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One of the most challenging things a sales manager or hiring manager can face when running a sales team during their sales recruiting process is the interview. It is in the interview where a very big decision has to be made about bringing someone new onto the team who will have a direct impact on the businesses’ top line for the coming quarters and fiscal years. In fact, if a bad hire is made then both the top and bottom line will be impacted by this poor investment. This is a risk to small, medium and large organizations a like, though more or less detrimental depending on the size and makeup of the overall organization. No company would exist without sales. So how does a sales manager mitigate the risk to their company and reputation when choosing a candidate through the sales recruitment process? By managing their interview process effectively.

Far too often, and especially in sales, candidates do an incredible job during the interview process. They know what to answer on the personality tests, they know all the right things to say and bring an swooning amount of charisma and character to the in person portion of the interview. Then by month six on the job, they are falling apart, not hitting their sales numbers and behind on their KPI.

Here are just a few important points or things you can add to your existing interview process when interviewing someone for a sales position, to make sure you are getting the sales representative you think you are when meeting with a candidate.

Ask For The Names of Their Previous Managers

When interviewing someone you will have already gone over their resume and see who their current and previous employers have been. At some point, fairly early on in your interview process while asking them about their work history, ask them who their previous managers were. Ask for their first and last name, when the candidate gives it to you write it down. With the exception of their current employer, ask them if it would be OK if you were to call their previous managers. This will let send a signal very early on to the candidate that whatever they end up telling you in the interview will be verified later if you were to reach out to their previous employer to discuss their experience their. This will hold the candidate accountable to the truth about their work history and keep them from over-embellishing the truth. In turn, allowing you to get a more honest and realistic view into whether or not they will be a fit for your team.

Ask For Evidence

Another great check and balance tool while interviewing candidates is to ask for evidence of their past successes. Prior to the interview, advise the candidate to collect all past career accomplishments. They could collect stack rankings from previous companies they had worked for, trophies, awards, acknowledgement emails from corporate, President’s Clubs, the list goes on. If someone is going to be forthcoming enough to include their quota success and past accomplishments on their resume, have them prove it by bringing additional evidence to the interview. This is a sure way to avoid those who again may lie or embellish their accomplishments and get more honesty from our candidate during the interview process.

These two golden nuggets should help you further identify true top performers and filter out the professional interviewers. Helping your top line grow, saving on the bottom line from attrition and non-performance. We at Axe Sales Recruiting deploy numerous proactive strategies ahead of getting candidates to interviews with our clients to further increase the success rate of sales hires. To learn more visit: www.axesalesrecruiting.com.

Happy hiring.