What is the Best way to Recruit Sales Talent

[BizNet]

I need help recruiting sales people. (two). I am not linking the resumes I see online and want to attract "A's" Suggestions on a strategy would be greatly appreciated.

[missy]

hiring sales people is as tough as it's ever been. if you want to hire and keep top talent, create a company culture where the best employees want to work.

[David Sandusky]

As in any recruiting strategy, first thing is to be sure you understand your culture and brand beginning with core value based mission and vision. Specifically for hiring sales people, the company needs to understand the sales culture. As an executive recruiter who has hired many sales executives and sales professionals, I always note compensation as a factor in the sales culture. Think about the balance between base salary and commissions or performance based compensation. Sales people love to produce and the best ones look for benefits based on performance and no cap in earnings. Think about that category.

You mentioned not liking resumes you see. Great sales people are on the streets doing it. Don't look for resumes, look for sales people. Identify the top producers in the industry you target (or any industry where sales process would be shared) and call them. Seriously. That is how you get great sales people.

When I was looking for researchers in executive recruiting who would have a few years experience, we looked at places like Enterprise Rent-A-Car. No recruiters there. We looked for excellent customer service and the people promoted to manager in two years from college are great catches we found. That is a compliment to Enterprise training. Think out of the box and target the people.

[lailei]

resumes aren't enough when looking for a sales talent, what really matters is how they speak and how they interact with other people. they need to be good at inviting and convincing people to come over your business, if they got a good convincing power then I think they have what you are looking for.

[Scott Smeester]

It is no longer acceptable to guess if a salesperson will actually be able to sell for you or not, regardless of how great their resume looks or how well they personally connect to you in an interview. You need to be able to know, BEFORE YOU EVEN MEET, that the sales candidate you are interviewing has the skills so they can sell what you’re selling and the motivation so they will sell what you’re selling. You need to know a reliable and repeatable sales recruitment process that weeds out non-performers even, before you interview them.

Here's how I recommend you hire sales talent:

1. Start with a complete profiling of the position that will define the most important characteristics of candidates to give the best possibility of success.

2. Create an affective advertisement to attract quality candidates from the profile, while at the same time making sure you weed out candidates who won't work. Write, test, place and promote the advertisements.

3. Use a powerful sales candidate assessment tool to test all candidates for sales skills and motivation. You need an assessment that will determine if the candidates have the necessary motivation and positive outlook to maximize their chance for success. In addition, this assessment needs to be able filter out inferior candidates who possess negative sales scripts (such as a bad buy cycle) that greatly decreases the candidates chances of success. And one last thing... the assessments needs to deliver a complete report for each of the candidates who are selected for employment as a record of their weaknesses for the purposes of management.

4. Implement a phone screen process to make sure the candidates possess the necessary phone skills, confidence and presence to call on and have meaningful business related conversations with decision makers.

5. Conduct the interview process to make sure the candidate can handle pressure sales situations as well as preparing the candidates to make the decision to accept an offer.

Hope this helps!