A team of great business development representatives (BDRs) or sales development representatives (SDRs) can change the trajectory of your organization, generating high-quality leads at the top of the funnel and scaling up your customer base. A team of bad BDRs can also change the trajectory of your organization – for worse.
While you want every hire to be a success, entry-level sales roles can be particularly hard to evaluate for a few reasons. One – not all entry-level sales candidates will have previous experience in sales, which can make it difficult to assess how their skill set will transfer to a top-of-the-funnel lead generation role. Two – it’s not always easy to evaluate if candidates have the soft skills that foreshadow success in a sales role. On top of that, actually filling your pipeline with qualified candidates is a big challenge given the demand for great SDRs. When you do get a seemingly qualified candidate in front of you for an interview, you want to be able to accurately evaluate the potential they have with your organization. Here are some tips to help you get one step closer to adding a new member to your sales team:
Screen for long-term sales fit
The truth is, not every sales hire you make will stay with your organization’s sales team long-term. However, it’s important to assess if this candidate is genuinely interested in a client-facing career, or if your sales opportunity is a pit stop on the way to other opportunities. During the interview, ask questions like, “Where do you hope your career to be in 5 years?” or “How does sales fit in with your skill set?” You can also directly ask if they envision themselves staying in a sales role long-term. It should give you pause if a candidate’s long-term goals don’t include something client-facing or a role that directly contributes to an organization’s growth.
Ask revealing behavioral questions
You can assess verbal communication skills in an interview – but how do you screen for things like grit, perseverance, and work ethic? The secret to successfully screening for those attributes lies in your behavioral questions. Here are some questions to ask to find out more about a candidate’s past experiences and how those can indicate their potential:
To screen for things like work ethic and perseverance, be sure to frame your questions around past challenges and how they responded to it. The ideal BDR or SDR shouldn’t give up if they face adversity, and this is your opportunity to find out how they’ve responded to it in the past.
Use the interview to assess verbal communication skills and sales potential
How well can a candidate sell themself during an interview? An in-person or phone interview is your chance to assess how well a candidate can convey his or her value in a concise manner – an essential skill of a successful BDR or SDR. When evaluating a candidate’s verbal communication skills, pay attention to these key things:
Ability to answer questions concisely. If you ask a candidate to describe themselves briefly, can they do it without rambling? Additionally, if you ask them to describe the core responsibilities of their previous internship, can they answer your question without getting off track? Pay attention to how well candidates can convey concepts and ideas – it can show you how well they can communicate the value of your service or product.
Good conversational skills. We’ve all interviewed someone who dominates the conversation and forgets to ask you any questions about the role – or someone who barely talks at all. It may sound obvious, but a candidate’s conversational skills are a real indicator of their sales potential. While many BDRs spend time crafting personalized emails, cold-calling a prospect to follow-up on an email requires someone who can sense the ebb and flow of a conversation and understand when to talk and when to listen.
Confidence. A BDR doesn’t need to be the most bubbly, talkative person in the room. However, having the ability to sound confident (even when nervous) is a great trait for an entry-level salesperson to have, especially if their job involves a lot of cold-calling.
Include a prospecting assessment in your interview process
Before you get too excited about your BDR candidate, it’s important to make sure they possess one of the essential elements of strong communication skills and prospecting potential: writing ability. To assess a candidate’s writing skills, we recommend creating your own, timed writing evaluation or a similar assessment. Keep in mind that an imperfect writing evaluation doesn’t mean a candidate is out of the running. As long as they submit a strong writing sample within the time constraints, they can likely be coached into writing engaging, personalized outreach emails.
Hiring the wrong BDR or SDR is a costly mistake that no hiring manager wants to make. Take the time to evaluate a candidate’s background, writing ability, verbal communication skills, and work ethic to determine if a candidate can be a welcome addition and long-term fit for your sales team.