What’s the biggest mistake people make when interviewing BDMs?
Not having the right questions to dig deep into the details.
Remember – most salespeople are great talkers.
You must get beneath the surface-level answers and look for hard numbers, grit, and the salesperson’s ability to take ownership of their success.
To help, I’ve compiled a few questions you slot into your next interview – good luck!
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General ice breakers
Questions:
- What interests you about this role?
- Tell me what you know about this role?
- Where do you see yourself 1, 2, 3 years from now?
- What are the most important things when selecting your next role?
What to look for:
- Clear career aspirations
- The level of research they’ve done on you and the company (this is indicative of how well they research a prospective before speaking to them)
- The culture fit – pay close attention to why they left their last roles and what they’re looking for in their next role.
Job performance
- Describe how you organize your day and week.
- How many outbound calls per day did you do?
- What were your KPIs, and how did you perform vs these KPIs?
- What were you calls to deals won conversion rate?
- Talk me through, from end to end, a cold outreach prospect that turned into a won deal.
- Were there any tricks/tips you found over time that helped maximized close rates for BDMs?
- What was your target vs. attainment over the last few years?
- Assume you get no leads in this role – how would you hit your target (a minimum of 10k MRR per month)
What to look for:
- Clear articulation of goals and targets attained.
- A structured, organized approach to each day. Concrete time blocks for outbound, inbound, follow-ups, pitch, desk creation, etc…
- Answers backed by hard numbers
- Short and succinct answers – anyone who’s long-winded is likely a poor fit.
- When marketing efforts are slow, will they “generate” their own leads of blame their failure on a lack of leads? It’s critical to have a “hunter” mentality in sales – regardless of whether or not your business is generating leads.
Tech savviness
- What CRM(s) have you used before?
- What other tools do you use to do outbound prospecting?
- How did you ensure your manager had visibility of your activity?
- CRM hygiene is a big part of this role – how do you feel about this?
What to look for:
- Anyone who claims they were “micromanaged” – in most cases this means the sales person doesn’t like being held accountable (of course there are exceptions, but keep this in mind)
- Diligent and smart use of the CRM 0 salespeople who use the tool to empower their success.
- Avoiding salespeople who see the CRM as “admin” or those who rarely update their CRM
- Daily/ weekly blocks for CRM updates.
Appetite to read/learn
- Entering a brand new industry, how would you get up to speed?
- Are there any publications you follow to keep across sales best practices?
What to look for:
- Are they open to coaching & mentoring? It is important to find a salesperson who’s hungry to learn and flexible enough to learn “your” way – as each business’ sales process is vastly different.
- Will they learn “new ways” or will they just do things their way?
- Are they following some of the thought leaders in sales?
- Are they looking at ways to consistently improve their “science” behind selling?
- Have they self-enrolled or self-taught principles like SPIN, Value selling, Challenger methodology, or other sales frameworks?
Hiring a good digital marketing BDM is tough.
However, as you streamline the interview process and ask the right questions – it’ll help you find the RIGHT candidate a lot faster.
Most underestimate the importance of the interview process in helping you nab that “perfect fit”.
Make sure you don’t do the same.
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Still not sure if someone’s the right fit for your business?
Found a candidate you’re not quite sure about and wondering how to delve deeper?
Or just wondering what you need to do to scale your sales & marketing effort?
Reach out and say hello.
Happy to share some tips & insights that’ll help.
