The Secret to Hiring Challengers

When it comes to talent management, it's critical for organizations to bring the best talent into their sales forces.

We know from our research on high performing rep skills that companies' best bet is to bring more Challenger Reps into the sales force – Challengers are four times more likely to be high-performers than Relationship Builders in complex selling environments.

But we've seen most sales organizations continue to use traditional relationship-based skills and competencies to screen and select new hires. After all, conventional wisdom tells us that the likable candidate who charms interviewers is bound to be a successful salesperson.

This hiring approach inevitably brings an unpleasant surprise, though. Why? Because if a rep relies on the same relationship-building behaviors they used to close a deal as they do to approach an interview, they'll soon find that their long-term likelihood to succeed is bleak.

So how do companies actually find sales rep candidates with the Challenger skill set in the marketplace?

After working with a number of member companies who have gone down this road, the SEC developed a framework to approach the Challenger hiring process as well as a series of tools to help uncover a candidate's true behavioral instincts.

Through dozens of conversations with both HR and Sales leaders, we believe the key to the Challenger hiring process must incorporate these three steps:

1) Make sure everyone in the hiring process is on the same page about what you're looking for in a candidate.

We found that it is critical to make sure everyone involved in the hiring process is familiar with the Challenger behaviors and why it is important to screen for their differentiating competencies during an interview.

To that end, the Council developed a concise Challenger Hiring Guide to ensure that everyone communicating with a potential hire is consistent about what makes for an ideal sales candidate. This tool provides managers with a quick overview of the particular skills and behaviors to look for when speaking with candidates, as well as sample questions to ask during a formal or informal interview.

2) Surface candidates who are open to the Challenger Rep profile.

The SEC also found that it's helpful to determine the candidate's overall openness to the Challenger Rep profile. Our Initial Screening Assessment outlines a quick way for an HR counterpart to prioritize candidates for an in-person interview, and is especially helpful for those candidates with little or no sales experience. The point of this exercise is not to determine whether candidate fall into a certain profile, but to gauge their understanding of why acting like a Challenger can make them successful as a candidate. (For more tenured reps, you can also use the Challenger Hiring Guide mentioned above to determine if a candidate should be prioritized during the hiring process.)

Not only does this step point to the likelihood of a candidate possessing Challenger skills, but it also indicates how coachable a particular candidate is – an important quality to gain a pulse for, since being coachable is key to effective and efficient onboarding and future development.

3) Test for Challenger potential by providing opportunities for candidates to tell a story.

To break past typical Relationship Builder qualities that are often highlighted during an interview, the Council developed the new Challenger Rep Behavioral Interview Guide to uncover a candidate's true behavioral instincts. The objective of this interview is uncover specific examples from a candidate's past in which desired Challenger skills were exhibited, even if a candidate has little or no sales experience.

This guide provides instruction on how to use the behavioral interviewing technique to ensure that a candidate is comfortable throughout the process and is engaging in an honest and fruitful dialogue with the interviewer.  The idea here is to open opportunities for candidates to share a story that shows specific behaviors and gives a holistic sense of Challenger potential once in seat.

And, to give interviewers concrete examples of what to watch for during their conversations with candidates, the guide outlines sample success behaviors and red flags to each of the six competencies that align to Challenger selling behaviors.

Once a candidate is selected and hired, it's also important to set expectations for long-term development by agreeing on the Challenger sales competencies they must build and sustain. Managers need to clearly differentiate between effective and ineffective behaviors to the new hire, and provide a method to track progress toward developing competence in key Challenger skills.

SEC Members, see our guidelines on Developing Challenger Competency Models, including the Challenger Competency Grid, the Sales Competency Design Principles and the Sales Competency Model Development Roadmap.

What other tactics have worked for finding and hiring candidates that have Challenger potential?  See our recent member discussion on finding Challengers in the job market, or let us know in the comments section below.