Hey guys this is Steli Efti with Close.io, A lot of people ask me what are the right
type of questions to ask sales people when you interview them. And others ask me as a
startup in general what are my as a co-founder and CEO, what are the top question that I
ask candidates when I interview them? Philosophically I want to share that I am
not a huge fan of the “interview”. In order to determine if somebody is a great
fit or not or how somebody is going to perform later on in their job. I just think that a
lot of people are great and kind of hacked and mastered how to present themselves and
sell themselves in an interview really well but that unfortunately doesn’t always or
rarely translate into if they perform well on a day to day an under the pressures and
changes and challenges of a startup environment. With sales it’s even more dramatic because
you know it’s like, think about it like that. Imagine you being the coach of a top
basketball team and you are sitting there to interview players in order to determine
if they would be good players and super stars in your team. What kind of questions would
you ask a person sitting there in a comfortable chair about how their basketball playing experience
and their basketball playing you know philosophy and thoughts and it’s silly to a certain
degree. You would just throw a person a ball and have them go play. You would go and watch
during games and then you would analyze their results over time and yes, you might go on
a walk with them or sit down with them and interview them and try to understand them
a little bit better, what motivates them, what drives them their values, their personality,
their cultural fit to your organization, but that is not how you are going to determine
if they are good on the field and if they are good at the game. And, it’s the same
thing with sales. If you want to know if somebody is good at sales throw them the ball and have
them play. You know give them the phone and have them make a cold call. You know give
them the stage and have them do a pitch in front of the entire team. Let them demonstrate
their abilities to sell. Don’t have them verbalize or intellectualize their thoughts
about selling or themselves or their performance. So, having said all of that if you absolutely
must ask questions I don’t know which ones are the right ones for you but I can tell
you that I have a simple rule and it always works which asking the three Why’s to get
to the real answer. So here is something that I have experienced
hiring lots and lots of people over many, many businesses. One thing that I have noticed
is that a lot of times people give you very superficial answers. Some do because they
haven’t deeply thought about the answer before or what really drives them in that
certain area and some do because they want to mislead or they want to present themselves
in a perfect way. It doesn’t matter what it is, if you follow up with three whys you
typically hit gold. I will give you an example. You ask somebody,
this is a question that is important to me is trying to understand what somebody wants
and then trying to understand why they want that and what really truly drives them. So
ask someone, “hey you know in a perfect world if everything goes brilliant in the
next five years where are you at? What did you do? What have you accomplished? How does
your life look like? What are you aspirations, your ambitions? What is your goal for the
next few years?” They might answer something like “oh I really want to become an entrepreneur
in the next five years. I first want to work with startups to learn and grow” blah, blah,
blah, “and gain some experience, but long term I want to be an entrepreneur.”
Cool awesome, it’s not a bad answer to give to a startup founder right? So, when someone
tells me that I go “cool, why that is? Why do you want to be an entrepreneur?” Usually
what I get next is also pretty superficial they go “well I don’t know good question.
I just like to build things, and I want to make a change and a difference in the world
and I really love you know the startup environment the fast pace so I think entrepreneurship
is really awesome for me.”“Cool, why do you think that is?” “Uh, what do you mean?”
“Well why do you think you love building things and seeing things grow? Why do you
care about an environment that stimulates growth?”
Now, typically at the second why you start to see the wheels turning and the candidate
thinking “Oh shit, I am not going to get away with just like some bullshit answer here.”
And typically they will start computing the answer in real time they will go “well,
I don’t know.” And, now there is a couple of ways the conversation can go. Either they
will start exploring the question in their own mind, they will just share their exploration
with you that you can follow them on their path to something that makes sense or they
might want to get the easy way out which is telling you “well I don’t really know
I have to think about it; it’s a great question.” At that point here is what you reply with;
“Take a guess. If you had to guess an answer what would be your first guess?” Don’t
let them get away with it people. Don’t let them get away with it. You really want
to push to get deep and truly understand what drives somebody or what the true answer is.
My experience has been that after three whys you typically hit gold. You get a real honest
truthful answer, and an answer that provides insight. Not, “I like challenging environments”
that is bullshit right? Anyone knows coming to a startup that that is something good to
say. “Why do you like challenging environments?” “Well because I love to grow.” “Cool,
why? Why is growth important to you?” “Well I don’t know it’s just, I always felt
like I am called for more and I always felt like I owe it to the world to live up to my
fully potential.” “And why is that important to you? Why is it important for you to live
up to your full potential? And when did you get that feeling that you were called for
greatness?” “Uh, I don’t know man it just, I think my school teachers told me earlier
on that I will never amount to anything, and my parents divorced when I was a small child.
I always felt like a failure and the world was against me. So at some point I got angry
and I promised myself that I would show the world what I really and capable of.” Now
you’ve hit gold. That is some real shit, that is some honest truthful shit and that
is something that tells you real insight into what drives that person and motivates that
person. That might be useful to the way you want to select who you want to work with and
how you are going to motivate them and how you are going to communicate with them.
Now the “why do you want to work here?” or “where do you want to be in five years”
that might not be the question that you want to ask, but whatever you want to ask I would
follow up with three whys until you hit gold, until you get something that is real, that
is honest, that is raw because that is going to provide you insight and insights are really
what you are looking for to making a determination and a decision on if you want to hire somebody
or not, if they are a good fit for your team or not.
All right, so having said all of that the last tip I want to give you on hiring and
job interview questions is empower people to demonstrate as quickly as possible if they
are really skilled or not. So for sales people have them make cold calls in front of you,
put them in a really challenging high pressure uncomfortable environment and see how they
act and react to it. And then, understand that you will make mistakes.
So, the art of become great at hiring is not having the perfect questions so you always
spot the right people, but the art of hiring and becoming great at is realizing that you
are going to make mistakes and being honest to yourself and to that person and being,
--reacting quick enough to correct those mistakes. So, if you hire someone and after two or three
weeks you get a sense that it may not have been a perfect hire or there might be things
about that candidate that make you have second thoughts you don’t push that away because
it’s uncomfortable but you act immediately, you address it, you let that person go, and
support them and help them find a place that is better for them. But, you need to live
with the fact that you are going to make mistakes and Nick Garvise said that “it’s not about
being great at hiring it’s about being great at firing if you want to build a massive and
amazing organization and culture.” And, I couldn’t agree more. The firing part is
much more challenging than the hiring part. I hope this was helpful. If you want to know
more, if you want feedback, if you want to jump on a sales office hour or just talk founder
to founder just ping me at steli@close.io. Subscribe to our YouTube channel wherever
that link is and make sure to visit blog.close.io and check out our blog posts. We blog two
to three times a week, we might do even more so this year. So we would love to see you
in the comments, we would love to see you in social media and in my inbox. Say “hi”
and share your thoughts and feedback around hiring, firing, growing a sales team, and
growing a business. All right take care. Bye, bye.