Top 5 Follow-up Strategies When Interviewing Salespeople

If you’re hiring salespeople, you know that how you interview them is crucial. If you’re like most interviewers, your biggest concern is what questions to ask. But after you’ve asked a great question, how do you follow up?

More and more, in today’s world, more and more importance is given to asking the applicant to give specific examples, and this is certainly a classic and extremely effective follow-up method.

But there are other aspects of tracking that are often overlooked. Here are 5 additional follow-up strategies you can instantly use in your interview approach that will multiply the amount of information you can get from the applicant:

1. Questions to get more specific answers: These are the typical questions journalists might ask: Who? What? How? When? Where? Why? How much? How much? And of course, “Can you give me an example?”

2. Questions that focus on the unanswered: For example, if you’re asking about the applicant’s work history and don’t mention a two-year gap on their resume, you can ask about that gap.

3. Non-specific questions or statements designed for the applicant to expand on their responses. My two favorites are: “Tell me more about that” and “What do you mean?” Sometimes simply commenting on a requester’s response can have the same effect (“Really?” or “That’s interesting”).

4. Reflections: A classic interview method is to “reflect”, reflect or summarize what the applicant is saying or implying. This communicates that you want to make sure that she clearly understands you or that you have a question about what she has said. For example, if the applicant says, “I’m great at closing sales,” you might respond (with a slight questioning tone to your voice), “Do you think you’re really good at closing sales?”

5. Remarks – You can often make a remark or provide information that invites or almost requires the applicant to respond. For example, “Well, you know, at this job, more than 70 percent of your time would be on the phone doing cold calls, and it’s not easy to do.” Then wait for a response.

If you add these tracking methods to the way you already interview, you’ll find that you’ll gain more insight and more valuable information that can help you make the best hiring decision.