2.3.2020
Each recruiting agency has 10 of its own stories about how they looked for sales manager. These stories are sometimes worse than the experience of mass selection. Here you have the greatly overstated results in the resume, and a regular client of the recruitment agency (5 work shifts per month), and strange behavior at the interviews. Perhaps this is due to the specifics of the profession, or maybe unique soft skills. In short, recruiters have long identified – sales managers need to first check for personal qualities. We tell you how to do it.
1) Check for adequacy
After the first interview and preliminary selection of candidates, make a couple of test anonymous calls to your candidate. During the call, try to sell him any common service / product. His reaction will be the very test of “normality.” Of course, this practice cannot be a 100% guarantee of success, but a salesman who hates people and does not respect colleagues (an always recognizable character from a Hollywood movie, by the way) will almost certainly not take root in the company.
2) Determine the activity / passivity of the position of the candidate
After the interview, tell the applicant that your recruiting agency is quite his candidacy and the decision now depends on the representative of the client. An active and motivated salesperson will look for an opportunity to meet with a client, give more information about himself, etc. – by all means, show readiness for action. Passive will say “Thank you” and will wait.
3) Willingness to compromise for the sake of a deal
Not the most correct way, but still has the right to be mentioned. Be late for a meeting without warning for 30 minutes. Go into the meeting room, apologize and watch the reaction. If the candidate closes right away and is reluctant to go to the meeting – there is a strong introvert in front of you, the tactics of which will be in question. If the situation is easily and quickly resolved, then sales will most likely have no problems with customer management. We can say that this is not a working moment and to value your time is normal, but after all, a job search is also a sale to some extent.
4) Ability to cope with difficulties
After a successful interview, give a short test task for a certain time (up to 60 minutes), which you will need to complete at home. Here, again, the candidate’s reaction will tell a lot: willingness to spend more effort on closing the issue, focus on results, and so on. This is how the willingness to work, and not just discuss opportunities, is tested.
According to Alexei Surovtsea, the author of the article “5 Easy Ways to Quickly Evaluate a Sales Candidate,” which inspired us to adapt his article for recruiters a little and share with you, sales people are advanced soldiers who should not only be ready for any force majeure, but also be able to save face.
We hope that each recruiter will find at least one useful trick for himself and be able to test in his practice.
