Maximize Your Hiring Efficiency with These Sales Recruitment Strategies

From Job Description to Onboarding: Mastering the Sales Team Hiring Process

A successful hire can significantly impact your company’s growth and profitability. Unfortunately, many companies can take over a month to locate, interview, and hire new sales staff because of the pressure to find quality hires.

The problem is that the time it takes to bring in new sales staff can hinder your sales team’s ability to do their job effectively and result in lost potential revenue for the business. And a flawed hiring process will cost you time and resources.

This is why it’s critical to streamline your hiring procedure to make it more effective and efficient.

Here are some essential things to remember when building a better hiring process.

Know What You Want

Hiring new salespeople involves a significant financial investment. With this in mind, you should first create a detailed and precise job description.

Your ideal description should include particulars about the job profile and the skills necessary for the position. In addition, include related keywords so that your job posting will appear in the relevant searches.

When crafting your job description, consult with the relevant department heads in formulating an appropriate description. Concentrate on the characteristics and qualities you seek in the prospective employee and your performance expectations.

Qualified candidates actively searching for a new sales position will be more likely to apply if the job description is detailed and easy to understand. However, if you don’t take the time to do it right at the beginning, you could wind up spending a significant amount of time vetting a pool of poorly-matched applicants.

Check that the job description includes what expectations and relevant skills you desire for the role.

Optimize Your Screening Process

Designing a complex round-by-round interview process only sometimes results in the best hiring. Instead, it can bury you in extra work while, at the same time, wearing the candidate out. However, if you plan your hiring process carefully, you can complete more work in less time and swiftly fill your open positions with successful salespeople.

Phone screening is often an effective tool for determining if an applicant satisfies your fundamental requirements. You can use this screening to confirm the details listed on the resume, tell them about the position, learn about their expectations regarding compensation, and fill in any information gaps that may have come up. It’s also a great opportunity to “sell” the candidate on the opportunity and get them excited enough to continue the process.

Moving forward, schedule the one-on-one interviews. Try to schedule up to three in one day. Write out your questions ahead of time and have all your notes prepared in advance. This gives the interviewee a good impression of the company and allows her to be more prepared. You can even share these questions with the applicants so they are better prepared.

Following this, you can move on to a skills test and schedule an interview with executive-level decision-makers, if applicable.

Make Things Easier for Everyone

Leverage technology that makes organizing meetings, sending reminders, and scheduling candidate interviews simple. You can do this with any number of applicant tracking systems available commercially. Make the data shareable with other hiring team members, so everyone is on the same page.

Consider whether the platform (online or otherwise) the applicant is using to apply for the position is user-friendly and simple to use. Ask yourself if the details you request are necessary for a good interview. Make most of your questions that may not be answered by looking at their resume.

You can also make it easier for the applicant to find the posted sales position, to begin with. Choose a few well-known and related job sites to publish the advertisement on, use social media, and take advantage of professional forums like LinkedIn.

Evaluating the Candidate

Confirm prior employment experience and perform background checks when needed. Verbal and numerical reasoning tests can be helpful, as can tests on logical reasoning. It’s best to ensure that professionals conduct these for the most accurate results.

Tests and background checks aside, consider the value a candidate will bring to the company and the technical qualifications needed for the position when hiring. Consider the candidate’s attitude and mindset to find a sales team member that will serve your company the best.

Specific Steps Companies Can Take to Streamline Hiring

You can simplify hiring and build a positive candidate experience by streamlining your process and respecting everyone’s time. Here are the specific steps to take:

Recruitment – Go to where the candidates are. Check LinkedIn and social media, or use the talents of a professional sales recruitment agency.
Screening – Choose the applicants you wish to spend time interviewing. Not every applicant who performs well during the screening process will be hireable.
Interviews – The goal of the interview is to learn more about the applicant and decide if they are a good fit. The typical difficulties at this stage include first-impression bias, poor communication, failure to prepare targeted questions, and ineffective use of technology.
Hiring – According to research, the time it takes to make a job offer after an interview is more than a month, which can, unfortunately, lower acceptance rates by 16%. Look to reduce the time it takes to hire new sales staff to stay competitive.
Onboarding – Onboarding gives new employees their first authentic taste of a typical day at your company. Successful onboarding boosts worker satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

Finding Top Talent with Rainmakers

The process of hiring top-tier salespeople should be a manageable burden. But, at the same time, successful hiring will greatly impact your business’s culture and success.

This is where you should consider the help of a professional sales recruitment firm for your hiring needs. An experienced sales recruiting agency such as Rainmakers can help guide your company to further growth and profit by finding and matching the very best sales candidates with your company.