Tired of Hiring Bad Salespeople? Do This w/Dr. Christopher Croner

This is Real Estate Team Builders, and I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The real estate team building world is driven by big egos who boast about how many homes they've sold or how much GCI they've earned. We don't hear much about their low profit margins, the long hours they put in each week, or the unbearable stress they endure. In fact, I've discovered that most real estate teams are losing money when you consider the amount of personal production their owners must do to make ends meet. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building sustainable systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on my podcast, just the real world tools, systems and strategies that work. So if you struggle to balance growing your real estate business with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you.

All right, welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. This is, I'll say this is an honor. You know, I started using a company called Sales Drive. Probably, I don't know, I feel like in the first few years of my business building journey and, you know, having to hire real estate agents to sort of, you know, do the job of salespeople and the tagline of this company. And we have Dr. Christopher Kroner on with us from Sales Drive, who wrote or at least co authored a book called Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again. And when I. If you go to SalesDrive, I think it's salesdrive.net.info.info. so salesdrive.info, so sort of a little bit of the punchline here, but this, this company and Dr. Kroner has sort of dedicated his professional life to understanding, you know, the different types of salespeople and, you know, what makes them them tr just play this game at a really high level. So, Dr. Kroner, maybe give a few minutes on your background. You know, I want. I want team builders to understand that this is going to be probably of all the podcast episodes I've done, I venture to guess that this is going to be probably one of the most valuable sessions that I'll deliver on the podcast. So give us a little bit of your background, then we'll just kind of go into the conversation around. All we do in real estate is hire bad salespeople. It feels like, so that's why I'm going to take a lot of notes as we chat. So give us a little bit of your background.

Thank you so much, Lars. And again, it's a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to be of service to your audience. Again, my focus is on, just as you said, the characteristics or traits, if you will, that we find do differentiate the highest performing salespeople of the world, particularly those that we refer to as hunters. We've been doing this work, gosh, for I've been doing this work for 20 years now. We've worked with over what, 1400 companies worldwide. We've administered over 100,000 assessments. And that is all that we focus on, is the characteristics that make people successful on the sales side. I got my, got my start 20 years ago focused on how do we conduct behavioral interviews with sales candidates at the same time looking at every bit of research that had been published academically in terms of what is it that makes a great salesperson of the last, what, 85, almost 90 years now, combining all of that data together to really understand what are the teachable characteristics and what are the non teachable characteristics that are essential, the three most important non teachable characteristics that are essential for success as a hunter. Because you're exactly right, that is the position. Lars, the number one position that we find that most companies have the greatest degree of difficulty in hiring is that hunter salesperson. Because anybody naturally in the interview is going to be on their best behavior. That's to be expected. But salespeople, as I'm sure you've seen over the years, can sometimes be very skillful at that. They know the right things to say in the interview. Sometimes they're even using sales techniques on you in the interview. And in particular, when you have a position that you have to fill that's time sensitive, it can feel in the moment like finally. But then sometimes six months or a year down the road, you're left asking, wait a minute, you know, what happened to the person whom I interviewed? That was the best sale that I ever really saw them.

Awesome, awesome.

So let's just jump right in. You know, it's not often where we get to chat with somebody that is, has gone so deep on a topic and probably like in the world. In terms of your proficiency here, let's break down. I know that there are sort of three elements of drive when it comes to these assessments that you do. And so maybe spend a little bit of time talking about those and how that kind of plays into the long term. Potential of a salesperson, of course.

So as I mentioned, when we started doing that research, looking at everything on the academic side as well as our own work, doing behavioral interviews with sales candidates, circling back with their managers thereafter to determine who becomes successful, we found that again, many of the characteristics that are important for someone to succeed in sales, many of them are things that most people can expect. Teachable characteristics, things like persuasion, relationship, organizational skills, characteristics like that. However, just as you said, there are three non teachable pieces that consistently stood out in differentiated the highest performers, particularly the hunters, if you will. Number one, the first one is what we call the need for achievement. And when we talk about the need for achievement in a salesperson, Lars, we're talking about the person who wants to do well simply for the sake of doing well. So that salesperson who's high in need for achievement, they just naturally want to set the bar high, if you will, they want to jump over that, then they want to set it even higher again the next time. So they're constantly focused on producing excellence just for the sake of excellence. That's the first piece. And it's interesting because the research shows that characteristic need for achievement is important only for salespeople, but also, incidentally, for entrepreneurs. People have to kind of wake up every morning and make it happen and there's nobody standing over them watching them. So as you can imagine, as companies now are having to hire people more remotely, in many cases, we are finding that characteristic continues to become more and more important. The second piece is competitiveness and the competitive salesperson, we find, Lars, really wants to do two things. Number one, they want to be the best in their team. They're always comparing their performance to their peers because they just need to know where they stand, if you will. And number two, they want to win that client or that customer over to their point of view, because to them psychologically, that sale is kind of like a contest of wills. And then the third piece is optimism. And that's the salesperson's sense of certainty that they will succeed, as well as, of course, their resilience to hang in there when they face the inevitable rejection that a salesperson just has to deal with. So we find it's those three characteristics all together, need for achievement, competitiveness and optimism, that psychologically create sort of the perfect storm, if you will. And collectively we refer to those three characteristics as drive. The challenge, of course, being that past the age of about 21, 22, there's not much we can really do to change the person's overall Level of drive. It's kind of either it's their or it's not. And the research also shows, unfortunately, as you can probably imagine, drive is the easiest characteristic for a candidate to fake in the interview and the most difficult characteristic to accurately rate. So that's why we zero in on those three non teachables.

Awesome.

So maybe use some like, practical examples. I'm trying to think of all the mishires that I've made. And we tend to, and I kind of say it a little bit like this, you know, I tend to like naturally look for potential. Like if you're sitting across from me and I'm interviewing you and you're like, I'm like, I need this position. You're like, I could do the position. I'm like, like you said, great, you know, because I'm pretty desperate right now. I've got too many leads. I'm, I'm not where I need to be or whatnot. And, and we let ourselves get in the way of doing the right thing in those situations. So maybe talk about some, some examples of like say, never hire a bad salesperson again. And the assessment, you know, helps kind of go through some of this. But what do you see the common mistakes that, that are made by folks that are looking to hire great salespeople but they continually don't.

Sure, you're exactly right. Particularly seeing an entrepreneur looking for somebody. In some cases, somebody's the very first salesperson. You know, they're looking for somebody that's going to succeed for them, often relatively quickly. So logically what they'll often do. One of the most common mistakes we see, Lars, is someone will go and look, look for a salesperson that has a substantial background, maybe several years of sales experience. And what's attractive to them is someone with experience, as you can probably imagine at a very large company thinking, okay, great, this person has had great success in some cases at this very large company, surely they must have had world class sales training. Surely logically they will bring that same degree of success to bear for us. But then the key question is, as you can probably imagine, what really led to their success? Was it their own effort or was it really the fact that in that situation they had all that brand recognition and collateral material. They're kind of helping them out, if you will. Sometimes it's better when you're looking for somebody who's going to perform quickly to find somebody who was successful maybe two to three years of relevant in previous experience, but at a similarly sized company. So they've had that experience in dealing with some of the challenges that they have that are inherent when you don't necessarily have all those advantages. And then at the same time they've got the drive, you know, those not those three non teachable characteristics to show that they will execute on that knowledge, if you will. That's one of the most common mistakes that we'll see. Also there's that tendency to want to be sold in the interview. Some, some candidates are just very, very good interviewers. So frankly they will read books on how to interview effectively. They want to answer questions well, particularly if you give them the chance to answer sort of situational or hypothetical questions. What would you. This happened. What would you do if that happened? What would you do if a customer did this? What would you do if a customer did that? Well, when you ask a person hypothetical questions, it's a great way to determine whether they know the right thing to do. Of course, diagnostically for training, but it doesn't tell you anything about whether they will actually do that. Instead we want to ask about what did they do in specific situations. That's another common mistake is allowing the candidate to kind of use conjecture and kind of use their knowledge of the right thing to do in a situation to win them over in the interview. And of course a third thing that people often do is let the candidate filibuster. Candidates often come in and we want to win that person over, particularly in the current environment. We want to make sure that we do the best that we can to win the person over and attract them to our company. Well, again, some candidates look at that as a great opportunity to sort of filibuster the interview. So they know they've got, you know, half an hour, an hour, however long it is, and they'll spend as much time as they can kind of, you know, go going through their canned spiel, if you will. So it's really about taking control of the interview, asking well constructed behavioral interview questions and make sure that we're sourcing candidates with an ideal background for us.

Awesome.

You made a comment, you know, in the pre work for this conversation about like markers on a salesperson's resume. Speak a little bit more to that. So how can we, you know, because I've been in that situation, I'm like, man, this person worked for like, I don't know, Procter and Gamble as a pharmaceutical sales rep. And you know, but then you find out like to your point, like they were selling like the right drug to the right region and they were, you know, had Nothing to do with what they were doing. And they brought better lunches, you know, than the next pharma sales rep that came in. So talk a little bit about, like what, as a hiring manager, as a real estate team builder or business owner, hiring a salesperson. What are the markers you can look for and how useful is a resume? How can we use it as a tool in the hiring process?

Yeah, you know, in terms of resumes, the challenge, of course, is candidates can present themselves however they wish. But we'll often get the question, you know, what do you look for in terms of, say, a Resume or a LinkedIn profile that will indicate that someone has a high level of drive? And we've had some clients where almost every single candidate they've assessed scores high on drive, you know, four or five, if you will, out of five on drive. And we've asked them, what do you look for in these situations that consistently determines the person is going to do well? And we've heard really three different things that companies will look for on a resume or LinkedIn profile. Number one, of course, naturally they look for the passive candidates as opposed to the active candidates, because, of course, if someone's been actively out there looking for a while in the world of sales, there could be a good reason for it. Number two, they look for the person. Of course, that's not a job hopper. So they have some longevity in the position, positions that they felt, you know, the first position or two out of college, of course, but then thereafter, we look for some stability at least three to four years in many cases. Ideally now, those sorts of things tend to change with the current environment, et cetera, but at least some stability to indicate that they've been in a position long enough that they've shown loyalty to that company, or at least that they've been there long enough to understand what it takes to succeed in that role, and they've done well. And that brings us to number three is that the person has some sort of metrics to show that they've been successful previously, whatever it is that's helpful to you to show ideally that the person has done well in that role, metric wise, whether that's a w, whatever it is that you might ask for. I know different states have different laws, but whatever would work for you. So those three things, the person's a passive candidate, they have some longevity in the positions they felt that satisfies you, and again, that they are able to give you some sort of metrics to show that they've done well. That combined with Looking for the person with, again, if you, if you are a smaller company, two to three years of relevant previous experience at a similarly sized company, that can be very, very helpful altogether to say, okay, it's not. That's not the be all end all. But it's a good first step.

Okay, so how about like screening processes? Like if is there is the drive test, like the ultimate, they score a four and a half out of five and they're good to hire. Or are there more screening processes that you guys use that fit in with the drive assessment?

Good question. So in hiring a candidate, many different steps are involved. Typically for smaller companies, we'll recommend, as you can imagine, starting out in some cases with a resume review, as we just discussed, then moving on perhaps to a phone screen of some kind. We provide guidance in our new book, the second edition of which has just come out, never hire a bad salesperson again. And questions you can ask in the phone screen and then decide at that point whether to use the online assessment. Then you have three great pieces of data to decide. Okay, great, do we bring the person into the one on one interview now? And if we do, how do we structure the interview to make the best use of our time? So in terms of the assessment, if the person does well on the assessment, no assessment is the be all, end all. I like to look at the assessment is a bit like having your consumer report, a very, very on consumer report, if you will, before you make a major buying decision, it just sort of says, hey, buyer beware. Make sure you're digging into any of these areas that are being flagged just to the point that you're comfortable in that interview makes you much more powerful now as an interviewer because as you can imagine now you're going to be going down underneath the surface and really understanding what's going on underneath the surface with that person and what really makes them tick. You're much more powerful in that way. And then no matter what, you're going into that new hire with your eyes wide open. So really using the assessment to decide, okay, do we bring the person into the interview? If they've done well on the assessment that the. That's great. Now they've earned that opportunity to be grilled by you. And that's when you bring them in and really dig down deep asking those well constructed behavioral interview questions that we provide with the assessment reports.

Awesome.

And one thing that you know, and again it go, it goes into like, I feel like I've done so many interviews of salespeople, but I'm the wrong person to be doing it. But if there is like a step by step process, so the resume, the phone screen, it sounds like the drive assessment, then an in person, right? Yeah. So when you're through the drive assessment, phone screen, resume, and you're in person, give us some advice or a structure for like the actual how do you use the resume, what questions? And I know there, there are tons of resources for free on the website as well, so I want to make sure people know to go over to salesdrive.info but talk about the interview process and how to effectively kind of manage the fact that they're trying to essentially sell you. And how do you kind of probe and do the interview? The right way?

Of course. And it's all about balancing, of course, especially in the current environment, balancing the time that you ask questions of the candidate with attracting the candidate, showing them what's unique about your position and how you really offer something that they can't currently get. But in terms of structuring the interview, first off, it kind of depends on how much time you have. If you have say one hour, two hours, I like to start it with a few minutes, five to 10 minutes at the very beginning, kind of warming the candidate up. Any candidate naturally is going to be a little bit nervous for the first one on one interview. Sometimes that's in person. Then at that point, you know, once the candidates warmed up, if you have not yet done so, I recommend getting into their resume with them and have them walk you through their resume. And for each position that they've held, ask them to answer three questions. Number one, give me the basic job description. Of course, what did you do in that role? Number two, if you were on a sales team, where did you rank on the team? Of course, the competitive person, as you can probably imagine, will know exactly where they ranked. And number three, what got you to move on to the next position? And when you ask that third question, what got you to move on to the next position? I'm sure you've heard over the years, Lars, that sometimes people will have what we might consider to be very guarded answers. Things like, oh, what got me to move on to the next position? Oh, there were some misunderstandings with my supervisor. There were some differences of opinion concerning my salary. You know, things like that. If you find that you're getting what you might consider to be guarded answers, I recommend using what we call the magic wand question. Okay, if we had a magic wand and we could change three things about that job so you would have never wanted to leave. What would those three things be? And you can imagine at that point, you start to get a kernel of the truth. Oh, let's see, my assistant wouldn't have quit, Might have gotten paid more. I wouldn't be able to my sales manager to give you something you can start to dig in on. And then, of course, at that point, the key is to find whether or not you can see other examples of that behavior occurring in the past as well. Because the more consistent examples of a behavior we can see previously, the more reliably we can predict it will emerge for us going forward, too. So then at that point, once you're through with the resume, then I recommend getting into the behavioral interview questions. Again, the best predictor of future behavior is previous behavior. So during the interview, we want to ask the candidate about behaviors they've engaged in at work that reflect the characteristics that we would like for them to show for us going forward. Looking at the three elements of drive, of course, need for achievement, competitiveness, and optimism. And then also those other core skills that, as I mentioned, we found to be important in just about every sales position that we looked at. Confidence. Does the person have a thick skin? Can they handle rejection? Persuasion. Does the person enjoy selling and negotiating? Will they move that sale from the first call to the second call to the close relationship skills? Is this person comfortable reaching out to other people? People socially and then organization Is just the sort of person who enjoys dotting their I's and crossing their t's, if you will, Asking them specific behavioral interview questions about each of those characteristics.

Awesome.

Give us some. Some examples. Like maybe, like, what are the top three most revealing or best interview questions? Like, I'm just thinking of, like, what are some? Just like, you've got to ask these three or four questions to every salesperson. They're just amazing. What are the few that come to mind?

Of course. So relative to, say, the three elements of drive, Starting out with need for achievement, again, we want to look for that person with need for achievement who wants to do well for the sake of doing well. So we want to ask the person about, you know, that sort of characteristic. One of my favorite questions is, what kinds of sacrifices have you had to make to be successful? What does that person consider to be a sacrifice? Was it maybe they had to work a couple weekends last year, or was it something more substantial? Now compare that to the kinds of sacrifices you've seen your top performers have to make over time. Or tell me about the greatest goal you've ever accomplished. Professionally, really have the person describe that to you in detail. And then you can say back to them, you know, you've got to be proud of that. How do you intend to top it? Again, the person high in need for achievement has a plan to top it, and they are excited about the opportunity to tell you about it. When was the last time you were competitive at work? What did that look like? Again, we want to find the person who just relishes a competition at work where even if there's not a competition in place, they will look to create one, because they just need to know where they stack up compared to their peers, if you will, for optimism. Tell me about a time when you remain persistent even though everyone else around you gave up. Now, tell me about another time. You know, just getting those consistent examples. Those are some of my favorites for the three elements of drive.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And do you. I know it's. It's more of a. More of a long shot, but what advice would you give to. And maybe it's just a tendency in real estate. You know, some younger people come into real estate and, you know, there's not as much to go on, like a track record, like you said, but, you know, they've, like, played college sports and they worked a job, you know, while they, you know, there's certain things you can look for inherent in the person. And you mentioned, like, by age 22, most of this stuff is baked in to them already. So what advice would you give to hiring potential top salespeople that just don't.

Have the track record yet?

You're interviewing someone who's 22. What are. How would you kind of navigate that?

Great question. Of course, we get that question very often. Companies will take our assessment, for example, and they'll take it to job fairs and those test kids just coming out of school. And then when it comes to the interview process, it's all about constructing the questions in such a way that we acknowledge the person may not have a substantial amount of work experience. But of course, they may have ample chances in the past to show those types of characteristics. So we'll look at, again, the person's past. For example, if we look at the opportunities they've had academically or in maybe extracurricular jobs, you know, things like that, and those broad questions can still work. What kinds of sacrifices have you had to make to be successful? Tell me about the greatest goal you've accomplished at this point, perhaps academically. How do you tend to top it? Now, the optimism question. A time when you remain persistent even though others around you gave up. It's all about asking those questions broadly enough to let them identify those things. And you have a great point. When you talk about the person's background, oftentimes it can be very tempting in many cases to look for someone with a substantial athletic background. And yes, absolutely, that can show. But another key thing to look at in that case, when the person has been successful in terms of a sports background, we want to make sure that we've identified that individual that has been, has succeeded based upon their own desire to do well, as opposed to just having the athletic background or athletic ability. So for example, we want to make sure that the person is the sort of individual who themselves were out there every morning at 6 o' clock before all the other players practicing, versus someone who had to get woken up by the coach every day and brought out to the field. Maybe they had a lot of talent, but not necessarily a lot of desire to do it. Sometimes you may have an individual, as you bring up, that has been successful based upon just working to put themselves through school, doing whatever it took. That quiet element of drive. It's not always necessarily the very gregarious, outgoing, effusive salespeople who are always necessarily the most driven. You can have in many cases people who are introverts, who have very high levels of drive. So it's all about giving the person whatever their background is, even if they haven't had substantial sales experience and you're getting them just out of school, the opportunity to show those characteristics. And there are many opportunities for it.

Yeah, awesome.

So tell us a little bit about sales drive, like the company itself, like, how'd you come up with the idea? You know, I also want you to tell people, like, what's the easiest way to kind of enter into this, this world of yours? The resources available, the assessments kind of tell us the story.

Of course, started doing this work, as I mentioned, 20 years ago. I started working at a firm called Whitmer and Associates that specialized in executive assessment. So that's when a company wants to bring in a new, say, VP or president. They sit the person down with the psychologist, do a two, sometimes three hour interview. They do a job simulation exercise. They'll do intelligence testing. Sometimes they wanted to design something as rigorous as that for salespeople. If you're not selling anything, nothing's happening. So they wanted to design something as rigorous as that. And that's when I began doing that. We wrote Never hire a bad salesperson again. I wrote that with My co author, Richard Abraham In 2006, as I mentioned, the second edition came out just a few months ago, in January of this year. We've been doing this work sales drive since what, 2005 at this point. We work with over 1400 companies around the world. So anytime a company in particular is hiring a hunter salesperson, that's when they will find us and reach out to us. Typically they will find us. And that is all that I have eat, breathed and slept since October of 2002. So it's always my pleasure to be of service in any way that I can. We offer a free assessment on our website, a free drive test assessment. Companies can always take advantage of that. Salesdrive.info There's a big red button up on the upper right hand side. And again, anything that we can do to be of service, we're always happy to help. And companies engage us, you know, at that in that hiring process, if you will. How do we identify candidates who are going to do well, what's, what sorts of questions can we ask them? And that's the main thing that we provide is the online assessment. It's called the drive test.

Awesome.

Tell me, tell me about this. I forgot to ask the question. You mentioned it earlier. And I'll kind of, you know, maybe preface or give it a little bit of context. The hunter versus Farmer. You know, we in real estate, I think it comes from like who you naturally are. Like we have folks that are building, you know, a business based on referrals and they're more farmers and they, they surround themselves with a bunch of farmers and they never grow in scale and they don't have any like energy and life. The business is sort of flat because everyone is, you know, planting seeds and just waiting for them to grow versus like getting after every day. So talk a little bit about hunter versus Farmer and what you've learned in the research.

Great question. So in terms of our distinction, we look at the hunter, of course, is the person that's focused on new account acquisition. The farmer is the person that's typically focused on developing existing accounts. Now sometimes companies will say, well, I want somebody who's going to grow existing accounts. They want somebody who's going to hunt on a farm, if you will, as some people will call it. And that's certainly fine too. But in terms of that distinction, making sure that we identify on the hiring side, the key thing is making sure we identify what we really need in that particular role. Do we need somebody who's going to be focused on Growing, growing new accounts and most companies do, versus someone who's just kind of dealing with existing accounts. If we do need somebody who's going to be an effective hunter, then we do need those drive characteristics.

Awesome.

So I guess there's nothing. So do you have companies that 80% of the people they want to hire are hunters, but they still use the sales drive to identify the farmers. Is it still an effective assessment to identify both types?

Yes, it is. We actually give measures on the assessment in terms of the hunter scale and the farmer scale scale. You know, is somebody going to be effective in either of those roles? What's the person's potential? Keeping in mind of course, that again, if the person is scoring a little bit lower on say the elements of drive, they might still be able to do well on that farming side, but not necessarily on that hunting sense. We're really kind of weight the elements of drive is on that hunting side. Is a person going to be able to be effective as a hunter? Now we also have a separate report that everybody receives for each person they assess. It's called the Production Builder. The Production Builder is our developmental report. So the Production Builder gives again all the same scores that they get on the drive test report from 1 to 5. But then it comes of additional pages of things they can do to mentor or motivate that person, given their unique psychological profile. When it comes to those more teachable characteristics, things like relationship skills, organizational skills, even persuasion. So we help companies when they're looking at their existing team. Sometimes a new manager takes over. It's almost like a new coach taking over.

Beautiful. Dr. Kroner, this has been, been awesome. And you obviously are, you know, I think we probably did a 45 minute podcast in 25 minutes. It's so much, so much good. Um, so sales Drive DYNFO is the way to connect with you guys. Even if it's like what, you know, there's a free assessment. So even go on there as the entrepreneur, as a business owner, take the assessment yourself just to get kind of acclimated to it. And then is it obvious on the website? I mean, I have it pulled up, but is it obvious on the website how to engage in future assessments and how to work with you guys?

Yes. So when you request the sample assessment, we'll reach out to you directly. We'll, we'll send the assessment and then we give you a step by step process thereafter for arranging a conversation with, with us. Happy to answer any questions you may have and it's our pleasure to be of service.

Awesome.

Thanks so much Dr. Kroner and salesdrive.info we'll see you guys over there.

Thank you Lars.

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