Interview Smarter: Using Roleplays to Identify Top Sales Talent (Brooke Freedman, Chameleon)

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1. 1:21

   on a call? It shows in the role play how they do that. I can find out how they structure a conversation, if they're comfortable, if they're quick to pick up on cues, if they can open a call and then guide it, and can they close it out with the next step. And then third, I kind of get a feeling for how curious they are and what kinds of questions “they ask, and then how they tie everything back together.” Awesome. Number two. My second favorite is onboarding all reps as support reps first. It's something I do at Chameleon now, but hadn't done at my previous companies. If you can have your new AEs spend their first few weeks holding off from jumping onto calls

   In Hiring SDRs

2. 4:55

   Well, let me ask you a little bit about role plays because I think it's super interesting. So you said role plays. I need you to be more specific. Like are you doing demo role plays, disco role plays, negotiation role plays? Like what kind of role plays are you doing and are they different per role? So we do the role play with all of our roles. “We did it with the account manager that we hired last summer and we do it with our AEs.” They are slightly different based on the nature of the role, but I'll start with the AE roleplay. We choose not to do the demo because you really would have to learn the product too well, which is a very hard thing to do until you're on board. So instead, it's discovery.

   In Team and roles

3. 6:19

   You send over a scenario or a dossier that's kind of like, this is what's going on, but what are they acting as? Are they acting as their current job and showing you how they discover that in their current job? Are they acting like a rep at your company and working through that? What kind of a role play are they doing? So they're the chameleon rep at our company “running the discovery. I'm coming in as the role play buyer as an inbound lead, let's say,” and I'll give them that scenario. I'll say, I came in, I requested to talk to sales. These are the two things that I told you before I got on the call, run your discovery with me. And I look to see how they organize that conversation. So one might argue, it's very difficult to do discovery with a product you don't understand. And you've already said it's

   In Hiring SDRs

4. 17:18

   competitors. I'm looking to see what the rep does to pull back from what they learned in the beginning of that conversation to challenge the buyer on that based on what they heard and what sort of urgency they think that there could be if we just No matter where you are, whatever product you're selling, you should kind of know “how to handle that and not just let it slide.” I've definitely had candidates that let it go. They're like, sure, I'll send a follow up. And when would you like to have a next step? Oh, next September. Okay, great. And then you know that they're going to struggle with that part of closing out the discovery for a next step. And how do you go about grading these at the end of it? So let's say someone set a good agenda. They got to sell a product.

   In Objection handling

5. 22:05

   But everyone else, I talked to someone that they've worked with or for to make sure that this is for real. I usually find that I never have just a culture or a behavioral interview. Sometimes if it happens at all, it's the first interview. “But I have my prospecting interview, my discovery interview, my process interview.” And for the things I really want to test, I have test interviews. So role plays, for example, or mock cold emails. The cultural stuff will come out in between each of those interviews at every step of the game. But the number one way, in my opinion, to test for culture is to go ask someone who's not in that room. In other words, go ask what they were like at their old company.

   In Hiring SDRs

6. 25:00

   Okay. So I've learned over time that if it's not a yes, if it's not a like, absolutely, we need to hire this person. You got to keep looking, even if that means that you have to find a way to hit the number for another month until you get that rep in the door. I know there's always a lot of pressure on hiring. “And I think it's important for managers to have that head hired before the number goes up.” But like it costs too much to do it wrong. So we really need everyone to be an enthusiastic, yes. And if it's not, then we keep moving. I would argue like and I would do this is, as soon we set this is the worst answer in interview, I'm a soft, yes.

   In Rep headcount and ramp planning