I’ve blogged in the past about sales candidates who have a propensity to be verbose and why you may want to avoid them (huge timewasters).
Whenever I’m tasked to do an interview with someone who our Sales Temperament Assessment has flagged as being over-social, I use the following technique to see if the person has the condition under control.
After the initial pleasantries, I set the scene by telling the candidate that I have to be done the interview at a particular time and that I have thirty questions that I need to get answered.
If I find that I’m getting overly long answers, I’ll mention that I don’t want to run out of time and I need to move along. I’ll give the candidate two, maybe three, of these warnings. If he doesn’t pick up on the fact that he needs to tighten up on his responses, I let the interview time run out and mentally disqualify the candidate.
If the candidate isn’t perceptive enough to realize the value of my time, he won’t respect my customer’s time either. We all live in the same busy world where time is at a premium and none of us wants our time wasted by an overly social salesperson.
There’s nothing wrong with being over social, just as long as the person knows when to rein it in and get it under control.
There’s nothing worse than a salesperson’s mouth running wild.
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