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10 Question to ask your candidate in an Inside Sales Interview before you hire them.
Your
company is growing, and you want to build your Inside sales team. Search is
ongoing to find the best hire for your business. Your HR is finding the right
fits for your company from different job portals and trying to select the best
one for your organization.
Now
the question is how you will know the candidate is the best hire for your
organization?
The
hiring process is time-consuming and requires the support of many people from
the same department. If the new joinery left your organization after few days,
then you be in stage 0 again and start finding the best hire.
I
would like to recommend few questions by asking which you can identify whether
the candidate is the right fit for your business or not.
Question
- 1:
How
do you define Inside Sales? What do you like most about Inside Sales?
By
asking this question you will identify his/her overall understanding of inside
sales and the part of it he like most.
You
may identify his interest in this kind of job and why he wants to pursue it as
a carrier.
Nevertheless,
this is the first question only and do not judge the candidate based on the
answer to this question.
Question
- 2:
How
comfortable you are with Inside Sales tools? Do you like using the CRM tool on
a day-to-day basis?
Here
you will understand how comfortable the candidate is with different technology.
An
ISR (inside sales representative) must use different email marketing tools
daily such as MailChimp, Sendinblue for an email campaign, and Fast2SMS for an
SMS campaign. So, an ISR needs to be comfortable with technology.
Having
excellent MS Excel skill is always an added advantage for any candidate. Excel
is not a nice to have skill but a compulsory skill for all ISR as it used for
reporting, activity preparation, account progress tracking as many more.
Having
experience in CRM tool for an ISR is not compulsory as it can be taught later.
Now
based on the above answer we should not reject anyone, it just the beginning of
our interview questions.
Question
3:
Do
you consider Email Marketing is an important part of Inside Sales? If yes, then
why?
Email
Marketing is an excellent tool to generate quality leads and is essential for
ISR folks to master this.
If
you hire someone good at Email Marketing, then it is a great advantage for the sales
department.
But
this skill can be trained as well. So, if the candidate is not good at this,
the company can provide training to help him master the skill.
Question
- 4:
Cold
calling is an essential skill or an optional skill for an ISR?
We
all know that cold calling is not an optional skill for ISR but most of us
hesitate to make cold calling as it involves more rejection.
Still,
we wanted to know whether the new hire will feel comfortable doing cold calling
or not.
Question
- 5:
Imagine
yourself in a situation where your sales are down, your sales performance is
decreasing day by day and your reporting manager starts criticizing you. How do
you respond to this situation?
The
best answer would be - I will stop imagining!!! Lol - jokes apart 😀😀😀.
Even
though there is no right answer to this imaginary situation, you will get
to the way, your candidate can handle a difficult situation. How much patience
he has or from where he will get the motivation to be loyal with the job and
try to overcome the situation by bouncing back to the track.
The
quality of being persistent will test in this question. Persistence is required
in personal and professional life for continuous improvement. We know that we learn,
and we fail and when we fail, we get the experience. This experience is
required to be persistence and keep moving on despite the different situations.
Question
- 6:
What
is your opinion on the use of LinkedIn in the Inside Sales process?
So,
this is a very good question to know how much importance the candidate gives to
the best tool for lead generation i.e., LinkedIn. How much he or she wanted to
use it and what is the opinion for using social sites in the process of Inside
sales. The free and premium version of LinkedIn is very useful in lead
generation and lead qualifications.
A
newbie interested to use social media to reach out to the potential customer is a good
sign for an organization.
Question
- 7:
How
you maintain your time slot? Is there any time slot you define based on the day-to-day
activities?
I
believe that maintaining a time slot increases the productivity of an ISR. This
time slot or calendar usually filled with the type of activity a salesperson
wants to do. Like the first 2 hours for email marketing, the next 2 hours for
cold calling. Some time for research about the prospects before calling, some
time for competitor analysis, some time for reading the case study, and so on.
When
you have a ready calendar for a complete month you do not need to think about
what activities to do, you have to follow the calendar only.
Question
- 8:
How
you improve the skills required to be an ISR?
Here
we can identify whether the candidate believes in continuous improvement and
pursue different certifications or reading books for the same.
Many
online certifications can add value to a candidate’s profile such as advanced
Excel certification, Business email writing certification, and soft skill
certification.
Question
- 9:
What
is your opinion about your previous employer and why you move on?
This
is the hardest question to handle for any candidate.
Here
we can see how positive the candidate in his approach. He can be loyal and
mentioned all the good things of the previous employer and what went wrong
between them that he must move on.
Are
there any monetary reasons to leave? Are there any conflicts that happen? Is
the working environment being very stressful?
There
can be the reason for someone to leave the organisation but mostly it's the
reason of thought process. Your reporting manager wants you to do things in a
certain way and you are not comfortable with that. Many organisations are
flexible to understand the thought process of the candidates too, but many are
not flexible.
We
can not select or reject a candidate based on his previous record.
Question
- 10:
What
do you know about our company and the uniqueness of our solution offerings?
Even
though this is the first the candidate is visiting your company it is expected
that the candidate must have gone through your company website and social media
sites to understand your company culture and the solution offerings.
I
have seen many people do a competitor analysis along with understanding the
solution offering by the company. These types of dedication are surely an added
advantage, but a candidate should not be selected basis on these criteria only.
Conclusion -
By asking the above 10 questions you will have a fair idea of the candidate's
knowledge in terms of Inside Sales and the mind share of the candidate. But let
me ask you 2 questions -
1. Can you get a perfect candidate for your
Inside Sales role?
2. Is there any Inside Sales skill that can
not be taught?
What
I know to say is that even though the above questions help you to identify the
mind share of the candidate but if your candidate has the below 3 qualities
then you should hire him or her
- Wanted to learn.
- Wanted to fit into your organization.
- Wanted to be successful as an Inside Sales Representative
Thanks
all for now from my side!
Let
I know your thoughts on the comment section.
Thanks
for reading.
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