Before you jump on the phone and beg someone to come in for an interview based on their artly crafted resume, remember this: resumes often lie!

You are not just looking for someone who looks beautiful on paper. You are looking for a sales beast . . . someone with such a white hot desire to succeed that they will outwork, outtrain and outsell everybody in their competitive space.

In this episode, you will learn:

Resumes are only the beginning of the vetting process but they are often rich in tells if you can crack the psychological code. Psychology is the absolute key to building championship sales teams. Master it! Use it! I’ll help you. 

Subscribe to this podcast today and stay up-to-date on the latest in sales psychology.

For additional resume review guidance, check out our blog: 5 Tips for Spotting Lies on a Resume.

For more resume review tips and a detailed phone interview guide, check out our online course: The Sales Manager's Guide to Phone Interviews.

At SalesDrive, LLC, we help companies perfect the salesperson hiring process by offering a variety of tools, like a sales assessment and psychologically-based interview guides, that aid companies in never hiring a bad salesperson again. SalesDrive was founded in 2005 based on the single biggest frustration many companies face, selecting sales candidates who interviewed well, only to flame out when placed on the line. Dr. Croner reviewed more than 80 years of academic research as well as his own work in conducting intensive behavioral interviews and discovered that high-performance salespeople shared three innate personality traits. After identifying a gap in the marketplace, he went on to develop The DriveTest® sales assessment. The only sales assessment to measure the three non-teachable traits necessary for new business acquisition.
 
 If you are hiring salespeople, request a free DriveTest assessment today: https://salesdrive.info/free-trial-request

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[00:00]  Katherine Abraham: Hello and Welcome to the Sales Psyched podcast, where we discuss strategies for leveraging psychology within the world of sales. Each episode is hosted by Dr. Chris Croner, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and has spent his career helping companies around the world build stellar sales teams.

[00:20]  Let's get started.

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[00:30]  Chris Croner: Dr. Chris Croner here reminding you that resumes lie. Let's talk about the real tells for sales potential resumes.

[00:40]  They've evolved to an art form and most people now follow professional guides on how to develop resumes that will have you jumping on your phone and begging to meet these perfect people.

[00:52]  But not so fast...

[00:54]  You're not looking for someone who looks beautiful on paper, you're looking for a sales beast. Someone with such a white hot desire to succeed that he or she will outwork outtrain and outsell everybody in their competitive space. We psychologists call this unteachable trait, need for achievement.

[01:17]  Take any role model you want...Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, Arnold Schwarzenegger...in every case, innate talent smashes together with insatiable desire and the result is a person who will simply not be denied his goals. Whether in sports, music, business or sales, you can't stop these people and that is exactly who you need and deserve on your sales team.

[01:46]  Of course, the challenge is, everyone is going to say they have a burning need for achievement. It's just like when someone comes to a psychologist for therapy, there's usually an unspoken truth and it's the psychologist job to get to the truth for a successful outcome.

[02:02]  So, when I read a resume, I'm looking for deeper clues. Evidence that the candidate has the need for achievement necessary to compete and win in the high risk, high reward world of high performance sales.

[02:19]  So, three resume tells for you today.

[02:22]  Number one, watch out for job hopping. It's okay early in career when people are getting their bearings, but eventually you want to see a solid run with one company. Hopefully including some acknowledgement of performance therein. Job hopping is often indicative to me, as a psychologist, of someone who runs rather than fights when stress gets high and stress is always high in sales. I want to see some mental toughness here.

[02:50]  Number two, notice the words they use in their cover letters and on their CVS. I like to see lots of verbs because verbs indicate an action mentality. This is subtle, but for example, rather than see something like top producer for three years, a more powerful indicator would be earned top producer awards by leading sales production for three years. Action!

[03:16]  And number three, my favorite. Look for indicators in their lives and history that really validate a strong need for achievement. This can come across very clearly in personal interests. All interests are valuable, but achievers usually participate in passions that include trial, competition and keeping track of achievement. Watch for terms like cycling, active softball, soccer, cooking as opposed to simply enjoying good food. Building something rather than just buying it. Not just watching, playing, competing, achieving.

[03:57]  Resumes are only the beginning of the vetting process, but they're often rich in tells, if you can crack the psychological code. And you know what, it's kind of fun breaking through the veneer, because like Tom Cruise says in a few good men, "I want the truth!"

[04:13]  Psychology is the absolute key to building championship, sales teams. Master it. Use it. I'll help you. See you next time.

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[04:27]  Chris Croner: Thank you for listening to the Sales Psyched Podcast. If you haven't already, please be sure to click the subscribe button and leave us a five-star review. If you found this information helpful, please consider sharing it. We'd love your help in spreading the word.

[04:44]  Until next time, take care!