Hiring the right salesperson for your team can be tricky. You not only need someone with the right experience and talents, but the right personality and flare for selling what your business offers. Additionally, the chance of hiring the wrong person is a bit higher in this category than in other industries; the turnover of salespeople in the U.S. is 27%, double the rate of the overall turnover average. Since it can cost up to $240,000 to recruit, hire, and train a new sales rep, according to one study, having a very strategic, effective hiring process is important. Here are four tools you’ll need to include in that process.
1. A Well-Written Job Description/Ad Post
This is something many businesses fail to get right. Most spend too much time writing out every single job responsibility of the position, which overwhelms readers. Some write too little, failing to give a clear description of the job, which is confusing to readers. You want to write a clear, concise job description outlined with section titles describing your product or service, the key tasks and responsibilities of the job, the job requirements and qualifications, and your company culture/vision.
When outlining responsibilities, use bullets—several of them is enough. If it’s too long of a list, again, people get overwhelmed and also wonder which tasks are most important. You can also leave a bulleted list of the job requirements.
When sharing more about your company and it’s vision, make sure it’s written in your business’ tone of voice and aligned with its brand. It should also have a sense of excitement. Think about enticing your perfect candidate by sharing what would benefit them most by being a member of your team.
Make sure to leave a salary range in the ad. You don’t want to waste others’ time by allowing them to apply for something not in their range, and you don’t want to waste your own time sifting through candidates who won’t accept what you can offer.
2. A Digital Job Advertising Tool
You want to put your ad in places your perfect candidate will frequent. LinkedIn is a great place because you can advertise your job to those looking for work and those who already have positions. LinkedIn also has a fabulous add-on called LinkedIn Recruiter that gives you advanced tools for filtering and narrowing searches for good candidates. You can also filter those who’ve applied for your posted position, easily allowing you to weed out bad matches or move good matches to the top.
There are other online job boards you can use that will put your post in front of sales professionals only, such as SalesHeads and SalesGravy. If you work for a startup, you can post your job on AngelList; it allows startups to post open positions for free.
3. A List of the Perfect Interview Questions
A talent study commissioned by Glassdoor found companies without a standardized interviewing process are five times more likely to make a bad hiring choice compared to those who have a clear process. Part of your interview process should include a standard list of questions you ask every candidate. First, if you ask the same questions of every candidate, you’re able to compare their answers. Second, compiling a list allows you to create questions you can use to identify their experiences, goals, priorities, work-ethic, and personality. You can see a thorough list of possible sales questions HERE.
4. A Sales Assessment Tool
There are many sales assessment tools you can use to test a candidate’s sales knowledge, skills, and aptitude. You could also use popular personality indicator tests like Meyers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, and the Caliper Profile, especially if you’re wanting to see how someone will fit with other personalities on your team. Whatever assessments or tests you choose, you want to pick ones that align with your company’s specific needs and ones that have been validated. For example, does it fulfill criteria that make it scientifically valid and does it pose questions a candidate would have to answer honestly instead of answering with what they think the interviewer wants to hear? In talking with other sales managers, you’ll probably get information about which assessments they’ve liked using and why.
Did you know that, according to a 2018 talent study, it takes a full year for a new sales rep to reach full productivity? The team at Sales Arbiter develops sales teams so they can be fully productive and you can maximize their potential. Contact us to learn more about how we get the most out of sales teams.
