If you are hiring a sales team in Sydney remember this golden rule.

However your salesperson presents in the interview is exactly how they will sell to your customers.

We often get blinded by the polish of a candidate. Most candidates will sit in your office and talk about the same things.

They talk about their years of experience.
They talk about their industry knowledge.
They talk about their "little black book" of contacts.
They talk about how they once rescued a deal through "multi-threading."

They sound good. They sound confident. So they are hired.

But then the problems start.

The Mirror Effect

When they get in front of your prospects they talk the same talk. They treat the sales call exactly like they treated the job interview.

"We have been doing this for 100 years."
"I have been in this industry for 10 years so you should trust me."
"I know a lot of people in this industry and I used to work with the same person you did."

But none of that resonates with your prospect.

As we discussed in Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics, your prospect does not care about your history. They only care about their own problems.

If your new hire spends the first ten minutes of a meeting talking about themselves they have already lost the room.

The "Covid Gym" Illusion

Your interview should never be about past experiences. Past performance is often just a result of a booming market.

You could put a 16 year old behind a gym counter post-Covid and they would hit 300% of their target.

Everyone wanted to join a gym. The "salesperson" was just taking orders. They still know nothing about sales.

If you hire based on past numbers alone you are likely hiring an order taker. When the market gets tough, as we discussed in The 'Always On' Sales Myth, these people crumble because they do not know how to generate their own demand.

What You Should Ask Instead

Your interview should be entirely focused on your candidate's knowledge of the craft.

You need to understand how they sell.

Here are the questions I recommend asking to cut through the waffle.

  1. "How do people buy?"
    This tests if they understand psychology or if they just follow a script.
  2. "Can you walk me through your cold call?"
    Ask them how they would pitch your specific services. If they cannot structure a hook, they will fail. This is the first thing we cover in SDR Sales Training.
  3. "Do you like to wing it?"
    Ask how they run a sales meeting or demo. If they say they "read the room" without a structure, that is a red flag.
  4. "How do you handle 'I need to think about it'?"
    This is the ultimate test. If they say they will send an email and follow up in a week, do not hire them. They should know how to uncover the real objection. We translate these objections in The Sales Translator.
  5. "How many proposals do you send that don't close?"
    If they are sending proposals to everyone they are wasting your time. As we covered in The Death of the Sales Proposal, a proposal should only be sent to confirm a deal that is already agreed upon.

Stop Recruiting on Waffle

Start understanding how your candidates sell and whether that fits what you need.

If you need someone to actually sell and not just take orders then make sure they know how to actually do that.

You can teach product knowledge. You can teach industry trends.

But it is very expensive to hire someone who refuses to learn how to sell.

If you want to ensure your current team actually knows the answers to these questions, check out our Account Executive Training.

Hire for skill. Not for tenure.