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Screening For A Hunter Salesperson

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Hunter salespeople: every effective sales organization needs them. With their innate drive, independence, and resourcefulness, hunters are the vanguard of any great business development team. 

So, when it comes time to hiring a new salesperson, what can your company do to screen the pool of candidates for a true hunter? Here are a few tried-and-true methods:

Clearly Define The Role In The Job Posting:

Ensure that the job posting is designed to attract the kind of talent you want. Avoid giving detailed information about the industry and the product. Instead, give specific details about the position itself, including a full list of daily responsibilities, requisite core competencies and an outline of your expectations. The more specific you are, the less time you’ll have to spend sifting through unsuitable CVs. 

Assess Personality Type: 

What really separates hunters from other qualified candidates is their distinctive personality type and work tendencies. Hunters are self-motivated, independent, persuasive and not easily discouraged. A great method of screening candidates for these qualities is a sales personality test. A sales personality test is an objective assessment tool for evaluating key personality traits most predictive of a candidate’s success in a sales role. They are customized to reflect the requirements of a specific position. Sales personality tests — such as the ones provided by Sales Test Online — have shown to be over 90% accurate in predicting job performance. They are inexpensive, easy to administer and provide immediate results, all of which makes sales personality tests an ideal assessment tool for sales recruitment. 

Conduct A Three-Stage Interview: 

Stage 1: The Phone Interview 

A 10-minute preliminary phone conversation. Save yourself the time of an in-person meeting if you do not get a positive read of a candidate during this initial stage of the screening process. 

Stage 2: The “Hot Seat” Interview

The cornerstone of the interview process: this is when you ask the candidate more specific questions, get a better sense of their personality and see how well they present themselves. Know that a hunter must display a strong degree of assertiveness, confidence and sociability, but also be able to show curiosity and attentive listening. 

Stage 3: The Performance Interview

If a candidate still shows great promise and enthusiasm for the position, ask them to engage with your company’s selling process. Provide them with one of the tasks they will have to perform on a regular basis as part of their position and see how well they perform.  

Once you’ve had a chance to screen a candidate for personality type, taken them through the three-step interview process and made sure that they are a genuine hunter, it is your turn to do the selling. Keep in mind that interviews are a mutual screening process and truly great talent is in high demand. So, if you’ve found the hunter salesperson you’ve been looking for, take the time to sell them on the job and on your company. 

Good hunters are the frontiersmen of your sales team: tirelessly pursuing new business opportunities, developing leads, and expanding the company’s client base. Consider the methods discussed here next time you need to recruit true hunters for your team.

About the author

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Milos Radakovic