encouraged them to ask questions I could address.
I’ll share more about the recruitment process and methodologies in a future article.
Conclusion
To build a great sales team you need to hire great people.
My startup recruiting methodology, developed through my experiences, focused on quality and efficiency. I interviewed many, hired some, and used an intensive training program, sales tools, and compensation to lift and retain the best.
The success of a sales team does not only depend on the drive, competence, and ambition of its members. But you will struggle to succeed without them. In future articles I’ll talk about how I trained, led and motivated the teams to help them become sales superstars.
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. Building a great team means finding people who are passionate about the work and the mission."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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