Soon after summarizing the book “TopGrading for Sales,” I had the good fortune to run into Sean Murray, a sales leader at Xactly who is applying many parts of the approach. Here is how Sean hires:
Step 1: Recruiting team pre-screens candidates
Step 2: Administer a behavioral assessment calibrated to maximize the score delta between the organization’s highest and lowest performers
[Jeremey: I recently evaluated both Devine and Talent Analytics for this; both were good but I chose Devine and have been exceptionally happy with their assessment and their service]
Step 3: Conduct a structured, competency-based interview as follows:
- Duration: 1 hour (50 minutes of questions + 10 minutes to field candidate questions)
- 2 interviewers in the room
- All candidates get the same anthropological (“Tell me about a time when you…”) questions exploring the following: (i) commercial strategy (ii) negotiation (iii) persuasion (iv) problem solving (v) coach-ability (vi) drive for results (vii) intellectual curiosity
Step 4: Provide the candidate with a 1-hour “break” during which time they are given the company’s pitch deck, tailored to a fictitious prospect, to study.
[Jeremey: It is very critical to have the candidate pitch your company back to you rather than having them sell you something random.]
Step 5: Have the candidate role play four key parts of the sales process with 2-4 other sales people or sales leaders in the room:
- Introductory conversation (5 minutes)
- Teach me something (5 minutes) – Note: The deck has a few slides with valuable tips that are contextually tied to the company/product; this also tests storytelling ability
- Objection handing (5 minutes) to see if the candidate is overly aggressive or overly passive
- Mutual engagement planning (5 minutes)