The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [49]
Notice this ad does not request a résumé. It does not ask for a minimum number of years of experience. There’s no mention of computer skills or degrees or certificates required for the job. The ad is challenging people to apply only if they are the best. What kind of person does an ad like that draw? A person with a strong sense of self.
When I got a paper route as a 14-year-old, it had 26 people on it and covered one neighborhood. When I took another job and turned the route back over to the newspaper, it covered four neighborhoods and had 126 people on it. It took three kids to take over my route. The point is that I had the qualities of a top producer even at 14 years old. Hence the line “Young or old, if you have the stuff, we’ll know.” That tells young people who think they’re hot stuff, but haven’t proven it yet, that you’ll recognize their greatness. I’ve often helped companies who can’t afford to pay for top talent to look for young people with the characteristics of top producers but who may not realize yet how great they are. But I’ve also hired 70-something-year-old fellows who still had the stuff, but whom most companies would pass over because of their age.
Age and Background Are Not Relevant
It’s all about personality profile. I’ve hired 24-year-olds who have outsold 20-year veterans. One of my greatest finds came from a stereo store. Here was an awesome salesperson whom I never would have even noticed if I didn’t know about personality profiling. I saw immediately that he had the stuff of superstars, so I recruited him out of the stereo store and set him on a path that ultimately made him a millionaire. The point is to be on the lookout for those superstars every where you go. If you’re looking for them, you will find them in the oddest places and they themselves might not know they have the stuff of greatness. Another great find was a salesperson who tried to sell me a sweater in a clothing store. I snatched her right out of there and she ended up managing three divisions of a company I ran. I recently found a 73-year-old man who has the best skills I have ever seen for getting top executives on the telephone. He had been a line producer for feature films. So disregard age or background. All you really need to be concerned about are those superstar qualities, and personality profiling can help you identify them.
The Prescreen—the Method You Won’t Find in Any Human Resources Manual
Here’s how to spot flaws in salespeople before you even interview them. The first thing you do to anyone who applies for a job in your company is to reject them, telling them why you don’t think they can do the job. It’s not that you don’t want to hire the person. It’s that you’re looking for the unique personality profile that becomes more effective in the face of adversity. This is the most important lesson I can offer for hiring people. If you reject candidates and they quickly crumble and go away, you see right then and there, before you hire them, what they are made out of. A superstar will start to question your reasoning—and may even tell you that you are wrong. It’s a very powerful exercise in determining people ’s strength.
When I’m interviewing for salespeople, we call or email each person who responds to our ad. Here’s the script: “Thank you for responding to our ad. We are doing a prescreening call of all candidates who contacted us. The prescreening takes place at a set time [such as Tuesday, 5:00–6:00 PM] and in that hour we’re going to talk to people to determine whom we will bring in to interview. Would you like to be at the beginning of that hour, in the middle, or at the end? We’ll call you within 10 minutes of the time you select.” Some of these prescreening calls take two minutes, some last a little longer, and some take seconds.
When you call them, the prescreening conversation goes like this:
YOU: Okay. You read our ad and it said, “Don’t even apply unless you think you’re the best.