[After a conversation with Yogesh Sharma, the CEO of Personiva]
Here’s an exercise idea you can use as a “Final Challenge” in the sales rep interviewing process. Note that it’s not a good exercise for sales executive.
This is especially relevant to young companies, or mature companies beginning to sell a young product, where the sales playbook isn’t clearly defined yet. When the sales tools, messages and process keep changing, testing for what works, companies need sales people that can ask smart business questions, create their own tools on the fly and solve problems in whatever situation they’re thrown in.
Example Situation
You have one or more sales candidates in which there is serious mutual interest. However, you’ve never worked with the candidates, and would like a way to take them for a dry-run to get a real sense of their talent. To add some pressure, one candidate has a competitive offer than explodes shortly.
The Set Up
On Friday, you present them with the final test: on Monday, they have an appointment with you…except you’re playing the role of potential customer, and they’re playing the role of salesperson. If you’ve interviewed them a couple of times, they should have enough of a sense of the target customer, problem and value proposition to put something decent together.
Replay A Past Customer Scenario
Come up with a story outline from one of your actual prior sales calls. For example: assume this salesperson (who works at your marketing services company), has a meeting with a new prospect, a VP of Marketing at Coke (you). The two of you have already had one 30 minute qualification call, and You’re interested. And you tell the salesperson: “Come in and show me what you’ve got”.
Give them a little time and information, but not too much. If they are good, they will work for it and earn it, even calling other employees in the company. They’ll dig for business problems, and be creative in getting information.
You could include someone else in the company as a second role, and the salesperson might have to connect with that person as well to really get the scoop on the business issues.
Play along as best you can. but try to be realistic – how much information or time on the phone would they get from a real executive to prepare for a meeting? 30 minutes? Or a couple of email responses? They need to be able to take bits and pieces of tools and information, and weave it into an effective story.
After the pitch:
* Did they take the initiative to go the extra mile? Were you impressed?
* Did they work to understand and try to help solve your problem, or did they try to sell you product?
* Did you trust and respect them?
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