Hiring Sales People Based on Competencies vs Experience

When it comes to hiring sales people, there are various aspects of the candidate we must look at. Although sales experience carries some weight, matching a candidates competencies to competencies required for the job should carry more weight.

So what is required for the sales position that needs to be filled? Before you post your job description up, it might be a good time to review what the job entails.

A good exercise to do is to interview current sales people in your company to find what makes them good. What are some of their day-to-day duties? What qualities make them successful? What differentiates them from average to poor sales people in your company?

Next, you should interview their manager to see what their insights are on the same questions. Get a good sample size of information. If you have multiple locations or operate in different cities, it would be beneficial to see and talk to more sales people in different places.

After you go through this exercise and have enough information from various sources, find commonalities between your subjects and design your competency list of what is truly required to be successful at a sales job in your environment.

Now it is time to integrate these competencies to your job description to be posted. If you use interview guides for your recruiter or hiring manager, it will be crucial to focus in on these competencies that you uncovered as the key areas to ask questions around.

When conducting your interview with a potential candidate, try to stick to behavioural questions vs situational questions based on the competencies required. As an example, if a competency that is required is achievement motivation, ask them what their greatest achievement was at their previous job or even in life. This will give you a good idea of how motivated they are and what their definition of achievement is. Don't throw a situational question here like, "what would you consider a good achievement if you were to join us?".

Situational questions will give you hypothetical answers, behavioural questions will give you real life examples of what they have done in certain situations.

So, back to the burning statement in the title of this post; hiring sales people based on competencies vs experience. If we see a resume for someone that worked for a competitor or in a like-wise industry, it will be very tempting to get excited. They might have track record and maybe even a reputation, but if they don't fit the competencies that makes sales people successful in your company, they will not fit.

They will not fit your company culture and may revert to doing things that "worked" at their other company. Now, don't get me wrong, in some cases shaking up your sales team with bringing in an experienced sales person from a competitor can be beneficial. You might uncover new ways of doing things and maybe even uncover competencies that can reshape the way you look for sales people.

If, on the other hand, you already have rockstar sales people in your company that are successful and are just filling vacant roles, stick to the competencies that work and don't get too excited about their experiences on their resume until you know they will be a good match.

About Marvin Torreno

Marvin has over 17 years of sales and marketing experience. Currently, Marvin is a Managing Partner at Retailors Group, specializing in Sales, Leadership, Retail Management, Digital Marketing and Field Marketing.