5 Steps to Recruiting Sales Reps That Will Drive Your Vision Forward
You are in an exciting new phase of your business: building a sales machine by recruiting sales reps. Perhaps you have been handling the sales up to this point. Maybe you have relied on inbound leads. Whatever the case, you are ready to accelerate your business’ growth. It’s a thrilling phase to be in, but it’s also an overwhelming phase.
Building your first sales team is a lot of pressure. That pressure comes from your vision for your future heavily relying on a strong sales team. At the same time, you are no expert in recruiting sales reps. Being at a crossroad, the first thing you need to realize is you must get expert help to be successful. Recruiting sales reps is a learned and developed skill. A skill you may not have, but a skill other professionals do have (and you can leverage that).
Developed by the experts at Sales Recruiters Denver, here are the five steps to recruiting sales reps. Not just any sales reps – those that will drive your vision forward and accelerate your growth.
5 Steps to Recruiting Sales Reps
There are two versions of a sales team you could build. One version is built independently. You could simply post a sales job, and interview candidates yourself. Sure, you can certainly hire salespeople that way. But they won’t be the best salespeople for your organization nor your goals for the future.
The other version of a sales team you build requires immense intention at every step. It requires a thorough understanding of the type of salespeople to include in your team. It requires a clearly defined territory map. It also requires expertise in recruiting sales reps to separate quality candidates from those with great lip service. Our team of professionals at Sales Recruiters Denver is here to help you build the second version of a sales team. That version starts with step number one below.
1. Define Your Vision, Goals, and Tactics
Don’t start recruiting sales reps by searching “sales headhunters near me” on Google. The first step to recruiting sales reps begins well before interviews. You first need to define your vision for the future of your business. Your vision is what your salespeople will rally behind. It needs to be clear and inspiring. You may already have a clear vision established. If that is the case, it is still beneficial to ensure you have structure to drive your vision forward. Structure looks like measurable goals and tactics that align what you do today with your vision for the future.
Using Your Vision to Set Goals
Your vision is your guiding light to set goals that will enable you to achieve your vision. While your vision is constant, the goals you set can be changed as your business evolves. With that said, they should reflect time-bound aspirations. In the next 1-5 years, what do you hope to accomplish with your business? Be specific so you can then create tactics to achieve your goals. Those tactics will uncover needs you have for your sales staff, so they are particularly beneficial to recruiting sales reps.
Tactics to Achieve Your Goals
Tactics are the small steps your organization will take in order to remain in alignment with your goals and vision. Tactics will likely include revenue benchmarks to hit, client profile of your target audience, and how you will bring in clients. The way in which you bring in clients has a large impact on your hiring. For instance, you will want to have a balance of both inbound leads and leads salespeople obtain. Spend time identifying what a realistic balance of lead allocation is, as well as requirements to achieve your revenue benchmarks. Both of those factors will drive the amount of salespeople you need to hire.
2. Establish Your Territories
Your next step in building a sales team is to establish your key sales territories. Not your territories today, but the territories you need to target for the future state of your business. This is an opportunity to leverage the client profile you created previously. The number of territories you establish initially will hinge on what makes sense for your business as well as projected sales volume. As an example, if you aim to achieve $10 million in sales in the future, and you believe an up-and-running sales rep could bring in $1 million themselves, you need 10 territories.
Start Modestly
What is vital to keep in mind with salespeople and territories is that they are challenging to take away. Great salespeople have a lot of pride in their territories (and don’t want to share them). Once you give a salesperson a territory, taking it away later could prompt that salesperson to leave. Start by diving up territories modestly. You can always expand them later if you find it makes sense for your business.
Territories Drive Recruiting
Recruiting sales reps is very closely tied to your territories – in a couple of ways. The first tie is simply numbers. You need to hire enough salespeople to cover all of your territories. Said differently, your territories are your hiring goal. The second tie is in where salespeople will be located (or where they’re familiar with). There is something to be said about familiarity with people in a particular community aiding in conversion rates. While it isn’t a requirement salespeople be familiar with their territory before getting hired, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
3. Identify What You Can (And Cannot) Provide
Your third step to recruiting sales reps keeps you in the “planning stage” for a bit longer. We meant it when we said a great deal of intention goes into building a powerful sales machine. Next, you need to understand what you can and cannot provide. You may also look at this step as things you do and do not have the bandwidth or resources for. Below are some considerations.
Can you train salespeople?
Training takes time. Beyond that, training requires an experienced professional to provide the training. Do you have the ability to provide either of those? Perhaps you have been handling your business’ sales yourself up to this point. Realistically, can your capacity handle training a team of salespeople? Do you have the time to train one salesperson, who would be entrusted to train the rest? Can your business be sustained while your sales staff is in the training phase? If you have the time and resources to train salespeople, that will tell you that you can hire lesser experienced employees. If not, you will need to invest in an experienced professional (or a few). Nonetheless, the answer to this question has a profound influence on the types of candidates you will target when you are recruiting sales reps.
Do you have the marketing resources to provide leads?
In its current state, can your marketing efforts provide your salespeople with leads? Different salespeople have different skillsets. They also have preferences. It’s best to be transparent around how much prospecting salespeople will need to do themselves. In order to be transparent, you need to evaluate whether you can provide leads. If so, what percentage of a salesperson’s leads will be provided? Keep in mind the conversion rate of the leads you can provide, and your revenue goals discussed previously. Those factors combined influence the amount of prospecting you need your salesforce to handle.
What will your compensation structure be?
When you are building your first sales team, you need to realize that compensation is the primary motivator for salespeople. Likely, these individuals are in sales to have a greater influence over their income. With that said, how will you structure their compensation? You will need to consider what you can afford to offer, if you plan to provide any benefits, and how you want to handle phases of a salesperson’s employment. Phases look like compensation through training, where they will have lower commissions. Additionally, another phase is when salespeople perform highly – how will they be rewarded? Every salesperson will expect to know what their compensation structure looks like in interviews. You need to know what compensation structure you will offer before recruiting sales reps.
4. Partner with Sales Recruiting Experts
Recruiting sales reps that are in alignment with your organizational goals is a time-consuming challenge. You have a list of ten other responsibilities that need your attention – delegate recruiting sales reps to experts in the field. As you begin searching for “headhunters near me,” keep the following top of mind for the best results.
Sales Expertise is Key
Salespeople are a very unique type of candidate. They are exceptional conversationalists. They can leave people feeling optimistic after an interview with even an average salesperson. If you are recruiting sales reps that are among the best, you need an expert to separate decent from amazing. Otherwise, you risk hiring a salesperson that can sell themselves… and nothing more. All of this in mind, you should be specifically looking for sales recruiters. They can spot a good candidate from a great one at a resume glance. In addition, they know precisely what to ask in interviews to clearly understand a salesperson’s past performance. The old saying is certainly true of salespeople: past performance is the best indicator of future performance.
No Two Headhunters Are Created Equal
Two companies that specialize in recruiting sales reps can lead to starkly different outcomes. Key differentiators between sales recruiting companies are their knowledge in the industry, professional networks, and how they collaborate with their clients. You can get a sense of how knowledgeable a recruiting company is based on their website. You may also be able to understand their high-level reputation through reviews. Before you hire a headhunter, spend time interviewing a couple on your list to feel confident in your choice.
Spend Time Aligning with Your Headhunter
Once you have identified the sales recruiting company you want to partner with, you need to spend time educating them. This is where the work you put into steps 1-3 will be particularly helpful. If you approached the first few steps appropriately, alignment with your headhunter will be seamless. The goal of your alignment conversation is to ensure your headhunter knows exactly what you are looking for with a sales team. Recruiting sales reps looks different from one organization to the next. Your goal in your alignment conversation is to showcase what you uniquely need from your salespeople. Following your conversation, your headhunter can hit the ground running – finding you exceptional candidates for step five.
5. Conduct Sales Interviews
Though partnering with sales recruiting experts alleviates you of much of the recruiting responsibilities, you will still conduct interviews. After all, you won’t feel comfortable hiring a salesperson you have never spoken with. A great headhunter will give you detailed notes on the candidates you will be interviewing. You can also ask for advice on how to structure the remaining questions you have. Again, interviewing salespeople requires you to separate great conversationalists from actual performers. Here are some questions that can help you with that as you are recruiting sales reps.
“Tell me about your most recent performance metrics.”
Numbers don’t lie. Likely, neither does a sales candidate in an interview. However, numbers cannot charm you into a false sense of confidence like a mediocre salesperson can. Asking for specific performance metrics is a great way to separate fantastic salespeople from the rest. A strong salesperson takes great pride in their performance metrics, so they happily share them. If you get an indirect response to this question, you are not speaking with a salesperson you should hire.
“Walk me through your current sales pitch.”
Depending on your services or products, you may not be able to ask a candidate to sell your own product/service to you. However, you can certainly have them share their current pitch. How do you feel about their approach? If you didn’t particularly like their pitch, are they coachable?
“What questions can I answer for you?”
A strong sales candidate will have questions for you. In fact, coming up with thoughtful questions is an important part of their success as a salesperson. If a candidate has questions prepared that allow them to better understand your organization and your expectations, fantastic. That is a signal they are motivated and interested.
Recruiting Sales Reps Requires Recruiting Help
With the five steps to recruiting sales reps in mind, you are likely left feeling as though you have some homework. And you do. Of course, you need to spend time defining your vision, goals, and tactics. You also need to establish your territories and what you can offer your sales staff. Your next action item is to partner with a top-notch sales recruiting company. We shared considerations to find the best company, one of which being conducting interviews. To ensure you are set up for success as you are recruiting sales reps, let’s dive into how to conduct effective interviews with recruiting companies. Below are great questions to ask during your initial conversations.
“How do you involve your clients in your process?”
You don’t want to feel as though you have to be involved in the recruiting process constantly. That said, you should always know what is going on. A great sales recruiting company will have an established process that includes proactive pipeline communication. The more confident you feel in their communication, the more confidently you can focus your time elsewhere.
“What is your approach to fulfilling a new contract?”
We mentioned great sales recruiting companies have strong networks. That isn’t something you can easily assess on their website. You can certainly assess their network in an interview, though. Perhaps more importantly, you can evaluate whether leveraging their network is integrated in their typical process. By not directly asking about their network, you have the opportunity to see if it is a point of pride. If it is, they will happily showcase it in response to this question.
“What timeframe can I expect my hiring need to be filled in?”
You have a business to run, which likely hinges on getting your sales staff up and running. Recruiting sales reps takes time. Good sales recruiting companies will be able to share an estimate of how much time it will take to fill your need.
Recruiting sales reps is certainly easier said than done. It requires an immense amount of intention and strategic partnerships. While there is work to be done before you make your first sales hire, every step in the process is worthwhile. Your sales team is vital to you achieving your vision for the future. Given their importance, you will never regret taking your time and using the right resources. If you do, you will look back on the journey to building your sales machine with nothing but pride.