First of all, what is a good salesperson and what is a bad one? Using nothing but common sense, we can see that a bad salesperson is obviously someone whose sales leave a lot to be desired, while a good salesperson is someone whose sales rise above mediocrity.
Then there are the excellent salespeople, who earn twice as much as the good ones and who might appear to have an innate talent and ability for selling. It is true that many people come “factory-fitted” with a friendly nature that helps them deal with others, understand how people make decisions and pick up sales techniques. But the truth is that anyone who is interested in learning the profession can learn it with the right training.
See also: The day I stopped being a terrible salesman
Of course, many companies don’t have the time, resources or inclination to hire “rough diamonds” and train them, and would rather hire an already polished diamond to boost their sales faster. In that case, the big question arises: how do I tell a good salesperson from a bad one in a job interview?
For many years, whenever I have been looking for a good salesperson, I have used a very simple question. It isn’t conclusive enough to decide that I should hire someone, but it is usually enough to decide that I shouldn’t. I started asking it after reading The Art of Closing the Sale by Brian Tracy, in which the author mentioned one of the most successful sales managers he had ever met. This man had 32 salespeople working for him in a highly competitive market, and Tracy said that his salespeople earned three times as much as the competition’s.
When he was asked how he managed to hire the best people in sales, the manager replied:
“Because I have developed a very simple way of telling the winners from the losers in sales. When I interview a salesperson, right at the start I always say: ‘Thank you for coming. Before we begin, I’d like to ask you a question: of the books in your personal library, which are your favourite books on selling?’
“If the salesperson hesitated or told me they didn’t have any books on selling, I would politely show them to the door, and the interview was over.”
The manager explained that if the candidate named a few sales books, audiobooks or seminars, they almost always got the job. Even if they weren’t yet a star salesperson, at least they had the desire and the interest to learn the profession. And with interest and desire, you can nearly always learn if you have a good teacher.
I adopted that question myself: which books on selling have you read?
Unfortunately, in Spain people don’t usually read about sales and negotiation. The truth is that the vast majority don’t usually read about anything at all. So, curiously, when you have someone in front of you who can name three or four books related to sales, they turn out to be better salespeople than those who haven’t read anything.
And I don’t really think it was because of the reading itself, but because of their desire to learn and keep improving.
Today I am even more convinced of it, and not only when it comes to sales. In any field or profession, voracious readers tend to be better prepared than everyone else, because a person with a good mentor will always have a better chance of succeeding in their field. And books, especially when they are written by experts in a particular field, can become our mentors: we are reading that person’s philosophy, beliefs and values, and they are sharing all their experience with us.
Of course, the drawback is that reading a book is one thing, and applying what you read is quite another. But in principle, it is a question I have always recommended including in hiring panels, because it says a lot about a person’s habits and interests.
See also: 22 commandments for being a good salesperson
Featured image: Alan Cleaver, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
