Sales jobs make up a sizable portion of the workforce, since nearly 12.3 percent of all jobs in the United States are full-time sales positions. Unfortunately, finding the right people for your sales team can be tough. It takes a certain skill set and personality to make a good salesperson, and not every job seeker will be a top-notch hire.
Obviously, hiring the best sales representative you possibly can is important. A recent study revealed in a business-to-business environment the caliber of sales representative is the most influential factor when it comes to buying decisions. A good sales representative can literally make or break your business.
Hiring is essential when it comes to putting together a strong sales team for your organization, and the video interview can be the right tool to ensure you hire only the most talented job seekers. Looking at the numbers, it becomes clear why you need to find a better tool for hiring than the traditional methods:
- 64 percent of sales representatives fail because they’re just not right for the job
- If you think you can train someone into becoming a more productive member of your sales team, think again. The best sales training will only increase performance by 20 percent.
- Besides, a whopping 50 percent of sales managers are too busy to train anyway.
So, could the video interview be the key to unlocking the top talent you need in your sales jobs? How can you use the video interview to perform great a sales job interview? And what are the right interview questions to ask?
Here are some tips for using the video interview to find the best sales team around:
Why Utilize The Video Interview?
What’s so great about a video interview for finding great sales talent? Doesn’t it make more sense to conduct a sales job interview in person? Well, not so fast. Online video can be a powerful tool to help you spot the right job seekers fast — before you waste any of your precious time talking to a candidate all wrong for your sales jobs.
These jobs prize superior communication skills, and the video interview will allow you to evaluate such skills faster and with less fuss. For instance, instead of doing several phone interviews back to back to evaluate communication skills, you can instead compile a list of great interview questions and send this list to all of your candidates. Then you can have your candidates answers these tough interview questions on film in a one-way virtual interview.
In a one-way virtual interview, job seekers answer an employer’s written interview questions on film. These video interview answers can then be viewed at any time by your hiring team. Now you can judge personality and communication skills without ever wasting time with the wrong candidate. When it becomes time to select candidates for a more personal live video interview, you can select only the candidates with personalities aggressive and confident enough to make a good sales representative.
How Video Interviewing Can Connect You With Great Passive Candidates
Great passive candidates are unlikely to have much time in their schedule to accommodate a sales job interview. Many of these candidates will work off commission, and therefore have little time or incentive to take a day off to talk with your organization. But these people might be just the talent you need for your open jobs.
Video interviewing can make it easier for these passive candidates to connect with your company without giving up huge chunks of time. A great passive candidate can connect with you in a video interview in a free moment, thanks to Spark Hire’s ability to work on any smart device. Now these interested job seekers don’t have to contemplate taking the day off work in order to answer your tough interview questions.
What Interview Questions To Ask
Hiring a great sales representative can be as easy as choosing the right interview questions to ask. After all, you want to make sure you’re asking tough interview questions that will elicit truthful answers from job seekers. You want to recruit top talent for your jobs, not hire a dud.
So here are just a few of the tough interview questions you should be asking during a live or one-way virtual interview in order to find the best people:
- Do you prefer a long or short sales cycle?
- What do you like least about being in sales?
- What makes you a good sales representative?
- Tell me about your career goals.
These tough interview questions will allow you to find out more about what your sales candidate knows and what kind of fit they will be for your open jobs. By focusing on knowledge and career goals, you’ll be able to discover just how serious this candidate is about pursuing a career in the sales field.
Video interviews can be a great way of finding the top talent you need for your sales team without wasting time and energy in the hiring process.