Using AI to de-risk hiring sales leaders
Hiring the right sales leader for your organization is often harder than it seems. We know all about this, and this was one of the drivers for us to create the competency cards. A really good hiring process starts with a great company brand, moves to a well-spec’d job ad and clear job description, is followed up by a robust competency-based screening process and interviews, moving to second round interviews with a job-based ‘challenge’ or even peer-based interviews, and the final box is ticked with a couple of quick and thorough reference checks.
We’ve built out the tools and blogged about many of these on Bolstur.com, but the one area we’re leaning on AI for is setting the challenge to assess the real skills the candidate has, and how they’ll apply them in for your context. Having created many of these ourselves, we know how time consuming it is.
So, using this prompt from NeatPrompts for ChatGPT, adding in less than 15 words to make it relevant, and hitting enter saved about five hours of work.
Here’s the prompt for you to cut and paste, along with the reply we got.
We put this to the test in an area we’re donkey deep in: sales leadership and growing effective sales managers. Here’s the output and after this, we share some quick insights:
ChatGPT output for challenges to set when assessing potential sales leaders
Role: Sales Manager
Abilities: Sales Leadership, Strategic Planning, Selling, Communication
Round 1: Sales Strategy Challenge
Participants will be given a case study of a company and asked to develop a sales strategy that aligns with the company's overall business goals. The challenge will require participants to analyze market trends, identify target customers, and develop a sales plan that incorporates both short-term and long-term objectives. Participants will need to communicate their strategy effectively and justify their decisions. This challenge will test the participant's ability to develop a sales strategy that aligns with the company's overall goals and communicate their plan effectively.
Round 2: Sales Forecasting Challenge
Participants will be given a set of data and asked to develop a sales forecast that incorporates both historical data and market trends. The challenge will require participants to analyze data, develop a forecasting model, and communicate their results effectively. Participants will need to justify their decisions and make recommendations based on their analysis. This challenge will test the participant's ability to analyze data, develop a forecasting model, and communicate their results effectively.
Round 3: Sales Team Management Challenge
Participants will be given a scenario where they need to manage a sales team to achieve a specific sales goal. The challenge will require participants to analyze team performance, identify areas of improvement, and develop a plan to achieve the sales goal. Participants will need to communicate their plan effectively, motivate their team, and provide constructive feedback. This challenge will test the participant's ability to manage a sales team, develop a sales plan, and communicate effectively with their team.
Comments from us
Overall these challenges are great! You can refine them yourselves or ask ChatGPT to evolve them for you. Either way, there’s a great short cut here.
The piece you can’t shortcut is the critical evaluation of the candidates and their work. Here are a couple of things to shape questions about if you do go with these examples:
Consider what they include and what is excluded from their sales strategy, and ask them to outline the choices they made and why they made those calls
Ask what areas they will focus on for implementation, and what barriers they might anticipate. Go deeper and ask them to outline how they’ve managed similar situations previously.
Ask their views on data accuracy and how they factor this in their calculations and assumptions
Get them to discuss how they use this data in their decision-making, and who else they engage to finalize their decisions
Balancing sales performance, management and coaching is an art and a science – ask the candidate how they would do so in this scenario, then detail how they have managed these in the past so you can assess what is ‘learned’ information and how they might actually behave.
The rise of AI can really empower leaders across any organisation and finding these use cases, sharpening your prompting skills and learning how to harness these tools will be incredible. Feel free to share any cool examples you have too.
