Adam Sand, CEO of The Roofing Business Partner, walks through a three-step hiring system for sales reps. First, a 15-minute vibe check assesses punctuality and body language. Second, a 30-60 minute interview tests knowledge of tools like HubSpot and CompanyCam. Third, candidates are matched against five core values including trust is earned and unimpeachable character.
If you're tired of hiring people who look great on paper but never really fit your team, this is for you. I'm Adam Sand, CEO of The Roofing Business Partner. At RBP, we've built a proven 3-step hiring system that filters for vibe, skill, and culture alignment so your next outside sales hire actually sticks. Let me show you how to hire top performers who earn their spot daily.
When you're trying to do strategic hiring, the goal is to say you want to give people an interview experience that's going to make them appreciate having the job there because they know you didn't just hire two feet and a heartbeat the minute they walked in the door and proved that that's what they had. Now, the problem with that is that you're going to get a ton of interviews, right? You're going to get a ton of people. So the first thing you want to do is what we call 15-minute vibe check, right? And the vibe check is like just checking a few things. Do they show up? Were they on time? Were they prepared? You know, if they're on Zoom, like, was their camera on? Does their technology work right? Do they have issues? And you're trying to monitor the conversation for cues. You're looking at body language because you're trying to say, is this person somebody that you think would be friends with the other people on the team that they're joining? But you'd be amazed at how introducing someone who's gonna be an obvious different culture or vibe than the existing team can kind of throw off the whole team because people start censoring themselves. They don't feel like they can be themselves. Like we had an applicant recently to be a business engagement specialist here at RBP. It was like, fitting our existing sales team. This person had some previous experience in a role kind of like this, but it would be so different. It would feel like literally there's the team and then there's this stranger, and I don't think that gap would ever have a bridge over it. And so that's really what you're looking for in that vibe check, is something that just says, like, is this the kind of person that the rest of the people on your team would fit with? This allows you to do rapid-fire interviews because you want to make these quick. You want to sort through these ones quickly. Then there's your second interview, and your second interview is going to skill fit. For there, it's like you're talking about the best skills or the best abilities to kind of say, what are the talents that you're looking for in an outside sales rep? What you're looking for is personality and a work ethic. Everything else can be trained for the most part. But if you're looking for somebody who's experienced, there's pluses to hiring somebody with experience, but there's also negatives, right? Because they're going to bring with them all their bad habits. I almost always prefer to hire people without experience in sales because I can kind of say I want to be able to create what they understand to be their job Because if you're trying to bring outside salespeople into your inside-outside sales department, like as you run the business, they're gonna have opinions on that and they're gonna try and change your opinions to make them feel more comfortable. But if you can't do that and you don't feel comfortable hiring somebody completely green and you have to hire somebody that's experienced, then the first thing you wanna think is like, do they have experience selling your product? Because now what you're really saying when you don't wanna hire and train somebody green and you don't have a farm team to bring up, the motivation to make that decision is that you're trying to decrease the threshold of onboarding time before they become activated and useful. So you're looking for traits or skills. Traits or skills would be that they've used HubSpot before, or they've worked with your manufacturers before, like they understand GAF or Owens Corning, because then all you have to do is train your word tracks and your presentation, your systems, but they understand how to convey the value in excess of price. So if they've used CompanyCam, they've used Arrivi, if they've used SumoQuote, those are pluses. If they've sold your products before, those are pluses. They got a personality, a work ethic, they understand some of the tools. All they need is your word tracks and your company story, and that's what they got to sell. So after we get that vibe check, the next thing you want to look for is a technical fit. Do they have the technical skill sets to be great in sales? So this is usually a 30-minute to 1-hour interview, and this is where we want to test their knowledge around the position. A good way to test their knowledge is not to say, hey, so have you done sales before? But it's like, ask the customer to solve a recent common problem for the position. So ask them to say, hey, How would you overturn this objection? The customer said that shingles blew off in their backyard and the other salesman recommended Owens Corning because it had the SureNail strip and you sell our product, GAF. How are you going to overturn that objection to make them want to buy GAF instead of Owens Corning with the SureNail strip when the circumstances of the situation as it is is that shingles blew off? They think of that strip as the guarantee that that'll never happen again. How would you overturn that objection? So that's usually a 30-minute to 1-hour meeting. The final meeting is the core value fit, and this is where you say, okay, you passed the vibe check, someone has cleared you for technical ability. Then you say, hey, these are our core values, tell me how you align with those. It's like the oversimplification of it. Like in RBP, that meeting's with me, right? And so we tell them like, hey, our core values: trust is earned, reward on merit, unimpeachable character, thoughts into reality, hard-boring work is our advantage. And then it's like, how do you align with each of those core values, and their answers will tell you a lot. Sometimes people don't have an answer, and if they don't have an answer, well, then that tells you they didn't put much thought into it and they just figured that the last interview was going to be weak. You want people on your team who earned a right to be there because the people you already have on your team are earning their right to be there every day. It's more work, but you get less churn. You get better people on the other side.
