Filling sales vacancies made easy - By: Jonathan Walker

Put simply, filling sales vacancies with the right people, rather than the wrong people, can be the difference between success and failure. There are a number of pertinent issues which differentiate between the two. Rather like the classroom scenario, good and bad behaviour alike can be just as infectious. If your new recruited talent soon exhibits poor behaviours your troubles could be amplified as this spreads throughout the team like a rampant disease. To make matters worse, the odd poor performer can soak up nearly all of your management time trying to deal with it, taking you away from those who can bring you results.

Sales vacancies are particularly difficult to get right, not least because one of the core skills of the sales person is to adopt the right style to sell in a given situation, act out the part necessary to get the role. Unfortunately, being able to deliver this in specific situations such as the odd call during a field visit, or in this case an interview, far from guarantees the consistency required to deliver day in, day out in a field sales role.

If I’m painting a somewhat dreary picture, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Some basic interview techniques will help you identify those who really will perform versus those who look good at interview but fail to deliver once into the job.

In my experience, people who deliver an excellent performance at interview do always start well within the role itself. The question is how long can they sustain a consistent performance for before it crumbles (if it crumbles). There are many factors which can cause a sales performance to crumble and never recover. They tend to be changing events such as divorce, bereavement or illness, things that can have a dramatic impact on ones outlook on life. In some cases it can simply be boredom, this should be really easy to spot at interview.

The good news is, the golden rule of interviewing stands, ‘history will repeat itself’. The fact is, in principle, people do tend to behave the same from one context to another, and over time. What you have to do is explore your candidates reactions to life’s adverse events along the way. The ways they have responded before will likely be an accurate predictor of future responses. So, if a person has a history of being knocked out of their stride by bereavement so much that the move jobs, the chances are, at some point it’ll happen again soon. Similarly, if they seem to leave companies when things are tough, maybe sales are down, or there’s a problem with a product, you may find the slightest blip and they’re off.

What you are looking for are candidates who describe adverse events as tough, but also describe knuckling down to their job and working through it. Timescales good gauges, someone who has always moved job every two years will likely do so again whatever the reason.

In summary, to get it right with sales vacancies prepare questions to explore your candidates responses to adverse events, do they run, or do they stand and fight? If the answer is the latter and they can show that they then produce good results you may have found a good egg who will produce a consistent performance whatever the commercial weather.

About the Author

This article is written by Jonathan Walker of Sales Vacancies

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