Hiring a Teleprospector: Have You Added These Steps?
Over the last 5 years interviewing teleprospectors, I have gotten to the point that nothing surprises anymore. The candidate who blew me away when I met with them face-to-face may not always turn-out to be a rain-maker on the phones. On the other side of the coin, the person I was lukewarm on turns out to be a perfect fit and ends up being the standard by which we compare all of our Business Development Representatives. They could meet with the president, Director, training team, other top BDRs, and you still may not get a true sense if they are going to be a success at the job. My point is this - interviews alone generally are not the single best indicator of a candidate's capability of making cold calls. That all having been said, there are other ways to identify if someone contains the traits necessary to get the job done. There are two other areas, as I mentioned on my webcast,
Perspectives on Teleprospecting: Best Practices for Hiring Teleprospectors, last week that can help you. It starts with a simple personality profile and ends with the most important piece, the phone-in role play.
I've always been told throughout my career that when your start a new sales job, seek out the individuals who are always at quota and then duplicate their approach. What I've come to discover is that typically, those individuals do not fit into just one particular profile or mold. Some took the approach of being more conversational and others were more to the point, but ultimately they managed to exceed their goals. That really isn't any different here AG. Each of our teleprospector has their style which we proactively encourage...as long as they are productive of course. That is why we bring in a simple personality profile to our new-hire process.
Now we're not expecting them to ace the Wonderlic or complete a 5000 word essay on "Why You Will Be a Success at This Job," since this is not the tone we want to set with a candidate when they first walk into our door.
What we want to do is simply uncover the potential traits that we already see in our top performers at AG. We've come up with our own brief personality assessment that has helped us to identify the tangible and intangible skills we see as being the foundation of a strong teleprospector. Before they fill the assessment out we explain that there are no right or wrong answers and they should answer each question honestly, rather than giving the answers they feel we want to see. This can also help us to understand what manager and/or project they would best align with (assuming we decide to hire them). I suggest putting a basic profile together or to use some standard on-line assessments like DiSC Profile. Once you've pulled that together, take the time to survey your team to see if you can pull out some common themes and then hire/manage based on the results.
The last, and in my opinion, most important component of the interview process, is the phone-in role play. Selling yourself face-to-face versus selling over the phones can, at times, require two very different skill-sets and we often find that the candidate can represent themselves much differently on an interview than they do over the phones. What we want to hear is an ability to project a message with some level of confidence; if they don't have command of the conversation they will be less likely to uncover and opportunity. They should also be able to handle a few curve balls we throw their way, from pricing objections to the prospect rushing them off the phones. The scenario we set typically revolves around them pitching AG Salesworks' services, and then have them push for a meeting with one of our reps. We don't set an overly complex scenario, but our reasoning behind it is to make sure that they have taken the time to understand our organization and how we uniquely position ourselves in the marketplace. If they can't sell the organization they are hoping to be a part of, it just might be another reason why you shouldn't bring them on-board.
No one said hiring a teleprospector would be easy. Think about some ways, outside of the standard interview, to draw out the traits you feel should be required in all your new hires.
Next week I want to cover some suggestions on how we feel you should evaluate your new hires, keeping in mind that a thorough evaluation (especially over the first 60 days) can determine long term success...or a quick flame-out.