Being interviewed for a sales job can be unnerving when your ideal job is staring you in the face but you have no prior selling experience. Yet — even though they won’t tell you — let’s not forget that the interviewers themselves may also be short on experience, or may sometimes be just as unsure of themselves as some candidates are.

During the interview the sales manager is switching roles. At this time his job is not to persuade people to buy what he has to offer. He is now the buyer who wants to make the best decision. There is a specific candidate profile, and there are clear policy guidelines. But happily, not everything is cast in stone, and there is some room for following your gut.

Today we’ll offer a few suggestions to sales managers, of whatever vintage, who may be preparing for their next candidate interview.

THE INTERVIEW SETTING

Start by getting the interview setting right. Here are a few pointers:

1. The room should be one where the sales manager is unlikely to be interrupted.

2. A very large room with just two or three people occupying it may not have the intimacy required to obtain a free, natural discussion.

3. A relaxed, informal setting away from the manager’s desk may encourage the interviewee to relax more easily. Using a low table which interviewers and interviewee can sit around (rather than sitting face to face) may be even better.

CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW

1. Ideally the sales manager should bring the candidate into the room himself. This helps to settle nervous candidates.

2. Open the conversation with a few easy-to-answer open and closed questions which allow the candidate to talk to the interviewers and gain confidence.

3. Get them to talk about themselves. You never know what insights you may gain that were not evident from their résumé or application form.

4. Be sure to ask the deep, probing questions that will take them out of their comfort zone. If they can’t handle a tough selection interview, how will they deal with a large but indifferent customer whose business you need?

5. Check for their ability to ask the deep, probing questions that differentiate salespeople who sell complex products and services at the upper end of the register.

6. Master the use of silence. There are numerous stories about salespeople who kept on talking after they had obtained the right commitment, but then lost the sale. Beware of the candidate who can’t shut up!

PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

Be wary of psychological tests because they can be unreliable. Here’s why:

1. Context. Before employing psychological tests, we need to be very clear about the specific context for which the test was developed. Was it, for example, designed for telesales people at a mobile phone service provider? And will that same test be effective when interviewing someone to sell complex financial services in a boutique bank? Not likely!

2. It is easy to cheat. Have you ever met a well-travelled rep who cannot hold a job but who achieves high scores with psychological tests? Why? Because after a while some of them know what’s coming in these tests and how to beat them in order to give a ‘correct’ profile.

3. Many tests measure interest or personality traits rather than sales ability. The sales manager knows the interests of successful salespeople and uses tests to discover whether potential new recruits have similar interest patterns. But this practice can lead to erroneous conclusions, because having the right interests does not equate with having sales ability. Further, factors such as how sociable, dominant, friendly and loyal a person is have failed to distinguish between high-and low-performing sales personnel.

EXPERIENCE OR POTENTIAL?

So you have conducted first and second interviews, and your selection process has left you with two candidates. One, although possessing good experience, and some measure of success, has a new sales job every 12 – 18 months. The other is a bright young man fresh from business school. He has no sales experience but is convinced that sales is a fast track to senior management and wants to jump in.

Would you employ either of them? If so, which one? Or do you revisit your selection process and start all over again?

Herman D. Alvaranga, FCIM, MBA, is president of the Caribbean School of Sales & Marketing (CSSM). For more insights on sales and marketing, please visit www.cssm.edu.jm