Four sales interview tasks that show you how a candidate works
Most sales interviews look to the past.
“Tell me about a deal you won”
“Tell me about a deal you lost”
“Tell me about how well you work with a team”
Blah, blah, blah.
There are two main issues with this:
It is very subjective - as the candidate I firstly get to pick which stories I share (and I will only pick my best ones), and secondly you can’t verify the facts so you just have to nod along until you can check references.
It talks about the past not the future - as a hiring manager you want to know what they will do in your company, not what they did do in the past.
Today the world of your customers, and your own business, is transforming so fast, that you need people that can learn fast and be entrepreneurial - not just run a playbook they were taught in their previous company.
Here are four ideas for tasks to help you understand how a candidate might actually work if they joined your team.
Account research task
Invite the candidate to arrive 60 minutes before their time with you.
Provide them with an account name (a public company so there is information available).
Ask them to research that company and prepare some bullet points on their point of view of the main challenges and opportunities for that company and the industry they are in.
Bonus points if they can link that via a value proposition to your own products or services.
Goal: how quickly can can learn about a new company, read financial reports, understand the customer’s view of the world and link to the products we sell?
Whiteboard story task
Invite the candidate to arrive 60 minutes before their time with you.
Provide them with an industry and some of your product documentation.
Ask them to create a talk track and simple graphics to help a prospect understand how your product can support some of their key strategic initiatives.
In your interview session, have them draw and walk through the story on a whiteboard.
Goal: can the candidate simplify technical details into visual stories? Is the candidate comfortable drawing and storytelling in parallel?
Build a mutual action plan task
Invite the candidate to arrive 60 minutes before their time with you.
Provide them with a set of information about an example opportunity, including the current buying group, the extended sales team, the current next steps, and the typical process to get a deal done in your business.
Ask them to create a mutual action plan using any preferred method.
In your interview session have them walk through their plan, explaining their decisions and raising any information gaps they have.
Goal: does the candidate have any existing process for creating a mutual action plan? Do they use a specific tool, or just a spreadsheet or document? What questions do they ask in order to fill in the missing information - i.e. how quickly can our legal team turn things around? What process does the candidate have for sharing their mutual action plan and getting customer buy-in?
Build a Digital Sales Room task
Invite the candidate to arrive 60 minutes before their time with you.
Provide them with the details for an example deal including a folder containing sample call recordings, a proposal and a presentation deck.
Ask them to create a digital sales room for their client either using their preferred tool, or using your company’s tool (which you would need to provide brief instructions for).
Goal: is the candidate comfortable with digital selling? How quickly can they pick up a new tool? Do they understand how to present content in a buyer friendly format? Do they record their own welcome video to add to the DSR? Do they take pride in the quality of their work? What formats of content do they choose to share?
See how they work
The goal here is not to catch a candidate out - these are basic tasks that should be in any good salesperson’s kit bag.
You want to see how they work and give them the ability to shine.
In their interview you can discuss the decisions they made, what they would do differently given more time, and what additional questions they would want to ask?
The discussion you have with the candidate will give you a much deeper understanding of the them and how they will work than asking, “tell me about a time when you’ve had to handle conflict.”
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Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your Revenue Operations strategy.
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