How to Make Sales Interviews More Enjoyable

Job interviews can be stressful for all involved so why not try to make them more fun than expected by doing some of the following:

Interview Outside of the Workplace

From a personal point of view, I had an interview at a coffee shop a few years back that I felt took the pressure off immediately, having other conversations go on in the background it just felt as though I was having a catch up with a friend, and I felt at ease. There isn’t a rule saying you have to take all interviews in the board room or in the workplace. It doesn’t have to be a coffee shop, it could be over lunch or in a public space, but it might help you both relax and give you a better reflection of the candidate’s personality.

Make it Interactive

It could be a good idea to do a role play, if you are interviewing for a field sales position, you could get the candidate to re-enact a client visit and ask the questions they would ask in trying to win a client. This will give you a decent idea of how they would act when out in the field working for you. You could be interviewing for a telesales position, if so act as the potential client on the other end of the phone and get the candidate to show how they could go about winning you over.

Ask Fun Interview Questions

Examples could be:

·         You’re a new addition to the crayon box. What colour would you be and why?

·         We finish the interview, and you step outside and find a lottery ticket that ends up winning 5 million pounds. What would you do?

·         What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?

Interview Environment

If you are interviewing in the boardroom or a separate room at the office, then try to make it as comfortable as you can for the candidate, don’t sit directly opposite each other face to face, try to make it a relaxing environment for both parties.  I know a Sales Director that interviews candidates side by side looking out over the landscape from his office window (which incidentally is a fantastic view!). He feels that interviewees are a lot more candid without the ‘confrontation’ of direct eye contact.

Considerations

There is of course a line with all of this not to cross, you want to be creative but also come across as professional. Make sure any questions you deem fun are legal and don’t make them feel uncomfortable with awkward questions.

Written by Liam Oakes

Liam is the Sales Recruitment Manager at Aaron Wallis and has been with the company for 5 years after having a career with the RAF; Liam has helped hundreds of Sales Professionals secure a new Sales role and ensures that Aaron Wallis runs smoothly.

Liam.oakes@aaronwallis.co.uk

www.aaronwallis.co.uk

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Guide to Recruiting Sales People

Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment has published a full guide to recruiting sales professionals with links to further advice content and guides.


Includes:

• Identifying Your Recruitment Goals 
• Establishing a Recruitment Plan 
• The Perfect Interview 
• The Offer Stage And Induction

Your free copy of 'A Guide To Recruiting SalesPeople' can be downloaded here:

http://www.aaronwallis.co.uk/Aaron-Wallis-guide-to-recruiting-sales-staff.pdf

We hope that you find this guide useful.

The Apprentice Week 6 - Non-existent Negotiation

This week saw the 13 remaining candidates told to set up their own DIY business and try to make a profit from basic jobs. This involved the two teams providing quotes for two jobs set up by Lord Sugar, handyman tasks for a football club and a theatre, as well as to try and drum up their own business from flyers and knocking on doors. For sales professionals this episode was particularly interesting as the key to success in the task involved negotiation to try and get the best deals possible, as well as generating business in the first place. Lord Sugar has shown just how much he values sales skills in his future business partner, firing Dan in the first week for his failure to sell. So how did the candidates get on?

Awful Negotiating

Throughout the whole of the episode I’m sure sales professionals across the country were shaking their head with astonishment as to how bad all of the candidates were at trying to secure a good deal. The biggest mistakes made by the teams from a negotiating perspective came when offering a quote for redecorating the dressing rooms for a theatre in London. One of the first rules of negotiation is to know what price you’re offering for a service and to try and stick to it. Team Connectus did not seem convincing at all when initially offering £777 for the refurbishment, only ten seconds later changing their price to £877. Comically, Brett tried to cover up this mistake by suggesting just how good a service they were offering, before mincing his words telling the theatre manager ‘I am an expertise in my field’. Not the most impressive pitch.

Team Versatile had the opportunity to capitalise on the other team’s price mishaps offering an initial £560 for the theatre refurbishment job. Astonishingly, after some of the worst negotiating in the world the team ended up doing the job for only £375! Negotiation is about creating a ‘win-win’ for both parties, not just for price but for the service offering as well. The negotiation led by Richard ended up discounting the price by £200, whilst the service still included the same amount of hours of work to complete. A good strategy may have been to change the service: offer cheaper materials to try and regain some profit margin, or to remove a part of the job to reduce the amount of hours needed to complete the project. In the end the team spent a large amount of their time on this task for not a huge amount of money, a key reason why they lost the task.

Generating Business

Quite often the key to securing a large volume of sales is to manage your time effectively. The balance between prospecting for business and actually securing deals needs to be right, wasting your time on one sales channel can really hinder your efforts. Yet again the candidates were not good business examples, with Team Connectus wasting a whole day on ‘market research’ to try and find out the best areas to clean windows! With only three days to generate sales what a waste of time this was! Somehow Team Versatile seemed to match their dismal efforts by missing the deadline to print fliers, talk about a rookie error… 

If your name isn’t out there it’s going to be very hard to try and gain new business. From both a sales and business perspective this week’s apprentice is not a very good model to follow!