I recently spoke with Craig Primiani, Vice President of Sales at DigiSensory–whose technology helps detect criminal activity–, about the importance of hiring great people if you’re going to build a great company. Like most sales leaders, hiring great sales people isn’t easy, and getting it wrong can be unpleasant and painful.

Now that I’ve gotten that disclosure out of the way, here are some of the bullet points:

• Craig developed a 15 point system that consists of little tests throughout the interview process, from phone screen to presentation
• He mentioned that he likes to try to scare people by painting a pretty grim perspective to see how much they really want the job
• He likes when sales candidates ask really good questions and actually interview him
• He told me that one of his candidates absolutely lost it during a presentation in front of 200 people
• The 3 core competencies that he looks for in candidates are; their ability interact and engage him, signs that they’ve done their homework, and do they show an ability to be aggressive

You will learn much more if you listen to the entire interview, but because it was more choppy than I expected, I’m hoping that these bullet points will help. (It will be better next time. I promise.) I look forward to your comments.

In this audio/video Skype interview, he tells me why he stopped relying on his gut, and how he had to learn to develop a more reliable interview process that each candidate must go through, along with some of the tactics (some of them may even scare you) he uses to determine sales ability and cultural fit.

If you’re a sales leader, perhaps he’s doing some things that you can implement into your recruitment process. If you’re an individual contributor, he will give you even more insight as you move through the interview process.

Disclosure: The audio isn’t all that great here. And the reason why this was broken into audio only and then video was because Skype and the recording plug-in failed the first time. Craig was really patient with me and provided great content, but you have to be patient as well. It actually gets better as it goes on.  The video is much more clear–although it only captured the end of the interview.

Learn how to close Craig, and other sales leaders now: