One Simple Question Can Separate Posers From Closers

When you are small business owner or manager interviewing sales people, there is at least one almost a sure-fire way to separate the posers from the closers:

Listen to how they try to negotiate their pay package.

If you are interviewing sales people, chances are you have some kind of pay structure put together and chances are that it consists of two parts: a base pay and a performance pay (commission).

At exactly what point in the interview process that you disclose the base pay and the performance pay doesn’t really matter, what is important is the candidates first response to the pay structure.

One Simple Question You Should Ask:

Are you aware of what the pay is for this position and does that work for you?

And then sit back and listen carefully.

While you may get a variety of responses to this question, there are three different buckets that you can expect to group the responses into:

1. No negotiation attempt whatsoever
2. An attempt to negotiate the base pay higher
3. An attempt to negotiate the performance pay higher

If the candidate attempts to negotiate the base pay higher or doesn’t even attempt to negotiate, you are interviewing a poser.

And if the candidate attempts to negotiate the performance pay higher, it is a leading indication that you have a closer on your hands.

While it isn’t foolproof, and certainly there are far more sophisticated techniques to separate the posers from closers,  this is the simplest acid-test that anyone can use.

PS: Now think back to when you hired your “Vice President of Sales”… You may discover that the Emperor Has No Clothes.