Proven Techniques for Effective Recruitment and Strategic Hiring
Recruiting top-tier sales talent is critical to the success of your business. Sales is essential for revenue generation, customer acquisition, and setting your organization apart in a competitive marketplace. A great sales team doesn’t just close deals – they build long-term client relationships and often act as the face of your company, representing the brand in interactions with clients.
If you want to build a high-performing sales team, it’s essential to approach the recruitment process with a clear strategy that can be broken down into three key stages – outlining the essential elements you need before the search begins, executing the recruitment process by thoroughly assessing a candidates’ skills, experience, and potential, and finally, converting your top candidates into committed employees.
Keep reading to learn how to master these steps.
Recruiting and Hiring a Sales Team that's Not Just Good, but Exceptional
As with any successful recruiting initiative, before you start the process you need to have a couple of key elements outlined:
Define Clear Objectives and Expectations
Clearly outline the role, responsibilities, and performance expectations of the sales job.
Identify revenue targets such as the number of dials or cold-calls per day, as well as the number of meetings that need to be set, etc.
Create a Salesperson Persona
You can reference your current highest performing salespeople to create an ideal sales persona you will use to guide your recruiting efforts. Start by listing their characteristics such as background and experience, selling style, motivations, and more.
Create an Enticing Job Description
Be clear, concise, and honest about the experience and skills that you’re looking for in the role, as well as the salary range, benefits, etc. that you offer as an organization and why they should come to work with your company.
This includes presenting job responsibilities and expectations, such as a brief description of the typical day and duties of a salesperson, as well as opportunities to shine and grow – this latter point is especially important for entry-level positions.
Be specific about the onboarding process and how they will begin working with your organization – what should they be able to do within the first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, etc.?
Ask for Referrals from Your Current Employees
Sometimes the best talent can be found by taking a closer look at your current team and their network.
However, do not feel compelled to give referred candidates a chance simply because they were recommended. If they don’t meet the qualifications, thank everyone for their efforts and continue the search.
Once you have your pre-recruiting key elements and recruiting plan outlined, it’s time to start the recruiting process itself by assessing skills, experience, and potential:
Pre-Screen Applicants
Keep the duties of the job that you already outlined and identified in mind, eliminating candidates who don’t meet the basic requirements.
Then, interview your top candidates who meet these basic requirements and more, and ask questions in the following areas to ensure you are getting a full and well-rounded representation of them as a person and as an employee. The first category of questions should be about their experience to ensure it aligns with the key performance indicators (KPI) of your current sales team. A couple of example questions regarding experience include:
What is your average deal size?
How long is your average sales cycle?
What are the roles of the buyers you are targeting? (i.e. CEO, CFO, IT, HR, etc.)
What are your current goals or targets?
You should also ask questions that are specifically sales-focused. A couple of example questions regarding sales include:
What is your strategy for cold-calling?
Tell me the story behind your most successful sale.
How do you stay motivated?
Tell me a mistake you made in your sales career that has shaped your approach to sales today.
Lastly, it’s important to ask questions that ensure if a candidate is a good cultural fit for your organization or not. A couple of example questions regarding cultural fit include:
Why are you leaving your current company?
What are you looking for in your next opportunity?
Now that you’ve executed on your recruiting plan and selected top candidates, it’s time to convert those best candidates into new employees.
Converting Your Best Candidates
To convert that top talent recruit into your newest team member, it’s important to enhance the appeal of your employer brand. When it comes to sales, a good avenue to do this through is offering attractive, competitive on-target earnings (OTE).
Be prepared to answer questions regarding the OTE, including how the candidate can achieve it, how many reps hit the qualifying quota last year, and what last year’s top producer earned.
Then, it’s time to make your offer and be prepared to negotiate – these are salespeople you’re recruiting, after all. However, if your budget is set, it’s okay to let the candidate know that the offer cannot be negotiated.
We hope this helps you equip your sales team with top performers and industry leaders, and remember that if you ever need help with your hiring and recruiting efforts, Premier HR Solutions is here for you.
When you partner with Premier HR Solutions, you get a team of HR experts on your side with proven strategies for sourcing, attracting, and vetting top talent. We’ll work hand in hand with your decision makers to develop and execute a customized plan, digging deep to understand your business, workplace culture, and what success on the job looks like.
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