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Finding an excellent salesperson for your company can be really difficult. There’s no universal plan that you can follow to make a successful hire. Usually, it takes good judgment, finesse, and a little bit of pure luck to find the right candidate and bring him or her on board. Yet, there are certain steps that you can take to set yourself in the right direction and increase your chances of hiring top-tier salespeople.
Interested to know more? Here are the top five tips to find and hire a great salesperson.
1. Craft a Hiring Profile
As a business owner, you need to build a hiring profile that identifies the type of salespeople you want to recruit. From the skills you are looking for to the overall background and experience, everything should be covered under the hiring profile.
It’s crucial for the profile to state specifically what your company considers relevant experience, instead of using broad or vague jargon. For instance, salespersons to sell insurance will need to have a different skill set and experience than their counterparts entrusted with selling SaaS products. It’s also important to avoid fluffy language like “high performing” in your hiring profile.
It’s much better to focus on the specifics needed, like the type of product and target audience to sell to. This means if your company needs to sell, for example, financial, healthcare, tech, or IT products to the CEOs, COOs, etc., the hiring profile should clearly mention it. Expertise in handling particular technology, tool, application, or software should also be mentioned with clarity.
2. Create a Winning Job Description
To hire competent salespeople, you need to attract the top talent. But how do you do it? It’s simple – by creating a winning job description. Since sales positions are highly competitive, it’s often challenging to find and hire candidates with the right blend of skills and experience. But with a well-crafted job description, you can make the process a bit easier and faster.
As a business leader, you need to ensure that your company’s job description is clear and concise. From your company’s products and/or services to the new hire’s key tasks and responsibilities, earning potential, and the company’s corporate culture, mission, and vision, and how the candidate is expected to fit into your team, the crucial details need to be an integral part of your job description.
Additionally, it should highlight the benefits of working for your company. From a competitive salary, growth opportunities, and commission structure to perks and benefits like yearly paid vacations, discounted gym memberships, or attractive deals on company products, the benefits should be laid out clearly.
3. Broaden the Hiring Net
When you are looking to hire salespeople, your job doesn’t end with creating a hiring profile and job description. Instead of waiting for the right candidates to apply for the open role, you should proactively try finding them.
Be it finding and approaching potential candidates on job boards and social media, asking your professional networks (say on LinkedIn) to refer and suggest candidates, or asking your in-house employees to refer candidates, you should do whatever it takes to broaden your hiring net to find the right people.
You could even approach passive candidates who fit the hiring profile to see if they are interested in the job. Though these professionals may not be actively looking for a job change, a bit of cajoling and the right job offer could sway them in your favour. You may even hire headhunters to accelerate the recruitment process if the above steps don’t yield satisfactory results.
4. Manage the Recruitment Process Well
Your hiring process should appeal to your ideal candidates and encourage them to take an interest in the open position. Not sure how to ensure this? Your job description should be crafted in an appealing and concise way and put on sites where your target candidates spend time (which could be specific job boards or social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc).
It also pays to make the application process fast and easy. Instead of having a lengthy application process that may drive people away or irritate them, curb it to a minimal one. For instance, a process where the candidates just need to upload a resume and fill in the basics (like name, phone number, etc.) should suffice.
Screening and evaluation (via 2- or 3-step interview) should be planned well to ensure at the end of the process, you have a shortlist of the top candidates.
5. Put in the Effort to Retain Them
Hiring excellent salespeople just to let them go after a few months would mean all your time, effort, and money invested in the recruitment process went down the drain. It’s vital to work to retain your top sales talent.
From fostering a positive corporate culture and focusing on DE&I to providing your sales teams with a positive work environment, adequate growth and training opportunities, and timely recognition and rewards, along with competitive compensation packages, you should ensure all these crucial elements are on offer to keep them happy and motivated.
It’s not uncommon for your top salespeople to be poached with multiple job offers with better pay packages. Though you can’t guarantee they won’t budge, you can always ensure they are happy and motivated working for you so that they have one reason less to look for or consider a job change.
Final Words
Now that you know how to hire the right salespeople for your company and retain them, use the tips above to hire well. And if it doesn’t work out as planned, you have always our team of expert headhunters at InHunt World to do the job for you. Call us today!
This article was written by Sonali