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Where Is the Salesperson That I Interviewed?

August 4, 2011 By 15 Comments

Jim Fiorini and I had a recent exchange about my post on the Internet being the weapon of mass distraction. Our exchange brought to mind how often sales managers and hiring managers hire someone who is an outstanding interview only to have a different person show up for the job.

Does this story sound familiar?

The Salesperson You Interviewed

The salesperson you interviewed was delightful. They were smart and thoughtful. They asked wonderful questions. And they were supremely confident.

Their follow up skills were impeccable. They called and called and called. They asked you for the commitment to hire them. They told you that they would work tirelessly to win deals and all they needed was an opportunity to prove it to you. They assured you that you wouldn’t regret hiring them.

That was a couple of months ago.

Who Are You?

The salesperson that is now employed is a very different person than the salesperson that you interviewed.

The salesperson that now works for you doesn’t pick up the phone or prospect much, if at all. They spend more time working on administrative tasks and busy work, none of which will ever translate into sales.

Their confidence is non-existent. This employed salesperson crumbles under the push back they get from the dream clients that they should be developing into opportunities. There is no help, no coaching, and no development that seems to make any difference whatsoever.

The relentless, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tenacity has somehow disappeared as well. The continued pursuit, the continuous request for a commitment, the “when do I start,” attitude is nowhere to be found.

If You Were That Salesperson

If the salesperson working now behaved the way they behaved while interviewing and attempting to get the job, they would be blowing out their numbers. That person would be a top 20-percenter, not a bottom 80-percenter.

If the salesperson with the new job were as smart, thoughtful, and confident as the salesperson that was interviewed, they would be developing opportunities with their dream clients. They would be opening important relationships.

If the salesperson now employed were as relentless and tenacious as the one that interviewed, their pipeline would be full of opportunities on their way to being won deals. If this salesperson knew what outcome they needed and asked for commitments again and again, promising to create value for their dream clients, they would be obtaining those commitments and advancing deals.

If the salesperson that interviewed were working to acquire clients like they worked to acquire the job, they would be setting records, instead of looking for work.

Questions

What are the behaviors that make an interviewed salesperson a desirable candidate?

How do you ensure that the salesperson you interview is the salesperson that shows up to work?

Why are some people aggressive and passionate when interviewing for a position and completely passive and impotent once hired? (please answer this one, if you know why).

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Filed Under: Sales 3.0
  • http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-mushey/8/428/305 Tim Mushey

    The behaviours that make them a desirable candidate are many. I have always focused on being able to carry on a conversation during an interview. Other simple things like a firm handshake with the interviewer, and making eye contact as much as possible. Focus on giving thourough answers, without being too long winded. To me it was always a good sign when an interview was not just Q&A, but a conversation broke out too. Confident but not cocky, was also my goal.

    I really do not think that there is any hard and fast rule that the same person that you hired will show up at work. To turn the tables a bit, myself and two colleagues had the unique opportunity to interview the last two candidates to be our Sales Manager with one organization. Well all felt confident in our decision, and picked the same person. He said all the right things, acted the right way, but it was all wrong, terribly wrong within a couple of weeks of him starting in the role.

    I am going to take a stab at question three. My gut feeling is there is that sense of urgency to find a role, so the candidate is pulling out all the stops and using their instincts in the hiring process. They may oversell themselves, and be portraying something that they are really not. When the role starts, they may “take their foot off the gas” so to speak, and revert back to more typical behaviours.

    • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

      Tim: Was the selection of the sales manager your fault, or did he represent himself as something he wasn’t? Or maybe you heard what you wanted to hear because he said what you wanted to hear?

      • http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-mushey/8/428/305 Tim Mushey

        Great question! I think he primarily represented himself as something he was not, maybe around 80%. 20% was us hearing what we wanted to hear. The nice little sidebar to it all was he was the main reason 2 of 3 of the guys were fired within five months of him coming on board, including yours truly!

  • http://twitter.com/MadsDahlLarsen Mads Dahl-Larsen

    The situation you describe could be a “management issue” or even an “organizational cultural issue” as much as a “where is the Salesperson That I Interviewed issue”?
    It’s to easy for management to “blame” the new salesman for not being as “smart, thoughtful, and confident as the salesperson that was interviewed”.
    I’d begin by looking at the organisational culture….and the management!  :-)

    • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

      Hi Mads, there is no doubt that you are correct. When we need to make sure we have headcount, we can get a little soft on selection. We can also be blamed when we don’t provide the salesperson with what they need to succeed. 

      But sometimes, the person who shows up just doesn’t bring what they brought to the interviewing process. They don’t sell us like they sold themselves. 

  • http://www.salespredatorb2b.com Jim Fiorini

    Hi Anthony!  To continue our discussion, I beleive a candidate has more confidence during the interview process simply because there exists an established relationship.

    You advertised a need for a rep.  The candidate replied with acceptable credentials.  You were receptive to the candidate because you have a need to fill and they responded in kind.

    There is a built in rapport to the interview process that does not exist with prospects.

    Prospecting is undoubtedly the most challenging part of the sales cycle and it is the most critical for success. In thirty years of hacking around the business 100%, not 99.875% but 100% of the reps I’ve seen fail did so because they couldn’t or wouldn’t prospect effectively.

    When a candidate faces a barred door that’s when the wheels fall off the cart.

    • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

      Receptivity is easy for order-takers, no?

      You are spot on about prospecting, Jim. It is the difference that makes a difference. I mostly don’t think it’s a “can’t” issue. It’s mostly a “won’t” issue. It’s the salesperson’s willingness to prospect that counts. 

      I have never been great at cold calling. But I have always had the discipline to lock myself in a room and dial the phone for 8 hours at a time. The willingness to do so has always served me well (as it does so many other salespeople who are less talented, and still willing to outwork everybody else). 

  • Jeffreybean

    This happens because the one thing even a modestly skilled salesperson should be able to sell effectively is themselves. In the case of an interview, they KNOW how to do it and put that knowledge into practice. It’s a short duration act that is easy to sustain.
     
    Once hired and when you want them to display the very same behaviours/skills that made you offer them the job, they ‘revert to type’ i.e. go back to being the person they really are rather than put on the act they adopted for the interview/hiring process.
     
    There are lots of reasons why recruits fail to perform (despite a great showing at interview) and it’s precisely to minimise the number of times this happens (it’s impossible to totally eliminate) that our many clients use our CPQ sales-specific personality profile. This test identifies and taps into most of the reasons recruits fail to perform.
     
    The one area we are unable to address (and hence why it’s impossible to totally eliminate this problem) is when candidates are delusional and genuinely believe they are as good as they have been telling you they are (and acting the part, short term).
     
    But for such individuals there is usually hard evidence to the contrary that a skilled interviewer/sales manager should pick up on through his/her normal questioning, so this isn’t as big an issue as it may seem. But as we know, some sales managers are not as skilled at interviewing as they think the are, either, so occasionally a ‘Walter Mitty’ will slip through the net.
     
    And there is also the fact that the old adage; “If it sounds too good to be true….” often applies.

    • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience, Jeffrey. 

      As an interviewer, I like to ask salespeople to walk me through their last three days of work in sales. I usually get a lot of vague answers, nothing concrete. Until I press and ask for an accounting of the whole three days, from the time they started until the time they left. I like to get an understanding of what they believe selling means, and the answers are telling. 

      I also like to understand what a person believes about sales. Their beliefs drive their actions, and their actions drive their results (or lack thereof). 

      To your point about slipping through, I see sales manager sell the candidate on the position. What’s your experience there?

      • Jeffreybean

        Anthony,

        I can only speak for the UK on that matter and my experience is there as many jobs oversold as candidates oversold. This is particularly true of many commission-only jobs that involve selling products/services of questionable value/utility. Unrealistic OTE’s achievable only by the aggressive and unethical are commonplace in this sector.
         
        But I don’t under-value the need for assertiveness and resilience as the cornerstones of the abilities to prospect, ask direct questions when necessary and ask for a commitment! The challenge is that too much of a good thing can be disadvantageous.  Over-resilience equates to lack of empathy and this detracts from listening and relationship building skills.
         
        I agree wholeheartedly with Jim F in that where even a cursory relationship exists, some people can converse easily but clam up in a true ‘first time’ situation such as prospecting. Balancing assertiveness and empathy to the needs of the role are crucial hiring criteria. Hence Account Managers who are dealing with established relationships can be quite different from New Business salespeople who will experience far more rejection.
         
        And the devil is in the detail. Both candidates and interviewers alike should ask probing questions whenever they are given an answer that’s a generalisation or vague. “What percentage of your sales team hit or exceeded target last year?” was one of my favourites as a candidate. “How long did my predecessor last and how many have there been in the last 5 years?” was another.
         
        Listen carefully to the responses to those types of questions and you soon get a feel for what is genuinely achievable in the role and what is simply pie in the sky.
         
        There’s a truck load of universal expressions applicable to hiring and training. “Hire for attitude, train for skill”, “You can take a horse to water…”, etc. They apply as well to sales as to all other disciplines, in fact, probably more so,

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1174308172 Sally Baker Williams

    If one is consistently seeing this happen with salespeople they need to ask themselves what are the impediments their organization is placing in the employees way?

    Occasionally having this outcome is one thing, repeatedly? Then there are more issues than just the quality of the person hired.

    I have worked in sales for companies that seem to have a clear vision of what they want a salesperson to achieve, but no real plan in place to deal with the increased business. It is difficult to schedule those new clients if the person to fulfill their account is never available. It is difficult to close the deal if you cannot get a firm commitment from the service provider on the details of the contract. Soon, the sales person feels it is useless to pursue those dream prospects as they know the chances of overcoming these obstacles is slim.
    Not saying it happens in all organizations, but I have experienced it often enough to know how demoralizing it is.

    • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

      I think you are speaking to this post, Sally: Adapt and Capitalize on Existing Opportunities Instead of Churning

  • http://roz-bennetts.blogspot.com/ Roz Bennetts

    I like your idea of asking the candidate about the last 3 days in sales and their beliefs about sales. But in answer to your question whilst the interview is one facet of the hiring process it’s subordinate imo to their results and references.

    It’s like a first date, it takes a while to get to know the real person under the ‘first date’ persona.

    • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

      Good luck with references here in the States, Roz! Since employers fear litigation, I ask for client references. They don’t have to worry about being sued. And, you’d be surprised by how many people can’t come up with any! 

  • http://www.thesalesblog.com S. Anthony Iannarino

    Thanks for sharing this here, Mike. I wanted the link to your post for those who need to read it and consider psychometric testing. 

    A

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