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I've been working on this for the last year now. The basic problem is that as a developer you have lots of ways to evaluate a candidate (coding tests). With hir

I've been working on this for the last year now. The basic problem is that as a developer you have lots of ways to evaluate a candidate (coding tests). With hiring for Sales it's not that easy - the traditional way is to rely on an interview in which you go on gut instinct. We're trying to change that by applying some science to the problem. The key idea is to find you sales people who match your current top performers' profiles using an assessment that is geared towards the sales process. The system is built in Node.js, Angular and PostgreSQL, and uses some of the machine learning concepts I contributed to SpamAssassin.

mbesto 12y ago
Interesting concept. Why not change your tagline to "coding interviews for sales people" and specifically target the tech community. It also wasn't clear about "what's different". IMO this is a huge problem in startup tech right now - having good sales abilities and also hiring people who do.
- baudehlo 12y ago
  We're targeting tech companies right now purely because they tend to "get" this much better than other industries, but ultimately it's a much bigger market than just tech. I'll pass on the feedback about the lack of "what's different" to the guy doing the site - it seems to be a bit of a pattern.
ovi256 12y ago
For the best test, check out Martin Seligman's work on using optimism as a proxy for sales success. He wrote about it in his book Learned Optimism. He started this work when consulting for a large company that wanted to improve their sales hiring process.
- baudehlo 12y ago
  Thanks - I've passed that on to our psychologist.
bane 12y ago
In general sales people are hired on a 12 month "understanding". The unwritten rule is they basically have 12 months to produce or get out. The control is that they usually have lower base salaries than you'd think, but they can produce virtually unlimited income off commission if they can sell...usually with all kinds of thresholds in their employment contract on deals (e.g. 7% on deals <$50k 10% on deals >=$50k and <$250k). It can take months to close a deal like that, so you can't just do a 90-day or GTFO trial like with other positions. But at the same time, if they aren't producing you'll know after a year. If you look at the resumes of professional sales persons, they'll usually have lots of ~12 month positions. Good salespeople should also be bringing with them their contact lists and be able to start sourcing things very quickly. You have to make sure thought that their contacts are relevant to your company. A guy with deep insurance industry contacts might not be helpful in a B2C company. They'll often also need to take over the pipeline that was in the works when they came on board, establish new contacts with that pipeline and go forward. They should also have basic managerial experience and know how to manage an inside sales person, a sales engineer, etc. They should be able to run a sales pipeline and figure out equitable commission sharing schemes with their team. Something that's very hard to find it not only somebody who can do the above, but also actually sell. For example, if you sell complex software, finding a sales person who can provide even a basic demo of the software is like trying to skin a bag of rabid cats while you're in the bag. But you can use this problem as a filter. Give them access to your software and some information about it and have them come back in a week to do a 15-minute high-level sales demo and sell you your own software. If they can't at least do that, then you can pass and move on.

mbesto 12y ago

Interesting concept. Why not change your tagline to "coding interviews for sales people" and specifically target the tech community. It also wasn't clear about "what's different". IMO this is a huge problem in startup tech right now - having good sales abilities and also hiring people who do.

baudehlo 12y ago
We're targeting tech companies right now purely because they tend to "get" this much better than other industries, but ultimately it's a much bigger market than just tech. I'll pass on the feedback about the lack of "what's different" to the guy doing the site - it seems to be a bit of a pattern.

ovi256 12y ago

For the best test, check out Martin Seligman's work on using optimism as a proxy for sales success. He wrote about it in his book Learned Optimism. He started this work when consulting for a large company that wanted to improve their sales hiring process.

baudehlo 12y ago
Thanks - I've passed that on to our psychologist.

bane 12y ago

In general sales people are hired on a 12 month "understanding". The unwritten rule is they basically have 12 months to produce or get out. The control is that they usually have lower base salaries than you'd think, but they can produce virtually unlimited income off commission if they can sell...usually with all kinds of thresholds in their employment contract on deals (e.g. 7% on deals <$50k 10% on deals >=$50k and <$250k). It can take months to close a deal like that, so you can't just do a 90-day or GTFO trial like with other positions. But at the same time, if they aren't producing you'll know after a year. If you look at the resumes of professional sales persons, they'll usually have lots of ~12 month positions. Good salespeople should also be bringing with them their contact lists and be able to start sourcing things very quickly. You have to make sure thought that their contacts are relevant to your company. A guy with deep insurance industry contacts might not be helpful in a B2C company. They'll often also need to take over the pipeline that was in the works when they came on board, establish new contacts with that pipeline and go forward. They should also have basic managerial experience and know how to manage an inside sales person, a sales engineer, etc. They should be able to run a sales pipeline and figure out equitable commission sharing schemes with their team. Something that's very hard to find it not only somebody who can do the above, but also actually sell. For example, if you sell complex software, finding a sales person who can provide even a basic demo of the software is like trying to skin a bag of rabid cats while you're in the bag. But you can use this problem as a filter. Give them access to your software and some information about it and have them come back in a week to do a 15-minute high-level sales demo and sell you your own software. If they can't at least do that, then you can pass and move on.