You assess a Business Developer’s hunting skills on evidence, never on how well they perform in an interview: new-business figures they can break down and that their referees confirm, a cold prospecting exercise, and a read of what keeps them going when prospects say no. A candidate who talks convincingly about prospecting has not necessarily prospected, and that gap is exactly what your process has to measure before you start recruiting a Business Developer.
In short
- Hunting comes down to one capability: generating revenue from clients who did not know you. Everything else follows from it.
- The first trap is the inherited portfolio. Ask what share of revenue came from accounts the candidate opened personally.
- Evidence questions are won in the follow-ups: “What exactly did you do?”, “What happened next?”, “How do you know?”.
- A twenty-minute role-play tells you more than an hour of storytelling. In Belgium, collective agreement no. 38 sets the rules for selection tests.
- A scorecard written before the interviews, identical for every candidate, stops you hiring the most likeable person instead of the best hunter.
What do hunting skills actually mean for a Business Developer?
“Hunter” appears in almost every sales job advert, often loosely. To assess it, you need to break it down into observable behaviour. A Business Developer who hunts can identify targets that are not yet clients, open a conversation with a decision-maker who was not expecting the call, qualify quickly so as not to waste three months on a prospect with no budget, keep up the activity when replies do not come, and secure a dated next step from every exchange.
This list deliberately leaves out managing an existing portfolio, which is a different job. We cover the distinction in our article on hunting vs farming according to your sales cycle, and the scope of the role is set out in the Business Developer job description. If you are still deciding which profile to open, start with the differences between a Business Developer and a sales representative: there is little point testing hunting skills in someone you are hiring to look after existing accounts.
Hunting is always measured against your market: opening SMEs on a short cycle does not demand the same resources as getting into industrial groups where it takes six meetings to reach the signatory.
Why the CV and a standard interview are not enough
A good salesperson knows how to sell themselves. It is their job, and the interview is where they are most at ease. The main risk is that they describe, in good faith, results they did not achieve on their own.
Three situations blur the reading of a sales CV. The inherited portfolio first: a candidate who grew revenue by 30% on accounts handed over on arrival has shown a real skill, but not hunting. The brand next: prospecting under the name of a market leader opens doors your SME will not open, and the same candidate may run out of steam with you. The team last: a lead generation unit or inside sales team often qualifies meetings upstream, and the Business Developer arrives on a prospect who is already warm. None of these situations rules a candidate out, but each one means isolating their own contribution and then checking it.
Expert view
An assessment that ends with a PDF report has no value. Ours rests on three moments: the deep-dive interview, competency analysis on real cases and role-plays, and the KOAN personality test. And above all, the debrief: spoken, structured, actionable. What you walk away with is a clear read on competencies, drivers, and gaps versus the target profile. Not a score. A decision.
Which signals should you watch during the hiring process?
Recruitment is itself a sales situation. The candidate is trying to obtain something from someone who owes them nothing, with stages, silences and objections along the way. Watch how they handle it, without telling them.
- Preparation: have they looked at your clients, your competitors, your presence in their future territory? Do they arrive with a hypothesis about your targets, or with generic questions?
- The quality of their questions: a hunter asks about the sales cycle, deal size and the share of prospecting expected, because they want to know whether they can win.
- How they handle silence or delay: do they follow up after the interview, how often, with what content? A follow-up that adds something is worth more than “just checking in”.
- How each exchange ends: do they ask for the next step, who decides it and when? Someone who does not do it with you will rarely do it with a prospect.
- Their reaction to a deliberate objection, such as a doubt raised about part of their track record. Do they close up, over-justify, or rephrase and answer with a fact?
Which evidence questions should you ask in the interview?
An evidence question is about a specific past fact that can be quantified. It is only useful if you keep probing until you reach the detail. These are the ones that isolate hunting ability.
- “Over the last twelve months, what share of your revenue came from clients you opened yourself?” Then: how many new accounts, what average deal size, what cycle length?
- “Tell me about the last account you opened from scratch.” Who was the first contact, how did you find them, how many attempts before the first reply, who signed, how long from first contact to signature?
- “Walk me through a typical prospecting week.” How many hours blocked out, which channels, what volume of contacts, how many meetings booked. A hunter answers with orders of magnitude without hesitating, because they track them.
- “Where did your meetings come from: your own prospecting, marketing, a colleague, your clients?” This separates hunting from converting inbound leads.
- “Tell me about a deal you lost to a competitor.” What you want: a clear-eyed analysis, a concrete lesson, and no blaming the product or the price.
Three follow-ups are enough for each answer: “What exactly did you do?”, “What happened next?”, “How do you know?”. A story that was lived gets richer with each follow-up. A borrowed one turns vague, slips into “we”, or drifts back to generalities. We have gathered the full set of Business Developer interview questions, beyond hunting alone, in a dedicated article.
Which role-plays reveal a real hunter?
Role-play is the most revealing tool, provided it is built on your own market and scored against a scorecard. Three formats are enough.
The simulated cold call
You play a realistic decision-maker from your target market, with a written brief handed to the candidate fifteen minutes beforehand: sector, size, contact, current situation. During the call, raise two objections prepared in advance, for example “we already have a supplier” and “just send me some information”. Watch the first thirty seconds, whether they ask a question before pitching, how they hold up under refusal and, above all, how the call ends: do they get a dated meeting, or settle for sending an email?
The prospecting plan for a segment
Give them one segment of your market and ask, after a short preparation, how they would attack it in their first ninety days: which targets first, which contacts, which channels, what level of activity, and which indicators would tell them after one month that they are on track.
The outreach message and its follow-up
Ask for a first written message to a fictitious prospect, then the follow-up sent a week later after no reply. A good message is short, personalised, focused on the prospect’s problem and ends with a simple request. A good follow-up brings something new instead of repeating the first message.
These tests come with rules in Belgium. Collective labour agreement no. 38 (text in French), published by the Federal Public Service Employment, provides that the cost of tests and examinations ordered by the employer is borne by the employer, that productive work requested as a practical test must not last longer than needed to assess the candidate’s abilities, and that travel should be limited by grouping tests together. In practice: a short, fictitious exercise is fine; having a candidate prospect your real database for free for a day is not. Questions must stay relevant to the role, and all information about the candidate is treated confidentially.
How can references confirm hunting ability?
Reference checks are often reduced to a courtesy call. Done properly, they are the most direct way to cross-check what the candidate told you. They are carried out with the candidate’s consent, with people the candidate names, and never with the current employer without explicit agreement.
Favour the former line manager, who saw the pipeline week after week. Ask factual questions rather than for an overall opinion: what share of results came from accounts the candidate opened, where their meetings came from, how they behaved after a run of rejections, what they needed in order to perform, and whether the manager would hire them again for a pure new-business role. Then compare the answers with the figures and stories from the interview. A discrepancy sometimes has a simple explanation: ask the candidate for it before drawing conclusions.
What an assessment and the KOAN test add
Questions, role-play and references tell you what the candidate has done and can do. They say less about what keeps them going when replies do not come, and how they react under pressure. That is the part an assessment makes readable.
At Archetype, an assessment rests on four components: a deep-dive interview, role-plays and a case study, a competency analysis, and the KOAN personality test, the assessment tool we have used for thirty years. KOAN analyses three dimensions: competencies, drivers (what moves the person forward and what holds them back) and behavioural dynamics, meaning how they react under pressure, within a team and in the face of change. Its competency model for sales profiles covers ten dimensions, several of which speak directly to hunting: perseverance, results orientation, influencing strategies, communicating and networking, and responsiveness.
The assessment is calibrated to how critical the role is, in a one, two or three-hour format, priced between €1,500 and €3,000. It usually takes place with the finalists, as part of an assessment for recruitment, and ends with a spoken debrief that compares the results with the target profile. On its own, a personality test is not a hiring decision: it sheds light on the areas the interview could not settle.
The hunting skills scorecard
Write the scorecard before the first interview, based on the role profile, and apply it identically to every candidate. Score each criterion from 1 to 4 (insufficient, developing, solid, outstanding), ideally with two assessors who score separately and then compare. Weight it to your context: a pure market-opening role will put more weight on the first three rows.
| Criterion | Strong signal | Warning sign | How to assess it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building pipeline from scratch | Share of new accounts quantified, dated examples, meetings from own prospecting | Results from an inherited portfolio or inbound leads, vague figures | Evidence questions, references |
| Activity discipline | Prospecting slots blocked out, volumes known without hesitation, tracked in the CRM | “I prospect when I have time” | Typical week, 90-day plan |
| Opening a cold conversation | Short opener, a question about the prospect before presenting the offer | Product monologue from the first sentence | Simulated cold call |
| Qualification | Quickly checks need, decision-maker, timing and budget | Keeps prospects with no project out of optimism | Simulated call, lost-deal story |
| Handling rejection and perseverance | Rephrases the objection and answers with a fact, follows up with something new | Gives up at the first objection or pushes without listening | Prepared objections, references, KOAN |
| Securing the next step | Ends every exchange with a meeting or a dated action | Accepts “send me some information” | Simulated call, behaviour during the process |
| Preparation and research | Knows your clients and competitors, puts forward a target hypothesis | Discovers your company during the interview | First interview, prospecting plan |
| Written outreach | Short, personalised message, clear ask, follow-up that adds something new | Generic text, follow-up that repeats the first message | Outreach message and follow-up |
| Drivers and reaction under pressure | Drivers compatible with the solitude of new business and with your team culture | Need for structure or immediate recognition that does not fit the role | Assessment, KOAN test |
Also set a knock-out threshold, for example no candidate shortlisted with a 1 on building pipeline, whatever their overall score. This rule protects you from the halo effect.
The mistakes that cost you a hire
The most common is mistaking verbal ease for hunting ability. A candidate who runs the interview brilliantly may never have survived a week of cold prospecting. The scorecard and the role-play correct this bias.
The second is looking for a hunter without giving them the means to hunt: a vague territory, no defined targets, a package that rewards account management rather than acquisition. A good hunter asks about all of this in the interview and walks away if the answers do not hold up. To calibrate pay, use our analysis of Business Developer salaries in Belgium.
The third is assessing every context with the same scorecard. The hunter who thrives in a scale-up with no process is not the one who thrives in a structured mid-sized company with a demanding CRM. If you are hiring for a young company, also read our article on the Business Developer profile for a startup.
Frequently asked questions
How can you tell whether a salesperson is a hunter?
Ask what share of their revenue came from clients they opened themselves and where their meetings came from. A hunter answers with precise figures, describes an account opened from scratch in detail and outlines a prospecting routine they genuinely follow.
Which role-play should you give a Business Developer candidate?
A fifteen to twenty-minute simulated cold call to a fictitious prospect from your market, with two prepared objections, plus a 90-day prospecting plan or an outreach message with its follow-up. Keep the exercise short and fictitious, in line with Belgian collective agreement no. 38.
Which KPIs should you use to assess a Business Developer?
At hiring stage: new accounts opened, deal size and cycle, prospecting activity volume and where meetings came from. Once in the role: meetings booked, qualified opportunities created, pipeline value and new clients signed.
Is an online test enough to assess prospecting skills?
No. A questionnaire measures knowledge or preferences, not behaviour in front of a real refusal. It usefully complements a role-play, references and an evidence-based interview, but it does not replace them.
What should you ask during reference checks?
With the candidate’s consent, ask their former manager what share of results came from accounts they opened, where their meetings came from, how they reacted after a run of rejections and whether they would hire them again for a new-business role.
If you would like your scorecard challenged, or an outside view on your finalists, discover our approach to Business Developer recruitment in Belgium: it starts on the very first call, by defining what “hunting” means in your market.
