How To Manage A Security Sales Organization. Lou Sepulveda CPP
a salesperson must have a degree to be successful in your company? Do you have any evidence to support your case, or did someone else convince you?
I bring this up because of my firsthand experience. You see, I joined the Navy, like many young men and women, right after high school. By the time I completed my four-year enlistment (actually four years, eight months due to the Vietnam War), I knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted a better life and that a college education was desirable. However, since I passed on the opportunity to continue my education in favor of joining the Navy, I had to pay my own way by working as I pursued a degree.
Some years after taking the job with Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Company and before earning my college degree, I interviewed with a chemical company for a sales position. I had reached a point in my career when I wanted to move up from door-to-door straight commission sales to a company that offered benefits and a career path.
The manager of the chemical company perused my application, talked to me about my sales experience, and then asked me if I had a college degree, specifically a degree in chemistry. When I said I didn’t have either, but that I was fairly close to earning a degree, he promptly laid my application down. I didn’t meet their requirements.
Being the salesperson I had become, I took that statement as an objection, and began a rebuttal explaining why his company should disregard the requirement and hire me anyway. But regardless of what I said, he explained that they had a hard and fast rule. In order to successfully sell chemicals, a salesperson needed to have a strong knowledge of chemistry. I continued to argue my points, but ultimately lost the argument and the opportunity to work for the company.
Not long after, I learned that a competitor of the chemical company I had interviewed with was also looking for a salesperson. I applied for that job, and this time I got hired. It seemed that they didn’t have a rigid rule about education; instead they relied on the judgment of the sales manager who conducted the interview. His gut said I could do it.
I hit the streets after a rather brief training period in which I rode with a salesperson in another state to learn how to represent the company and its products, and when I got back home to my own territory I proceeded to kick sales butt. I sold chemicals with names I could barely pronounce. I sold chemicals to golf courses, to high rise building for their chiller systems, to hotels for housekeeping, to bars and restaurants, and to every other business I thought could be a prospect. Much to the first company’s dismay, many of those clients had previously been their clients. I especially enjoyed selling to them.
At the end of the first year I was presented the Rookie of the Year award at the company’s annual convention. I accomplished that without a degree in chemistry, or in anything else for that matter. What I did have was sales experience and a burning desire to succeed.
Does this mean I believe that you shouldn’t prefer a candidate who possesses a degree? No. But I do believe that you should allow a manager to make a gut decision based on experience. Having a degree should not be a critical requirement.
One last point, if you conduct your recruitment process partially online or through the human resources department, and your company has a degree requirement, consider a way to allow exceptions based on the experience of the candidate and the judgment of the interviewing manager. The final decision can be sorted out in the interviews. I know companies that post sales jobs on Monster.com, and when applicants answer they have no college degree on the online application, the system automatically disqualifies the applicant, and no one sees the application. I understand that this automated process likely saves time, but it leaves no room for personal judgment and good old gut reaction.
4. Interviewing
Now that the calls from your more traditional methods of recruitment are coming in, it is time to set up interviews. The sooner you can arrange these, the better. Just like fish and sales leads, they begin to spoil the older they get. You should want to see the sales applicant as soon after she calls as possible. When you have an ad running, speaking to the applicants becomes the most important thing on your to-do list.
Based on the type of ad you placed and the anticipated number of responses you will get, you’ll need to decide what kinds of interviews you will conduct. Here are some of the choices:
Prescreen phone interview
One-on-one personal interview
One-on-one personal interview, followed by interview with other team member
Group interview, followed by one-on-one interview
When there is a large response to an ad, some companies prefer to screen applicants by phone first, and then invite the ones who best fit what they are looking for. When I conduct prescreen phone interviews, I follow a set of steps that leads me to those best matches.
Specifically, when a candidate calls in and asks for Mr. Lewis, that call is directed to a person on my staff who is trained to do part one of the phone interviews. He or she asks the callers about their previous experience, whom they worked for last, why they are looking for a job at present, and other questions along those lines.
The main thing the screener looks for is previous experience, if that is my highest priority. They also pay close attention to the callers’ personalities (how they sound), motivation, and attitude. The screener rates the callers on a one-to-five scale, with one being weak and five strong. At the end of the calls, the screener tells the candidates that they might receive a call from the manager, Mr. Lewis, later that evening, and they ask for a phone number Mr. Lewis can call after 6 pm. Then I, “Mr. Lewis,” began by calling the candidates who rated five, and work backward to the ones if I still need more.
Why call after 6 pm? Primarily because, like you, my day is often cluttered with the day-to-day issues all managers face. And when I speak to sales applicants I want to be able to do so with few—or better yet, no—interruptions. Making the follow-up calls after 6 pm allows me to focus on the important task at hand, recruiting salespeople.
I have others reason for calling after 6, too. First, I want to see if the candidates want a job badly enough to wait by their phone for my call. Second, I learn a lot about their personal life by calling them at home at night. If applicants have a drinking problem, they might be sober enough to speak to me in the morning, but rarely can they hide their condition later that evening. Third, part of good selling is common sense. I learn which applicants have the foresight to ask me to hold for a second so they can get to a quiet spot where they can talk without the background noise that exists in most homes.
After completing the phone interviews, I invite the applicants I want to proceed further with to a second interview. If my office isn’t large enough to conduct the second interview, or there isn’t an office in town, then this will take place in a meeting room at a local hotel. I’ll hold it as soon after the phone interview as possible, preferably the next day.
The type of interview I will conduct often depends on the number of candidates who make it through the phone interviews. If there are only one or two, I’ll likely do one-on-one interviews. If, however, there are more than ten remaining, I will do a group interview followed by one-on-one interviews. Why?
Let’s analyze what should happen in a sales interview. The first thing I need to do is similar to what the ad should do, and that is sell the opportunity. Here is what I have to sell to the applicant:
The company. Unless my company is in great demand or has huge recognition, it is important that I communicate why a salesperson should want to work for us. A side benefit of doing that is that I also demonstrate how the salesperson, if she gets the position, should sell my company to prospective buyers.
The company’s product. Just as salespeople will have to sell the company product to end users, I need to sell the product to the applicants. When they conclude that the product is exciting, needed, and worth buying, they become more excited about the opportunity to sell that product, and they have witnessed a professional presentation of the product that they can emulate.
The problem the product solves