Coach them through your corporate pitch
Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2025 6:30 am
1. Request an audition
Hiring a sales rep? Get them to sell something to you. Hiring a software developer? Have them solve a logic problem. Hiring a creative designer? Get them to go through a consultation with you. The key is, to go beyond their résumé and have them put their experience into practice for you to see firsthand.
One great technique I use to hire sales reps is to have them deliver a 15-minute presentation to me and a few others from my team.
I give them the topic in advance, which includes a high-level case study that sets the context. I make sure the topic is relevant to our business and their potential role. I also make sure all the content needed to build their case can be readily found online.
Seeing how the candidates prepare for the task, how poised indonesia telegram data and confident they are during the exercise, and how they handle themselves after being asked tough questions from the audience speaks volumes about their potential and how quickly they would ramp up in our business.
I am constantly surprised (yet thankful) to see candidates who had been otherwise stellar until this point completely blow the audition step (which saved me much grief down the road).
2.
When I interview candidates, coachability is one of the most important attributes I look for. Coachability speaks to the candidate’s ability to listen (super-important for sales reps), adapt, and externalize knowledge quickly!
To test for this attribute, I use a simple technique. I ask the candidate to imagine that they just got out of the interview with me and a friend calls and says, “Hey, I heard you just had an interview with [company name]…what do they do?” I then ask how they would respond. The candidate will usually try to stumble through your corporate pitch, with some doing a better job than others.
Hiring a sales rep? Get them to sell something to you. Hiring a software developer? Have them solve a logic problem. Hiring a creative designer? Get them to go through a consultation with you. The key is, to go beyond their résumé and have them put their experience into practice for you to see firsthand.
One great technique I use to hire sales reps is to have them deliver a 15-minute presentation to me and a few others from my team.
I give them the topic in advance, which includes a high-level case study that sets the context. I make sure the topic is relevant to our business and their potential role. I also make sure all the content needed to build their case can be readily found online.
Seeing how the candidates prepare for the task, how poised indonesia telegram data and confident they are during the exercise, and how they handle themselves after being asked tough questions from the audience speaks volumes about their potential and how quickly they would ramp up in our business.
I am constantly surprised (yet thankful) to see candidates who had been otherwise stellar until this point completely blow the audition step (which saved me much grief down the road).
2.
When I interview candidates, coachability is one of the most important attributes I look for. Coachability speaks to the candidate’s ability to listen (super-important for sales reps), adapt, and externalize knowledge quickly!
To test for this attribute, I use a simple technique. I ask the candidate to imagine that they just got out of the interview with me and a friend calls and says, “Hey, I heard you just had an interview with [company name]…what do they do?” I then ask how they would respond. The candidate will usually try to stumble through your corporate pitch, with some doing a better job than others.