How to Hire a Sales Rep Who Actually Closes Deals

You hired a sales rep, handed them a product deck and a CRM login, and three months in, they're still asking prospects. So, any questions for me? Your system is broken, and I'm going to fix it before you make the next hire. So, here is how you hire a sales rep who actually closes. Let me walk you through exactly how. Three things you're testing in a sales interview. First, response speed. Before the call even happens, how fast

they reply to your job application tells you how they'll treat prospect emails. A rep who lets your email sit for 48 hours will let follow-up sit for 48 hours, too. So, cut them early. Second, social awareness. You want somebody in the middle of the introvert extrovert spectrum, comfortable leading, but willing to hand the conversation back, ask the next question, and let silence do the work. Because if they steamroll you in the interview, they'll steamroll prospects straight

into objections. I've tested this across multiple industries. Third, the coachability test. Drop a roleplay on them. Tell them you're a prospect running a 10person agency struggling with lead genen, and you want them to run a short discovery conversation. Let them go for a few minutes, then stop and give one piece of specific feedback. Something like, "You went into pitch mode before you understood my budget situation. Try again and hold off on the solution until I've told

you what I've already tried." Then watch. A candidate who gets defensive is going to be a nightmare to manage. But a candidate who resets and clearly applies what you just told them extend the offer. I've used this exact test on every sales hire I've made, and the ones who passed it closed deals, but the ones I skipped it for cost me months. Once they're hired, don't spend the first two weeks on product features. A rep last

quarter spent 10 days studying every skew and then blanked when a prospect asked what it would actually do for them. But if a rep can describe a buyer's problem with more clarity than the buyer can, the close almost handles itself because the prospect thinks this person gets it. And that trust is worth more than any feature sheet. So days 1 through 10, your new rep should be watching recorded sales calls all day, not skimming, but watching

them fully. After a big batch of calls, they start to feel the rhythm of a strong conversation, where the call stalls, how a strong close sounds compared to a weak one. And if you don't have a call library yet, build one before you bring anyone on. Get on the phone yourself, hit record, and run those calls at a high level because you need that asset before you need the hire. And that brings me to my next

point. Days 11 through 14, script work and roleplay. A script is a series of prompts lined up so the buyer talks their way into the answer you're guiding them to. By day 14, the rep should run a mock call without notes. Put them through the coachability test again, give feedback mid call, and see if they adjust on the spot. I had a sales hire once who used a notion doc script, talked about his weekend, and lost

every prospect with, "Let me think about it." That rep cost me months before I replaced him. After that, I never let a rep touch a live call until they could run the structure smoothly in a roleplay. All right, that's enough talking. Let me show you. Here's the CLIPS framework. C, confirm the context. Start the call by stating the purpose out loud. The reason we're on this call is you wanted to see whether this fits your situation.

Is that right? Lay out their pain. Say the problem you think they have before they tell you. Based on your intake, it sounds like you're getting leads, but they're not converting past the first call. Is that close? And when you describe their pain back to them, something changes because they lean in. I investigate past experience. What have you done to fix this before? And why didn't it work? This surfaces the objections early and gets the prospect

to say out loud why their past attempts failed. P. Pitch by permission. Based on what you've shared, there are a few things we do that it hit exactly where you're stuck. Mind if I walk you through them? Keep it to two or three points tied directly to the pains they already mentioned. S. Secure the decision based on everything we've talked about. Does it make sense to move forward today? And then the second s smooth objections using

their own reasoning. So if they said their last solution failed because of weak follow-through and now they're pushing back on price, bring it back. You said the last thing you tried cost you 3 months and got you nothing. So what's that worth compared to what we're talking about here? This right here is what it's all about. Once your rep is live, listen to their first five calls. If they're confirming context at the start, naming the problem

before they pitch, and pushing toward a decision, then coaching gets simple. just re onboard them on the structure. But if you don't have a pipeline ready to support a hire yet, here's the order. Build the lead list, run the outbound yourself, record the calls you close, then hire. I use Scraper City to pull targeted prospect lists by industry, title, and company size. And that's the starting point before any rep ever picks up the phone. And if

you need to pressure test your script against people who've seen it work at scale, that's what Galladon Gold is built for. If you need leads, check out Scraper City. For cold email coaching, check out Galladon Gold. And if you want to see my favorite tools to grow your business, go to alex berman.com/tools.