Podcast Transcript: 

[00:01:47] Sean Steele: Welcome back to our regular listeners and to anybody joining us for the first time, thrilled as always to have you. And we are welcoming back this week, Talila Kroy, Co-Founder and Director of Emple - A business that helps Australian companies build scalable sales engines. Who doesn't want one of those? I'll have five, please, Talila.

[00:02:05] Talila Kroy: Thank you. Coming right out.

[00:02:07] Sean Steele: Pop that in the order carts and if you could deliver it by five o'clock tomorrow, that'd be awesome.

[00:02:13] Talila Kroy: It takes a little longer than that, but yes, we certainly can deliver them. All five.

[00:02:20] Sean Steele: Well, look, I mean, it's lovely to have you back, number one. And number two, we got so much value out of your interview last time, so I'm really grateful to that. And what we were talking about was the fact that anybody who wants to build an eight-figure company, 10 million plus in revenue and to keep scaling, needs a systematic way of acquiring profitable customers. And there's lots of ways to do that, and people have different kinds of businesses, but you guys are quite focused on helping Founders now the conversion and the people and the reporting, you know, that's the sales ecosystem, and to make sure they optimise the outcomes from any leads that they’ve got. And last time we talked a lot about the foundations that you need to get right, like compensation design and the performance agreement and KPIs and reverse engineering, sort of what success looks like and the onboarding period and all this awesome foundational stuff. And so today I kind of want to assume, okay, great. Our listeners have done that. And if you're listening today and you didn't hear the last episode, please go back and listen to it. Because you need those things in place before you invest in the hiring of salespeople. So do not listen to today and then run out there and hire salespeople without going and doing the other stuff first, because Talila and I will both tell you, you are not setting them up for success, you will build a lot of frustration. You will waste a lot of time and waste a lot of money. So today I want to talk to you about what Founders need to do to nail the hiring process, you know, assessing their capability, not just hiring somebody they like, and you know, let's face it, salespeople, typically, excellent first interviewers.

[00:03:50] Talila Kroy: They are very likable.

[00:03:52] Sean Steele: Yeah. They're very likable. They're so good at it and you've got to go deeper than that first interview and your gut feel. So, I would love for you today to just unpack the methodology. How do you find? How do you interview? How do you assess? How do you think about hiring these people? Give me some juicy secrets and tips you can, so that Founders can implement those straight away.

[00:04:11] Talila Kroy: Will do. And just so that everyone really pays attention, let's focus on what's at stake here. You get it right, a good producer will earn you a million dollars plus. That's kind of the going rate in a lot of B2B areas. Get it wrong, that person will waste a lot of time, a lot of money, burn your leads, you'll have to replace them. It'll be very expensive. Everyone will be upset. It will affect morale. It'll affect your client relationships. And the statistics are, that the odds are not in your favour. About 50% of people fail. So, getting this right will change those statistics dramatically and the chances of a failure will be next to none.

[00:04:55] Sean Steele: They reduce. And you know, giving it so high risk - high reward, wouldn't you want to do like, this is always what's best for me. It's like, wouldn't you want to stack the deck on this one, especially if you don't know how to do this. It's not like other parts of your business that you can just, as a Founder, kind of cowboy your way through and just hope for the best. Like there's a lot of areas where you can just kind of make it up and ChatGPT and whatever, and you'll be fine. But sales, I don't think that's quite the same with sales. So, where do we start?

[00:05:24] Talila Kroy: Yes, so we start again. We've done all the work as you said in the background. And one of those things that we said we do, but I want to touch on again is we got clarity on the role because if we don't have clarity on the role, it's very difficult to understand what is a good fit when they come along. Because and all the resumes will look very different. They'll be formatted differently. They'll have lots of good stuff on each of them and it can be quite confusing, particularly when you see high sales performance in lots of different areas. So, I think the best way of looking at this is, imagine you're building a sports team. For example, if you were building a soccer team, you wouldn't necessarily want to hire a tennis player. There might be a great tennis player, but they're not necessarily a good soccer player or as good a soccer player. And therefore, whilst all salespeople can be considered like sportsmen or sports women, we want to try to narrow down and hone in on the skills that are in our specific team environment. So, how does that look differently? You know, some environments require a lot of hunting, others require very rapid closing. Some require a long sales cycle and a lot of nurturing. For example, some require detailed capability to create proposals and write things and document stuff. Whereas others are much more face to face and relationship-based. So, just detailing, really detailing, what does your salesperson need to be able to do? Who are they talking to? How do they need to be able to present themselves and show up, even down to the demographics, you know, who's going to fit best with that particular client persona. So, documenting that, you know, we ask a lot of structured questions when we do an onboarding, when we do a positioning session before a hire, and that gets down to the nitty gritty of who this person is and what they need to be. Now you will have done that work in your PMA. So hopefully if you've done a performance measurement agreement, you've got some of that stuff. It's also important to know that people are motivated in different ways. You'll get the person that's motivated by the job, like they're very committed to their job and their role, and they see it as a big part or extension of themselves, and then you'll get people who are more making money basically is the thing that they want. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's important to understand their motivation because a lot of times it will affect how good they are in different sales cycles. And the longer the sales…

[00:08:02] Sean Steele: Can you give me just an example of that? Like, where might be a good fit and where might be a bad fit for a, example, sales cycle?

[00:08:10] Talila Kroy: Great question. So, what we found, and I'll go back a little bit to our history of how we used to do the recruitment in the early days was that intrinsically motivated people, which is people that are actually motivated by the purpose behind the role. They're quite happy to have a long sales cycle. They don't mind. They see the long vision. They want the results for the company. Those people who are really quite focused on making a good lot of money, they can be a great salesperson for you, but they're good in short closing type roles or roles that are fast to move, where I'm not going to say they're transactional because you never want to be transactional, but they don't involve as much investment of time and energy and commitment. So, that's a small example.

[00:08:59] Sean Steele: I'm only laughing because my first sales roles, the thing that I loved about sales the most was how instant the feedback was. Like, change of state, walk in that day, you've thought about your script, you've adjusted these three things, you do a phone call, boom, you got to go to sale. And I would always, I had my manager trained to send me an email and go; Sean, you just make this much in commission. And like I say, I loved that motivation. I loved the short feedback loop cycle. And I always thought really long sales cycle stuff would probably drive me up the wall to your point. It was just not aligned with the way that I thought and the way I like to operate.

[00:09:35] Talila Kroy: And that also touches on another point, which is that salespeople need to build their confidence, and money is not just money. Money is a badge of honour, and a badge of success too. So that's the thing we need to understand for sales communicators. Making good money is ‘I am worthwhile, I'm doing my job.’ So, it's not just about wanting to get their hands on the dollars, if you know what I mean. And that's true for the extrinsically motivated ones too, the ones, like you said, that just want that feedback.

[00:10:06] Sean Steele: Can I just give an example on the first point, because he talked about kind of the, I guess the environments and customer types and the sort of yield of the sale and the sales cycle that they probably need to be familiar with if they're likely to succeed. And I always remember finding that in education, you know, it was very rare that you would find education sales people. But the typical price point was somewhere between $4,000 and $10,000. It was going to be done with some kind of a payment plan. It was never going to be more than a two-call close. So, it was always going to be a very short from the time that you actually did a needs analysis to enrolling the student was never going to be more than a couple of weeks. It wasn't going to be not 3 months or 6 months or 9 months or 12 months or 18 months. And we found great success with people from a fitness background, because they were comfortable talking to people about emotions and education is a confidence based advisory process because they're scared that they're going to fail in the course. And so that's actually the majority of the call is about, are they going to succeed in this thing? What support have they got? How long does it take? Blah, blah, blah. It's not about what's in the course and the fitness salespeople were used to relatively short cycles. The yield was probably a little bit different, but maybe it's similar in terms of a lifetime value, but I understood the kind of conversation, how many conversations and how to have it. And those people succeeded in education context, but many other people would not have. And so, it's a good example of how to get those kinds of key features of the sales process to match.

[00:11:43] Talila Kroy: Yeah. And one of the things, and I think you've touched on it, is that if a person themselves has limiting beliefs of their own, they can't sell a certain thing to someone. So, if they believe that, you know, I don't know, it's a waste of money to spend $50,000 on a self-development course, then they're not going to be able to sell it to anyone else. It's just not going to work. So, we used to use a sales tool, which is still pretty good. It's called the Objective Management Group Assessment. We don't use it anymore and I'll explain why, but it is quite harsh on people. We used to make applicants do it, and it was an hour of their time. It would pepper them with questions. And at the end, it would give us a deep report, are they intrinsically motivated? Extrinsically motivated? What are their limiting beliefs? Are they comfortable talking about money? Are they like a person that can hold their own with confidence and become like a trusted advisor? Or are they more of a relationship-based seller? How do they sell? And all sorts of things like that. It's really valuable, insightful. And yeah, one of the things that would show would be those limiting beliefs. And it would literally list them. So and so is not comfortable about money, talking about money. So and so isn't comfortable challenging the client. So and so … you know, it really was interesting.

[00:13:04] Sean Steele: That makes complete sense. Yeah, I mean, and equally the opposite is true, right? If they can develop a belief that what you have is the most important thing to solve X, Y, Z problem that it's almost would baffle them as to why somebody would not take that solution to solve that problem because it is the best fit. That level of rock-solid belief. Absolutely. Like I had to develop that level of belief in white pages listings to be successful, which was not easy, but I promise you, I was absolutely convinced that these companies would be crazy if they were large companies and people are looking for them all the time. This is obviously pre internet. That they would not need bold, super bold. They need to be in every directory. They need logos, they need colour logos, all this sort of stuff. And because of my level of convinced-edness, I was able to do 350 to 400% of the target, but had I believed that white pages was a complete waste of time, to your point, there's no way it would have been successful.

[00:13:59] Talila Kroy: Yes, because people pick up on the subtext. They pick up on every little thing that you say and don't say and the way you say it, and they can feel the vibe of it. And that makes a huge difference. And that's why when we're working for purpose-driven businesses, purpose-led businesses, we're really looking for those evangelists. Those people who are going to speak from the heart, because when they do that, there's no stopping them, and it's no longer sales. It's like they become an ambassador and that's what you're really looking for in your business. And finding that is important. And we're getting down the track a little bit from where I was planning to start the conversation, but…

[00:14:36] Sean Steele: Yeah, apologies…

[00:14:38] Talila Kroy: No, it's really good start.

[00:14:40] Sean Steele: Yeah, key behaviours and environments are going to match the motivations, got to match the belief set has got to be complimentary. So, you've got to figure that out. And you're looking for those who will be able to really own it and speak from the heart and are excited about being involved in that product or service. Okay. What else?

[00:14:56] Talila Kroy: So, those are some of the criteria, but there's also a process, like how do we get that data? Because it's not like, you can just x-ray their brain and figure out what's going on inside of it. So, what we've built is a very objective step by step process. I would say that it's not infallible. Like recently we had a case where one slipped through the net, and that was because actually we did an interview with the hiring manager who'd never hired before. So, you have to be super careful, but most of the time we get super performers and they ramp up fast. And that's because of the detailed approach step by step to every one of these details that I'm going to talk to you about. So, the first thing is you've got your idea of who the person is. You get it as clear as you can in your head, how they sound, what they're going to feel like to work with their culture fit, you know, all their abilities, all of that stuff. The next part of that puzzle, there's two parts of the equation is what are we offering to this amazing person? What is our employee value proposition? What's our EVP? And you know, right now we're post COVID, the market is crowded. It's cooled down a little bit, but it's been such a hot market. And I was reading the ABS put out in 2022, that almost 70% of businesses were unable to find the candidates that they were looking for. And that's only slightly cooled down in the last couple of months. So, there's been a massive talent shortage and those larger companies, all those companies with well-developed EVPs, they can attract. And it's not going to work to put out an offer that is lukewarm or uninspiring. And so how do we build our EVP? Have to look within your own company and really figure out what are the layers of value that we're offering to the salesperson. If we did the work on remuneration, that's a big one. We should also think, consider career path, development path. Salespeople do love to grow. They love a challenge. They're those crazy people that will climb a mountain just for the sake of reaching the top. I shouldn't generalise, but many of them would sit in that category. You know what I mean? They love sports. They're competitive and competitive with themselves. So, a growth opportunity is a big thing for them, both professionally, personally, career wise, emotionally. What are the other things that they love? Flexibility is huge now. The capacity for hybrid work. Culture is super, super important for people, am I going to be treated well? Am I going to like these people? Are they ethical and honourable and all those sorts of things. And there's often lots of little perks. We only have to look at Google and Facebook and all of them and how they've ramped up their EVP to see how successful that strategy can be.

[00:17:56] Sean Steele: Talila, that is the perfect place for a plug for ScaleUps Roadmap, my course on eight-figure strategy, because in Module 6, after you've actually figured out what your strategy is going to be, the next question is what resources I'm going to need. So, you're going to reverse engineer your org chart for the next three years. And then you're going to figure out exactly what you just said. That's great. You know who you need, but how on earth are you going to attract them? You actually have to do, there's a whole module on EVP, like what are the components? How do you think about it? And small companies often think that's something that big companies do and they're absolutely wrong. It's actually all the uniqueness. You know, to your point around culture, it's not good enough to say we've got a great culture. Whoopie do. They need to know, well, what does that actually feel like? Is it just drinks on a Friday afternoon? How do you collaborate? When does the team get together? How do decisions get made? Like, how clear is the alignment between my job and the company's success? All these things are all part of culture. Like don't feel bad if you're a smaller business, it doesn't mean that you don't have something super valuable. You've got to think cleverly about what you have to offer and how to explain it or show it to people so they can feel like that's something they want to be part of.

[00:19:03] Talila Kroy: Very, very true. And actually, one of the things that small businesses have, it's a very dynamic environment. It's a harder environment, but what it does offer is growth opportunities. It does offer excitement, a chance to actually forge and be a part of the strategy, which in large companies, one's just a name, you know, and another thing is when they're socially conscious or purpose driven businesses, salespeople that are evangelists love that stuff because that means they're going out and they're doing something meaningful every single day. It's what you said about having that passion about what they they're doing, that it really matters to them to achieve this result. And as an example, we had the honour of working with a major national hearing company, and we hired a dozen people for them nationally. And we were looking all the time for that passion and that motivation and that trumped a lot of other things. I mean, they have a good EVP, but that trumped the salary to some extent. And those people ramped up so fast and did so well because they had that passion.

[00:20:12] Sean Steele: So, you got clarity on who the person is. You got a really solid offer and you got something compelling to attract them to. What's next?

[00:20:19] Talila Kroy: So, then you put it all together and you write the most compelling, job ad campaign in the history of the world, or at least in your world. It needs to be like a beacon in the marketplace because, it's actually a myth that SEEK doesn't matter anymore. SEEK is a very powerful job board and a vast number of candidates still come through SEEK, including from recruiters. So, you know, you can't overlook it. But whether you're going SEEK LinkedIn or really you need as many outlets as you can with creative databases, looking in the back ends, you know, using talent search and all that stuff, you need the offer to sound…you need all of that in there. Who do you have to be, and who are we? And they have to read that and go, wow. And if you write it right, and I was taught this by a psychologist in the early days when we used to use a psychometric test, a different psychometric test, you write it almost like you're throwing down the gauntlet. Are you this person? It's almost a challenge. Can you do this? And if so, only if so, please apply because this is what we can do for you. And I remember doing this in the early days. We hired a sales manager for a home building company. And they were, when I first told the, I think it was a GM. This is how we write the job ad. She said to me later when we, she did a like a feedback thing. I thought you were just like BSing me, you know, because I said to her, the right person will read it and get fired up. The wrong person will read it and actually self-disqualify themselves out. And she said; Oh yeah, sure. She said, I read that ad and I totally disqualified myself. So, it worked, right? It made her say, ‘I am not that person.' And it's got to do that. And actually, the sales manager, we got someone else read that ad and said; Hey, read this. This is you read this. And he went and read it and he wasn't actually actively looking and he applied and got the job and went on to become the GM of that company.

[00:22:20] Sean Steele: Yeah.

[00:22:18] Talila Kroy: So, really throw down…

[00:22:22] Sean Steele: I love that there's some focus on the job ad and the compellingness of that, because to your point, if you're looking for a players, let's just not forget, they have options.

[00:22:33] Talila Kroy: They do have a lot.

[00:22:34] Sean Steele: They have lots of options and they're not thinking about your business today if you're a smaller company, and if they're thinking about kind of career opportunity, they're probably thinking about something bigger. And so you've got to get cut through and you can, but you've got to put some effort into it. So, let's assume now that you've got this compelling campaign and you've got great job ad and you're getting the engagement, you're now starting to get applications. What’s next?

[00:22:56] Talila Kroy: Yes, what's next is the applications are going to be flooding in, handling them correctly. And we have to remember that a day in recruitment is a long time, particularly in a hot market. And if they're applied for your job, they've applied for others and they might be down the track with others. So, someone is got to be manning that station and really checking everything really fast and getting back to people. It's also good manners to get back to everyone. It is difficult to do, but, and that's why we use leverage systems and we really focus in the early weeks of the campaign, but it's essential for your brand and for your image as well. And the speed with which you respond says a lot about you and it gets them excited and it keeps the excitement level up. So, responding rapidly is important. And then, how do we respond? How do we start to screen them? Because that assessment that I told you about that we used to use, they've done millions of sales, they've assessed millions of salespeople for the last 10 years. And they are very big on the fact that only 26 percent of salespeople really have the goods, which is a pretty low number. It's one in four. And everyone else is either average or terrible. It's pretty harsh. And really, if you've got a good sales system, a lot of that doesn't matter. But if you want those top performers, being able to find them and address them quickly is going to be really key. So, one of the things that we do in our system is that we have an internal scoring rubric for the resume and the cover letter. And we're looking for how well does the resume fit certain key points and have they addressed what we asked for? Have they personalised the cover letter and addressed what we asked for in there? And depending on whether they score, they're either in or out. And if they're really high, they get VIP treatment and an immediate conversation. If they're sort of doing well, but not really high, they will get the next step. And if they're not, we'll send them a very polite, ‘thank you so much, not quite what we're looking for.’ So that everyone kind of knows where to stand fairly early on. So then moving to the next stage, you've got the opportunity to gather a little bit more data. And we've learned by experience that there would be surprising red flags that you would not think of. So, for example, you know how on SEEK you can put a few questions. Do you have a valid driver's license? Do you have a vehicle? Yes and yes is what we got from one particular candidate. And then, , this was probably in very early on. Probably the first or second year of when we were hiring salespeople. This person went right to the end and got hired by a very excited hiring manager. And then it was found out that they had been driving under the influence. So even though they did have a driver's license and a vehicle, they couldn't actually drive the damn thing. So that was a real wake up call to us that you cannot assume anything. So, for example, if the person is going to work from home, we need to dig in. And we can do this either by a bit of a form that we get them to fill in before our first questions or in the initial detailed screening interview, which we always do by video, not phone. Tell me about your home working environment? What's the setup? You know, making sure that they've got a space that's not intruded on. What disturbs you during the day? What's your internet like? Tell me about your computer system. Tell me about, is it an ergonomic chair? I don't care. Just don't leave things unturned because we have to be sure. We don't want to hire them and then find out that, you know, there's problems there. So, the first thing we often do is send them a set of questions saying; fantastic, you've got to next stage. We want to have an interview with you before you book that. Could you just answer a few questions? Then we get some yes and no answers in writing and that's really useful. We can weed out some of those things. And again, if there's a red flag or a yellow flag, we can take action. Red flag - Sorry, not a fit. Yellow flag - raise it in the interview, in the screening.

[00:27:12] Sean Steele: Yep. Okay. And then how long is your screening call usually going for?

[00:27:18] Talila Kroy: Depending on the depth of the role and how many candidates they are and how high level it could be between 10 and 20-25 minutes, that initial call. And what we want to do there is again, basic housekeeping, you know, do you live in the right area so that you could locate to the right place, making sure that what they've said on their resume is accurate, as an example. Things like, for example, we've had sales people who were actually building another business on the side and they just saw this as a money-making engine until the time when a year or two later, they could throw the towel and move to their business. So, we try to find that stuff out because if the business owner is hiring for the long-term and wants someone for the next five years, it's just not very fair that this isn't known. Another example would be, and again, I have to be very careful here because we have to respect people's rights to live the way that they need to live and give everyone equal opportunity. But the things that happen outside of work do affect our ability to work. And if we have massive commitments on the weekends and at nights and all these other things, then it's important to know about them because salespeople role particularly is not always a 9 to 5 job. It kind of can take over life a little bit. Sometimes you have to do things on a weekend or at night, and therefore those things become important to know. Another example we've had is someone who was studying for a degree really hard and planned to only be in that job for a few months until they got the degree. Things like that, you know, you need to know. And so, we do our best to uncover all of those things. Another one that you mentioned last time, I think is income expectations. You know, where are they, do they need to sit to make sure that they're aligned and people are going to be happy moving forward.

[00:29:17] Sean Steele: Do you put any, how do you connect, what do you recommend to clients around income expectation setting in the job ad upfront, versus in this interview, versus later on? Can you give me an example of how you would approach it?

[00:29:33] Talila Kroy: Yeah, because so many salespeople roles are a mixture of base plus commission or bonus, you know, the base can often be well under six figures and the commission can get them into the heart, you know, reasonable six figures. So, it's important to express that correctly. What we tend to do is, we make sure that the base is competitive and solid. And we say something like that competitive base or solid base plus commissions. That base is often negotiable depending on the quality of the person by about 5 to 10K. But the commission structure, we then provide an OTE and that OTE or the On-Target Earning is based on the reverse engineered pipeline that was done in the workings before. And sometimes there's a year one OTE is different from year two and three because the person's building up and we even express that. So, when we're asking that initial question, we're checking that the base particularly, is all right for them. So that's an important point.

[00:30:38] Sean Steele: And so, would you usually state the base or would you usually say something like OTE of X dollars, including solid base and commission. And then when you get to the call, you're trying to understand their base so that if you're thinking the base can be 70 and then they are thinking that base can be 150, at that stage you could have some issues.

[00:30:55] Talila Kroy: Yes. I mean, that's a very extreme example, but it could be out by 10 to 15 or even 20. And so, it's good to do that and reality check it there. That's correct. 

[00:31:07] Sean Steele: Okay. And then anything else in the video screen before you sort of move to your next interview or knock people out?

[00:31:10] Talila Kroy: Yes, there's one thing we do, which I think is quite fun. And I would recommend everyone to do, which is get them to pitch themselves in a minute or less. What do you learn from this? Ability to sell, their ability to communicate. Whether they talk too much and they can follow the instruction and actually stay under a minute. That's a real eye opener. Sometimes I can tell you, their ability to address what was said was important to the company, whether it's about them or whether they're pitching for the company, all those things come out, and that minute is amazing.

[00:31:49] Sean Steele: Can you explain the last component about kind of the relationship between them and the company and like what’s the actual phrase that you use to set up that little one-minute pitch?

[00:31:57] Talila Kroy: We would say something like; okay, great. You've told us all this about yourself. It's really good to know. Now tell me… you know, we've seen quite a few candidates. If you had to give us in a nutshell, one minute, why are you the perfect fit for this role? What makes you stand out? Why should they hire you? That's it. And then just say, a minute, please. And see what happens. So that really works. It works amazingly well. And it's often the make or break of the video interview.

[00:32:26] Sean Steele: So, then just give me an example of the break. Like, what is it that you're looking for where if you saw it, you'd go; oh, okay. I'm not loving that. Or if you saw it, you'd go; that's a good sign. Let's proceed to next step?

[00:32:37] Talila Kroy: Okay, so, ‘Oh, I'm not loving that’ is, they take three minutes. They're boring. They don't have charisma. It's all about what it can do for them, or it's not what they're going to do for the company. Well, they don't address specifically why the company and they are a good fit. They speak in generalised terms that are too general to have meaning. And on the contrary, if they're a great fit, they will talk specifically to the role. They'll have incredible confidence about it. They'll have presence and every word will count and they will really present well.

[00:33:14] Sean Steele: Hmm. Cool.

[00:33:18] Talila Kroy: So, that's a really good one. A little bit of that secret sauce that you asked for.

[00:33:23] Sean Steele: Yes, absolutely. I've got some more to add into when you get to your interviewing, your next interviewing stage. So, let's assume you've done that, you know, sounds like okay, the remuneration is within expectations, you haven't seen any red flags around kind of life, you know, the home context, anything else that you think could be a red flag? The presentation was awesome. It was very focused on the company and the fit and it was clear and you go, this is a good candidate. So, what's next?

[00:33:48] Talila Kroy: The next thing from our point of view is to set them up with an interview with the client or if you are the person hiring to interview them. We tend to find that one interview is not enough and one person is not enough. Particularly if it's a key role, there should be a first interview and a second interview, maybe a task in between and then an assessment. And the first interview can really dig into a lot of stuff. But it's a sale on both sides. The salesperson is selling themselves, and the company owner is also selling themselves, and they have to ask and tell each other a lot of stuff. We recommend having quite a strategic approach to those questions. If you don't, then as you know, you'll go by gut feel, and salespeople feel great. So, it's a really, one of our sales managers says something like, “I've fallen for the sizzle too many times without tasting the sausage.” And it's true. They sizzle really well. Right?

[00:34:46] Sean Steele: They do. Interview one, as you said, they're usually expert at thinking through, how do I get through interview one? And so, they've usually prepared well, they're particular, they get through it. What are some of your favourite, like what's one or two or three of your favourite questions in interview one that you think adds a lot of value to the hirer?

[00:35:04] Talila Kroy: So, first thing is don't ask them what they can do. Ask them what they have done and always go for examples. Like give me an example of when you turned this deal around, you know, it had been lost and you want it back, and how did you do it, and get them to speak to it. Or say something like, if they're in a role right now, how are you structuring your follow ups? And then when they explain it, oh, can you show me your calendar? Show me how it's done. If their calendar is empty or it's not like that, you can see that they're probably sizzling. So basically, situational or questions that are actually about what's going on or has happened are much more powerful and they can also be used for reference checking purposes. So, those are really good. Another thing that we would encourage is understanding their sales methodology. Some people are very strong at relationship building, which means they need to get to know people and it takes a long time, but it's great for, again, it comes back to different type of athletes. So, it's great for farming, right? Great for keeping people, but that's not necessarily what you want. Particularly if you've got a two-call close, right? You don't need a relationship builder. You need a rapport builder, but not a relationship builder. And so, understanding the selling methodology, what has been the history? How have they taught themselves to sell? What are they doing to improve themselves? What is their thought process around what sales even is? That's a really important one. And we also like to know things about them. Like are they morning people, night people, really deeply understand who is this person standing in front of me? You know, what is their routine and what do they do? Do they have written goals, for example, that's always a very good sign. Things like that. So, lots of things. And having… sorry, what's that?

[00:37:11] Sean Steele: Yeah. Carry on.

[00:37:11] Talila Kroy: Having your questions structured will prevent them from taking you off course. And some of the things to look for is evasive answers. Like, what's your biggest weakness? Oh, I'm such a perfectionist. You know, I try really hard and I spend too long on things. That is not a weakness, right? So, I mean, it may be, but it's also a cover up, possibly. So, you have to dig deeper. Or, tell me a story of when you did XYZ. And then the answer is, oh, I used to do that a lot. There were lots of times when I did that, kind of thing. That's not a story, is it? So great. Tell me one of those stories. Be specific. When did it happen? Who did it happen to? Who were you talking to? Be precise. And sometimes you have to ask them four or five times. 

[00:38:01] Sean Steele: And they're like, oh yeah, I was involved in a company where the company used to do all sorts of things like that. And you're like, that's not you.

[00:38:05] Talila Kroy: Exactly. And that's another thing that we found the hard way, which is a salesperson may have been involved in a deal that was huge, but doesn't mean they drove that deal.

[00:38:15] Sean Steele: They drove it. Yeah. What role? Yeah, absolutely. What role do you actually play?

[00:38:19] Talila Kroy: Yes.

[00:38:23] Sean Steele: In your first or second interview, do you ever roleplay, like, you know, they kind of need analysis to see how they respond to sort of question asking, how deep it goes, how they're curious, are they trigger happy?

[00:38:036] Talila Kroy: Yes. We have an assessment that we use, which is basically when you're shortlisted, we recommend everyone uses this assessment. Not all of our clients want to, but those who’ve built playbooks with us always do, and it's always so powerful. Usually those who don't use it, they don't have anything to assess with. Like the needs analysis isn't a documented process. There's nothing built. So, it's harder for them to figure out how to do this. But for those who have it, it's really easy. We go, here's the playbook section. Here's a recording, go away and bring me back and let's do this. And there's nothing better because you learn so much about them. You can just do it off your own back, and that's what you can do when you don't have that documented. And that has been very successful too.

[00:39:27] Sean Steele: I've supported a lot of clients in those interviews to run just mini role plays. I've never hired a sales role no matter actually how senior without a basic role play. And I haven't done it through a formal assessment model. I've just run it like an activity. Like, you know, I work for a pen company. You're inquiring about pens, like go basically you're the salesperson, I'm the company. No, sorry. I'm the client... My brain just exploded. Yeah, sorry. They work for the pen company. I'm a potential client. Yeah. I'm calling them. And they're essentially got to figure out the needs and I have like I have a huge order, like I've got all sorts of things that I'm willing to buy and I know what all those things are before I go into this and all I'm really looking for is, do they get through the layers? Like, do they keep digging until they understand the motivations, the reasons, the drivers, the pains, the problems, and if they don't, it's amazing. They'll literally get to like; oh yeah, we've got a pen and it's blue and it costs this much. And would you like it? And I'm thinking I was going to buy like 70,000 pens that were personalised and branded and diamond plated and sent by courier and all these other things. And I'll only give that information bit by bit based on how that question and it's so interesting to see. And in every case, I don't think I've ever been proven otherwise, that the trigger-happy ones, end up being terrible salespeople because the moment they see a buying signal, they just try to close deals. The ones who are happy to be a detective and be curious and are okay in that state and literally think of themselves like. There's no way I could know what the solution is until I fully understand what is going on with you and why you're thinking that and what problems it's actually solving. And those ones always get somewhere between 50 and a 100% of the deal value out of me. And I'm always willing to give up, but it's such an interesting exercise.

[00:41:20] Talila Kroy: I love it.

[00:41:21] Sean Steele: Because I can't prepare for it. They just have to be on the spot and you just get a sense of that. And if I really thought I had the capability and they failed that exercise, then to your point in interview two, I'll run it again. And I'll even say to them; Hey, I'm actually looking for you to dig and do an age analysis and be comfortable with asking uncomfortable questions. And you know, like be a detective and then some of them still give up halfway because they're just uncomfortable. And that just tells me everything about their capacity to find full value in any deal or get to real motivations and real pains. Because those who can be comfortable with it and all the silence and all that stuff, they get much bigger deals done than those who don’t.

[00:41:59] Talila Kroy: A real indicator of emotional intelligence, isn't it? Just their capacity to understand the other person's psychology and work with it, which is really what sales is, sales communication is and interestingly, and this is why I love sales systems, and needs analysis is something you need to train a little bit to do. But if you've got the system documented, anyone could do it. And that's where the emotional intelligence will shine. You'll find that the admin lady in the corner is actually a great sales person if you give her the structure to do it. And I've seen that so many times. We had a very recent example of that, where we had someone sell a quite significant sale based off a structure, which came from someone else. And they'd never been able to make this kind of sale before, but once they had the structure, they were just ready to rock and roll. But to your point, that, will you sell me this pen thing, is awesome. I love it.

[00:42:56] Sean Steele: Yeah, it's good value. Okay, so let's assume you have done, I'm just conscious of how much time we've got left. I want to make sure that you get through all the stuff that you wanted to. So, we've kind of done a pretty solid sounding first interview. When are you doing the assessment? Are you doing that pre first interview or is that in between interview one and interview two? Where does it …

[00:43:14] Talila Kroy: That probably depends on the number of candidates that you have. If you've got five really good ones and you need to start waiting them out, I would put the assessment in first. Otherwise you could put it a bit later if there's like two and trying to struggling to figure out which of them. So, there's that element that you said, which is sell me this pen. Or show me your discovery skills, sales conversation, but there are other elements as well. So, in our assessment, we'll ask them, here's a few different clients. Read about our business. Here's a bit about our business. Here's a few clients. I want you to analyse which one is a good fit to follow, which one isn't a good fit, which one is okay. And then choose one of them and then hold the discovery on that. So that's part of the assessment. And then the next piece is, okay, you held the discovery, document everything that was said by the client. What would you put in the CRM and what would you email them? Because that will show them, so a set of skills. And if you cover all of those, you've pretty much covered the thinking, the selling and the documentation, and you've ruled out a lot of problems. 

[00:44:19] Sean Steele: Is this Talila an off the shelf tool that you guys use that Founders can get themselves or is it something that's proprietary to emple? 

[00:44:25] Talila Kroy: We created it ourselves out of need. But yeah, I think, look, I haven't actually ever shared it with anyone, but I have told people that listen to this podcast that they can come along and do the sales hire ready consult with us. What I am thinking of doing at that point is giving them one tool that suits them. So, whether it's an onboarding plan template, maybe this assessment tool template. Or maybe, budgeting or a KPI thing, something that meets their direst need or their biggest gap.

[00:46:05] Sean Steele: So, can you just unpack for those people maybe who didn't hear the last episode. So, what is this sort of sales high ready assessment and then where do they go to get access to it?

[00:46:13] Talila Kroy: Yeah. So, the sales high ready assessment is a 15-to-20-minute conversation with us. It's basically, where are you at? Are you ready to hire a salesperson? You need to step back, protect your money and do a few things first. And we ask a series of questions and then we give you a little benchmark score. Terrible. Great. Ready to go. Go and hire. You're good. Or do these things. Yeah, do these things first or no, just please don't, please don't. You will so regret it if you do, and they get a little report and each one has a tip, like do this first, do this next, do this next, and then we can give them a debrief and a tool to assist them in. Their lowest scoring area.

[00:46:54] Sean Steele: Awesome. So, at least going to give them a bit of clarity as to where they're at. And it's going to allow them to move forward, whether they work with them or not, they're going to get some value from that process. So, thank you very much for offering that to our audience and the URL they go to get that is what?

[00:47:06] Talila Kroy: It’s www.emple.com.au/saleshireready. And hopefully you can put it at the bottom of this podcast as well.

[00:47:16] Sean Steele: Yeah. And so you can either look at the last episode, you'll just look at the show notes, you'll see the link in there, or it might also be in the show notes for this episode, so please make sure you go check that out. Okay. So, let's assume, you know, interview one, we're going, okay, lots of ticks. Maybe we've done the sales assessment yet, and maybe we haven't done it. But we're now heading into interview two. Talk to me about what tasks do you like to set up? Because I'm a huge fan of the work in between interview one and interview two and how that feeds into interview two. Tell me about what you do.

[00:47:48] Talila Kroy: So, if they have a sales playbook, this is a great opportunity to give them a piece of that playbook. Because we want to see that they are learning. We want to see that they're willing to use our structure. We want to make sure that they are motivated to act. And you know, if we do this now, we'll knock off some training time when we hire them. So, win-win for everyone because they'll also jump in a bit more educated. So, we can share an element of our playbook and get them to absorb that. That is really, really powerful. And then we can ask them about it in the final interview and really figure out, did they understand what they read? Did they take the time to absorb it? Do they now know what our client's greatest pain points are, for example, or how we're different from competitors or what are the biggest problems that we solve or which personas to talk to, things like that. So that's the main one that we use.

[00:48:39] Sean Steele: Beautiful. I love that.

[00:48:39] Talila Kroy: We also had things where we've sent them to the website, ask them to absorb content, things like that. Asked them to do a small task of some sort, like creating an email or things like that. But our assessment covers all of that now, so we don't tend to do creation of stuff separate to that.

[00:49:00] Sean Steele: Yes, understood. That makes complete sense. And some other things, people might want to think about, you can, of course, get them to present on something broad, but that might be, for example, to your point, okay, you've now learned a bit more, like give me all of the questions that you're going to ask in a discovery and what sequence are you going to do that and why? Or show me what your LinkedIn direct message sequence is going to look like. Like, show me number one, number two, number three, number four, like, how many are they going to be? So, you can get a really quick sense of, do they actually have skills in this, or do they just spray and pray, like, is it terrible, how much training am I going to have to do with them? And I guess this would be subject to where you're at with your foundations to train them in afterwards. But there's a lot of things I would never have anyone come to interview to without them presenting on something that I'd given them as a task. And I typically would only give them 48 to 72 hours absolute max between interview one and two, to make sure that there's a bit of pressure on them that they find time to do it. And that will tell you a lot if they come prepared, it tells you a lot more about their willingness that do they actually want this job? And if they come unprepared, that tells you a lot about whether they really want this job or whether they even remember your name.

[00:50:12] Talila Kroy: We're looking for evangelists. So, the evangelists will jump to it and they'll do whatever it takes.

[00:50:16] Sean Steele: Yeah, absolutely. So, then interview two.

[00:50:20] Talila Kroy: Interview two, usually we suggest in person so that you don't get any nasty surprises when you show up and they have a bunch of body piercings or, and not that there's anything wrong with that, but you know, you know who the person is that you're actually hiring. It's a good idea to eat with them at some point because you learn a lot about their manners from that and things about them come out when they're not so formal, they'll just be more themselves and you'll see more of them. Interview two though itself, we suggest two or three people should be there from the company, all of them scoring on the core elements of what you want the salesperson to do, which should be in a rubric and all of them coming with their own questions and those questions should build on what was said in interview one. So, it's deep and thorough.

[00:51:08] Sean Steele: So, if those two to three people weren't all interview one, you would provide them with kind of an e-assessment against the rubric from interview one and any notes, so they come prepared to be able to build on it? Or would you always try to have the same people in one and two?

[00:51:23] Talila Kroy: At least one of the same person. So usually, it's the hiring manager or the Founder or whoever is the key person will be in both one and two. And so, they have the knowledge to tell the others, well, you know, last time they said this, but I wasn't sure about that. And I wasn't like, there was a bit of a... I'll have a little bit of a chat first and then go in with a plan to uncover those things. And the other thing too, is to… It's not just about uncovering to them. It's also a time for setting expectations. So, it's time to pull out the PMA and pull out the onboarding plan. Say, these are our expectations of you, and how do you feel about them? And how are you going to, like make sure that they come knowing what's expected of them and walk them through the contractual side of it, not a contract, but more the agreement between you and us of what's going to happen and why. And this is useful because a lot of times someone will come into the role and say, I didn't realise I had to do X, Y, Z, and say, well, we told you, we showed you there were three of us there, you know, so it's really important.

[00:52:29] Sean Steele: Yeah. Absolutely. And they may not give you…you know, if some of that information is kind of new to them, they may not tell you in the room that they've got an issue with it. But what they will do is they will bow out of the process if they've got a problem with it, which is great because now all of a sudden you haven't hired somebody who then get all prepared and then you start onboarding them and then week four when that thing happens that they absolutely hate it, they're like, oh, this does not work for me. Yeah, I'm a big, big fan of sharing the onboarding plan. That makes a lot of sense.

[00:52:59] Talila Kroy: And really setting expectations clearly. I mean, there are lots of ways to entice. A lot of times there might be a discrepancy between what the salesperson wants for a base and what the business owner is prepared to pay. And one of a good way of doing that is, well, prove yourself for the first six months, hit these targets or ramp up to this by month three and this by month six, we'll raise your base and that provides the salesperson with impetus and knowing they'll get what they want. But the business owner with some protection in the meantime.

[00:53:30] Sean Steele: Yeah, I like that. So conscious of how much time we've got left, what are we missing that we need to make sure that we cover?

[00:53:41] Talila Kroy: We have to also all the way through, we have to not only keep them engaged, but be assured that they're not halfway down the process with other roles. So right from the very first time we've talked to them, we need to know what else they're looking at and why, and how we stack up in comparison and find what they really want and why about our role, if we're passionate about it, because otherwise you could put a lot of work in and be really excited about someone, make them a job offer and they've gone and particularly the hot market like today, just can't have that happening. So, it's really important to know where they're at all the time, particularly like a few years ago, it was much more of a hirer's market. In other words, you get a lot of candidates, you'd be able to sift them down. You'd be able to do this. Right now, it's the opposite. Candidates have got choice, man. And if you make it hard for them, they might leave. So, it has to be a gradual build-up of getting invested and asking for stuff. And doing that correctly, you get a really good buy in along the way. The job offer itself needs to be negotiated carefully, of course. So that requires the skill to be able to express everything properly, show them the remuneration, talk through any sticky areas, make sure there's no misunderstandings. And it's important to get their yes in writing before you tell candidate number two or three that they're no longer in the running just in case anything happens in the meantime.

[00:55:15] Sean Steele: I interviewed a guy recently from Forsyth Barnes and like in a really fast growing European recruitment firm, and one of the things I did in the offer process, which I thought was really interesting because that's really, really trying to build like a six star sort of recruitment process where there's differentiation in all the bits that are sort of normal and boring. And I said, actually, in the job offer component, they've really changed that where they actually build a PowerPoint where they present back to the person. How, given all the information they've had, how they think the values match, why they think they're going to be a good fit, you know, like they really sort of sizzle and dazzle the offer, so that actually the offer stands out in the candidates mind, because to your point, they may have actually had an offer this morning, your offer in the afternoon, and I've got another one coming tomorrow because it's a candidate's market. 

[00:56:04] Talila Kroy: That's very true.

[00:56:05] Sean Steele: So interesting opportunity to sort of jazz it up a little bit, but of course, to make sure that you still manage the expectations.

[00:56:11] Talila Kroy: And that’s also why when we're doing it, like this small to medium businesses, there's often a lot, they're like ducks, you know, a lot of paddling beneath the surface. You can't see much from the top. They could be about to explode to the next biggest thing. But if someone sees their job ad and goes to it, and they've got a poxy little website that no one spent much time on yet, or it's doesn't look as big as, and they're considering working for a major company or this, the sales person can immediately prejudge. So, we do use the power of anonymity in ours. And then when we're doing our initial screening call, we're doing as much selling as buying. So, whenever they say something that matches, your values are a match for this. This is what they're looking for. It's great that you've got this amount of time. That is also what they're looking for. So, we call out all the synchronicities all the time. And if they're not there, we also call that out because it's a bye-bye, you are not a fit.

[00:57:08] Sean Steele: Yeah, as you said, that's why it's a screening call. It could be screened in, it could be screened out.

[00:57:12] Talila Kroy: That's it. So, everything matters even up to the point of the first week, the first month. First six months are very risky. And that's where you need the onboarding plan. You need the regular check ins. You need a good managed sales leadership structure. And one of our team is an absolute expert at sales leadership and she's done a lot of work in the space and having that good management rhythm and that good feedback system and that good support for the sales person means that they don't get lost in those initial weeks and they just go upwards. It's very important as well.

[00:57:57] Sean Steele: Love it. Wow. Talila, I have learned, I have so many takeaways from today. And people, if you are listening, you are rarely going to find someone who's offered as much detail and value as Talila has for you today. So please go back and listen to this and take notes. There's a transcript by the way on the website. If you go to www.ScaleHQ.com.au, click on the pod link and go to Talila's episode and you will see a full transcript. So, it may save you some note taking effort. Feel free to copy and paste from there. But I think the fact that you have, you know, one of the things that really stands out to me is, you've used core parts of the foundation building stuff that we talked about in the last episode in the recruitment process, which is why you do those things. If you talked about sharing with them, the performance management agreement, sharing them with the onboarding plan, you know, using elements of your playbook in the assessment, they're training, they're kind of the assessment in between the interviews so you can see how all of these things link together. And so I really like the way that you've put that together because I can see how much leverage there is in your sales recruitment process from the foundation building that you've already done.

[00:58:56] Talila Kroy: And I will add that all the stuff I've told you today about recruitment will help enormously. But if you really want to get rid of your risk, you do the pre stuff. Because as I said - You can do the pre stuff, get an average person in a great result, or you can not do the pre stuff and get a great person still be struggling for a few months. So, it's all about the pre stuff.

[00:59:17] Sean Steele: 100%. Talila, I'd really like to acknowledge your generosity of time, information, there's just so much gold in there and I look forward to chatting to you again soon. If people want to get in touch with you or follow along, where would you send them to? Probably a good opportunity to reiterate what that URL is again, people can go to the show notes, but how would you suggest they get in touch with you if they wanted some support in this process?

[00:59:41] Talila Kroy: Yes. They can email me [email protected]. They can go to www.Emple.com.au/saleshireready. You can find me on LinkedIn, or our website www.Emple.com.au. So, I'm very happy to help people. I know that the right people will continue to work with for a long time. And those who we aren't a perfect fit for, we can still help them a lot along the way. That's important.

[01:00:08] Sean Steele: Fantastic. Talila Kroy from Emple, thank you so much for your time today. Folks, I really hope you got lots of value out of that if you have a B2B business and you are at the stage of looking to recruit salespeople or already recruiting salespeople and have listened to the last two episodes and gone, oh, there's some things that I have not done that would really probably help me. Just listen to them both again and go and do it. Obviously if you need help, you can reach out to Talila, but there's so much practical advice that you could just take and implement, which is the purpose of these two episodes. So please enjoy it, implement, improve the results in your sales function and your sales recruitment process. And Talila, I look forward to chatting with you again at some point in the future.

[01:00:45] Talila Kroy: Thank you so much for the opportunity, Sean. I greatly appreciate it.

[01:00:48] Sean Steele: Pleasure. Okay. We'll speak soon. See ya.