Tight Markets and Great Salespeople: Sales Tests Driving the Real Estate Hiring Process
As the market continues to decline, the pot of potential salespeople grows. My desk has a stack of resumes of agents that see our products moving (and even a few newbs that want to crack the real estate nut) and want to be a part of the action. Of course, I write a good bit about the demise of the traditional six-percenters, but a majority of my business is in building a marketing and sales machine for whole residential developments in East Tennessee. Here we rely upon the strong skills of our salespeople that is not always transparent in the first interview.
For example, a good friend and renowned sales speaker, Lance, helped me fill a critical gap in our sales process. We were generating a number of leads and passing them off directly to the sales agents, but the sales agents were focused on closing the deals with their current clients and paid little attention to the new leads with long lead cycles. Lance suggested that we conduct a sales personality profile / test to recruit this person before ever interviewing a person. We found a few candidates, and we had them take the Craft Profile, but they simply were not a fit. With their high goal orientation, these candidates differed little from the sales people in the field.
Finally, we found the perfect candidate. She had a high Social Drive, low Goal Orientation, and a high Need to Nurture, which meant that as a telephone marketer, she was going to be incredibly outgoing and she would stay on the phone engaging leads for a very long time ensuring their needs were met–exactly what I was wanting.
After seeing her success on the job, and proving that the personality profile helped us weed through some of the less desirable candidates, we immediately profiled our remaining sales staff. Based on the results, we reshuffled the deck, moving our salespeople into positions that better suited their strengths. Now, our whole process is running much smoother.
