Effective Sales Hiring

Sales hiring is the most influential driver of success. Hiring right yields top revenue growth, encourages efficiency in development, and raises the talent bar. Hiring wrong costs the company money, dilutes development efforts, and lowers the talent bar.

Identifying and executing on the process required to hire right is the crucial initial step. Incorporating onboarding plans incentivized with clear career paths is a comprehensive approach that turns mediocre hiring into world class sales hiring. This comprehensive hiring process is the way to predictably hire top performing sales teams.

Step 1: Candidate Profile

Start with the unique characteristics of sales hires, which must fit the sales context. What needs to be sold? Thinking of buyer behavior, what attributes are necessary to be successful selling the product or service to the customer? Is the offering highly technical, requiring specialization? Or straightforward with a low level of complexity?

What are the points of differentiation for the offering? What experience, skills, education, and personal characteristics of the ideal salesperson are required? Is this role for new business development or to grow existing business? With those questions answered, a candidate profile will emerge.

Step 2: Position Descriptions

Position descriptions contain soundbites to be used when crafting job descriptions for publication. The initial draft can be created by the hiring manger, but several people in the organization should edit and review it to ensure it accurately conveys the core content of the internal position description. More importantly, the job description should be screened so it doesn’t appear to discriminate against anyone.

Step 3: Sourcing Talent

I’m a big advocate of hiring when there is no vacancy. It is good insurance to have some potential employees in mind for when the company expands or if a rep departs. The hiring process takes considerable time, and it carries opportunity costs and additional work for existing staff. The longer the position is open, the greater the cost and pressure on staff, which leads to substandard hires to get the position filled. Having a hotlist of potential hires is a great insurance policy. I invite sales leaders to watch salespeople in the wild. There’s no need for a formal interview until ready to pull the trigger to fill the position.

Observing potential employees when they’re in the throes of selling and don’t know they’re under consideration for a job is the best way to evaluate prospective sales employees in my opinion. For raw and unfiltered results, sales leaders should be open to those opportunities.

Networking to get warm intros and to connect with candidates is a fruitful avenue for sourcing. Getting introduced through network connections can be timely, particularly if there’s news of foreboding times at a prospect’s present company and the potential for good sales people to consider leaving. After being connected, planting seeds that your less volatile company with growth opportunities is looking for an ideal candidate, can only benefit you. Perhaps your connection isn’t interested, though they are willing to put you in touch with interested coworkers or others they know in their network. This approach generates momentum for sourcing solid candidates.

The next avenue to pursue is hiring outside of your sector or industry. When candidates meet the characteristics for successful sales hires (more on that shortly) and are selling something similar by derivation, it is worth considering as it opens the candidate pool.
What do I mean exactly? If your company sells a B2B perishable product with a short sales cycle (e.g. technical components with frequent obsolescence), sales reps in other industry sectors (e.g. CPG) that sell limited shelf life B2B products with similar sales cycles should be considered. I’ve personally made some of my best sales hires using this approach and usually they come with lower compensation expectations and a higher degree of gratitude.

The long game approach is to create a farm system. Becoming an active corporate sponsor of higher education institutions that offer accredited sales certifications and degrees is a form of networking and brand marketing that puts the company in front of a
steady stream of qualified candidates to source.

Attend career fairs. Sponsor sales competitions. Participate as a guest speaker. Meet with sales professors. All of these activities will help you impart influence, so when graduation nears students that have been formally trained in the art and science of selling are available to fill open positions. These students come with a degree of polish and a sales foundation that is easily built upon to produce superstars for the applicable sales context.

According to the Jobvite 2019 Recruiting Benchmark Report, approximately 50 percent of applicants come from job boards, 35 percent from internal career sites, and less than 1 percent of those who apply through both are offered positions. The takeaway is job boards and internal career site candidates are statistically inefficient compared to the other sourcing methods already described.

Still need more sources for ongoing top of funnel screening? You should. Recruiters can be an option. When the company is new to a market, is under time constraints for placement, or needs expertise in candidate screening, hiring a recruitment agency becomes a viable option. Important to note, recruiters have numerous clients and like
any smart salesperson, they will prioritize the clients that pay highest, yet they expect the company they work with (you) to stay exclusive with them to prevent duplicate outreach for the same candidate(s).

 There are a host of other avenues for sourcing. Professional organizations within your industry is one. Another more overlooked avenue is from candidates themselves. The aim of interviews should be to always get something of value out of the conversation. That can be finding out what other companies pay for similar positions, market insights, training initiatives and other things that may be adopted to make your company better. The main thing though is to find out if the timing to seek out other candidates from the same place is ripe, or to find out where the candidate’s employer sources their candidates.

The final source is referrals. Customers can be a great resource for referring candidates as discussed previously, though I’m mainly referring to B2C customers where the business relationship is less likely to be impacted. Referrals from suppliers or vendors, also a viable source.

Don’t forget current employees, they should have people in their network that can be considered. The company should have a referral program where referred candidates from employees equates to a hiring bonus incentive

 Not all sales positions require sales experience, people need to start somewhere. In fact, everyone should work a sales job at some point in their life. Retail store sales experience is most prevalent among those with limited experience. That is a mixed bag because how much selling really occurs in those stores? It varies greatly and, in most
cases, positions boil down to order processing, inventory organization, and handling returns. There are other ways to screen for sales aptitude and the characteristics required to be successful in a given sales
context.

Step 4: Screening for Sales Characteristics

Assuming there is empirical proof that based on the buying context, specific characteristics lead to successful sales hires, the next step is effectively screening for those characteristics. The attributes for the sales position then requires us to look for candidates that are coachable, curious, competitive, and have a strong work ethic. First let’s define these characteristics, then we will cover screening recommendations together.

Coachable. It means a person that is capable of receiving coaching. That is taking coaching and then implementing the coaching immediately. This characteristic applies to every sales context I’ve ever encountered, though it’s weighted lighter for transactional selling.

What seems to work well when screening for coachability is running role plays that mirror real life sales calls. Be forewarned, though, getting candidates on the phone with live customers to see how well they perform is not only unprofessional, it’s inaccurate because it isn’t in a consistent controlled environment where a valid basis for comparison can be applied.

 Screening for curiosity is more subtle. Curious people ask good questions, hence the importance of being curious in sales. It is too easy to become complacent and count any question as a point toward curiosity, don’t fall into that trap. They should be really good questions. Good candidates are prepared so questions might go deeper about the company and other than what is already available through public means. Questions that have some nuance regarding the role, the buyer, the product or service, these are all good as long as they are not superficial. “That flagship product you mentioned, do you sell a lot of them?” versus “What percentage of total sales does that flagship product make up in the territory?” Use a point scale to grade the candidate on curiosity.

Screening for competitiveness is done before speaking with the candidate, and after. There is an assumption if the candidate was already a top salesperson, they probably were competitive, that should still be verified. Other indicators include being on collegiate sports teams, academic decathlon, or speech and debate teams. During the interview, I like asking the candidate to provide an example of a time they were competitive. The way they tell the story and how well they sell their competitive nature provides insight into their sales ability as well as screening for competitiveness. Grade the candidate on the point scale depending on the response.

Proving work ethic can be tricky. Asking the candidate to describe their work ethic only has so much credibility. Who is going to say they put in the minimum to get the job done and then check out? Instead, it’s something like, “I’m the hardest working person I know,” or “Nobody can outwork me.” Certainly, they have to be convincing enough to believe they have a strong work ethic. Though this is best verified when checking references. Asking references to rate the candidate’s work ethic and explain why they gave that rating lends greater credence.

Step 5: Interviewing

Having a methodical, thorough, and objective process that is above board leads to world class sales hiring. The same main questions, role plays and time allotted should be applied to each candidate to have a true basis for comparison. Additionally, when open positions require that several department heads interview candidates, the directive should be that each person is tasked with teasing out specific areas to move the candidate forward or disqualify. Ranking systems based on responses are encouraged and more objective.

Interviews should also be done based on how the position will function communication wise. For SDRs that are on the phone, a portion of the interview should be conducted over the phone to vet phone sales skills. Role plays are essential. For sales positions in particular, getting the candidate to test drive the role provides some indication of their ability to adjust to your unique sales context and gives candidates a taste of what the role is really like day to day.

Interviewing in bunches is the most efficient approach. It goes smoothest when you have a specific day of the week attributed to interviewing particularly when multiple people are involved in the interview process. At the end of the day, interviewers can share notes and add color, able to make informed decisions by close of the same business day and mitigating the risk of losing great hires to the competition as a result of extended hiring practices.

Step 6: Onboarding

Part of the hiring process is getting new hires up to speed. The onus is on the company to invest in training and resources to bring the candidate to standard as soon as possible and on a trajectory to reach full potential from the start. The onboarding process should be regimented with transparent milestones that have to be met. Over time the onboarding process requires iteration for optimization and adjustments based on the stage of the company, any pivots that have been made that have changed the sales process, and adjustments to the position requirements.

Though the hires are vetted for fit, direct supervisors should identify skill gaps, prior to and during the first phase of onboarding. A best practice is to have a survey sent out to a half dozen references with leadership responsibility in order to identify new hire gaps in advance of the first day of employment. This can be produced on a shoestring budget by software engineers on hand or more professionally through
a company like SkillSurvey Inc. that provides a background check option that can be integrated digitally into the hiring and onboarding process. The objective is to have a supplemental development plan prepared prior to employee arrival.

The new hire should also have some skin in the game with preliminary preparation. Companies have their own parlance, and for new hires, just speaking the same language becomes a challenge in the beginning.

There are acronyms specific to the business, enterprise vocabulary, industry specific terms, backend system references, and the list goes on. Sales leaders should provide new hires with a list of commonly used words and encourage new hires to familiarize themselves with that list in order to reduce anxiety during onboarding and to accelerate retention. It is also a prudent first test since hires that come prepared having studied the list of terms are a good sign.

Coordination is an important component of the onboarding process. This starts with strategically assigning a start date that leverages resources. Will everyone that needs to be part of the onboarding be available during that time period? Are their schedules locked for the commitment? If there are multiple hires for the same or similar positions, they should be grouped to go through the training together. Even in cases when the roles are separate, the initial company orientation, training on systems and tech stack, can be done together for efficiency.

Milestones were mentioned earlier. New hires should be told on their first day about milestones and what to expect. They will be drinking out of a firehose for the first few weeks, but they should be reassured that the training curriculum is designed to start foundationally and become more advanced to ensure the content sticks. To keep true to that promise, consider designing curriculum into modules: beginner,
intermediate, and advanced.

Each training module should have a theme and purpose. The beginner module
introduces the new hire to the marketing framework for proper company orientation. They are put through the buyer’s journey to experience the typical buying process and gain an appreciation for the buyer’s challenges. They are trained on the basics of the business such as the sales org makeup, key terms, and what the systems are used for in the tech stack. The intermediate module goes into the use of backend tool process, systems, and sales process. The advanced module doubles down on the previous module with nuance to be tested. New hires are shadowed during the intermediate and advanced modules, encouraged to learn through doing and to fail early and often, so smaller value deals are provided that are less financially risky for the company. As new hires become more proficient, they are given more autonomy yet adhere to the general onboarding process.

Where I’ve found success is when each module has a test at the end that must be passed with a score of 80 percent or higher, or else the candidate has to be rolled back to repeat parts that were missed in the module. If the candidate cannot retain the content or pass the same module a second time, they must be cut loose. This is rare but it does happen. If the candidate is allowed to slide there is a good chance the inevitable will be delayed and they will eventually be terminated before the end of training or within a year of employment. Having a hard and fast rule also motivates those doing the training to do their duty to the best of their ability and discourages complacency. Everyone going through the process should be held to the same standard. Being vigilant through the process and holding everyone to high standards produces the best trained hires.

There are indicators that the onboarding plan is getting better or getting worse. The strongest indication that the onboarding plan is getting better is when new hires who are trained up keep raising the performance bar. We saw that at a technology company where our new hires were outperforming our veterans in short order. Raising the bar forced existing team members to step up or self-select and step out. When the onboarding plan is not working the way it is intended, it will present itself in replicative coaching, struggling performance, and complaints from coworkers about the new hire. It is the responsibility of sales leadership to have an iterative onboarding process that is effective.

Step 7: Career Path

I’m a big advocate of transparency. If I were in an entry-level sales position, I would want to know what the next career step was and how to get there. I would also want to know how far I could go with all things being equal and realistic. Of course, a formalized development plan should be designed and accessible for reference as well as implementation. Salespeople should be granted this transparency their first day, even during the interview process when a candidate asks about career trajectory. It should be backed with data to indicate what is possible and a realistic time frame. Sticking to the facts and avoiding overselling is paramount.

Another component of transparency: employees should know what each position pays. This is a controversial topic. Many companies expect employees to keep their compensation private. That’s a nice thought, but it’s unrealistic because people talk and ultimately upper management gets bit.

There are other considerations for implementing pay grades. Transparent pay reduces claims of discrimination. It helps calibrate appropriate costs for the positions. Pay transparency curtails new hire compensation negotiations, which can derail the hiring process. Instead of candidates trying to negotiate for the highest pay they can get, candidates are compensated on what the position pays at the company—there is no haggling on pay. It really streamlines those discussions, and for the sales members that claim they are God’s gift, the variable component rewards top performers with earning potential for their efforts. Their background, skills, and experience got them the job; their performance and not their negotiation skills, will determine how much more they will gain financially.