In our continuing series on how to screen a sales resume, today we touch on:

Does there seem to be a logical progression of promotions throughout the salesperson’s resume?

Most companies, after a set period of years, will typically enhance a salesperson’s title to reflect increased stature and seniority. This is usually awarded in concert with achievements at the “lower” level, but not always.

If you see this logical progression, this simply tells you that the candidate is well-regarded, but will not necessarily tell you that they can sell at a high level.

If they have solid achievements alongside steady advances in promoted titles, then this is certainly a positive.  Accolades, as we’ve discussed before are the hallmark of a great sales resume and are an absolute “”must have” in order for you to even consider them for a live interview.

However, if the salesperson has been at the company for five or ten years and their title never changes from “sales executive” to “senior sales executive” or another some such thing, this may be an indicator that you have an underperformer on your hands. This is especially true if the sales achievements in the time period mentioned are sparse or worse yet, non-existent.

However, if you see a strong progression of title changes, as well as diverse job experiences such as promotion to a specialty sales role along the course of their time at a particular company, then you’ll probably want to interview them. This is especially true if this progression of promotions is in your company’s industry.

Remember at this stage of the interview process, you’re only at the  second step of the whole hiring process, what we call the “Six Step Hiring System” which we do teach to our Academy students.

Your main goal at this stage is just to do one thing: determine if they are worthy of your time in a live interview…nothing more and nothing less.

Bottom line here is this: if you see a logical progression of steady promotions, mixed with top accolades, get ‘em in for a live interview. This sales rep could be a keeper.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

What do you think? We want to know, don’t be shy. Post a comment below.

Remember that the goal here is to filter out the less than worthy candidates, before you take the time to do live interviews.

How many jobs has your sales applicant had…and for how long?

You can reference age on this one because this one is a biggie. If you see them changing jobs every two years, why would you think this applicant would stay working for you any longer?

They may have a fear of commitment or they may just get easily distracted. Either one is not so attractive to you.

The truth is that they may just wear out their welcome after a certain point in time. This will most likely be the case if they come to work for you. What you are really looking for here is what kind of person are they and time spent at previous employers tells you a lot about them and could mean any of those things previously mentioned.

To be fair, many salespeople get laid off, downsized or outsourced, so don’t necessarily jump to any firm conclusions here, but if you do choose to interview, this point should be addressed when you meet them face to face.

How long have they stayed at each position or company?

This is similar to the point above, but slightly different. The longer the candidate stays at any one given job, gives you an indication that either they were making such great money that they could never leave, they flew beneath the radar and were never found out that they were sleeping under their desk, or they really liked working there. I’d be willing to bet it’s the last one.

Look carefully at the job duties of the job they spent the longest time at. Their job duties and performance gives you a good indication of what they are about. If they were there for eight years and have no accolades in that time, then forget it – dump that resume.

Additionally, if there is a good track record, that longest stretch of employment tells you a lot about what they like and what drives them, whether its good or bad. Regardless, this is something you would need to ask them about by asking them: “you were selling for Crazy Coffins, Inc. for eight years, you must have really liked it there – what did you like so much about it”.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Tell me your ideas on how you screen sales resumes by posting a comment below.

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In this sales training series on screening sales resumes we tell you exactly how to do it…so you can get your sales superstar quickly…while wasting minimal time.

“Power Words”

When describing their achievements or does the sales candidate use powerful “power words” to describe their accomplishments or “passive words”?

Sales is a combination of action and results. You definitely need someone who takes action to be working for you – especially someone who proactively creates action, without you have to “motivate’ them to do so.

Words like “achieved”, “won”, “accomplished”, “catapulted”, “exceeded” and “generated” are action-oriented “power words”. They bespeak confidence and striving, both important traits that all high performing sales representatives possess.

However, “passive words” like “managed”, “responsible for”, “completed” or “promoted” are far more submissive. If you see too many passive type words, it may indicate that you may have a passive candidate.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

How about you? Do you pay attention in this kind of details? Please post a comment.

Without even talking to a sales candidate face to face, you can tell a lot about a potential sales candidate by simply analyzing their resume.

In this sales training series on screening sales resumes we tell you exactly how to do it…so you can get your sales superstar quickly…while wasting minimal time.

Age, GPA and Education

They tell you in every interviewing course or class you ever take and in every interview book you ever read…

Human Resources rails you for it if you ever ask it…

Its the “age question”.

OK, so keep everyone happy (and you from any sort of legal issues) – don’t ask it, just figure it out instead. Either way, you’re only in the resume screening phase, so don’t sweat it.

Determining the age of a sales candidate is an important part of the resume screening phase of hiring a sales person. As important is examining their degree and GPA – very important tidbits of info you can gather way prior to meeting a candidate. In this tip, we show you how to do it so you can screen out the junk and get to the good.

1. Determine their age by when they graduated from college.

If they graduated from college in 1992, than as of this writing, the candidate would be roughly 37 years of age or so.  Not that age really matters, but at this stage all you are trying to do is to get a clear sense as to who the person is, so gaining a mental picture of their approximate age is a useful tool to deploy.

Whatever you do, don’t discriminate due to age, because great sales people come in all sizes and shapes, as well as all ages.

2. Is there a Grade Point Average?

Under the “Education” section, you’ll either find a G.P.A. listed or not. The G.P.A. is a good indicator of the “self-starting”, internally-driven nature of the candidate. If there is no GPA, there’s probably a reason why. It simply means its not that good.

GPAs are easy to check and are done in most background checks with employers, so if its missing, that means that the candidate purposely chose not put it on there.

In my opinion, if you had a high GPA in college, you were either naturally smart, very disciplined or both. As you may know, there are a lot of distractions in college, so a candidate who achieved a high GPA may indicate that he is impervious to distractions, self-starting and focused – all good attributes for a sales candidate.

3. Do they have an advanced degree?

If they do, then that’s great. That degree, even though it looks real good, won’t necessarily help them sell any better however.

If they are in the process of completing their advanced degree, then the current GPA will tell you a lot about their ability to manage time effectively.

Even better, if they are pursuing an advanced degree and concurrently have outstanding sales accolades, then you may have found your next sales executive!

However, be cognizant of your company’s tuition reimbursement program, because the candidate is bound to ask you in the interview, so do your homework.

To learn more about sales management training, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Please post you comment and insights below.

In this sales training series on screening sales resumes we tell you exactly how to do it…so you can place your sales superstar quickly…and get your sales humming.

So continuing our series on how to screen a sales resume, here’s our next helpful tip:

Do they list extracurricular interests and activities?

If they do, then great, these are good conversation starters for the you the interviewer. If there are sports achievements, especially those from very good college sports programs (Division II wrestling or Division I Women’s lacrosse), it may indicate that the candidate possesses solid discipline and mental toughness. If top sports accolades are listed in combination with a very high GPA, then you can bet the candidate is pretty sharp, disciplined and well-rounded.

Also, if there are activities such as running marathons, volunteering for National Guard or working for charities such as Habitat for Humanity, you can bet you have someone who is very altruistic, self-motivated and organized; especially if the work track record is solid.

However, beware of the candidate who has too many extracurricular activities (soccer coach, baseball coach, golf, etc); these extracurricular activities may end up distracting them from working their real job, namely the one with you.

For example, I once saw a resume that listed a golf handicap in this section. I interviewed him just for the heck of it, extremely curious because he had after all actually played on the PGA tour…so I thought that may actually be a positive.

I was sorely disappointed because during the interview I figured out he was just trying to find a job so that he could continue to try out for the next tour. Oh well.

In reality though, how much time can you spend actually selling if you’re constantly out on the golf course?

To learn more about sales management, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Leave a message after this post for your comments and feedback.

Well, yes it has been known to happen on occasion, but there have been times when people (and not just sales people) take a little creative license when writing their resumes.

The big untruths, you can probably pick out:

“…was instrumental in the signing of the SALT II Treaty…”

“…single-handedly responsible for wiping out hunger in the countries of Botswana, Niger and…”

“…won seven CEO Circles in six years…”

The less obvious ones are take a bit more work for you to uncover. In our continuing series on how to screen a sales resume, we delve into three tips on how to do that here:

1. Do they list their jobs by year only or by year and date?

If they list past positions by year only, they may be trying to hide something. Perhaps there was a period of unemployment they are trying to fudge over by giving years of employment only and not months. Another indicator is that if they just list years of employment and no date, then they may just be plain lazy – an indication of lack attention to detail and follow up – both important attributes to possess for ultimate sales success.

2. Are the job descriptions specific or vague?

The more specifics the better, in this case. Also, the more specifically described the accomplishment, the more likelihood that it’s true. It’s far easier to fudge a vague non-specific achievement, but a specific one is harder (and more risky) to fudge, because it can be easily checked in a background check or asked about by an interviewer.

3. If they have accolades, do they use “power words” to describe those accolades?

Sales is a combination of action and results. You definitely need someone who takes action to be working for you – especially someone who proactively creates opportunities on their own, without you have to “motivate” them to do so.

Words like “achieved”, “won”, “accomplished”, “catapulted”, “exceeded” and “generated” are action-oriented “power words”. They bespeak confidence and striving, both important traits that all high performing sales representatives possess.

However, “passive words” like “managed”, “responsible for” or “completed” are far more submissive.

You want a resume filled with “actions words” to say the least…

However, if you have a lot of accolades, but they’re all stated in passive, non-power words, then you have a disconnect. This would lead to skepticism on whether or not those accolades are 100% accurate.

Action-oriented achievers talk and write in power words, non-achievers typically talk and write in “passive words”.

If the resume still looks good, but you have questions, then that candidate may be worth a live interview just to get the specifics answered in a face-to-face interview.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Are you doing the same thing when it comes to screening sales resumes? Post a comment below.

Although the mutual fund industry repeatedly tells you that “past success is no indication of future success” when investing in mutual funds, I far prefer to put my retirement savings in 5 star funds instead of 1 star ones, don’t you?

Likewise when screening a new sales hire, the presence of recurring, frequent past accolades in a sales candidate are about the closest thing you can get to guaranteeing future sales success with any new sales hire.

When screening a sales resume for accolades, you must keep three things in mind:

1. Where are the accolades?

As we discussed in previous blog posts, accolades do in fact, rule the day. When screening a resume the big thing to look for is not only do they have some, but almost as importantly is, where are they placed in the resume? Are they at the bottom of each paragraph? Are they at the top?

The real key is the higher they are, the more important they are to the candidate. As a sales manager, this is a very important point when screening sales candidates: the higher they are under the category for each job they have had, the more important they are to the candidate.

You want a candidate that has an overabundance of “drive to succeed” – a person like this lists their achievements first, not last. However, if a candidate does not have any accolades, then knock them out immediately. Bottom line: the higher on the resume the better, the higher and more prominent they are in the text, the more important the accolades are to the candidate.

2. Are the accolades consistent in each job they have had?

You need someone to produce consistent results. Anyone can catch “lightning in a bottle” once and have one really good year. But can they perform at a consistently high level for you year in and year out?

“One warm day in April does not make a summer”…and likewise,  one lone Pinnacle Award from 1998 does not make a great salesperson!

You want consistency – so look for strings of accolades at every sales job they had. Look for national rankings, regional rankings and local rankings, all three are important. The more there are on multiple years, the better.

3. Compared to what?

Do the accolades have a “…out of 165 sales reps” qualifier that tells you truly where they were ranked versus their peers?

It’s one thing to be “#2 in the country”, but if there are 3 reps in the country, its not quite as meaningful. Obviously, the sales rep who was “#2 in the country out of a sales force of 303” is a little bit more impressive of a statistic. Check for documentation of these rankings when you interview them, if you think it looks fishy.

But always, look for these qualifiers to get a better sense of where they truly stand versus their peers. The higher the ranking out of the more peer sales people group, obviously the better.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Post a comment below and tell me your insights on accolades. Do you think they’re as important as we state here? We welcome your comments.

Although a few are bound to slip in, in order to prevent this from happening to you, there are a number of ways that you can screen out a great sales rep resume, prior to actually meeting with them face to face.

Your sales recruiter will help you with this enormously…as long as you’ve carefully followed the steps in our previous post on how to find a top notch sales recruiter.

In combination with a solid recruiter who understands both you and your company’s hiring requirements, using these  steps can help you to cut out a lot of the ‘time waster’ interviews, so you can focus your time on the cream of the crop.

When analyzing a resume, the first and most important part is the layout.

The layout can give you deep insights into broad characteristics of the candidate. Since every resume is a direct reflection of the candidate, you need to carefully scrutinize the layout – as it subtly tells you the importance of many details are subliminal “clues” that are so important to uncover from your candidate prior to hiring them.

So carefully review how the descriptions, achievements, dates, descriptions and accolades flow together.When you do this you’ll get a good sense from the flow of the layout what the subtle character attributes of the candidate may be.

Here are 5 things to specifically look for when it comes to resume layout:

1. Is the layout neat?

A neat layout means the candidate is clear, well-put together and organized – all character attributes that are desirable in the sales world. Although these three things are not included in the “The Fabulous Five”, they are very important character traits much needed for success in sales.

2. Is the layout well-organized

This will give you key insights into the candidate’s organizational skills. The more logically organized the better.

3. Does the layout follow a logical direction?

Is there a job description blurb first under each heading, then accolades as to how well they did in that position? If the accolades are on the first line on some headings and last in others, you may have logic issues with the candidate. Common sense is not all that common, but you need your candidate to have it; this organizational part of the resume you can pick out very quickly.

4. Is it well written?

If you have trouble figuring out what the candidate did by deciphering the text of the resume, you can bet she’ll have trouble articulating the same to you in an interview. She’ll also have a very hard time communicating to you clearly on emails and written communications as well. Look for clear, direct language, well articulated and logically thought out.

5. Are there any typographical errors?

Are there any typographical errors? If there are, immediately take a pass on the candidate. Typos on resumes are inexcusable, and I am continually amazed at how many resumes I see with egregious spelling and grammatical errors.

Any typos really means the person does not have the attention to detail that you absolutely require as a top-performing sales manager. It also means they can’t write! How can the candidate close sales, write up sales proposals and complete the necessary customer follow up when they can’t even spell hit “spell check” prior to sending their resume to you? Needless to say, typos are a big red flag.

These 5 tips will help you to get rid of the dead wood and take you one step closer to finding your ideal sales candidate.

To learn more about sales management, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Post a comment below and tell me what methods youve found to properly screen a sales applicant’s resume?

With the hundreds of sales resumes you will likely screen for the position that you have open, you really need a methodical way to screen a resume and get the sense of what the candidate is all about.

The problem is if you list your openings on any of the online job posting sites like monster.com or hotjobs.com , you’ll end up getting deluged with resumes and just get muddled in the muck, so to speak.

A lot of companies have an internal recruiter, which is a great help…however you still need to have direct contact with the person who’s actually talking to the candidates initially.

Whether you’re using an internal recruiter or and external recruiter, you’ll need to teach the recruiter about the essential qualities you are looking for in your ideal candidate. In The Sales Management Mastery Academy, we call those “The Fabulous Five”.

After you’ve done Step 1 and have written out your “Fabulous Five”, now you’re ready to find a good recruiter.

Here are a seven steps to getting a great sales recruiter:

1. Look for recruiters who specialize in sales recruitment – there are tons of recruiters out there, but only a handful specialize in sales exclusively.
2. Find a recruiter with a long track record of success – there are plenty of “fly by night” sales recruiters out there, so make sure they have been in the game a while, because experience counts.
3. Find sales recruiters who have extensive experience with national expansions, product launches  and regional expansions – if the recruiter has done well here, then chances are they can handle your singular request.
4. Ask them about thier track record of success and “stick rate” – meaning how many of the candidates they placed are still employed with the organization they recruited them for? There’s no real way you can validate this, but it is extremely helpful to ask.
5. Ask what they feel are the core attributes of “the ideal sales candidate” – if their answer overlaps your “Fabulous Five” (or at least three or four out of the five), then you’re on the right track.
6. Ask the recruiter what kinds of questions they ask in the screening. You’ll still have to do a fair amount of screening in your actual interviews, but making sure the recruiters are asking “knockout questions” prior to you talking with them will save you hours of time.
7. Ask yourself is this someone I can work with? If you have no level of rapport with them, it may be difficult to constantly be fielding their calls. Remember that you’lll be talking to this person alot, so make sure you connect with them.
8. If need be, inquire about their fees and direct them to the correct person within your company to negotiate rates.

At Top Sales Manager Blog, we highly recommend these two excellent recruiting firms: Briand Fiorella Search, Inc. and Treeline, Inc. Both firms have placed top sales superstars for a wide-range of industries – with particular expertise in the medical field.

Once you’ve found your recruiter, then give your recruiter your list of the your “Fabulous Five” criteria – ask them what kinds of questions they would ask to uncover those characteristics in an initial screen.

Remember that a resume is a very good initial guide to the who, what and where of a sales candidate – what is says and where it says it speaks volumes about the candidate’s character attributes. And resume screening is just the very first step in the whole process and a very important one.

So save yourself hours and hours of time, hire a sales recruiter and have them do the screening for you. You’ll save hours of needless work by hiring an outside source to screen and recruit suitable candidates for you and you’ll get a whole lot more talent to interview in half the time.

To learn more about sales management training, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Leave a message after this post for your comments and feedback.

Maybe, the one you just let go just couldn’t cut it…

Or maybe, your company is going through an expansion and you have to hire three more…

Or perhaps your best rep just got promoted, congratulations by the way…even though it does stink for you.

So what do you do?

Beware however, the tendency is to do a “one and done” interview and hire, you will regret this very poor decision later…trust me, Ive done it and it’s the worst thing you can do.

What you need is a strategy to screen resumes, determine which ones you want to either phone screen or interview, then interview, then hire.

You’ve go a lot to do, you are busy and getting busier by the second.

Well for the next few posts, we will be gong through this entire process step-by-step so you make the right decision, minimize the chances of making the wrong decisions, and hire the next sales superstar for your team.

So let’s get into the first step in the entire process of interviewing: resume screening.

Step 1: Examine your hiring criteria

The first real step is to identify what your hiring criteria really is.

Like many companies, you most likely have a job posting somewhere on your company’s website for all to view to the world. It may go a little something like this:

• A Bachelors degree in Business, Marketing or the Life Sciences
• 5 years successful front line sales experience including strong “closing” skills
• Knowledge of the healthcare industry and the general economics of business
• Ability to develop and sustain strong customer relationships
• Strong business planning and organizational skills
• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills
• Solid PC skills including knowledge of Microsoft software
• A valid driver’s license

Well there you go, all you need to do is find all that and you’re on your way to hiring a sales superstar!

Hardly. I’m guessing that this is not the exact candidate you’re looking for….

The problem is that with most postings looking like this, there is really nothing in the posting that will help you to screen out the resumes you don’t want and help you bring in the ones you do want. Nor does it give you any indication of the types of talents that you are actually looking for.

So, Step 1 is examine your hiring criteria and make a list of qualities you cannot live without in a new sales recruit. In The Sales Management Mastery Academy, we have a list of five and we call them the “Fabulous Five”.

You need to come up with your sales management “Fabulous Five”…before we reveal our five…and here’s how you do it:

1. Sit quietly with a yellow legal pad and pen for about 15 minutes or so and think about what characteristics you absolutely need to have in a sales candidate in order to achieve the results you want. Think about all your top performers, or maybe top performers that are in other sales groups. What core characteristics do they have in common?

2. Write down five absolutely essential character traits that those sales reps have, (there could be more but don’t get too complicated)

With all the work you have to do…you need to get some help sifting through the bad resumes so you can focus on the good ones.

To save you TONS of time, a sales recruiter will do this work for you – so you can stay focused on other things.

We’ll give you more insights on excellent sales recruiters in our next post.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Do you have your own hiring criteria? Please leave a comment after this post.