Dear Stephen,
I was recently promoted from regional vice president to vice president of sales for a midsized manufacturer. I have hired people over the years and made my share of mistakes, but the stakes feel different now because I now report directly to a CEO who hates turnover and expects every hire to be the right one.
We are a highly A&D-oriented company with a product line that includes many bespoke options for high-end contract customers. We sell through an open-line dealer network, so our salespeople need more than product knowledge and a list of accounts; they need credibility with architects, designers, dealers, and end users, along with relationships strong enough to open doors for our brand.
I already ask applicants about their sales numbers, projects, accounts, failures, management style, and how they develop new business. The problem is that polished salespeople are often very good at interviewing, and I want one question that cuts through the performance and reveals whether the connections they claim to have are genuine. If you could add one question to an interview for an A&D salesperson or sales leader, what would it be? More importantly, what answer would convince you that the person truly has the access and credibility to succeed?
Signed,
Looking for the Tell
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Dear Looking for the Tell,
First, stop trying to make every hire perfect. Your CEO can hate turnover all they want, but recruiting is still an art, not a science, and anyone promising you a flawless hire every time is selling you something I would not buy. That said, during a recent search at The Viscusi Group, a client shared one of the smartest sales interview questions I have heard in years. They were not interested in candidates who could simply recite the names of important design firms; they wanted to know whether the relationships were real.
Here is the question: "Name five architects or designers whose cell phone numbers are in your phone right now and whom you could text today and reasonably expect to get a response, a meeting, or even a favor." Then stop talking and watch what happens, because the silence after the question may tell you almost as much as the answer. Brilliant, right?
Do not ask whom they could email, connect with on LinkedIn, call through the main office number, or eventually reach after three messages to an assistant. You are asking which architects and designers trusted this salesperson enough to share their cell phone numbers—and would immediately recognize the name when it appeared on their screen. That is very different from asking someone to list the largest design firms in the market.
Anyone can walk into an interview and say they know Gensler, HOK, SOM, Perkins+Will, Rockwell Group, or whichever firms matter in that territory. Name-dropping is free, and any reasonably intelligent salesperson already knows the names you expect to hear. The real question is not whether the salesperson knows Gensler. The real question is whether anyone at Gensler knows the salesperson.
A salesperson can exaggerate a territory, inflate a pipeline, take credit for someone else's project, and turn one showroom introduction into a five-year relationship during an interview. It becomes much harder to bluff when you ask for five actual people and then ask how they met, what they worked on together, and when they last communicated. Someone with genuine relationships will have stories, details, and history, while someone who is bluffing will usually begin to fall apart somewhere around the second follow-up question.
The strongest answer may even be, "I could ask that person for a favor, but I would never do it unless it truly mattered." That tells me the salesperson understands that trust has value and should not be treated like another name in a CRM system. A contact is not necessarily a relationship, and a CRM entry is definitely not a relationship. A relationship means the other person knows who you are, understands why you are calling, and has enough trust in you to respond.
Before the HR people attack me in the comments, I am not suggesting that you grab the candidate's phone or make them text five designers during the interview. That would be tacky, unfair to the designer, and more likely to prove that someone will perform a stunt to get a job than that they know how to build relationships. You are not inspecting the phone; you are listening to how quickly the names come, how credible the stories sound, and whether the details hold up when you start asking questions.
Ask when they last communicated, what they discussed, and whether that designer would still meet with them if they represented a different company tomorrow. That last question matters because salespeople love to believe every customer relationship belongs to them, but it does not. Sometimes the architect loves the salesperson, and sometimes the architect loves the brand, the product, the pricing, the samples, the lead time, the service, or the dealer—and merely tolerates the salesperson. A great interviewer needs to know the difference because relationships do not automatically transfer when someone changes the company name in an email signature.
Of course, having five cell phone numbers does not guarantee five specifications, and no salesperson owns an architect or designer. Someone may have excellent access and still fail if your product, price, service, reputation, delivery times, or dealer strategy are wrong. But direct access is relationship capital, and there is an enormous difference between knowing the names of five important designers and having five important designers know your name, save your number, and make time for you.
Do not get hung up on the number five, but do not make the question too easy either. Five is not a lot for a senior salesperson or sales leader who claims to have spent years developing the A&D market! Someone with genuine credibility should not need ten minutes to think—or start naming people they met once at NeoCon, Design Days, ICFF, BDNY, Salone, or a showroom cocktail party. Meeting someone while holding a glass of wine does not automatically make that person part of your network.
I would use a version of this question with your current sales team during performance reviews too. If developing the A&D community is an important part of the job, ask each person to identify the architects and designers with whom they have built real access and trust. You may learn something very encouraging about the strongest people on your team, but you may also discover that someone you have been paying for years to develop the market cannot identify five people who would make time for them directly.
If that happens, you may not have a relationship salesperson. You may have a product presenter with an expense account! Yes, that sounds harsh, but your salespeople do not need to vacation with their customers or be invited to their weddings. The relationship only needs to be strong enough that the customer recognizes the name, trusts the person, and responds.
The best salespeople become resources to their customers. They are the people architects, designers, dealers, and clients call when there is a problem, when they need information, when they want an introduction, or when they need someone to quietly get something done. That kind of credibility is not manufactured inside a CRM system; it is earned one meeting, one returned call, one solved problem, one kept promise, and sometimes one personal text at a time.
So yes, continue asking about revenue, pipeline, dealers, specifications, leadership, successes, failures, and plans for developing the territory. But when you want to know whether the relationships are real, ask what is inside the phone. The resume tells you where the person worked, but the phone tells you whether they were any good.
Now I want to hear from the sales leaders, recruiters, architects, designers, and salespeople reading this. Would you hire a senior A&D salesperson who could not answer this question, and what is the single best interview question you ask?
Signed,
Stephen
Stephen Viscusi is the founder of The Viscusi Group, a New York-based executive search firm specializing in the interior furnishings industry. Hires made through The Viscusi Group are backed by a one-year free replacement guarantee.
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