In our second post in this series, How to set up your interview process, we discussed the importance of setting team values, how to structure your entire interview process, and what projects you can give to fully vet their skills. In this post, Carina and Julio share what traits they look for in a solutions and a technology sales person, as well as what their favorite questions to ask are in order to ensure they have the right sales humans for their teams. Carina and Julio make sure to ask questions to not only evaluate their skills and how their brains work but also to see how good of a culture add they will be.

There are many questions that overlap no matter if your product is a technical sale or a solutions sale, but depending on the sales motion, you definitely want to dig in more in certain areas so you can learn about their fit selling your product.

Solution Sales:

Solutions sales professionals are typically more senior and have been in the sales game for a longer period of time than technology sales humans. This can mean they might be better at interviewing, and therefore asking the right, layered, questions is even more important.  In order to vet these professionals, Julio stresses the importance of digging deeper in the areas where you could see their answers are the lightest. For example, if you can see the individual is Type A, and you want to get to know them better, ask them questions such as what their favorite book is or what the last thing they learned for fun was... and if they are Type B, and you want to see their analytical side, inquire about their sales process and metrics they’ve built out.

According to Julio, here are a few traits he looks for in a solutions sales person:

• Strong organizational and note taking skills
• Excellent at project management
• Very curious and understands how to layer questions and use the answers to those questions to convey value
• Understands how to work with both internal and external stakeholders to progress deals
• Familiarity with demoing themselves and a willingness to jump right in and start selling
• Comfortable asking for big dollar amounts
• Comfortable asking the prospect if they are ready to buy
• Can creatively get deals done that are both good for the business and the customer

Below are some of Julio’s favorite questions to to better understand the candidate:

Technology Sales:

When interviewing for a technology sale you will be looking for many similarities as the solutions sales human, but the key traits such as having worked complex deals, strong project management skills, and ability to navigate multiple stakeholders internally and externally aren’t as applicable.

According to Carina, the best technology sales humans have the following traits:

• Highly analytical and knows how to prioritize time
• Understands and implements high velocity frameworks based on activity and smart campaigning
• Uses all available technology and tools as efficiently as possible
• Looks for and improves highly scalable plays and processes
• Knows how to eliminate friction during her/his work day
• Knows when to include his / her manager to escalate problems or share best practices with the team

Here are some of Carina’s favorite questions to help her identify the best people for her teams:

Here are a few additional tips for you to make sure you nail this:

1. Have the same interview panel for each interview asking the same questions to your candidates. This way the interviewer can truly get a feel for a great answer, an ok answer, and a bad answer.
2. Make sure to save 5-10 minutes at the end of each interview for candidates to ask questions. If the candidates don’t have questions, this is a red flag!
3. Show up on time and don’t go over time (if possible). Be respectful of your colleagues’ and the candidates’ time.
4. Refresh yourself on the candidates’ legal rights during the interview process.

Hopefully  this breakdown of traits and questions better prepares you for hiring the right person for your business. You can still ask the candidate to sell you that pen, but now you’ll have other questions to ask as well :)

In the next post we’ll be outlining how best to make the offer so you can close the candidate. Thanks so much for reading and let us know what you think!