Returning guest, Jan Foster, of Performance Resources, Inc, joins the Human Resources for Small Business podcast to discuss recruiting and hiring the perfect sales person for an organization.
During the episode, Jan and Brandon discuss common challenges with hiring sales reps, behaviors to look for in the perfect hire, interview questions to ask, whether you should hire for culture or skill, and much more.
Contact Jan Foster at jan@prol.ws
Common variances between sales roles (as referenced in discussion):
Company size
Startup, emerging, established organization
Collaborative vs. confrontational culture
Self-directed vs. micro-management
Supportive (resources) or self-reliant environment
Formal training vs. on-the-job
Hunter/farmer/both
Type of buyer – CEO/VP (decision maker), purchasing, maintenance, etc.
Target client industry – industrial vs. professional organization
Software vs. hardware
Services vs. products
Value sale vs. commodity
Concrete vs. conceptual sales
Size of sale – millions, hundreds or dozens of dollars
Sales cycle – enterprise long-term, transactional
Tell us what you think!
Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, my name is Brandon Laws. I am with Jan Foster, a returning guest, and she is the accounting executive at Performance Resources, Inc. They are a provider of HR tools including applicant tracking systems, assessments, and—fitting for this conversation, as we’re going to talk about how to hire great sales reps—Jan is a career salesperson with over 30 years of experience with Xerox and other large and small companies. Jan, it’s great to have you back! How are you?
Jan: I’m great, thank you!
Brandon: Let’s kick it off! What are some common challenges that you’ve heard from people you work with about hiring awesome salespeople?
Jan: What I hear is that hiring salespeople is one of the hardest things in the world. And the reason for that is that sales professionals are trained to be charming. They often can talk a great talk, but what we want to know when hiring is can they deliver for us and our environment, and can they transfer industries. Because not everyone is going to come from the same type of industry you’re in now.
Brandon: That’s interesting. So when you have an open position, you’re about to hire somebody, what are things that employers are looking for on a resume that would determine if they’re a good sales rep, if there’s even such a way to do that?
Jan: Well, what I hear a lot is that they’re really focused on What have you done before? Have you worked in our industry, do you have contacts in our industry, do you know this industry? And that has validity for sure, but I think there are a lot of people out there who can learn your industry and what we really need to be concerned with is, Do they have the skills and attributes similar to what we need? If we get the right person in the job, we can train them in those specific skills. Employers also want to know what results they have delivered and, on the resume, do they provide percentage increases in sales or dollar figures? Or is it just awards that they’ve won, who they’ve sold. So people who give facts and figures typically have delivered more than people who just say I’ve sold this or that.
Brandon: It sounds like it’s really a combination of industry experience and something that directly translates to their business, and then also, proven results—percentage increases of growth, revenue targets, goals, those sorts of things. Is that what you’re saying?
Jan: Yes!
Brandon: So for current sales reps who are in an organization, what are signs that it’s just not working out?
Jan: Often it’s obvious pretty quickly that they’re not learning about your organization. They’re not learning about your products. They’re not learning what is the differentiator between your products and your competitor’s process. Those are all learning abilities, so it’s very important that we get sales people who are able to learn a new industry, new contacts, how we do things around here. Sometimes people just don’t get it, or they’re not able to communicate at the right level to be able to kind of get through—the rocket scientist trying to talk to someone who’s average, like you or me!
Sometimes we see they’re not making appointments, they’re not getting out and seeing people. That relates to their energy level, their perseverance, their ability to prospect. Are they a self-starter? Do they build relationships? Do they like being around other people? Those are all kinds of behavioral things that we see.
Sometimes we see that they’re talking to a lot of people but they’re not moving people into proposing a solution or demoing them if it’s something you can demo and closing. 
They’re just not getting people into the funnel, as we call it in sales. Another error that I see sometimes with employers is that they’ll hire somebody and they’ll bring them on and they expect results in the first 30, 60, 90 days. If it’s a different industry, if it’s a larger type of a sale, that does take time, so we don’t want to be too quick to judge that they can’t sell. We have to be looking for progress. And there’s lots of other symptoms—in our heart of heart, sometimes we just think, This isn’t the person that I hired! You just get surprised as you’re disappointed in the ramp-up.
Brandon: It’s interesting to me because it seems like there are some very clear personality traits or attributes, or even metrics, that could help us identify those sales people in our organization that just aren’t working out and aren’t a good fit. Is there any way to figure that out ahead of time before you even hire somebody? Through, I don’t know, assessments or through the interview process? What have you come to find out about that?
Jan: Well, when we’re using our sales assessments, we have a process for that. If you have a sales team, it’s a larger company and there are some people that I call rock stars, we want to measure them through our assessment and find out how they rate on each of the things that we measure. We’re measuring cognitive skills and abilities, kind of like a mini-SAT if you will, and we’re looking at behavioral traits and occupational interest. So what we do is we measure top performers and look for more people who share some core characteristics—they’re not exact clones, but they match closely on those things that research has shown matter in picking the right person for the job. And if we don’t have top performers, we also have a library of base patterns that we could use. . If you think about it, an insurance company that’s a super big one versus this one that’s five employees, the characteristics of those kinds of insurance sales is very different. And the cultures of companies are very different, and the levels of support and so forth. So we always use a survey tool to help fine-tune it to help fit that particular organization.
Brandon: You mentioned fit and the word culture—that’s the biggest buzzword of 2014 I think, and 2015. I’m sure a lot of employers are looking at this and saying, I want these behaviors for a sales person, but I also want a really good culture fit. What do you think is better, or which do you need to hire for, I guess is the proper question?
Jan: Well, the research has shown that these cognitive things that we’re measuring and these hardwired behavioral traits which include how independently they like to work, how they make decisions, how assertive they are, how well they do in a fast-paced environment with lots of interruptions, those types of things really matter. And cultures are different. Some companies are super, super fast-paced and there are lots of interruptions, and in other cultures you’re just kind of plodding along doing one thing at a time. So the cultural line is important, but I see a lot of organizations that are focusing on the cultural fit more than job fit, and my recommendation is to make sure we’ve got the right person for the job, but if the little voice in the back of your head is saying They’re not a fit for our culture or I don’t like this person, then don’t ignore that. You’ve got to make sure you think they fit your culture, but what we’re most concerned about is can they do the job, how are they going to work within our business and with our clients, and are they passionate about the types of things that we’re doing here? Are they going to stick with us once a better opportunity comes around?
Brandon: So if you look at your experience, all the years of sales experience you have and all of the data you’ve seen through your assessments, what do—if there is a prototypical top performer in sales—what do they look like, from a statistical or resume standpoint?
Jan: Well, it really depends on the industry and type of company, because there’s just so many different types of companies, so many different types of sales. A few years back I worked for a CEO that told me, If you can sell, you can sell anything.
Brandon: [Laughing] I’ve heard that before! Is that right?
Jan: I really disagree with that, because it’s very different. When I worked for Xerox, the company at the time was 100,000 people with lots of resources and support and everything. Then I went to work for smaller organizations where pretty much I had to figure things out on my own. Some people can make that transition, and that’s very, very challenging for some people who are used to a lot of support. And there’s all types of differences between companies and between sales roles. So you think about a company that’s selling leading edge products and they’re the latest in technology or new concept that’s new to the market, that takes a different kind of salesperson than someone who’s selling a commodity item that everybody knows and you’re competing on price. Or it’s different in a retail environment where your customers are coming to you versus more of a hunter role where you have to go out and find the business. There’s lots of differences in sales roles, and that’s why we benchmark our top performers or we use these base profiles and then customize it to the specifics of that organization.
Brandon: All assessments aside, when you look at top performers, what do the business leaders say that makes a top performer?
Jan: Well, again it depends on the industry and the type of sales. But I’d say positive attitude’s a very important thing. Having a positive attitude means that they’re going to persevere. In sales you get a lot of no’s, you get a lot of rejection, you get a lot of people who don’t call you back. So you’ve got to have a positive attitude to keep going in the face of all of the challenges, whether the economy’s bad or many other factors. I think, also, energy level. Some jobs require that a person make a lot of outbound phone calls or a lot of networking meetings to meet with potential referral partners and so forth. Other ones are more focused. Like, I’m working major accounts and I really need to focus on building the relationships with key decision makers or key influencers. So it’s really different from role to role, but that fire in the belly, that’s a thing.
Brandon: It seems like planning, and somebody who’s focused and able to plan out their day and week and focus on goals would be the top performer as well.
Jan: Right. So some of the things that we look at that are kind of unique to sales versus just the fit for the job are, what can we expect for prospecting? Are they going to keep making the calls or the appointments and keep going? Are they a self-starter, do they need somebody to be telling them what to do? Because in most sales positions, you’re pretty independent and you need to be able to do these things on your own.
We look at how are they at building relationships? Do they like long term relationships? Some jobs really rely on that, and other ones you make a sale and you walk away and that’s the last of it.
We look at working with the team, how are they going relate to the other people in the company, the people in their building or their support services, their service teams, the management, and working with outside resources that they depend on?
We look at compensation preference, too, that’s a big one because some jobs come with a high salary and a little bit of commission or even 100% salary, and other ones are 100% commission where their livelihood depends on selling every week of every month. And if a person is not comfortable with that, there’s a lot of risk that they’ll leave because they’re losing that security.
And of course closing is an important skill. Being able to get the order and knowing when to ask for the order—not asking too soon but not waiting too long and continually moving people through the sales cycle.
Brandon: Earlier you alluded to the fact that there are so many different types of sales positions out there, and it really varies across industries and what’s needed. So for the employers who, for one, either have a recruiter or HR person or hiring manager looking for candidates that fit a certain type of sales role in the organization, how do you figure that out? What are ways to find out if a candidate is the right fit?
Jan: Well, that’s where my business is focused on assessments, and the research, SHRM has done some studies, the Society for Human Resource Management has local chapters all over the place. But they’ve done some studies where most hiring decisions, and this is true of sales over any other role, are made in the first five minutes of an interview, or sometimes even faster. And a lot of that is based on rapport, do I feel comfortable with this person, do I like what they look like and everything, and by using assessments, what we do is we dig into not how we perceive them, not what their resume, which is a marketing document, tells us. It helps us to withhold our judgment until we have more facts about the person. So the assessment gives us more data that we can use to understand how they’re like what we’re looking for and what they’re not like so we can ask behavioral, open-ended interview questions to determine if those differences are going to get in the way of them being successful. Again, I have bias, but I’ve seen it work time and time again where once we have this additional data, we’re able to make more decisions.
Here’s an example: you’ve got a candidate who really, really wants this job. They need to make their mortgage payment, they want to get back to work, whatever their reason is, they may come across as being highly assertive. But once you hire them, and they’re no longer wanting to get that job, they may not be as assertive with their client base. You may also have someone who’s very chit-chatty and sociable and just seems really outgoing in an interview situation, but then you hire them and find they want to go hide in an office or in their cubicle, hide in some way because they really don’t like working with other people that much or interacting with people. So there are some surprises sometimes that we find about people that aren’t what we perceive in a typical interview environment.
Brandon: Jan, when you and I started planning for this topic, because we both kind of felt like hiring sales people is such a key function in an organization. Just getting the right person is so important. So for hiring managers and HR people, they have such a large task in hiring sales people. You sent me some content when we were planning for this topic on common variances between different types of sales roles and what could help determine how maybe you want to structure like a resume and just things to think about. Would you mind just talking about some of those things? I know the company size and industry—those are some of the main things. But maybe just run through some of those things that are things to consider.
Jan: Yeah, so company size is a big one. Larger companies typically have more resources available. And not to say that somebody who’s worked for a big company can’t work in a smaller environment, it’s just something to consider. Also we have start-up environments which are really, really different. They’re fast-paced, everything’s changing all the time. We get into emerging companies where maybe they’ve got more funding or they’re a little more established. And then we get into well-established organizations.
There are different cultures. Xerox is a very collaborative type of environment and a lot of workplaces are like that. And then there’s other workplaces where it’s very confrontational. Intel, I hear, is very confrontational. You’re supposed to put it out there when you disagree with people. So we’ve got to look for fit in those areas.
There are roles where the person is very self-directed and some companies have a lot of micromanagement. They want to know how many calls you’ve made every day and a lot of details to monitor what the sales person is doing. If somebody’s very self-directed, that micromanagement will drive them crazy. If they’re not as self-directed, they may get in an environment where they’re not getting enough direction, so that can be a problem too.
There’s environments where there are a lot of resources and there’s environments where you have to go out and figure things out for yourself. Some companies provide formal training and in other companies you have to do on-the-job training or you have to know who in the company to go ask questions to learn what you need to learn about that company and what’s appropriate for your clients.
Of course we’ve all heard about hunters and farmers. So hunters are out there hunting new business, that’s their focus. Then there are farmers who are working with existing accounts and trying to grow the business. And some roles are a combination of the two, where you’re supporting existing clients but you’re also looking for new business.
Then there’s different types of buyers. In some types of sales we’re dealing with a purchasing agent, a maintenance manager, or blue collar kinds of things. And other ones you’re dealing with a CEO or VP. It takes a different type of person to relate well to those different levels of buyers in an organization.
The industry of target clients is different. Sometimes we’re calling on industrial clients and sometimes we’re calling on law firms and CPA firms and professional organizations. And again, different people may be more effective in one type of client organization versus another. It’s very different selling software versus selling hardware. I came from Xerox, which is a hardware company though there’s a lot of software in it. When I left Xerox I started selling E-commerce software back in the day, and that was a whole different game. And so again, some people can do both and some people are better at selling one versus the other.
Some people are better at selling services versus products, or vice versa. Sometimes we’re selling value, we’re selling a high priced item, we’re selling them how we can save them money in the future versus a commodity sale where we need widgets to produce our products.
And then there’s concrete sales where, here’s what I’m selling. Here’s a Xerox machine or this laptop or whatever, versus a conceptual sale, which is kind of like software or consulting services where we’re selling what we can do for them but we can’t actually see it.
And then there’s different sizes of sales. Some people are dealing in lots of transactions that are small dollar amounts and other people are selling million dollar systems or engagement. So those are different types of sales environments.
And then the sales cycle can be very different. There can be transactional sales versus where you’re working on deals for a year, or two or three or four, where you’re working with a whole enterprise and trying to shift, make a major, major change in that organization, and those things take longer. Some people can’t endure for that, typically those kinds of sales have higher salary levels because sales are few and far between, but some people thrive on that, getting the big one.
So those are a few of the differences. I did some brainstorming with a bunch of sales leaders and they helped me develop this list. I think it’s a good one to consider.
Brandon: I think we definitely will have to add this content up to the show notes, I think it’s such a great list, and thank you for walking through that and doing a thorough dive into the variances.
So, as we wrap up this topic, I want to leave the hiring managers, the HR people that are listening, with some tools that can help them in their pursuit to hire great sales people. Do you have some ideas, or point them in the right direction for assessments to use and those sorts of things?
Jan: Well I certainly represent assessment tools and would be happy to talk with anyone. I would caution a couple of things. I see a lot of companies out there that are using what I call personality assessments that are things like DISC, Meyers Briggs personality analysis, and some of those. Those are great tools, I have a great deal of respect for those tools, but they have to be used in the right place. They’re not designed for hiring, they’re really designed for how are you going to relate to different kinds of people and optimizing that relational style. But someone can be a different style, or several people on a team can be different styles, and still be effective in a sales role, so that’s not a way to make a decision on hiring.
So, the tools that I represent look at the things that research that came out of Harvard and many, many years of research. And we’re looking at three basic things, we’re looking at can they do the job, do they have the right level of verbal skills, verbal reasoning in their skills, numeric reasoning, to be able to learn what they need to learn for the job and to be able to communicate at a level that their clients and their coworkers can understand? So if you’ve got someone who’s really really high on the skills and they need to communicate to a buyer that’s not at their same level, we need to make sure that they can kind of dumb down their language to a point that their clients can understand. On the flip side, if we’ve got someone who’s not quite sharp enough, they may not be able to learn or communicate at the right level.
The second area is those behavioral things: how independently they like working, what’s their energy level, how sociable are they, how accommodating are they, how assertive 
The third area is occupational interest. Is this really what they want to be doing with their life? Are they going to bring passion to this job? Are they going to keep going in the face of all those no’s you get in sales? Are they interested in entrepreneurial things, which what you think of is entrepreneurs, but it’s also sales, it’s persuasion, it’s leadership. Are they interested in serving people? Do they want to help make people’s lives better? Are they interested in financial and administrative types of things, are they interested in mechanical or technical or creative things? So when we get people that are well-aligned with what they’re really passionate about, we find that they’re willing to go that extra mile a lot more.
And then, of course, we’ve got to look for those numbers. What have they delivered before, and I would highly recommend calling references. And not only the ones that they give you, but look at their LinkedIn profile, their resume, and try to find people they’ve worked with in the past, past clients, and see if you can find out any additional information from them. And that’s true for any kind of a role, but people will give you great references of course, they want a job! But if you can seek out some other people they’ve interacted with and get some opinions from them, I think you just get a better feel for whether they can deliver in your organization, and always considering can they deliver in my organization, not just where they’ve delivered in the past.
Brandon: Great, great, great advice! I know this topic has probably been on the minds of a lot of people, it’s been on my mind, I’m sure it’s been on your mind. I mean, sales is so needed in every organization, and to hire the right fit is so important. So thank you for the great advice for the listener!
Do you have any links or any other resources that you just want to mention before we close?
Jan: One other thing I would mention is that when we’re doing interviews, we need to ask questions, but we need to dig in further than, I think, a lot of organizations do. So when you’re asking about sales performance, I would ask, Tell me about one of the sales you’re most proud of. What obstacles did you need to overcome, what were some of the challenges you had, did anybody oppose your decision? And really dig into how they got this sale, who all they got on board with the decision and just keep asking questions to make sure they’re not creating stories that didn’t really exist, which happens on occasion as you may have heard.
As far as resources, I would be happy to talk with anyone. It’s so specific to industries and so forth that that might be the best approach. So, feel free to share my contact information.
Brandon: Absolutely! And what’s your website address, so people can go learn more about what you do?
Jan: Our website is www.prol.ws and my email is jan@prol.ws.
Brandon: We’ll definitely put up a link to it as well. Jan Foster, Account Executive at Performance Resources, Inc, thank you so much for joining the HR for Small Business podcast! I know I learned a lot, and I’m sure folks listening also learned quite a bit. We appreciate it!
Jan: Thank you Brandon!