Jason M. Lemkin recommends asking candidates to sell your app in a timed exercise during a second interview. Give them 30 minutes to a few hours to prepare, then watch how they research, pitch, and close. It shows real sales skill, not theater.
Chapters
To close the loop on this thread, uh, when you're interviewing the early sales reps, those first 2 quirky folks, what are some questions and ways to know if they're maybe a good fit? You mentioned one of like, you feel like you would buy from them.
Okay. The one, the really the simplest one, and, and early in my career, I thought this was silly or hated it. This Glengarry Glen Ross. I don't know if it was Glengarry Glen Ross or that, that, that toxic, um, Leo movie about sales, which is still entertaining. but what, yeah, one way or another, Lenny, it's gotta be sell me this pen, but it's not sell me this pen, it's sell me this app. So I don't like surprises. I don't like games. I like to do this in a second interview or whatever, give them time. And I don't like to judge too harshly, but it, whether it's the first interview or the second, they gotta sell you this pen. They've gotta put in the 30 minutes of work and maybe it's 2 hours, but here's the thing, today's world, you can go on YouTube or someone's website.