ECI^® Blog

The importance of using structured interview questions such as behavioral event formatted questions cannot be understated.  This holds true particularly when hiring salespeople who, as we know, drive our business.

It is highly important to have a structured process regardless of the size of your company.  However, the importance grows exponentially as the size of your sales force increases.  Think about it, the more people you have and are looking to hire, the more opportunity there is for variation of style to affect the end result.   Adding structure to your process will help you minimize the effect of the varied styles and preferences of interviewers you have.  This is important because the interview in and of itself is a subjective process and this subjectivity can reduce the effectiveness.  When we reduce the effectiveness of our interview, we reduce the quality of our hire.

The salesperson is one whom we can presuppose will interview with more panache than most other positions.  Therefore, we should step up our questions to ensure we gather the best possible content from them.  If they are truly a salesperson, they will easily sell us on their merits, regardless of whether they are a fit for our organization or the role we’re interviewing for.

Behavioral event interview questions as a part of a structured interview process should be based on specific instances you want to see performed on the job.  Therefore, compiling a list of basic tenets that are important for the role in advance of interviewing is and excellent practice.  Then, simply base the questions off of those tenets.

Structuring the questions is easy.  All good behavioral event interview questions include 3 basic components:

1. Situation/Task – here the interviewee should be requested to provide a situation.  This can be either hypothetical or an actual past experience
2. Action – here the interviewee is requested to provide the action they took in the situation.  This provides the interviewer with a view into how the interviewee behaves
3. Result – here the interviewer is interested in  seeing what actual results the candidate has achieved

For example, if you’re interviewing a sales representative for your organization a good question would be: “Please describe your optimal sales call.  What does such a conversation look like?  What questions did/would you ask?  What would/did you achieve as a result of this conversation?”  A candidate’s response to this question would provide you with their sales style.  Do they prefer a challenging customer?  Do they prefer a friendly customer?  Do they prefer a quick sale?  You will also see what type of results they are looking for from their interactions.  You will gain insight into the types of conversations they are prepared to have.  You will begin to see a great deal into the potential fit they have to the role you want to fill.

Remember, a good sales person will sell themselves well and therefore they are likely to look good in an interview.  It is important that you be prepared with good questions that will help you to dive deeper into how they will perform for your organization.  After all, first impressions are lasting, but they do not tell us all we need to know, particularly when we are talking about the risk of a bad hire!