MBA963 Guest Teacher: Dr. Christopher Croner- Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again

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Hey O welcome to welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that delivers golden business nuggets every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our Guest Teacher episodes I invite a guest to teach you a lesson in their area of expertise. Today we have Dr. Christopher Kroner. He's the principal at SalesDrive.info. salesDrive is a firm that is specialized in the selection and deployment of high performing salespeople and he's going to be teaching you how to never hire a bad salesperson ever again. This lesson is absolutely amazing. He's going to break down how to find the right salespeople, the right questions to ask in the interview. How to find out if somebody has that inner drive, if they have what it takes to persevere, what makes them tick and what keeps them ticking. This is going to be a value packed guest lesson. Sales is such an important part of your business. Without it you have no cash flow, you have no business. You need the right talent to make sure sales are coming in we got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When it comes to hiring salespeople in your company, if you're the leader of your company and you're not a sales expert yourself, you're in trouble. You need to know exactly what to ask, what to look for. You need to find those natural born winners, people that want to do a great job. It's in their blood, it's in their DNA. They're just driven by success. And that's what Dr. Christopher Kroner is going to teach you today. He's going to walk you through what exactly to look for the three things actually you're supposed to be looking for in salespeople, as well as what questions to ask to find out if they have those things. I'll be back to give my takeaways from today's lesson. But for now, take it away. Doctor.

Welcome $100 NBA show listeners and thank you for joining me. My name is Dr. Christopher Kroner, Co author of the book Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again. And today I'm going to teach you how to identify driven high performance salespeople while avoiding underperformers. Let's jump right in. As you know, the most important decision a business owner or sales manager will ever make at any level is the selection of productive salespeople, because sales is the lifeblood of of any company. So there's so much at stake, both on the plus side and on the negative side. Our focus at SalesDrive is on the characteristics or traits, if you will, that distinguish the top performing hunter salespeople, those focused on new account acquisition, because that is the position that most companies have the greatest degree of difficulty hiring for. Many candidates, quite frankly, are very skilled at presenting themselves and as effective hunters. But then six months down the road, a year down the road, they break your heart when they don't live up to the promises they made when you hired them. So we set out to understand what it is that truly differentiates the highest performing hunters. We began over 15 years ago researching everything that's been published on this topic academically over the last 90 years, as well as conducting our own research, doing behavioral interviews of sales candidates, and then circling back with their managers thereafter to find out who became most successful. All of that research showed that many of the characteristics you might suspect are important for hunters are in fact very important. Things like persuasion, relationship skills and organizational skills. All of those were very important. But above and beyond any of those, by far were these three non Teachable characteristics that consistently differentiated the highest performers. The first characteristic is called the need for achievement. The salesperson, high in need for achievement has the desire to do well just for the sake of doing well. They are constantly focused on setting the bar high, jumping over that, and setting it even higher again the next time they produce excellence just for the sake of excellence. The second piece is competitiveness. And the competitive salesperson, we find, really wants to do two things. Number one, they want to be the best among their peers. And number two, they want to win the customer over to their point of view. They see that sale as kind of a contest of wills. Finally, the third piece is optimism. This is the salesperson's sense of certainty that they will be successful, as well as their resiliency in dealing with the inevitable rejection that's part of the sales process. These three characteristics together, need for achievement, competitiveness, and optimism, create the perfect storm psychologically, if you will. And collectively, we refer to them as drive. The challenge, of course, being that past the age of about 21, 22, there's not much we can do to change a person's overall level of drive. It's either it's there or it's not. Additionally, the research shows that drive is the easiest characteristic for a salesperson to fake in the interview process and and the most difficult to accurately rate. That's why we recommend setting up a rigorous assessment and interviewing process to identify sales candidates who are truly high in drive. Regarding the interview process, of course, the best predictor of future behavior is previous behavior. So we want to establish the patterns of behavior that the candidate has engaged in previously that will allow us to more reliably predict how they will perform for us. Here are some of our favorite questions for the three elements of drive, starting with need for achievement. What's the toughest goal you've ever accomplished professionally? Give them a moment to respond and then reflect back to them. You have to be proud of that. How do you intend to top it? The person, again high in need for achievement, has a plan to top it, and they're excited to tell you about it. And by the way, they will love the opportunity to answer that question. You're essentially going to be putting them up to the plate and giving them a chance to knock the ball out of the park. High achievers love that opportunity. Here's another one. What kinds of sacrifices have you had to make to be successful? What does that person consider to be a sacrifice? Listen carefully to what they say. How does that sale stack up against the ones? How does that sacrifice stack up against the ones he would need to make for you? How does his answer compare to the kinds of sacrifices you've seen your best performers make? Now for competitiveness. When was the last time you were competitive at work? In this case, the candidate may talk about an intense competition with her co workers or competitors for a prospect. She'll also describe the situation as enjoyable and motivating. Finally, for optimism, tell me about a time when you remained persistent even though everyone else around you gave up. In this case, look for stories about remaining resilient and sticking to their guns even after a prospect blew them off or their colleagues decided the situation was hopeless. If they lack sales experience, they'll tell you about other incidents at work or school where they remained true to their convictions. Those questions, of course, cover the three elements of drive. Now here are some questions for the other, more teachable core skills that we assess. Specifically, these are confidence, persuasion, relationship skills, and organizational skills. Starting with Confidence the confident salesperson, of course, has a thick skin and can handle rejection. Talk about a time when you got a result, even though, as a side effect, you had to ruffle someone's feathers to do it again. Salespeople who fear rejection are often afraid that they'll upset the prospect with their call. This question allows them to show that they can fight the good fight, if you will, and smooth things over if necessary later. In short, they're not held back by their fears of the prospect's rejection. Now for persuasion. Of course, the persuasive salesperson enjoys selling and negotiating, and they're skilled at moving the sale from the first call to the second call to the close. Tell me about the most difficult deal you've ever handled. Again, tell me about the most difficult deal you've ever handled. Nice broad question. Now listen carefully to your candidate's answer. How does that sale stack up against the ones she would need to make for you? How did she handle the challenges that were thrown at her? Did she close the deal? Again, probe carefully to gather this information. For relationship skills, of course, we know that relationship skills are essential for high performing salespeople in both account acquisition and account maintenance roles. Tell me about a customer relationship that was particularly challenging to develop. Listen carefully to the candidate's answer and of course, probe deeper as necessary. Look for the Number one. What was most challenging about the situation? Did the candidate succeed in developing the relationship, or were the obstacles just too difficult to overcome?

2.

Was the customer's personality an issue? If so, is that type of individual routinely difficult for the candidate to handle 3. Does the candidate need training in dealing with individuals at specific organizational levels, e.g. c level prospects or individuals on the shop floor? Finally, organizational skills. We know that organization skills are important for tracking opportunities effectively. Tell me about a time when your organization skills were important to you. Look for the candidate to reply with a situation where their discipline and attention to detail were essential to accomplishing a goal. So in conclusion, if you want high performing hunter salespeople, they must have drive and they must also have of course, the other core skills which are important as well. Use a consistent hiring process to eliminate underachievers and identify the high potentials with the passion to grow your business. If you'd like to continue learning about drive, please feel free to visit our website at www.salesdrive.info. lastly, for any sales hiring managers listening today, if you'd like to add data to your hiring process, visit www.salesdrive.info to request a free trial of the drive test, our sales assessment designed to identify high potential candidates prior to the interview. Thank you for joining me.

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What a great lesson by Dr. Christopher Kroner. I especially like his point about how to discover if somebody has drive. He breaks it down by, you know, telling you some people just love doing a great job of what they do. Being excellent at something matters to them. So that question about your biggest accomplishment and how you're going to top it, that was gold. I also like the fact that he understands that people that are competitive can really be a positive in a sales environment. The funny thing is that we all kind of know these things, but we need to formalize so we know how to ask the right questions on an interview. And I think that's what Dr. Christopher Crono did today. If you want to learn more about Dr. Christopher Crono, what they do at SalesDrive, go to salesdrive.info. and if you're a sales manager who wants to add data to your hiring process, head on over to salesdrive.info free trial request and you'll get a free trial to their DRIVE Test, their sales assessment tool. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. When it comes to your business, there's a lot to cover. As we know here on the show but when you're starting out, one of the things you really need to decide on is your domain name, your actual URL, your website address. In tomorrow's lesson, we'll take a deep dive on how to choose the best domain name for your business. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it, and I'll see you then. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Getting hungry, driven people on your team, whether in sales or another department, is so important. You can't train somebody to want something badly or to be competitive or to want to strive for excellence. You got to find these people and you got to hire them. So keep this in mind in all your hires. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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