How To Find And Interview Your Elite Sales Team

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Welcome to the ultimate no-BS renegade guide to putting together a highly effective sales team. Nick, I'm Dave D. We got Nick Luese here. Nick, I wanted to use everything we could possibly put into a title. I think you hit it.

For this.

I think you hit it.

I think I got it all.

Absolutely.

I think I got it all. But in all seriousness, this is going to be an incredible program.. And what we're going to do on this is go through and really go deep on how to hire a sales team, motivate a sales team, compensate a sales team in order to grow your profits, grow your revenues. So Nick, first of all, before we get started into the nitty-gritty about how to do it, let's first talk about why almost every business, even a small business, should really think about hiring a sales team or at least start with one salesperson.

So, you know, I think that's a critical thing because a lot of times companies want to be market-driven versus maybe salesforce-driven. And I think the perfect marriage is what we teach of having a market-driven company as well as a salesforce-driven company. And if you really want to grow your company, you really want to scale your revenue, you really want to take your company to the next level, putting a person as a salesperson or putting more than one onto, onto the street, so to speak, is really the key to do that. They're going to bring back information to you that is critical. They're going to be talking to people people belly button to belly button. You know, they're going to be carrying a bag. We'll use all the clichés possible as we're putting together this, this, but they're going to, they're going to be getting unfiltered information from your prospects, from your customers, from non-prospects that are going to be critical for you in crafting your sales messages and your marketing messages also. So not only are they going to bring a revenue line to you, but they're also going to be getting key information that you're going to need to help craft and hone your sales messages and different products or services that you're going to offer, because they're going to find out that you're not going to find out about.

I think the late Chad Holmes in his, in his great book, The Ultimate Marketing Machine, or in some of his other recordings, talked about that's one of the fastest ways to grow revenue is to actually hire a salesperson, get somebody out there in the trenches for you selling. So I think it's mission critical. So one of the things we're going to talk about here is how do we go about doing it? So let's start with that. Okay. I'm new in business. I have bought in. I'm not new in business, but I'm ready to hire a salesperson.

Right?

How do I go about this?

I mean, how does it work? That's a good question. I think the important thing to sit down first before you get into that is kind of define and think of what type of personality or what type of persona are you going to want out on the street kind of moving your company to the next level? So think about what you want from that. The second thing that you want to look for is at the end of the day, where is there an age category? So are they, Hiring a 20-something to sell to 50-somethings probably won't work. So you want to look at the demographic of your key customers and your target customers and try to get something to match into that. Because going after different pockets of salespeople, different generations of salespeople, is going to have different approaches. We're going to talk a little bit about that in the future, but that's something you want to look at. So who are they selling to? What educational levels do they have to have? Do they have to, you know, if you're selling B2B to CEOs, you're going to have to have somebody that has a level of a bachelor's degree maybe, or an MBA or something of that nature, so they could articulate that. And when they're at the table, if you're selling just, you know, kind of rank-and-file people, maybe somebody that doesn't have a bachelor's degree, maybe an associate degree would be fine. So try to define your target professional, and then from that you could start looking at different sources of candidates or where to get your best candidates out there.

So I've got a question for you that I just jotted down here. Is there a difference between— well, I know there is. So what are the differences between hiring an inside person, someone who's going to be inside your company, as opposed to an outside salesperson? Do they have different temperaments, or is that the same? What should we be looking for there?

It's a good question. You know, the trend that we see currently, and it's a trend, but the trend is moving really towards heavy inside sales staff. So you look at larger corporations like Adobe, which is a software corporation, is really scaling back their outside sales sales team and bringing more and more of it inside. But there are two different personalities for an inside salesperson. So really, if you decided inside sales is the way to go, the first thing you have to look at with the inside salesperson is how's their voice, right? How's their voice on their phone? Can they modulate their voice? So you want a lot of your interviews to be with this person to be over the phone so you could hear how they interact with— you could teach them those skills. But if somebody has a mousy voice, they're not going to be able to work with people over the phone. So that's the first thing that you would look at for an inside salesperson. Also, an inside salesperson, since they're not going to be customer fronting, you could get away with, you know, they don't have to look a certain way because they're just going to be on the phone. So you have to realize that. Two is you also want to realize that somebody that has a temperament to be a phone jockey. So somebody that could pound out a lot of phone calls, as we kind of call it. Somebody that knows that they, you know, they could do 3 hours in a row on the phone and then maybe take a little bit of break, go to lunch, and then do another 3 hours on the phone. Also somebody that has the ability to stay on script. If you're going to be scripting your people, which we highly recommend that you script them, they're going to formulate their own verbiage in the scripts, but you really want key inflection points for that. So that's what I would look for first and foremost as that. An outside salesperson sometimes has a Lone Ranger mentality, right? Where an inside salesperson wants to be around people, likes being around people, likes the camaraderie of that. An outside salesperson, he likes has that gunslinger mentality that we always think of as a salesperson. This is a person though that has to really understand reading body language. You know, you have to, if you're sitting across from a customer, what's that body language? They have to have a, you know, we also look for tonality in their voice and that, but really somebody that understands the psychology of the prospect a lot better because you're in front of them. They have to be able to read the room quicker. They have to be a little bit more adaptable. The inside salesperson doesn't have that ability. An inside salesperson probably has a tougher job because they can't bond quickly with a person because they're not across the table for them. So you want to— they want to figure out how to bond quickly. And a lot of that they use with their voice and their temperament. They want to mirror and, you know, mirror people's voices and articulation.

So there's actually probably 3 different types of salespeople that I'm thinking about. Okay. So you got the guy that's outside, right? Meaning he's going out, he's going to businesses. Then you have the phone salesperson, what you just talked about. What about the person who has a retail store?

Right.

And they're coming in. They're coming in. And so the person is neither on the phone nor they're going out, but they're physically present with the customer.

Right.

What are we looking for there?

I think there you're really looking for— I look for something with that, with a service mentality, but they could still sell. So sometimes service people want to focus on the customer and servicing the customer, but they can't really sell products or move products. So you want to see that person that has a service mentality. There's a lot of great books out there, but, you know, one of the— I like to go into stores, you know, shop. You know, I'm a clothes horse, so I like going into the Nordstroms.

And a very good-looking man.

Thank you.

We really should have done this on video.

Video. But, you know, we talked about that. But, you know, most salespeople are in their cars all day, so they want to listen to that. But, you know, you look at the great ones and how they do it. Nordstrom's has some great ones. And, you know, they'll use phraseology like, what occasion brings you into the store today, not, you know, can I help you with anything, you know. So somebody that could really articulate that occasion, somebody that knows how to bring multiple items to people, somebody that could make people feel confident in their— why they're choosing that. Retail is a very interesting, interesting, interesting world, and you want somebody that could kind of build that instant rapport with folks and also kind of move them into the appropriate place and ask for the sale.

So I want to bring up, because again, this is one of the titles of this thing was No BS, right? Which is something that we use at GKCA all the time. So I want to bring up a topic which I haven't heard talked about in other programs like that, and that is the physical attractiveness. That's fair. Of the salesperson. So we have a member and who's got a very, very successful info marketing business. I mean, like super crazy successful info marketing business. You know, he's got his own buildings and flies a helicopter to his place, and almost all of his— that they're selling to professional service providers, and almost all of his salespeople are gorgeous young women. Yeah, talk a little bit about that. I mean, again, we want— this is no whole bar thing here, so we want to talk about the seriousness of— I'm not being flippant here, this is important.

Well, I think a couple things. One is an attractive salesperson is going to feel more confident about themselves. So it's just the nature of who they are and what they do. The other thing you'll see is that if you look at studies, attractive salespeople and you want to define attractiveness in certain ways, actually are higher earners as sales professionals. And there— and it could be as high as 40% higher. Right. And so then there's, there's a number of different studies out there. A couple we'll give at the end. We'll give a number of different sources for studies so people can do that. So they don't think that we're just throwing things out there. But we— I track a lot of this. So one is— that the second thing too is even for the phone, you know, the inside salesperson to the phone jockey, I look to somebody that is attractive as also very athletic. Right. So if you think about a lot of the sales guys that we have here— yeah, well, one of the guys is an extreme marathoner, Ironman marathoner. He's insane. Right. So 100 miles, right, in the desert. Or, you know, you had other ones that were, you know, into physical fitness or marathoners and that. So Those type of personalities, one is they have the stamina to build through. Attractive persons will have the stamina. If you have them front-facing, there's two types of attractiveness. There's the physical attractiveness that we're talking about, but the other attractiveness that I would look for is the personality or the charisma attractiveness. You meet people out there that are very charismatic, but they're not attractive. Absolutely. But they draw you in. And that person is one that you would want to hire just because they just make people feel good about them. They just make people feel good. They focus on the person across from them and realize that that person is the most important person to them. And if you have outside salespeople and you're putting them in public things, the last thing you want— we've all been there, you've all sold— is the guy at the networking event that's shaking your hand and talking to you but looking over your shoulder for the next one. That's not attractive. And it doesn't matter how physically attractive they are, that will be off-putting. So the— I like the model and I've used the model in other businesses where we call it the pharmaceutical rep model, which is what he's doing, you know, where you put the attractive female and she's out. A lot of times you use them as openers, so they'll open up a case for you or they'll open up an account for you. But sometimes you have to bring somebody in a little bit more senior in to close the account. So it depends on your price point of that type of thing. Two is it depends on who they're selling to, right? So they can— they could bond with the office staff very quickly. They could get through and clutter to the doctor. I mean, it's just the nature of what you do. So you see that in a lot of things and it works very well. Do well. And, you know, the attractive men, you know, they just, just feel more comfortable. And the look to the, the persona too, and the charismatic-ness of it.

Yeah, I love how you just separated the two things, physical attractiveness from attractiveness. And so really, the, the note that I took— and I'm, as you can see here, yeah, I'm taking notes here— is what you're really looking for, yes, physical attractiveness, but, but more importantly, wouldn't it be charisma and the energy you're talking about? So I remember when I was dating before I got married— obviously not good to be dating after you get married, right?

Right.

And going on a lot of dates from Match.com and things like that. And I remember going on this woman specifically, and when I met her in person, I'm like, oh man, she's— she's not really that attractive. She looks different than her pictures. But then in getting to talking to her, the more I talked to her that evening, the more attractive she became to me and the more because of her personality, of her, of her energy, of how she projected herself. Sure. With her confidence. So, that's kind of what you're talking about, isn't it?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree 100% on that and that's spot on. And, too, is also how they, you know, how do they dress? How do they carry themselves? And it doesn't have to be, you know, the shoes don't have to be the best, but are they polished? You know, so you look to all those things because that's going to show how well they think about themselves in that and also the charismaticness. The other characteristic, too, that you want and that we look for is what we call the grit factor. And how gritty they are. That means if they get pushed back, are they going to fall over? We talked a little bit about that in that Gold CD that we did, and we'll talk more about that, but do they just keep moving forward? And I think if they have the internal motivation and they feel good about themselves, that grit factor goes to the next level and it keeps them moving forward. All right.

So we talked about what to look for in salespeople, the different types of salespeople that we have, what we should be looking for. You gave a great tip about athletic. I haven't heard that anywhere before, but it makes a lot of sense because it also shows that they're disciplined. Right, right. That's the other thing that you're looking for. So that's really cool. All right. So now we know who we're looking for.

Okay.

Okay.

How do we go about finding them?

That's a good question. It's a different world than it was many, many years ago when you used to be able to just run an ad in the local paper and then you'd have 50, 100 candidates. It's a much different world and it's even a much more difficult, difficult world out there, Dave, than it was 3 years ago, 4 years ago, the economy is better. There's, you know, companies are ramping up salespeople. So as we do this now, you have to look at the booms and busts because if it's a bust economy, you're going to have a lot of good salespeople on the street. If it's a boom economy, they're not going to leave. I also— the one of the things that we want to talk about is the timing of finding people, right? Okay. So the best time to find salespeople really starts in September, October, November. And that's— you're giving me a look and you're trying to find out why. Yeah, because a good salesperson won't leave his pipeline. To go to a new company because he knows he's got deals that are coming in and he spent the year of moving up the pipeline. And so he won't move his pipeline. Well, he's got to start his pipeline and his quota is going to start over and things of that nature. So he'll leave kind of toward— they'll look to make their move January 1st, January 5th. So that's great information, right? So it's the best time to find salespeople starting in the fall to bring them on first of the year because they're going to then go through all their spiffs and their bonuses from their other location because you want to hire high performers., right? Because I always hate the guy that wants to be nickel cheap and get low-performing salespeople. These people should bring 5 times, 10 times, 20 times their earnings to your company, if not more. All right, so nowadays, LinkedIn— so social media plays a big role with sales professionals. LinkedIn is very important. Glassdoor is very important. Glassdoor is a site where you post your job, as well as it's actually like a Yelp for companies. So there's social reviews. So any business owner looking at this that hires a lot of people wants to check Glassdoor to make sure that their reviews are positive. And you can have your current employees post reviews as well as your past employees post reviews. And a lot of salespeople will look at that. Saleability.com is a company that is a website that you could do posting for that. And there's a lot of other, you know, But LinkedIn is a good source.

How do you use LinkedIn, Nick? I mean, I have no idea. You know, let's say, as you know, I'm not the social media man. How do I do that?

How do I go about doing that? Well, first thing I would do is I would tell you to create a company profile in LinkedIn. Okay. So that's the first thing you want to do, plus a personal profile. So you'd want to put up your own professional profile on LinkedIn. And so those are the two things that you're going to do. And then you would want to go out and find groups for. So say you want to hire a salesperson. Well, you would join different groups. So you would join inside— if it was an inside sales, there are about 5 different inside sales groups that you would join, or, you know, sales professional, or for you, chief marketing officers or sales strategy professionals or those type of things you'd want to join. LinkedIn allows you to join 50 groups, so you would join 50 of those groups and then the groups will allow you to post positions in that. And that's something that I would do and be very detailed in that, in those profiles. And then there's other things that you could pay to put in there. So you would look to that. Then you want to look at alumni boards. We have a lot of success with alumni boards, especially alumni boards that are local that have strong business schools if you're selling salespeople. So like here in Illinois, we use Northern Illinois and U of I because they have alumni boards to call. And so we post on there. The other thing is if you don't need it to be a bachelor degree, usually your community colleges have very strong board job boards, and I would post on those. So if you could get away with an associate's degree in Chicago, in the Chicagoland area, we have one site that we go to that posts out to 8 different, you know, community college boards. So you'd want to post it on to that. The other thing that we're finding that we use, and more and more people are using, is contingent recruiters. Okay, so I would find contingent Sales recruiters. So there's a difference between the two different types of recruiters. We could talk a little bit about that. But people that you— that get paid only on the placement is a contingent recruiter. And there's five solid, you know, contingent recruiters just for sales. Give them the profile and let them work the phone because we talked a little bit about the fact that we're kind of in a boom economy and a boom sales economy. So right now, anybody that's good is not looking for a sales job. Right. So you have to fill a position in the middle of the year. We talked about the timing of it or, you know, or kind of the first quarter, second quarter. People aren't going to move. Right. So you want a recruiter just kind of hitting the phones and they will then say— and we use recruiters here, you know what, give me your telephone pitch. So they'll teach everything that we teach people to do. They'll do, but they'll do it on the phone and they have networks of people that they use and they'll use that to get that. The other thing we use is referrals. So, you know, who, who do you know? Who are your friends? Who sold before? You can find that through employee referrals or just referrals in general. I have a dear friend that built up a big company, a big sales force, and he built it up by calling on every customer when he'd be in front of them after the sale, after he closed the sale, he'd say, "Listen, I'm trying to grow my business. Who do you know that's coming through your office selling stuff that you think is a good salesperson? I want their name and number and I'm gonna call them." So it didn't matter what they sold, he just wanted good salespeople. They could sell media, they could sell office supplies, They could sell widgets. It didn't matter. He would get those name and numbers from people that were his customers. They loved him. They trusted him, that type of thing. They wanted— they were invested in his business. So he would get referrals from his customers and then call on those salespeople. And he built up a large sales force from that.

Wow, that, that is outstanding. What just occurred to me, Nick, is that this is marketing.

It's all marketing. It's lead generation. It's lead generation.

I mean, it's really no different than everything that we teach. You just said you need a multiple. So we say, you know, that the worst number of businesses is one. Right? So you don't want to have one method for getting these folks. You want to use as many as you can so you can get the right person and then use lead generation. So you've got to create the profile, a circle profile here, because it's like anything. If you're going after your customer, you got to know who your customer is first.

And you teach the avatar.

Right.

Right. And so I do the avatar for the salesperson after I sat through your bootcamp. Right. And you know, it's like, well, you had a mental avatar, but you want to write that avatar down and you want to be specific and it goes back Right. So, back to what we talked about. Are they attractive? Are they charismatic? Are they— well, you can't obviously put that in an ad, but you want that avatar, but you want athletic, right? So, you want driven and you want all that stuff in your ad because you want that ad just like we talked— the Gary Halbert ad when he was dating, right? You talk about that all the time you're teaching and you want your ad to be that. I like the ad to be as specific as possible, not as nebulous because I want them filtering people out because as a business owner, you're too busy. You can't be sitting around, you know, talking to everybody. And sales— we're going to talk about interviewing salespeople because they're horrible to interview because, you know, because they all lie, you know, that type of stuff. But, you know, what are the ways to kind of try to find the right people? But, you know, really it is lead generation and it's just everything that we teach. Build the avatar, have multiple sources because one is a dangerous number. As I said, as a thing, stay off of Craigslist, you know, just little tricks like that.

Yeah, but that's beautiful.

Cool.

So let me ask you this. Should I be looking for someone who's new who I can train, or should I be looking for somebody who's already a superstar?

Does it matter what type of business I have or where I am in my business? There's the yes, yes and yes and no and no. So yeah, there's pros and cons. So if you're looking for a superstar and you really want— you're looking for somebody that will— in our business we call it a book of business. So somebody that's selling in your industry that has a book of business that that could manage those relationships and move those relationships over to you. There's something to be paid, but you're going to have to pay for that. So, they're going to be a lot more expensive than a newbie or somebody that doesn't have as much tenure in your industry. They know their— you're trading on their contacts, right? So, you really want to query them when you're interviewing them, and interviewing is going to be a little bit later, but you really want to talk to them about how strong those relationships are. Are those things— are they— Do they— will people move with them? Because then you could really get a jump start in your, in your, in your revenue. A newbie, if you have something simple, you know, something that's transactional, you know, I like, I like newbies because I could train them and mold them because you're not bringing bad, you know, bad habits from somebody else's job into your, into your employment area. So newbie. But now you have to be very specific on what you're looking for. And I find that the young professionals coming right out of college, we interview a lot of them. I interact with a lot of guys that hire a lot of sales guys and they are aggressive and they're savvy in different types of media, right? But what you have to be careful of, they haven't grown up with the phone and the phone still moves business. So you have to really realize that they have to understand how to use the phone. And there's some great articles going on right now and great case studies of companies. One just say, hey, listen, I banned my sales team from selling sending emails for a week or a month. And, you know, we had a 20-25% increase in sales over that time, you know. So they're media savvy, but they also rely on media. So you have to realize that they have to teach them how to use the phone. But I like them. I like newbies. I like to hire the professional if you can, especially here. We deal with business owners, so it's tough to have a newbie, you know, because they haven't been kicked in the teeth, so to speak, or, you know, they haven't been humbled by life a little bit. So you really want a level of knowledge base. So if you're— if you have a technical sale or you have a very consultative sale, and we're going to talk a little bit about the differences of those, you may need a more seasoned person for that.

It reminds me of the movie Wall Street.

Yes.

And you remember Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko is in the locker with the Charlie Sheen character and he says, give me a guy that's hungry and has no feelings.

I think I'll get involved. And that's what we look for. Yeah. You know, and I think of the pros and cons of The Wolf of Wall Street, right? You know, that movie, which is Martin Scorsese's movie with— look, you know, there's good lessons in there and there's bad lessons in there. But, you know, he was saying, hey, that phone is your friend and you want a guy that's got, you know, that's got reasons to get on the phone every day and is hungry and is aggressive and really wants to move the mark. And we're finding young professionals in that in that, that fit that build a lot.

So let's talk about kind of a touchy subject.

Sure.

Hiring from your competition.

Yeah.

Your competition. You got it. You see him over there. The guy's a stud, right? And you want him. Now, you can't bring— let's say you can't bring his book of business over because—

yeah, there's the ethics of that in that. So should you hire from the competition? Well, there's two schools. The one school says no, never, don't even bother. Right. Because what's to stop them from moving back or moving to another competitor? So you're opening yourself up to some level of that. Other schools will say, yeah, you know, I want industry jargon. They, you know, there's no learning curve with that person. So they're going to know what's going on in the industry. They may know where there's weaknesses. They may know of products and services that maybe their company never brought to market that you could bring to market. So there's benefits to both sides. It's just a lot of it will depend. You know, you have to realize that if they're leaving for you, they could leave you and go to your competitor. That's right. So be careful. And, you know, then there's always the joke of, well, put them on a non-compete, you know, consult with your lawyer on that. But, you know, courts seldom ever hold up non-competes for salespeople, usually more for professionals or partners or things of that nature. But the court will say the salesman has to feed his family, right? So if all he knows is one industry, you can't box him out of that industry. But obviously, you know, check with your legal counsel and your hiring counsel on that. I think that there's benefits of both sides. So I've hired from the competition before, you know, making sure if there's a number of great salespeople, sales trainers out there that will say if your people are leaving you, it's your fault, right? So you didn't set up an opportunity for them to be successful or for them to stay and for them to make as much money as they need or for them to be very, very aggressive, right? So if you have an environment environment, that you have that person set up for success, that you're investing in salespeople, you have a pro sales environment, you have a pro salesperson and marketing environment, you're bringing plenty of leads and lead flow into the market for them, and they have the ability to make a lot of money, they're never going to leave. So don't worry about it. But if you have the opposite, then you have to worry about it. And I wouldn't be hiring my comp— you know, for my competition if I know that it's not— I don't have a lot of lead flow coming in. So I don't follow the principles of GKIC. I don't have— you know, I have only one source of leads. I'm not paying them well on commission. I'm fighting them on every sale and I don't give them residuals. They're going to be gone.

They're going to be gone.

You're not treating them right.

You're not treating them right. Not treating them right. And we're going to talk about that incentivizing and treating them right and all of that stuff. All right. So we've placed our, quote, lead generation ad. Sure. To, to attract the person. All right. So what is the next step in the process? So right now we're talking about just hiring the guy. We've attracted some people. We've gotten some, quote, leads in. What do we do now?

What's next? Well, I think we got to start interviewing. Okay. Right? So, you know, you got to start interviewing and you're going to have your series of questions that you have. And we talked a little bit about it. If I'm hiring for an inside-only sales position, I'm going to have more interviews over the phone with the person. Okay? And so some tricks of the trade. One is on the phone. Two is you see if they match and mirror your voice. So they've learned. So I talk fast and I slow down and I talk fast and I slow down just to see if they do that with their Two is you want to check their tenacity.

Can you go over that a little bit? Because I don't think everyone is aware of that, of that strategy. First of all, explain what the strategy is, matching and mirroring. It's really good if maybe that someone's not doing it themselves that they should be.

Talk a little bit about that. So it's an NLP, right? And what it is, is it teaches you to— matching is you match the person's voice and tonality and speed and kind of the way. So if they are a fast talker,, you don't want to be a slow talker because they're going to check out and it's just not going to work for, you know, you're going to do that. If they speak loudly, then you want to speak loudly. If they go soft, then you want to go soft. And you do the same thing in your, in your pitches because there's times when you want to, to be forceful, you know, and there's times that you don't want to be forceful. And we'll talk a little bit about that in the second addendum to the rest of this program of, you know, how to set up a sales script and all that. So you want to match them. And also you want to mirror people and watch to see if they mirror you. So if you lean forward, do they lean forward when you're sitting across the table from them? If you cross your legs, do they cross their legs? All those type of things. And a skilled salesperson will do that because it's just bonding and rapport techniques. So if you're hiring for inside sales, as we talked a little bit about, I'm going to hire them over the phone a lot. I'm going to obviously do face-to-face because there's important things that you're going to get from them in that. But you really want to go through a series of phone interviews with them and you want to also check their tenacity, right? And then the other thing that you always do is you always give them a specific time and day to follow up with you. So if they don't follow up with you, then forget it because of the fact that, you know, if they can't follow up with you for a job, they're not going to follow up with your prospects. You know, don't even bother going on with those folks. So I would have a series of questions that you really want to ask each and every one of them, but you really want to go back to their successes. Okay, so you want to find out successes both professionally and personally that they're proud of. You want to go back to how quick they got acclimated to the industry that they're in. What— how do they get themselves up and running? How do they kind of move forward with it? Do they have a pride in their industry? Are they readers? You know, even if they're reading other things, you want to see if they're readers. And now, they— in, you know, day and age, they may read a ton of blogs, which is okay. You know, they may not read books, but are they reading industry journals? And then you want to look for their competitiveness. So we all— I always ask the question, do they play— if they didn't play college sports, do they play high school sports? Where were they? Were they happy with— if they were second string, were they happy being second string? Are there accomplishments of their life? They're very, very, you know, that they're very accomplished. You look for that. You want to see if they're currently selling. Are they in the President's Club, you know, or the CEO Club? You know, every organization has these type of awards. Did they win? Do they win consistently or is it, well, everybody could be a one-trick wonder. If they have incentive programs, do they win incentive programs? Are they proud of that? Because that's the key. Look at, see, are they dressed? Because if they're making good money, a salesperson is going to dress well. So they have a nice watch. So when you bring them in, you're looking for those things. There's an old analogy that a guy could buy a Rolex because he hit hit plan one year, but he buys a BMW 700 series because he hits plan every year, right? So, you know, there's a difference of how you're looking to hire people for that. So those are the keys. When they're in front of you, you want to— I use the walk test, right? So you— if you have a walk test, very good, very good. You caught that. What's the walk test, you might ask? I walk with them, and a salesperson that's worth his salt will walk with with an approach to say hi to everybody throughout the organization. So you see if they make eye contact with people, do they say hi, do they ask questions? Because it's called the factory tour that we're trained as salespeople to walk. You don't want to be in the office of the organization, you want to walk the factory because you want to look around, you want to ask questions, you want to see where problems are. So if you're hiring them and they know how to do it, they'll walk with that. You also want to see if they walk with purpose. So they just kind of meander around and they're 15 steps behind you. Don't, you know, just end the interview right there. Thank them for their time and wish them well and give them a goodie bag and kick them out. But if they're walking with purpose as you're walking with purpose and they're looking around and they're asking questions. So here there's a lot of stuff on our walls, right? So they may see our sales board. Oh, I see so-and-so. I see 5 people out of 7 are making plan or, you know, just little things like that. What's this? You know, they might stop to look at the employee bulletin board. Or, you know, you want to see them asking questions, see if they take the observation. Oh, seems people seem nice here. People don't seem nice here. You know, those type of questions. So that's the walk test that I give them because any salesperson in any situation will want to walk the company that they're selling to.

So.

Wow.

Fantastic. So let's do this. Okay. To end this first section of the program, let's do an interview. I want to do a mock interview. Oh, okay. Okay, because I think it'd be very helpful. I'll be the person who you're trying to hire.

Okay. All right. What happens if I don't hire you?

Is that bad for the interview? Well, you'd be blowing it.

All right. There you go.

I'm like the number one, the best sales guy on the freaking planet. So, but we're going to pretend that it's not me personally.

Okay.

We're going to roleplay here and I'll— let's just go through it. Okay. And we'll just briefly— we don't have to do like an hour interview. Just very quickly. To see. So we're sitting across from each other. Let's say you've already talked to me on the phone. This is my second interview or whatever.

Let's just role play. Sure. And I think this is a great addition. I didn't even think about it, but the other thing you want to do in your interview is role play with them. And so let's talk a little bit about that, right? So we'll get to that point in the interview. So, hey Dave, thanks for taking time. I appreciate you coming out here. You know, first thing out of the shoot is, do you have any questions? You know, that'd be the first question that I would ask ask the person to see if they come prepared. Because if they didn't come prepared for an interview, they're not going to come prepared for a sales call. Right? So, if they didn't come prepared, then, "Oh, you know, no, I didn't," you know, so you ask, "Did you get a chance to look at our resume? Did you get a chance to look at our website? You know, do you have any questions?" You want to see if they've done LinkedIn. We talked a little bit about LinkedIn. So, you want to see if they've noticed that they've looked up people on LinkedIn. Have they looked me up on LinkedIn?

Right.

So those are the things that I check because Dan talks a little bit about it in a number of his things is did they do reviews of people and do deep searches? So you want to see it. A good person will have notes. So I want to see them open up their portfolio or, you know, nowadays, you know, people may do it on their phone. I want to see if they have notes, if they have printed out things about us and that. So that's the first thing I do. So once you've sized up the person, their shoes will shine. You know, their suit is— their suit or their clothes are clean and pressed and all that good stuff and fashionable, you know. So you keep on going. So I'm going to ask the questions. I won't make you go through all of that, right? Yeah, that's okay. But I would say, you know, do you have any questions about us? And that opens up to their research, right? Because a salesperson also— a salesperson worth their salt will want to control the dialogue versus be reactive to the dialogue, of course, right? So that's why I open up. They said, no, I don't have any And then they're not going to control anything.

And then the salesperson is going to control. It's so interesting. The reason I took out my little— Your Moleskine. Yeah, my little Moleskine, which I carry with me every day. It's a little notebook. I had a meeting today with Charlie Lathrop, who's high on the board here at GKIC. And a great entrepreneur. And a great, a brilliant entrepreneur, right? Brilliant entrepreneur. And I had a meeting with him and I had things I wanted to get across to him and I wanted to sell him on these ideas that I had. And so funny. And so this is what you're looking for, right? You would— so the guy brings a notebook. He says, yeah, so I've got some questions. I checked out your website and I've got 3 areas that I want to talk about. You're like, that's the guy. We're moving in the right direction. So I asked my questions. Is that what happens?

You're impressed because I've come prepared, right? You've come prepared. You have questions. I'm going to see if you're taking notes.

Okay.

Because there's an old analogy in sales that even if you have a great memory, right, and you can remember everything, if the prospect doesn't see you taking notes, he doesn't think you care. Right. So that's, that's the important thing. So I'm watching if they take notes, right? I want to make sure they're taking notes and going over everything and they may circle back. And, and also I want to see if they ask clarifying questions. So I may be vague in responses and see if they let that go.

Okay.

Give me one of those. So an example would be, well, you know, how do people— let's say I would say, "How's the company culture here?" Right?

So you may ask me, "How's the company culture?" So one of the questions I have is, "How's the company culture here?" It's good. Well, what specifically does that mean?

I mean, can you expand on that? Very good. So you didn't let me go with just a trite answer. You know, "It's good. People like it." So I would say, "Very good question. That's a good question." I would test them to see if they push back on me on that. And I would say, "Well, the culture is growing, right?" certain things we do right, certain things we do wrong, and we know what we do wrong. We're trying to improve on that. The things— here's the 4 things we do right, and I would list those 4 things, and here's the 2 things that we could do better, you know, so that type of thing. So I would give a yes or no, you know, a question that should have a long answer. I would give a quick question to see if they let me go. Beautiful.

So you have this scripted out too?

Oh, it does. It is. Yeah, I have it down to a science. And I, I'll be honest, Dave, and this is— no, we're a no-BS company. I don't spend a lot of time with a guy that I know isn't going right? So if I could tell right off the bat that isn't going to work, I'm going to thank them for the time. I give them a copy of our newsletter, maybe give them a book and, you know, and validate their parking, you know, and send them on the way. Right.

So we've made it through that.

Right.

Those are all great tips. I never even heard the one about asking the vague question because that's beautiful. Okay.

What happens? Let's continue. So we're going to drill down then, and then I'm going to drill down on their earnings. Earnings. Okay. Okay. It's tough to be with a newbie, right? So, you know, now we're, we're going in front of a seasoned professional, right? So we're asking the questions about, you know, what's your best year? How much have you ever made in your, in your career, right? Did you, did you make it once or was it consistency? Do I see, you know, so we're going to talk a little bit about their earnings because their earnings, we're salespeople, we measure performance by earnings, right? And so we're motivated by money and prestige. It is what it is, guys. Guys, let's move on, right? So, uh, you know, uh, so how much do they have? I'm going to ask them to bring their W-2s, okay? So I want to see them. Now that's key, right? And you even caught that in your eye. I want to see people's W-2s. I want to see proof of their— of their— I want to see a guy— I just interviewed a guy yesterday. He brought 4 years of W-2s without me asking. Usually in the second interviews where I asked them for their W-2s, he put it up. That guy's a hunter. He knows what he's I want to see— they might have their production, so I want to see their production, right? I grew up in, you know, kind of sold in the insurance agents. You know, my first job was in insurance or in media. You want to see your production. So what's your production? A good salesperson will have their production with them, right? You'll say, how many key accounts are you working? Right? I'm working 10 accounts. Guys only work at 10 accounts, forget it. You know, unless it's— unless he's selling to, you know, Oracle and Microsoft and that type of thing. 10 accounts, he ain't gonna do anything for you. You gotta want a guy working 100 accounts at any given time. So that's the most important thing that they could be doing. So you're gonna ask them those key production questions when you're interviewing them. So what's their production? How much have they made? Have they— spiffs, have they gotten spiffs? Have they gotten bonus? Do they make plants? So what's their quota? How much do they grow their quota? You know, you're gonna ask them all those important questions. On their production. And we could go into more detail if you think we need to.

No, no, I, I think that that's great. Okay, so you— so do you do any testing in this interview other than what you just said? Yeah, I mean, you kind of did it with me at the very beginning, was if I didn't hire you, right? Right. And I like immediately, with all sincerity, like, you'd be an idiot.

And that's the test that we talk about, right? But the one question I do have, especially, um, I won't— if a guy is a driver and I know what's going on, well, I won't use this. But if I'm on the fence on somebody's grit or stamina, I'll say, listen, I just don't think this is for you. I just don't think we're the right organization. I don't think you're a good salesperson. And if they take all their stuff and they put it in their bag and they leave, I know I was right. But if they say, listen, you're crazy because you did it to me, right? We're all competitive, right? I was cracking up. You guys can't see because we're not on video. He almost jumped across the table when I said I wouldn't hire, you know, he's like, you guys, you guys, you got to be crazy. You wouldn't hire You know, here's my production, here's what I could do. I know you're— what are you possibly looking at? What did I miss here? I don't want to work for you, right? So that's the one test that we do, and that's the one that's interesting. You don't do it with everybody though. I don't do it every— right, because, you know, it just— there's certain— you intuitively you could tell. But I do do it if I'm on the fence with somebody on, you know, like they're answering everything correctly, but I think they're answering it, you know, they're like they're going through the motion. Like you get a sick The one thing I say about hiring salesperson that's very, very difficult is they're professional interviewers, right? And you always look on their resume. And so if they are only at a place for a year, right, and then a year, then a year, then a year, then a year, well, that's a trend. Because normally what happens is you get rid of the low-performing salespeople. And usually you want to, you know, a company will have a different approach than I do. An entrepreneur isn't going to keep a low-performing salesperson around for more than a couple of months. A company will keep them around for a year. And so what you want to do is look, if every year they're at a different place, I wouldn't even bother bringing them in the door. But you want to query people on that. You want to see progression. So you want to see maybe somebody that came in, started as a CSR, customer service rep, and then they moved into an inside salesperson, and they moved to an outside salesperson, or they became a territory manager, or key account manager. And so there's different terminology that you'd look for, but you really want to watch how they control the interview. Because if they don't control your interview with you, they're not going to control an interview with a prospect. With a prospect, exactly.

And then, yeah, forget it. So we make it through, all right? Are there, how do you end? How do you end the interview?

Before I end it, I ask them to pitch me. Okay. So I say, pitch me, you know, sell me something. Sell me what you're currently selling or sell me something. Okay. And I might do it maybe at the end or in the middle, I might change because a sales interview— I'm snapping my fingers— because a sales interview will change. You have to be able to be adaptable in your interview. That's the first thing that I'm going to do with them as we're getting towards the end. Then, as I said, I'm going to give them a specific time and date to follow up with me, because if they can't follow up with me, then it's— then I know they don't have it. You know, they're not going to follow up with a prospect. So I give them a time, or I wait to see if they ask ask, what's the next step? Because if they come from a sales process that's a multiple step process, you want them to say, what's the next step before I tell them what the next step is.

Got it.

Got it.

All right. So what we've— wow, we've gone through how to generate the lead. Okay. I keep calling it lead. That's what it is. Generate the— how do we attract some salespeople? We've talked about what you need to look for. We talked about the newbie versus the professional inside, outside, telephone, phone sales. We've talked about should you hire from the competition and what to do during the interview process.

All right, thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow, and the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. This free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at NoBSLetter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month, one from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift, gift in your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.