"Interview Questions That Will Make You An Abundance Of $$"

How do you wade through the proverbial haystack of applicants and find the perfect employee? You know the stack. It’s looking at you right now. Ouch, you just got pinged with another resume in your inbox.

Hiring new personnel for your business can be expensive, both financially and emotionally. Studies have shown that on average, companies spend 2.5 times an individual's salary to find a replacement, including recruiting, training, loss of productivity costs, and severance payments. Wow! Furthermore, the disruption in your client base when a salesperson leaves and or the uncertainty amongst your staff when the manager departs after only a few months can be devastating. In order to maintain the peace, we suggest looking back, rather than forward with the interview process. History repeats itself, and by structuring your interviews on past behavior, you can get a good sense of possible future actions and decide if the prospect is a good fit. Hey Coach, how should I structure my questions?

When structuring your interview questions, keep in mind the importance of focusing on the past rather than asking hypothetical questions about the future. Questions about previous work experiences and managers allow you to discover what candidate consists of as you will have acquired proof based upon learned past performance results, or simply how a previous situation was handled. Asking hypothetical questions about the future such as, "What would you do when you get here during the first 30 days?” carries little value. Instead ask, "In the last company, what were the things that you did in the first 30 days that generated the best results and why did you choose those activities?” The chances are high that they will implement the strategies that worked before now as they enter their new role.

As you look to develop your interview questions for your next great sales or Vice President of Sales hire, we have outlined the following key areas on which to base your interview questions. Although these questions may seem simple on the surface, these are the questions that have consistently allowed us to choose the person who produced immediately.

1) To start with, it’s important to determine how open is this person? The candidate who is open is going to accept feedback from you (their boss), their team, peers, etc, and will view your feedback as an asset rather than a threat. We suggest investigating their learning process. Ask what is the last sales book that they read? How often do they attend seminars? What magazines do they read daily? What's one lesson that they learned from that book/seminar/magazine that has been successfully applied? Someone who is committed to learning and seeking support is always going to be open to new ideas, feedback and suggestions from their team.

2) How much responsibility is the candidate willing or able to take for their actions, or do they look to blame other outside influences, i.e. the economy, competition, etc? An excellent way to determine someone's capacity to accept responsibility for their results rather than fall victim to their circumstances is to ask the following set of questions, “Outline for me your greatest set back and or failure. How did you respond to it? What is one thing that you learned from that experience?” The candidate who indicates that the set back or failure was their responsibility and can clearly point to the lessons learned is a responsible candidate who can be counted on to take charge of any situation in the future.

3) It is important to asses if the candidate is going to fit comfortably into your environment. Below are some questions designed to elicit key information. The responses will serve as an accurate assessment of their ideal boss and work environment. If their favorite boss just "left them alone" and allowed them to work from home without having to provide any reports, you may have a candidate who does not want your attention and to be “micro-managed.” He or she may also not be enthusiastic about coming into the office, attending meetings, or social networking functions with the team. Asking about their favorite and least boss is a sound way to predict the dynamic they want to create with you.

A. Who do you view as your most effective "boss"? Why were they so effective with you?

B. Who do you view as your least effective "boss"? Why were they so ineffective with you? How did you communicate with your boss to express your views to them about your dissatisfaction?

C. What company environment have you thrived in? Why did you thrive?

D. What company environment have you felt frustrated in? Why did you feel frustrated?

The question about "how did you communicate your dissatisfaction...?" serves as another opportunity for you to discover if the person is direct and does not shirk from confrontation. A responsible candidate will not be afraid to tactfully voice their opinion, rather complain loudly to co-workers about their discontent.

4) How do you determine if a candidate takes responsibility to generate their own sales rather than waiting for the company to generate leads for them? The person who openly complains that the company's marketing department did a poor job providing leads may be a candidate you want to run from. In fact, start sprinting. This information is easily extracted by asking, “What was your most effective way to generate leads and/or your best lead source? What was your most creative approach in securing a meeting with a prospect?” Strong sales candidates will readily have effective answers available and will point to examples on ways they generated their own leads from their own efforts.

5) To asses a candidate's previous performance, ask them directly for their results and pay close attention to their response including body language. Start with, “How was your performance tracked in your last company? Were you on a monthly quota? How many times during the last 12 months did you reach or exceed your revenue target? How did you rank amongst your sales peers? What did you do differently to make yourself stand out from your peers?”

Make certain you receive straight answers to these questions. A candidate who is vague or has difficulty explaining their performance against quota is someone who may not be focused on delivering numbers, perhaps doesn't understand numbers, did not actually have a quota to reach, and or is not motivated to exceeding set goals.

6) Everyone has a key motivator which is easy to determine by asking the following, “What is the one thing (above and beyond anything else) that motivates you every morning when you wake up?”

In sales, ideally you are looking for motivational responses based on high level income, the eagerness to be the best on their team or in their industry and the desire to exceed set targets. The sales-person who says they are motivated by stability or that your company is close to home, illustrate complacency and are not ideal characteristics of a top sales-person.

Finding high performing sales professionals is an art. I have managed, trained and coached thousands of sales-professionals. If you are like most managers we work with, you can count the number of great sales-people that you would rehire on one hand. Yes, one hand. Take your time, do your homework, and focus on the questions that revolve around past performances. The end result will be a win-win, a motivated employee that slides comfortably into your business resulting in higher achieved quotas and a dynamic workplace.

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