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Video Transcript:

Hi everybody!

I’m Dale Archdekin, I’m an ISA coach.

Today I wanted to talk about a topic that comes up pretty frequently when I’m coaching people on developing an inside sales team, or even hiring a new inside sales agent.

That would be Skills Based Assessments.

So I know that all of us – for those of you who are with Keller Williams like I am, or if you’re with another brokerage, you may have some kind of hiring and screening process that they suggest that you go through.

At Keller Williams, it’s called Career Visioning and it used to be called the Career Select Process.

A lot of the processes they teach real estate agents for screening new candidates for whatever position they’re hiring for tend to be very lengthy, very involved, very one-on-one, they take a lot of time, a lot of interpersonal time – where you’re having conversations with people about their entire life history, their entire life story, just to see if they’re going to be a good fit for your culture, for your team, whether or not you can determine whether they’re going to do a good job at the job also.

And a lot of these hiring process are based strongly or focused a lot on personality assessments – whether it’s a DISC, or it’s some other – the AVA that Keller Williams used to have (which is now the KPA), and I’m sure that other brokerages also suggest other types of personality assessments because they’re very popular now.

Those kind of assessments and those tests work very well, and it’s something that’s absolutely necessary.

However, I think that for hiring an inside salesperson (ISA) for whom skills is the utmost-importance (because if they don’t have the phone skills or the sales skills, it does not matter how great a fit they are or what kind of personality they have or how simpatico you are with them and their past life and everything they’ve done in their lives and how they feel), if they can’t get people on the phone, keep people on the phone, and set appointments with them over and over again, they’re not going to work out in that role. And if you’ve invested 10 hours of interviewing that person, just to find the right person who then can’t make phone calls and actually convert to appointments, it’s a total waste and you’ll have to start over again.

So what I do for myself when I’m hiring and what I coach my clients to do is to really bring in a lot more skills-based testing into your recruiting process from the very beginning.

So that involves role playing with them – first off, it starts off with how they speak to you over the phone, how do they present themselves, are they articulate, are you able to understand what they’re saying, are they able to clearly communicate with you, do they sound like someone you want to talk to, do they sound interesting, do they sound fun, do they sound nice, do they have a personality. That’s the first step.

The second step is role playing with them. Trying it out, trying these scripts out. And I really only hire people who have no real estate experience; I want to see how people with no industry experience handle that – that’s when you truly see what kind of sales skills they already have, and whether or not they can actually get on the phone and be successful at it.

The next step from that is, what I do is have them come in, sit in a chair, and start making calls on a recorded line. And I coach my clients to have them do this as well.

The one caveat to this – if you choose to have an unlicensed person come in and make phone calls to consumers, you need to know what your local state and federal laws are and you need to abide by them.

Whether you shadow them (you’re on the call too, listening in but they’re the ones doing the talking) – however you make that happen, the burden of legality is on your shoulders.

But what I’m saying is, if you can actually put somebody into a role where you get to see them do the job function before you invest 2-4-6 hours, however many hours, 8 hours, of interviewing and personality assessments so that you can actually see whether or not this person can carry out this job, you’re going to save yourself a lot of time and a lot of headache, and you’re really going to set yourself up the best for finding a great candidate who’s going to do awesome for you.

That’s it – thanks!

A strong, skills based inside sales recruiting process is the key to finding an amazing ISA for your team.  Contact Dale for more info