"To An Octopus, ‘Fifty’ Means Nothing Or Why Empathy Matters"
Article by Andrew Rudin, MS
At a recent workshop for technology entrepreneurs, an audience member asked an entrepreneur panelist which competencies are best in a salesperson. The panelist responded “I ask candidates what their key skills are. If they don’t include ‘listening,’ I tail off the conversation rather quickly.” Listening? As a self-assessed skill? While the panelist identified at least one important ability, any response he might receive wouldn’t yield any more insight than asking a candidate submarine commander the same question and hearing “I know the difference between port and starboard.” It’s definitely important to confirm, but hardly revealing about how suitable the person is for the job. How would you know whether the candidate manages to perform the skill routinely? Even more important, don’t other competencies matter too?
To uncover the answers to those questions, we often attempt to shortcut the discovery process by asking other questions: How did you perform against quota in the last five years? What did you W-2 in the last five years? What was the amount of your latest quota? What was your largest sale? These questions are even more boring to answer than they are to ask. Unless connected to meaningful qualitative questions, such empirical questions provide little more than easy-to-ask data points. The employer learns nothing about whether the salesperson likes his or her career, can fit within the employer’s culture, can lead collaborative teams, behaves ethically, manages failure well, can rebound after a difficult year or quarter, can adapt well, or is emotionally mature. In addition, because there is no industry standard for setting sales quotas and goals, how can anyone reliably compare one candidate’s average 80% average quota achievement to another candidate’s 100%, to someone else’s 120% average achievement? The key insight these questions miss altogether is how the candidate has achieved success, and whether those behaviors and processes can be repeated—let alone fit—in your company environment.
You can see the problem. The evidence is that year after year, meeting after meeting managers complain “we just can’t find salespeople that can sell!” Is this always salesperson’s fault? Or is it Einstein’s definition of insanity—doing the same things but expecting different results—corroborated in a salesperson hiring venue.
Andrew Rudin is the Managing Principal of Outside Technologies, Inc. and specializes in sales strategy for technology companies. He holds a BS in Commerce (Marketing) and a MS in Management Information Technology (MS/MIT) both from the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, where he serves on the Advisory Board for the MS/MIT program. He is Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) through APICS. As a Faculty Adjunct at National Louis University, he teaches Strategic Uses of Information Technology. He can be reached at 703.255.3732, or arudin@outsidetechnologies.com
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