Essential Tips for Hiring Tech Sales Talent

Whether you’re assembling a completely new team or looking for a replacement for a recent departure, hiring can be a tricky process. Finding the best fit for your company based on skills, personality, and experience is a time-consuming process that often comes down to following some rules and breaking others. This is particularly important when you’re hiring for a sales role, as success in the tech sales industry depends on a number of specific, sometimes contradictory qualities, including but not limited to drive, confidence, emotional intelligence, and minimal fear of rejection.

“As an employer, there are several things you can do to ensure your recruitment and interview process is comprehensive enough to inform your decision-making and ensure the best new candidate gets the job.”

1. Prepare (even if it’s just a little bit)

The importance of preparing for interviews is manifold. It allows you to avoid falling into a routine conversation by keeping the interview focused, and it helps you to define the role you want to fill before you start the process. Knowing what you’re looking for in a new employee simplifies the often complex task of assessing a person’s eligibility. It might help to put together a list of characteristics you’re looking for — i.e. upbeat, resourceful, solutions-oriented — so that you can easily refer to it during or after the meeting. Preparation doesn’t have to take long, and it will save time as the criteria can be applied across multiple interviews.

2. Ask in-depth behavioural questions

Finding out the right information about a candidate relies on asking the right questions. If you’re looking for a certain set of skills, you’ll likely utilise more industry-specific context or ask the individual to walk you through a specialised process as if you were a customer. If you want to gauge problem-solving ability, present them with a hypothetical or ask about previous conflicts in earlier positions. Tech sales lend themselves to certain characteristics, and interview questions should reflect that. Asking about how they handle customer objections or what they would change about the current sales funnel at your organisation can give you a glimpse into their individual sales style. Further, ensure to also ask behavioural style questions. These will allow you to get an insight into how people deal with different situations. After all, you not only want to find a great salesperson, but you also want to find someone who fits perfectly into your existing team

3. Don’t forget they’re interviewing you, too.

While the scales may be tipped a bit, interviews are a mutual screening process, especially when you’re interviewing a highly qualified. Remember that they are probably meeting with multiple companies and want to get to know yours during the interview. You want to avoid focusing too heavily on what they bring to the company in the event that you want to hire them, and they haven’t been convinced that your company is the best fit on their end. Make sure to include communicating the benefits of working for you, and if time allows, you can introduce them to other members of the team so that they get a feel for the workplace culture.

4. Don’t be too rigid

While this list is a guide for keeping your interview process efficient and on track, it’s also necessary to go with the flow in some cases. Being too rigid can lead to discounting qualified candidates who bring something new to the table that you didn’t even know you were looking for. For example, if you have a minimum number of years of experience that a candidate doesn’t meet, look at the other, potentially unrelated experience they do have and how that could play into their competency. In some cases, having too much experience in one area can actually be a negative, as it could narrow someone’s skillset or perspective. Requirements on paper are one thing, but the whole package of skills and personality can look different depending on the situation.

5. Make it enjoyable

Interviews can be stressful for both parties, but reducing stress is an important tool because it helps to reveal a person’s true nature and gives them the opportunity to perform best. There are steps you can take ahead of time to ensure a more relaxed environment, such as letting candidates know ahead of time the general gist of the interview so that there are no surprises or uncertainties. If you’re flexible with timing and overall communication before the interview date, applicants are likely to be more at ease when the time comes. A high-tension conversation is sure to be less productive and professional than one in a comfortable setting.

6. Pass them the baton

A great way to see how a candidate would fit into your company is to give them the opportunity to show you. A popular way to do this is to have them give you a quick presentation on the product or service of your choice. For a sales position, this allows you as the interviewer to assess their presentation skills, their ability to understand and execute a task, and their overall sales literacy. Asking for a quick presentation or roleplay takes a hypothetical question a step further so you can see a realistic portrayal of their sales technique. You can tailor the requirements to your needs, but it helps to be flexible enough to let them show their strengths.

7. Define the role – for yourself and the candidate

In some cases, what’s written in the job description isn’t the whole picture. Often, you don’t just need a sales director; you also need someone who can effectively lead an entire team. You don’t just need a salesperson; you need someone who can both sell your products or improve upon your company and its current culture. If you’re in management, speak to the employees this new hire would be interacting with the most on a daily basis and ask for their thoughts. They may have different criteria because of their perspective and understanding of how the role fits into theirs, and this can be valuable insight for making your final decision.

8. Follow Up

Well-prepared candidates have probably had dozens of interviews before yours. Many cursory meetings have a similar formula, and sales interviews can often consist of the same types of questions. These tend to be more generic, open-ended questions, such as “Tell me about yourself” or “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” In these cases, candidates can easily prepare responses that will apply to many situations, and only give a surface-level understanding of their workplace competency and behaviour. That’s why it’s essential to use follow-up questions to dig deeper. Ask specifics about customers, conflicts, and solutions, both in past experience and future hypotheticals, in order to get real, unrehearsed responses.

9. Consider the resume, but not too much

There is a lot of information to be gleaned from someone’s resume, both from its content and format. However, if a resume was all it took to find a good fit for a role, interviews wouldn’t exist! But of course, they do, and that’s why you’re reading this list. We know that so much comes down to the characteristics of an employee that a piece of paper can’t always capture. If you limit your requirements too much, you’ll miss out on a lot of great candidates. Requirements like years of experience or level of education don’t always reflect the best person for the job. The interview is your chance to go further than that. You know what you’re looking for in an employee, and it usually isn’t easily measurable.

10. End on a good note

Regardless of the decisions made during or after an interview, leaving on a good note is a positive that everyone can benefit from. Whether you want to ensure you’ve made a good impression on a candidate that you plan to offer a job to, or you want to boost morale for a great candidate who simply isn’t a good fit, parting ways with a smile gives them a good sense of your character and your company. The same goes for notifying applicants who didn’t make the cut – while it’s sometimes not possible to do with a high volume of people, when it is, it’s a piece of generosity that makes the job search more enjoyable for applicants. Providing feedback is also greatly appreciated and often leaves the door open for future applications.