Part of our recruitment process includes role playing face-to-face sales meetings. Depending on the type of seller we are looking for (transactional versus consultative) we set up a sales meeting giving the candidate a one page brief. We then take the role of the buyer and allow the seller to do their best.
After the exercise we give feedback to the candidate pointing out their strengths, and their development areas. Sometimes we’ll run the exercise more than once to give a promising candidate the opportunity to show us the flexibility of their selling style.
We’ve always had positive feedback from candidates, even the unsuccessful ones. Top class sellers should be comfortable with role play. It is, after all, the tool of choice for sales managers who are taking an active role in developing their sellers’ skills.
So next time you are hiring, take some time with your shortlisted candidates to see if they really can sell as well as they promise.
After all, it’s always better to find your candidates weaknesses before you hire them…
These are a collection of our views about the world of selling, though please feel free to disagree and share you own views with us.
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“CPV have taken the mystery out of the sales process and shown us how to do it for ourselves, now I feel much more in control of our business” – PW, MD Financial Services SME