Predicting Sales Performance
Why evidence of initiative predicts sales performance better than interview answers.
I've reviewed more than 10,000 sales candidates.
The best predictor of sales performance has never been an interview answer.
Yet interviews keep asking the same questions.
"Why sales?"
"Sell me this pen."
"What are your goals?"
The answers tell you who prepared.
Not who will perform.
Sales is a profession of self-initiation.
No one can make you prospect.
No one can make you follow up.
No one can make you ask for referrals.
No one can make you recover from rejection.
The people who succeed usually start acting before anyone asks them to.
That's why I don't look for polished answers.
I look for evidence.
What has this person done when nobody expected them to?
Found an internship instead of waiting for campus placements.
Built a project without being assigned one.
Started a club.
Organized an event.
Sold something.
Created opportunities for themselves.
None of these guarantee success in sales.
But they reveal a pattern.
Initiative.
Skills can be taught.
Products can be learned.
Objections can be handled.
Confidence grows with experience.
Initiative is much harder to teach.
People rarely become proactive on the day they're hired.
They usually arrive that way.
The interview isn't there to create initiative.
It's there to recognize it.