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“Sales recruiting…is it always this bad?”
If you know me, you know I think recruiting sucks…. but it doesn’t have to!
However, sales recruiting is another beast entirely.
It can feel impossible to consistently find and recruit high-performing salespeople.
Every organization lives or dies by its ability to drive revenue.
But how can you do that if you can’t hire salespeople that perform?
If you’re having trouble recruiting salespeople, let’s look at a few of the reasons why sales recruiting sucks…and what you can do to make better hires.
Losing Sight of What’s Most Important in Sales Recruiting
At the end of the day, recruiters for sales roles should be laser focused on a candidate’s ability to drive revenue, followed by how they will mesh with their leader and team.
But part of the problem is that salespeople can be great talkers. No one can sell themselves better than a salesperson. While sales recruiting, it’s key to take a step back and look at their actual record of performance.
And how many times do recruiters get caught up in degrees or years of experience? These qualifications have almost ZERO bearing on how well a candidate will deliver on the job!
Recruiters need to closely look at how much revenue a candidate has driven, how they have met or exceeded quotas, and importantly, what environment the person was selling in.
If someone has crushed their quotas in a radically different environment than yours, you need to take that with a large grain of salt.
Structured interviews like Results-Based Interviewing are another great way to make sure you stay focused on what really counts. It’s important not to let bias and personal attitudes affect the selection process.
Sales Recruiters Don’t Care About Quality of Hire
One of the biggest challenges in recruiting (sales or otherwise) is that many recruiters don’t believe they’re responsible for quality of hire.
Maybe quality of hire isn’t a recruiting KPI, or maybe the recruiters won’t take ownership because they’re not the ones that make the final decision.
But here’s the thing. Recruiters may not make the final decision, but they wield a TON of influence on the process.
Great recruiters don’t just present candidates. They ask thoughtful questions to help understand and refine your candidate profile.
Going a step further, they should be counseling the hiring manager on the opportunities and challenges presented by the current talent market.
Maybe they recommend you actually search outside your industry because competition is too fierce in your line of work. Alternatively, they might recommend you search for more junior level sales professionals who are crushing it and ready for a promotion to better fit your budget.
Whatever the case, recruiters should be providing recommendations based on extensive experience with sales recruiting and navigating your industry’s talent market.
In short, they should be influencing the hiring manager on how they can best meet their sales goals through candidate selection.
Recruiters ARE responsible for quality of hire. If they don’t believe this and aren’t measured by it, is it really any wonder you can’t hire the right people?
If your sales hires suck, consider making quality of hire a KPI by tracking revenue of new hires!
Recruiters Aren’t Using the Right Tools for Sales Recruiting
Few things are more important to your organization long-term than your ability to drive more revenue.
Unfortunately, many companies still view recruiting as a necessary evil.
But what if we instead looked at recruiting as our path to building tomorrow’s dream team in sales?
Once you appreciate the tremendous value that can come from great sales recruiting, you recognize it’s well worth it to invest in the right tools.
Recently, my company Qualigence became a partner of Perception Predict, a sales arbitrage platform.
In short, it offers highly accurate predictions of how well each candidate would perform on your specific sales team in your specific circumstances.
It analyzes every member of your existing team to create a “performance fingerprint” for YOUR unique organization and team as it is today.
That way, you can understand which candidates will excel and which will fail in the same roles and same environment as your current team – whether that’s a mature vs new market, hunting vs. farming, etc.
Perception Predict allows you to identify which characteristics correlate with higher sales attainment, and which ones actually lead to lower sales attainment. This is key during sales recruiting.
For example, it’s universally believed that an attention-to-detail is a beneficial competency – but Perception Predict might reveal a different lesson in the data. It might show that on a specific team, an attention-to-detail actually correlates with underperformance in sales.
It allows you to not just pick the best sales talent, but the best sales talent for YOUR team while predicting specific sales attainment. It’s almost like cloning your best salespeople.
Perception Predict also allows you to identify which members of your team would benefit most from additional training and coaching.
You can predict the earning potential of each candidate and member of your team and spend your limited resources accordingly to maximize revenue.
We partnered with Perception Predict because we believed companies deserved better sales hires. With an option like this available, why leave it on the table?
Tomorrow’s Dream Team is Built Today
The people you recruit today determine whether you crush your goals or slowly fade away.
Nowhere is this truer than on your sales team.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, I challenge you to ask yourself one question…are you willing to put in the work to shake up the status quo and start making killer sales hires?
Or will you accept business as usual and just hope for the best?
Your sales recruiting is building the foundation for tomorrow’s success. Plan accordingly!
If you’re interested in learning how you can drive record revenue just by making better hires, schedule a call with me today by clicking HERE.
Article authored by Qualigence CEO & founder Steve Lowisz