Data-driven success proves itself time and time again. In an age characterized by disruption and restless competitive threats, gut instinct is a dangerous basis to make decisions on. Now is the time for sales leaders to examine the scientific metrics of a high-performing sales force.
Based on the latest research and hard-earned experience, here are seven characteristics that differentiate highest performing sales teams from the average ones.
1. The best sales organizations hunt on the farm.
It is five to twenty-five times more expensive to gain a new client than retain an existing one. That’s why top sales organizations invest in existing accounts. They maximize account potential by selling to existing clients. This is also referred to as hunting on the farm.
To encourage this focus, top sales organizations adjust compensation plans accordingly. They use comp to motivate their teams to build meaningful relationships with key account stakeholders.
Additionally, the best leaders coach their teams to “go micro”.
Going micro means:
learning the micro markets within a territory,
knowing where their clients are adding capacity, and
where there are opportunities for future expansion.
In top performing sales organizations, reps know which products each account uses. They learn the details of each client. They anticipate potential problems by suggesting useful products that fix or prevent the difficulties that their clients face.
2. Top performing sales organization sell the way their customers want to buy.
Because customer loyalty has dropped 20%, top sales organizations can’t use only one sales methodology. They must be flexible. And that flexibility makes customers 30-50% more likely to become enthusiastic promoters and repeat customers.
When the buyer is comfortable with conflict, 64% prefer sellers to challenge their thinking. Top reps alert their clients to the dangers of the status quo.
They don’t ask leading questions but instead engage in consultative interactions with the clients.
They also engage in solution selling. This allows them to target a client’s pain points and offer an appropriate remedy.
In addition, they capitalize on ease of purchase. They include the right people at the right time. Reps are encouraged to work cross-functionally to maximize the channels through which customers interact with the brand. Reps in high performing sales organizations create a frictionless journey from the initial consideration to the moment of purchase.
3. In top performing sales organization, reps expertly manage their pipelines.
High performing sales organizations train their reps to manage their own pipelines. They hold them accountable for quantifiable, binary results. When the time comes for feedback and quarterly reviews, reps are measured based on their quota.
Companies that have an effective process in place for pipeline management see a 15% increase in profit.
“High performing sales teams think in terms of strategic sales process management, while under performing sales teams are more focused on personal sales prowess,” say Steve W. Martin and Nick Hedges.
High performing sales leaders keep their teams focused on executing their strategic sales goals.
4. Top sales organizations have strict processes.
In Steve W. Martin’s study of 786 sales professionals, half of sales reps from top performing sales organization organizations whose annual revenues increased significantly year-over-year had rigorous sales processes. They were were closely monitored, strictly enforced or automated. Only 28% from under performing sales organizations described themselves as having strict sales processes.
In addition, top sales organizations set stretch goals within their rigorous systems to increase profit. It also allows them create a “superior” experience, something 80% of companies believe they provide, yet only 8% of customers agree. Even though they don’t expect all their reps to meet their quotas, they consistently set higher quotas by up to 50% more year over year.
5. Top organizations know that committees are easily influenced.
In B2B sales, there are an average of 5.4 people on buying committees. The best sellers know how to appeal to an audience. However, they also know that one committee member tends to bully others to their view. In fact, 90% of participants in HBR’s study confirmed that there is one person who sways the buying decision.
Reps from top performing sales organizations are groomed to look for the bully. The committee member is successful at bullying the outcome 89% of the time. In instances like these, top sellers are aware of the group dynamics. They sell not only to the decision-maker, but to the bully.
6. Leading sales organizations are not afraid of market leaders.
The competition does not intimidate top performing organizations. They don’t buy in to the myth that market leaders dominate the demand. They know that 63% of buyers are open to buying from second-tier sellers that deliver equivalent value.
When selling to manufacturing, information technology, human resources, and accounting, top sellers know to tailor those methods to the price conscious needs of those departments. However, when selling to tech, banking, or consulting, they focus on delivering value because those industries are typically not as price sensitive. Fashion and finance, however, prefer to buy from the biggest names in business.
So top organizations don’t fixate on competing with the market leader. They focus on delivering value to their customers.
Selling is a data-driven process.
Instead of relying on gut-instinct, top organizations use tried-and-true methods to drive growth. They hunt on the farm, sell the way their customers want to buy, and accurately forecast their pipelines. They also have strict processes, know that committees are easily influenced, and are not intimidated by market leaders. The best sales organization rely on proven data to track their success.
To learn more about hiring strategies to become a top performing sales organization, click here.
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Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Keep your churn rates high and your employee satisfaction rates low.
Why put in the effort to keep your top reps happy when you could alienate and push them to work for the competition? Why work to maintain a healthy sales force when you could sabotage them at every turn?
If you’ve run out of ways to push your top sellers out the door, here are 21 tongue-in-cheek ways to make sure they bolt:
1. Cap commission.
High-performing sales organizations consistently attract and retain top sales talent by rewarding them with compensation packages that beat market. One way they do that is uncap earnings. In fact, 79% of sales managers with no compensation cap meet and exceed quota.
Commission caps are the easiest and fastest way to cripple a sales force. It removes the incentive for reps to stay motivated and keep selling once they’ve reached quota.
Steve Richard, CRO of ExecVision, met with a sales rep when the subject of compensation arose:
“We were talking about the comp plan and he mentioned that their pay stub showed a ‘commission deduction line.’ It shows the amount of commission earned and then a deduction for earning above the limit for the pay period.
Let me repeat this: this company actually shows reps how they are being screwed (ahem, sorry, ‘capped’) as a line item on their pay stub. I can’t imagine anything more demotivating. ”
Rarely is there an economic downside for a company to pay large commissions if the sales compensation plan is structured to be profitable at any level. Companies sell more when they eliminate barriers that hinder salespeople’s incentives.
Over the next two years, 60% of companies will make a change to their compensation plans. This is particularly frustrating for reps when it occurs in the middle of a sales cycle. Finding out that their maturing leads and opportunities will result in lower payout than expected demoralizes a team.
If an adjustment is necessary, provide ample notice and communicate the ways that it benefits both the rep and the business.
3. Refuse to compensate reps on certain types of sales.
If a rep makes a sale that generates desirable profit for the company, compensate them.
Paying commissions only on the sales of certain products and not others, despite both types of sales generating profit for the company pushes your best people out the door.
The best sales organizations pay the highest commissions for the sales that generate the highest profits, regardless of type of sale or type of product.
Rewarding a rep for every sale that benefits the business aligns them with your corporate purpose.
4. Require reps to book the cheapest travel arrangements.
Time is your salespeople’s most valuable and scarce resource. Cheap travel arrangements can take a long time to find, which not only chips away from important selling time, and but leaves reps in poor selling condition.
Every dollar strategically invested in business travel correlates with an increase in $20 of additional gross profit, according to an analysis of 900 public companies over an 11-year period. When reps aren’t focused on saving money when they travel, they can focus on making money when they arrive.
5. Penalize the sales team for poor post-sales delivery.
Penalizing the team for post-sales delivery is a distraction from making sales. The best companies keep reps focused on delivering sales results by rewarding consistently excellent performance.
Not all reps have the same post-delivery style:36% of salespeople report that they feel personally responsible and dedicated to a customer’s success and 26% report cordial but less personal relationships, citing busyness on both ends. Only 22% take a hands-off approach.
Salespeople have varying approaches to post-sales relationships with clients. As long as reps are making sales and maintaining healthy post-delivery relationships, however involved, the desired result is achieved.
6. Fail to provide innovative product and service offerings.
Excellent reps need to sell excellent solutions. They are not satisfied selling ‘me too’ offerings.Top performing sales organizations need to provide products that solve big problems for customers. Otherwise, they risk losing their reps to competitors who develop truly innovative products.
7. Keep poor performers on board.
If hiring strong salespeople sounds expensive, speak to any business leader who has ever built a team of mediocre salespeople. Underperforming sales reps drain financial resources, strain managerial resources, and damage brand reputation in the marketplace. It can be tempting to fill an open seat quickly. Resist the urge.
Take charge of your company’s future and don’t tolerate consistently missed quotas. Fire poor performers quickly.
In fact, high-performing sales organizations are quicker to terminate — 18% of them fire mediocre reps after just one quarter, compared to 5% of under-performing organizations. Within the span of a year, 78% of high-performing sales organizations will fire under-performers. That number drops to 52% for under-performing sales organizations.
If someone is not a good fit, give them the opportunity to find somewhere where they will thrive. Don’t needlessly cause your team to suffer.
8. Refuse to leave your office.
Managers can’t lead from an ivory tower. Successful managers are fully engaged with customers to discover their needs and are connected with their team. Reps need to see managers on the sales floor with them, modeling the right behaviors and attitudes. This removes the opportunity for reps to harness resentment.
There’s nothing more frustrating than taking direction from a leader who is out of touch with the realities of the team. The best sales leaders leave the office and invest time developing relationships with customers and employees because it builds trust.
9. Prioritize non-selling activities.
If the consequences for not updating the CRM are heavier than they are for underperforming, your leadership priorities are mixed up. Refocus on the basics of sales. Don’t weigh down your reps with paperwork.
“There are too many salespeople who are more proficient at entering tasks into Salesforce.com than they are at executing the basics, like telephoning a prospect to secure a meeting. Unfortunately, much of the blame rests with sales managers who are more concerned that their people keep the CRM system updated than they are with whether they can effectively sell.”
Focus is critical for your reps to achieve results. Transfer activities like updating CRMs, pulling reports, and creating sales enablement materials to sales support. Your sales reps are best qualified to be generating profit, not doing paperwork.
10. Take credit for your rep’s success.
Taking credit for a rep’s work is one of the fastest ways a sales leader can frustrate their team. Sales managers succeed when they lead their team to victory, using wins as opportunity to reinforce excellent selling behaviors and activities.
Top sales people are motivated by recognition. Celebrate their work and highlight their accomplishments at all-hands meetings, smaller team calls, and in front of company executives.
11. Step in to take over accounts reps have worked hard to acquire and develop.
Allow your reps to be responsible for their own work.Chuck Blakeman, business advisor and founder, writes:
“Ownership is the most powerful motivator in business and the ability to make decisions is at the core of ownership. Stop solving and deciding for others[…] You, your company, and everyone who works there will all be better off if you do.”
Reps who maintain ownership of a prospect from nurture stage onward stay motivated to close them.
If a manager steps in to take over a rep’s account, however, that ownership is disrupted. This gradually erodes the rep’s confidence and threatens to weaken their ability to sell longterm.
Managers should leave the selling to their reps. Companies with a well-developed sales process are able to trust their reps to be accountable. Managers can use weekly one-on-one time to stay updated on the status of projects, only getting involved when appropriate. The best sales talent will not stay at a company to be hand-held.
12. Focus on hours instead of results.
Results are what matter. Excellent reps thrive in an environment their performance is evaluated based on measurable business objectives. It can feel frustratingly irrelevant when a sales leader places too much attention on a rep’s hours, busywork, and physical time spent “in the seat.”
Micromanaging your team removes their drive to perform. To keep top sales talent, set clear expectations for success and keep performance measurements focused on those results.
13. Undervalue corporate culture.
The pressure sales reps face can be disheartening at times. A healthy corporate culture reduces pressure, and instead recycles and plays to rep’s competitive intrinsic motivators. When reps amicably compete against one another, they are motivated to sell more and close bigger deals.
Top performing sales organizations know that they are built on corporate culture. They handle challenges with integrity and treat them as an opportunity to grow. This breeds transparent leadership and allows reps to have a realistic view of their organisation, promoting an all-around strong sales culture that top reps are happy to be a part of.
14. Focus on the negative.
Rejections rack up on a daily basis in sales. But a team’s success depends on its ability to soldier forward in the face of this reality. Sales leaders need to consistently encourage their reps by acknowledging and celebrating progress.
The key is in the small wins. Every victory has a strong positive effect on a worker’s motivation and their ability to tackle difficult work challenges. Sales leaders must celebrate their small successes to keep the team motivated. Zig Ziglar said,
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.”
So be the cheerleader that distracts them from their daily rejections and help keep the office a positive place to be. Track daily and weekly wins. Keep a pulse on small positive metrics like leading indicators. Publicly acknowledge progress and remind your team of its overarching mission on a regular basis to stave off the negativity that will send top reps running for the hills.
15. Avoid coaching opportunities.
Not only does coaching benefit the company’s revenue, it is a retention tool that is directly linked to job satisfaction.
A survey of over 2,000 sales professionals found that reps who received more coaching than others were twice as likelyto recommend their role at their company to a friend. In other words, they were “promoters,” using the standard satisfaction measure of NPS (Net Promoter Score).
An important note is that there is a disconnect between how much coaching a rep feels they receive and what a manager thinks they provide. Managers survey reported that they provide an average of 3.9 coaching hours per rep per months, while reps reported receiving 2.2 hours. That’s a 40% discrepancy.
Bear this in mind as you coach your reps.
Excellent sellers want to grow and improve and therefore, need leaders to build into them. Managers must provide this support to their teams if they want to keep their top sales talent.
16. Fail to invest in marketing and brand building programs.
Billions of dollars are spent on B2B brand equity. Problematically, despite the immense budget, it found that managers are not focusing enough effort internally on active brand building.
That is an expensive mistake. Top reps want to work for companies who are mindful of their brand positioning and manage their reputations well. Corporate branding is responsible for 7% of stock performance and the best forty brands outperform stock index MSCI world index by 73%.
There are two primary ways to invest in brand. They are internal branding and brand recognition. Internal branding sells your brand to your employees so that they will become promoters to their networks. Market your brand to your employees internally by having:
a mission statement,
an ambitious, long-term vision,
a clear set of action values, and
persuasive, on-brand collateral.
When your employees buy in to your brand, they become brand ambassadors to their networks.
Take full advantage of these methods to connect with your audience online and offline to spread brand awareness or risk losing your top selling reps.
17. Pay commissions late.
Ensuring reps can see an immediate connection between their positive activities and their commissions is the best way to reinforce the right selling behaviors and keep them loyal and productive.
It can be demotivating for a top rep to deliver a great sale and not receive commission when it’s due. According to Mark Roberge, who built the sales team at HubSpot, the rewards must be immediate.
“When salespeople succeed, they should see it reflected in their paychecks immediately. When they fail, they should feel the pain in their paychecks immediately. Any delay between good (or bad) behavior and the related financial outcome will decrease the impact of the plan.”
When direct return or loss can be felt instantly, the motivating effect is potent. Capitalize on this to drive your reps to succeed.
18. Fail to equip them with best practices and resources.
Talented reps don’t want to spend their time developing resources and reinventing the wheel. Support them with high quality reference materials, sales enablement collateral, value proposition talking points, and anything else that will make them sell better faster.
Even the best salesperson’s performance dips in the absence of a well-structured sales process. Equip them with best practices, training, and resources. Research shows that high performance companies are twice as likely to have structured sales process and businesses that want to help their sales reps reach full potential need to support them in this way.
The time they spend creating resources is time they are not on the phone booking meetings and closing deals.
19. Ask reps to lie to customers to close more business.
Top sales talent values integrity. The best sellers believe that trustworthiness, professionalism, follow-through, product knowledge, and enthusiasm are what customers value most about them. A survey of high-performing salespeople overwhelmingly shows a preference for the truth with 70% of reps preferring to be honest rather than embellish.
Reps stay intrinsically motivated when they believe in their mission and ability to match prospects with a truly good-fit solution. Lying to customers is a lose-lose proposition.
Customers will lose trust in the company and churn. Reps lose their most basic and powerful reason to sell which is faith in the product. On top of this, managers that compel a rep to lie will simply alienate their team and lose top talent.
20. Force reps to attend too many internal meetings.
Time spent in meetings is time that reps could be selling. Before inviting your sales team to a meeting, seriously consider whether or not it’s essential to have them there.
If it’s not essential, don’t have them sit in. If you absolutely must include them, make sure that you have a clear and specific agenda. Move through it quickly and systematically. The best thing you can do for your reps if they must absolutely be in the meeting is provide the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of time. Get them in and out as fast as possible.
Instead, begin each meeting with an agenda. It is critical to stick to the agenda once it has been set. Weinberg has outlined a list of possible agenda items:
personal updates
company vision
results review
product training
success stories
deal strategy
sales training/ coaching
business plan presentation
celebrate
sales wish list
marching orders
takeaways
These items provide a springboard for discussion while keeping the focus on business and are a starting point for anyone who wants to make their meetings less painfully unproductive.
21. Suggest or imply that selling is the easy part of a company’s success.
Sales reps are the driving force of a company’s growth. It’s critical that managers tie their team’s role into the bigger picture. Suggesting that sales is the easy part of a company’s success undermines your reps desire to succeed. Poor managers fail to validate the many positive ways they influence the company:
They drive revenue. This revenue translates into the ability to grow the company into new markets, further pursue its mission, pay salaries, and benefit investors and shareholders.
They face rejection daily. The best ones get back up and continue selling. It can be easy for managers to lose sight of the challenge that is being a salesperson.
There are also less tangible ways that talented reps influence the company as a whole. Reps have a direct line to customers, who are the people that matter the most.
Sales represents the brand. They connect the dots to solve people’s problems. They listen to customer needs and communicate them up through the company.
There is no doubt that they are a key frontline component and to suggest anything less is a big mistake. Underappreciating the sales team is not only detrimental to growth and success at a team level but could be fatal at a company level.
These mistakes could cost you your top selling reps.
If you find yourself doing anything on the list above, stop yourself immediately. None of these items are worth risking the resignation of salespeople you have developed.
The investment you make in your sales team is too valuable to lose.
Like what you’ve read? To learn more about hiring strategies to build a top performing sales team, click here.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
For tech startups, there may be no better location than New York City.
NYC has a long history of attracting people who dream big and chase success, and that certainly still rings true of entrepreneurs today, especially those in e-commerce, sales, finance and technology innovation.
As Glassdoor notes, “there’s no city quite like New York. Uptown to Downtown, Brooklyn to the Bronx, Staten Island to Queens, the boroughs are filled with hard working people chasing their dreams. “ Or, more specifically, dream jobs.
If you’re in sales, up-and-coming tech companies should be on your radar. Why? When you work in a large enterprise in New York, it’s highly likely that your path will cross one or more of these startups as they gain traction and flourish – whether as a potential client or a potential employer.
If you’re a sales leader on the lookout for your next career move, here are 10 tech companies in New York City that you need to be watching. Dynamic and disruptive, these ten startups are combining innovative vision with growing investor support to create significant impact in the market.
InVision is the Digital Product Design platform used to make the “world’s best customer experiences.” The company provides design tools and educational resources for teams to navigate every stage of the product design process, from ideation to development. Today, more than 3.5 million people use InVision to create a repeatable and streamlined design workflow; rapidly design and prototype products before writing code, and collaborate across their entire organization.
Industry: Internet – Digital Product Design Platform
Industry Outlook: Digital product design is still a relatively new field of expertise. As a career, digital product design began with personal computers in the 1970s but has evolved drastically due to the explosive popularity of smartphones and app stores beginning in 2007. Today, digital product design is scaling rapidly. Leaders in this industry know how to leverage technology alongside their teams to design well-crafted experiences that won’t break or cause harm when utilized at the furthest edges. Companies in this industry are designing at a global scale. A foundation of training is emerging for digital product designers, taught by those who have come before (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Salesforce, etc.) – from basics of tools designed to create infinitely scalable interfaces to developing critical empathy skills for the consumers who will use it.
Growth stage: Series D
Selling tools available: Free trial for lead generation, product tours.
Awards Received: Named one of the Top Company Cultures of 2017 by Entrepreneur and CultureIQ – February 2017
Best Places to Work in 2017 from Glassdoor (#21)
Forbes Cloud 100 List, Forbes, 2016
Fast Company Innovation by Design Finalist for Apps, Fast Company, 2016Best Prototyping Software, G2 Crowd, 2016
Funding: $235,200,000 raised in 7 rounds from 12 investors
Employee perks
Work in an environment that you’re comfortable in (and enjoy Starbucks beverages on the company)
Medical insurance with broad personal coverage
Free gym memberships
Generous equipment allowances and conference/travel budgets
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 4.7 stars… 89% recommend to a friend. 86% approve of CEO.
“This is the most talented group of people I’ve ever worked with. Thoughtful, smart, and there is a culture of humility and empathy that fits really well with who I am and my work style.”
“InVision is truly design-centric and a visionary in the industry. You’re encouraged to be your authentic self, measured by the work you put in, and have opportunities to challenge yourself and grow.”
Conductor is an organic marketing company. Its content intelligence platform, Conductor Searchlight, generates customer intent insights that lead to compelling content, increased traffic and higher organic marketing ROI. With Conductor, marketers can continuously measure and refine SEO and other content marketing efforts, based on insights drawn from the search rankings and performance opportunities.
Industry: Internet – SEO Platform & Enterprise Content Marketing
Industry Outlook: The convergence of SEO and content marketing has been a topic of conversation for many years, and now the fusion is finally happening. In the digital marketing ecosystem, all roads lead to the website and branded content. Marketing channels impact conversion, so creating a unified message across all departments is vital. Just as content marketers must understand the technical aspects of SEO, they must also understand and adhere to new creative ways to build and amplify their content, build processes and cultures of content in order to implement integrated and scalable content marketing plans.
Predictions: According to Gartner, the Enterprise Content Marketing market saw an 8% growth from 2015 to 2016, with global revenue up to $6.1 billion from $5.6 billion. It’s predicted to reach $9 billion in 2018. Industry predictions also include a massive pivot to Cloud; the emergence of AI and machine learning to better describe content and to enable CSPs to be more predictive and accurate in the way that they deliver content to knowledge workers; and continued demand for contextual information coupled with evolving approaches to interacting with content.
Growth stage: Series D
Selling tools available: Training, Product tour/Demo request for lead generation, Marketing collateral: client case studies, company “learning center”.
Awards Received: Named one of the Best Places to Work in NYC by Crain’s – November 2017
Ranked #4 Best Company to Work for in New York for the 9th year running – 2018
Ranked #38 by Inc. Magazine in its Fastest Growing Private Companies list
Recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in America for six years running
Conductor Searchlight received a High Performer badge in the Fall 2017 SEO Grid® Report
Funding: $60 million+ raised in 3 rounds by 6 investors (Matrix Partners, FirstMark, Investor Growth Capital Limited, Blue Cloud Ventures, Catalyst Investors)
Employee perks
Unlimited vacation time
Energizing environment, including a communal kitchen stocked with nutritious snacks, monthly “Flap-Jack Fridays,” and multiple diversions like scooters, beanbags, and nerf wars.
Quarterly activities such as go-karting, karaoke, picnics and scavenger hunts.
All “Conductors” encouraged to take 2 days off work to get involved in the charities they feel most passionate about.
The Conductor Foundation (the company’s non-profit arm) offers opportunities throughout the year to give back, including the Quarterly Conductor Cares Charity Challenge and the many pro bono customers accepted annually.
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars. 93% recommend to friend. 99% approve of CEO
“The company is a complete meritocracy in that if you have a great idea with a sense of direction, you’ll be given the tools necessary to realize that idea in earnest. There’s no ego, and everyone is willing to collaborate to contribute to the overall good of the company.”
Pipedrive’s roots are in direct sales. As sales managers and trainers, two of the co-founders experienced an increasing amount of pain with CRM software. Without a good solution for managing the company’s sales pipeline, they teamed up in 2010 with talented developers to create Pipedrive. Pipedrive is a sales management tool designed to help small sales teams manage intricate or lengthy sales processes. It also sports built-in forecasting, integrations with other software such as Google Apps, MailChimp and Zapier and a powerful API for those that like to “roll their own” software solutions.
Industry: Computer Software
Industry Outlook: Over the past three decades, CRM has vastly improved the measurement and reporting capabilities of the sales function. Today, every sales force has some type of CRM tool which generates dozens of management reports. However, this increased access to data has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in control over sales performance. Despite an abundance of numbers, executives often lack a framework they can use to consistently pinpoint problems and proactively manage salespeople to higher performance. Pipedrive is currently one of the main leading players in the Lead Management Software market. The market competition is constantly growing higher with the rise in technological innovation and M&A activities in the industry. Additionally, many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new vendor entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability and innovations in technology.
Growth stage: Series B
Selling tools available: Affiliate partner program/Expert program, CRM platform, Free trial for lead generation, Two-week email sales course called Pipeline Academy.
Awards Received: Best Enterprise SaaS B2B Startup from The Europas
Best Employer in Estonia in 2016
2017 SalesTech Award
Named by Inc. 500 as the 204th fastest-growing company in America
Funding: $17 million
Employee perks
Free snacks and drinks
Monthly lunch with CEO
Health/dental/vision insurance
401K, bonus and stock options
Commuter discount
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 4.3 stars out of 5, 81% recommend to a friend, 100% approve of CEO
“Pipedrive values people and makes all possible to create comfortable conditions for them. It is a mature company which has pretty clear structure but at the same time teams are very flexible. Management tries to be as transparent as possible.”
“The company culture is great – people feel involved and purposeful.”
Sisense simplifies business analytics for complex data, giving business users the ability to freely prepare, analyze and explore their data, without relying on a patchwork of tools or extensive IT assistance – even, and especially, in complex scenarios. Sisense’s revolutionary business intelligence software tools are used by thousands of users around the world, in companies ranging from Fortune 500s to innovative startups.
Industry: Computer Software, Business Intelligence (BI)
Industry Outlook: Toward the end of the 20th century, the term business intelligence (BI) gradually earned popularity among most modern-day enterprises. High levels of competition in the business arena have raised the need for an analytics-oriented system that can enhance their capabilities to reinvent and modify information they already possess. Geographically, North America is the leading market region in terms of market revenue share, due to increasing focus on innovations, research and development in manufacturing analytics technology, and stable economic growth in US and Canada.
Predictions: The global manufacturing analytics market is expected to rise with a CAGR of 22% during the period between 2017-2024. The key factors driving market growth are emergence of industrial internet of things, increased business agility and scalability, adoption of advanced data management strategies and surging demand for process optimization. Complex system structure and lack of integration with legacy systems are expected to restrain the market growth. Rising cloud adoption trends and increasing demand for real-time streaming analytics are expected to provide lucrative market opportunities.
Growth stage: Series B
Selling tools available: CRM, 90-minute “Test Drive,” Lead generation with Demo, Client case studies, Free white paper for email list-building.
Awards Received: Ranked 8th in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 list, 2015 and 2016
Named a Visionary in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant
Awarded a Bronze Medal for the Stevie American Business Awards, Company of the Year in Computer Software
Named one of 100 Companies that Matter Most in Data by Database Trends Applications Magazine
Named to 10 “coolest New York-based enterprise startups” by Business Insider in 2014
Funding: $50 million
Employee perks
Mandatory long weekends called “Coming Up for Air”
Free lunch/snacks
Performance bonus
Health insurance/retirement plan
Autonomy and flexibility to work from home
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 3.8 out of 5 stars, 69% recommend to a friend, 85% approve of CEO
“Sales quotas are achievable and the compensation is highly competitive.”
“They take care of their employees. Sisense does whatever they can to ensure their employees success. There is no micromanaging. They effectively and efficiently use their CRM and other tools. Compensation is great. You are selling a best in market product. They are transparent with employees and treat them with respect.”
EcoVadis operates the first collaborative platform providing Supplier Sustainability Ratings for global supply chains. Combining “People, Process and Platform,” EcoVadis has developed the industry-leading team, innovative technology, and a unique CSR assessment methodology that covers 180 purchasing categories, 150 countries and 21 CSR indicators.
Industry: Software and Consulting – Sustainability Ratings and Scorecards
Industry Outlook: A pressing demand for education and guidance has grown from companies who seek to contain risk and create value through driving sustainable procurement and supply chain performance. In addition to financial criteria, investors increasingly include ecological and social factors in their investment decisions. Continued efforts to advance corporate sustainability have benefited from a wide range of collaborative initiatives spanning the public, private and nongovernmental sectors.
Growth stage: Venture
Selling tools available: Training, Demo request for lead generation, Marketing collateral: website video, guide to sustainable procurement, downloadable CSR scorecard.
Awards Received: Named a 50 to Know Company from Spend Matters in 2018
Named a finalist in the World Procurement Awards
Funding: $35.8 million raised from 1 investor
Employee perks
Health, dental, vision insurance
Ability to work from home or do reduced schedule/flexible hours
Commuter checks/assistance
Company social events
Geo-mobility and office exchange
Community days
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 5.0 out of 5 stars, 100% recommend to a friend, N/A approve of CEO
“Great culture! Fast-growing company… with an multinational team of people passionate for Sustainability is incredible. The management is very trustworthy and transparent.”
“It feels great to be a part of an organization that is making a global impact on sustainability within the supply chain.”
HyperScience is a machine learning company focused on building enterprise-grade AI solutions for automating office work. The company’s mission is to “automate low, medium and high-skill office work to help customers do their jobs better, faster and cheaper.” HyperScience builds products that are drop-in replacements for existing manual business processes without lengthy integration periods or steep learning curves.
Industry: AI Automation Solutions
Industry Outlook: AI is transforming all industries. CEOs agree that AI will impact every facet of business, offering unprecedented ways to innovate and grow – with 72% reporting that they believe AI is a business advantage for the future. 54% of executives say AI solutions implemented in their businesses have already increased productivity, according to the PwC Consumer Intelligence Series.
Predictions: The value of AI in 2018 is found in empowering current employees to add more value to existing enterprises. That empowerment is coming in three main ways: automating processes too complex for older technologies, identifying trends in historical data to create business value and providing forward-looking intelligence to strengthen human decision.
Growth stage: Series A
Selling tools available: Web examples of forms, Demo Request for lead generation, emails leads and tracking through updates for EXTRACT product.
Awards Received: N/A
Funding: $18 million raised, 6 investors in most current investment round
Employee perks
Lunch and mid-afternoon snacks delivered daily
Comprehensive medical and health coverage
Choice of hardware
Gym membership
The ability to change the landscape of office work
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 5.0 out of 5 stars, 100% recommend to a friend, N/A approve of CEO
“Machine Learning, applied to big problems. Very smart team from diverse backgrounds. Great compensation. Talented and innovative and experienced leadership. Top-notch perks. Collaborative environment.”
UiPath’s mission is to eradicate repetitive tasks through intelligent use of software automation. The company specializes in robotic process automation, leveraging computer vision to operate the user interface layer of software more efficiently and accurately than human users. Clients include big four accounting firms like Deloitte, EY, and PwC, which use UiPath to automate redundant processes internally and for clients. UiPath’s services have also been used by manufacturers to automate inventory management and supplier communications.
Industry: Artificial Intelligence – Robotic Process Automation
Industry Outlook: Robotic process automation is an emerging form of business process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or AI workers. The concept has been around for a long time in the form of screen scraping, but robotic process automation is considered to be a significant technological evolution of this technique in the sense that new software platforms are emerging which are scalable and reliable enough to make this approach viable for use in large enterprises. The top test automation tools and frameworks have the potential t
o help organizations to best position themselves to keep pace with the trends in software testing.
Predictions: In the World Quality Report 2017–2018 by Capgemini, Sogeti and Micro Focus, key trends include increasing test automation and widespread adoption of agile and DevOps methodologies. The report points out the need for organizations to have intelligent automation and smart analytics to speed up decision making and validation and to better address the challenges of testing smarter devices and products that are highly integrated and continuously changing. The report also suggests the need of smart test platforms that are self-aware and self-adaptive to support the complete application lifecycle.
Growth stage: Series B
Selling tools available: Enterprise RPA Trial, Training and professional development, Partnership programs: service, technology, resellers, resource, and official training partners.
Awards Received:· Winner of HfS 2017 RPA Blueprint
· Named RPA Technology Leader and Star Performer from Everest Group FIT Matrix, 2017
· Named RPA Industry Leader from Forrester Wave Robotic Process Automation, 2017
Funding: $153 Million in Series B funding
Employee perks
Health and life insurance/flexible spending account
Maternity/Paternity Leave
Free lunches/snacks
Work from home options
Performance Bonus and stock options
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars, 94% recommend to a friend, 100% approve of CEO
“ It’s incredibly exciting to be at UiPath. You’ll never be bored because aside from the client work (which includes Demos, POCs and Support) you are also encouraged to work on internal initiatives. If you are a hard worker and a self-starter you can really succeed here.”
“The company is growing at an unprecedented rate, and I genuinely enjoy my day-to-day job. The culture is open and collaborative and the CEO fully believes in the UiPath mission.”
Dataminr turns social media into real-time, actionable alerts. Recognized as one of the world’s leading businesses in AI and Machine Learning innovation, Dataminr is pioneering groundbreaking technology for detecting, classifying and determining the significance of public information in real time. Dataminr discovers high-impact events and critical breaking information instantly, with solutions for Corporate Security, News, the Public Sector, and Finance that are relied on 24/7 by thousands of clients in over 70 countries.
Industry: Enterprise Software & Network Solutions
Industry Outlook: Over the years, the enterprise software sector has attained maturity to a very great extent. New enterprise software firms are coming up in large numbers across the globe. However, en route to progress, making enterprise software adaptive to market changes still remains a daunting task for entrepreneurs in the sector.
The two mature verticals for Dataminr are public sector entities and finance firms such as hedge funds. Both industries highlight the Dataminr value prop.
Growth stage: Series D
Selling tools available: Website lead generation, Email tracking/email newsletter, Demo request, Marketing collateral: case studies, infographics, reports, videos and webinars.
Awards Received: AI 100: The Artificial Intelligence Startups Redefining Industries, CB Insights, 2017
Forbes Cloud 100 List, Forbes, 2017
Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500™, Deloitte, 2017
Forbes FinTech 50, Forbes, 2016
CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list in 2014 and 2016
AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies list
Funding: $180 million raised from 60+ investors
Employee perks
100% covered health insurance
Daily catered lunches, endless snacks and cold brew coffee on tap
Team-driven and collaborative culture
Company outings like Star Wars movies and Happy Hours
Recreational clubs and a fitness subsidy
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 4.2 stars out of 5, 80% recommend to a friend, 74% approve of CEO
“Working on the cutting edge of information discovery with intelligent, motivated people. Good compensation and perks make you feel like your work is valued.”
“We have a significant impact on the world, as our clients are using Dataminr to find critical and breaking news in real time. Amazing company culture and there are a lot of employee engagement events which gives you an opportunity to mingle with members of different teams.”
SevenRooms is an all-in-one platform for hospitality management. From reservations to marketing efforts, the platform ensures better business practices and guest relations. Founded in 2011, SevenRooms’ reservation, seating and guest management platform gives operators the tools they need to develop direct relationships with guests, boosting revenue and enabling personalized service and marketing.
Industry: Computer Hardware & Software
Industry Outlook: A rise in cloud integration is driving growth in the hotel and hospitality management market. According to BusinessWire, hotels usually spend approximately 10% of their total budget on strategies and solutions that help them maintain and retain their frequent customers. Hotel and hospitality management software lowers the dependency on manual record maintenance, which increases the overall efficiency. Hotels and resorts are gradually deploying this software to eradicate inadequacies and accelerate the overall process efficiencies.
Predictions: According to Technavio analysts, the global hotel and hospitality management software market will grow at a CAGR of almost 9% between 2018-2022. The reduction in overall operational costs is a major factor driving the market’s growth.
Growth stage: Series A
Selling tools available: Demo Request for lead generation and email tracking, client case studies available for download.
Awards received: Best Hospitality Technology, NYC Hospitality Alliance Awards 2017
Funding: $4 million+
Employee perks
Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
Mental health care
Performance Bonuses
Ability to work from home, flexible schedule
Paid gym membership
Company social outings
Pet-friendly workplace
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 4.8 stars out of 5, 96% recommend to a friend, 100% approve of CEO
“My two years at SevenRooms have been the two most exciting and intellectually stimulating years of my professional career. There is never a dull moment, never a day when I don’t learn something new and always incredible people to learn from and work with.”
“Working at SevenRooms allows me to help solve complex problems for our clients and work with an incredible team of smart, nice people to build the cutting-edge product. I walk into work every day excited for the challenges ahead.”
Troops is building intelligent software to help millions of people automate key workflows, eliminate busy work, and bring insights to make work easier. Troops is a Slackbot for sales teams, making it easy to use CRM data to do your job. Troops lets you instantly push and pull CRM data in and out of Slack, turning it into the sales hub for both you and your team.
Industry: Enterprise Software & Network Solutions
Industry Outlook: Workflow and Content Automation (WCA) is a new enterprise software category for automating business workflows, document processes and transactions.
Workflow management software helps companies to manage and automate their standard processes; they are evolving to become more human-centric with less programming. WCA solutions accelerate how quickly information flows between enterprises, people, and important business systems to accelerate process cycle times and increase accuracy.
Growth stage: Series A
Selling tools available: Free trial with email lead generation, Overview Demo Video, Demo Request, Slack integration.
Awards Received: Bloomberg’s list of 50 most promising startups (out of a field of 50,000 companies)
Funding: Most recent round was $7 million from 7 investors
Employee perks
Unlimited vacation
Product ownership
Flexible Work Schedule
Outings, happy hours and parties
Paid medical insurance
Glassdoor reviews
Ratings: 5 stars out of 5, 100% recommend to a friend, N/A approve of CEO
“ They encourage their employees to express themselves…you come as and are accepted as who you are. The culture is a product of the employees, not something management dictates from the top. Everyone strives to make everyone else better and quality of work is high.”
Unique benefits, competitive salaries and the chance to be part of a startup making waves in its industry – not only are these companies working well, but they are companies that employees actually want to work for.
These are some of the tech startups in NYC that we’re keeping our eye on at Peak Sales Recruiting…Which companies would you add to our list?
Curious to see what other NYC opportunities are available? Explore Peak’s Career Portal for a current list.
Consistently ranked among the best places to live in the world, not to mention the largest city in Canada and commercial heartland of the country, Toronto also offers a strong business environment for employers to build their sales teams and for sales talent to advance their careers. This has created an evolving sales hiring landscape that is pitting established and growing companies from the city’s major industries against one another in their search for top performing salespeople.
In this article we examine the sales profession in Canada’s largest city, including how Toronto’s economic growth, start-up community, and educational institutions are affecting the sales talent pipeline and driving employers to pay wages at unprecedented levels.
The Toronto Landscape – An Overview:
Toronto is truly an international city. Of the more than six million inhabitants, half the population was born in another country. Significant portions of the city’s population speak Cantonese and Mandarin, Italian, Punjabi, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages. The city is also strategically located on the Northeastern seaboard, with easy access to other financial capitals such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, all within a 90-minute flight. This international mindset influences everything about the city – from its cuisine to cultural activities.
The city also has plenty of homegrown pursuits, including the annual Toronto International Film Festival, world-class museums, including the Royal Ontario Museum, professional sports teams, like the Toronto Raptors, world-class shopping along Bloor St. and plenty of nightlife to keep people busy in their spare time. This unique combination has set the city up as an elite business centre where companies and their employees thrive.
The city has emerged as the second largest and fastest growing financial centre in North America and, according to the World Economic Forum, is home the world’s safest and most secure banking system. The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) is the world’s largest exchange for mining and oil and gas, and the leader in cleantech listings. The TSX ranks first in the world in number of new listings, second overall globally in the number of companies listed, and second in North America in the number of technology companies listed.
As one of the most diverse economies in North America, Toronto is home to companies from almost every major vertical. More than 200,000 people work in over 13,000 technology companies, while the city lays claim to one of the largest biomedical and biotech clusters in North America, with over 50,000 people working in more than 800 companies. Greater than 36,000 employees work in 1,700 renewable energy and cleantech companies, while more than 251,000 employees work in the financial services sector.
Taken together, Toronto’s position as a leading cultural hub, its impressive array of companies, and its workforce offer a compelling combination for both sales professionals and the companies looking to hire them.
Growth in Greater Toronto:
As a place to conduct business, Toronto positions itself as one of the best in the world. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers “Cities of Opportunity” study, the city ranks fourth among the top global cities like London, New York, and Singapore. In addition, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked Toronto as the best place to live. In particular, the EIU gave the city high marks for its innovation and intellectual capital and the quality of its business environment. These findings should not surprise business leaders who are evaluating the Toronto market since the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) generates 20 percent of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while the city’s economy grew by 2.7 percent in 2014.
“Toronto’s strengths are already attracting major businesses, start-ups and top talent, creating an innovation hot bed in the city’s South Core and Waterfront districts,” said Ted Graham, innovation leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Enhancing the city’s connectivity to domestic and global markets by better integrating its IT and transportation infrastructure, and embracing new technologies will be key to drive further growth in the city.”
If Toronto is a magnet for people from around the world, it is also attractive to Canadian companies and global companies looking to expand. About 40 percent of company headquarters sites in Canada are based in Toronto and even more in the surrounding area, including Kitchener, Waterloo, Markham and Mississauga. Google Canada’s headquarters (and its mini-golf course, full gym and game rooms) are located right in downtown Toronto and the company recently expanded by opening a new facility in nearby Kitchener. Apple Canada moved its headquarters from Markham to downtown Toronto last year, while Honda Canada is also based in the city.
Although the largest employers in the Toronto area, including the Royal Bank of Canada, Rogers Communications, Manulife Financial, TD Bank and Scotiabank, are all important drivers of the GTA economy, there is plenty of hiring activity among smaller firms looking for the right sales talent to drive growth.
Toronto Start-Ups:
The province of Ontario, where Toronto is located, attracted $708 million in venture capital for 152 deals during the first three quarters of 2015, nearly 44 percent of the $1.6 billion in venture capital invested in Canada, according to data from the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association. This has created a vibrant start-up scene where some of the worlds most innovate solutions are being developed and sold.
Consider the prospects of Kik Interactive Inc., a private mobile messaging and chat company. The company, which is based in Waterloo, just received a $66 million investment from China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. Kik Interactive is planning to leverage that relationship into a greater presence in China and to develop the capability to facilitate commerce. Those plans, of course, require the right talent. That is why Kik Interactive plans to double its workforce and why it has also recently created a chief people officer position for the first time to manage that expansion successfully.
Once high-flying Waterloo-based Blackberry has hit a rough patch and has been cutting back its workforce. However, plenty of other technology companies are moving into or expanding operations in the Toronto area to make up those lost jobs. For example, Shopify, an e-commerce company based in Ottawa, has opened a new space in Waterloo for the developers and sales teams of its Shopify Plus e-commerce solution for larger merchants. The company has surged into a market value above $1 billion since it announced a partnership with Amazon, in addition to existing partnerships with companies like Intuit.
Another growing company in the city is Influitive, which provides marketing software to help companies create customer “advocates” who can become effective referral sources. The company, which recently closed on more than $30 million in funding, is planning to add new products and expand into Europe and Asia. To support this growth, the company is also planning to double its workforce to about 200 employees this year. “As more and more companies recognize that customer engagement, experience and advocacy are key to meeting their revenue goals, Influitive has become buried in market demand,” says Mark Organ, the Toronto-based company’s CEO.
Of course, not all growing companies in the Toronto area are involved in information and communication technology. Three clean energy companies in the Toronto area – Pond Fuel, Electrovaya and Celestica – have been named among the leaders of Canada’s clean energy industry. Highland Therapeutics Inc., a pharmaceutical company, is building out its sales and marketing infrastructure as it pivots toward rollout of its new drugs. To support these efforts, the company recently closed on $24 million in funding.
There are hundreds of start-up sales positions in the Toronto area. There are more than 200 sales positions listed on online job boards in the region, while demand for Peak’s services to recruit senior reps and VPs for high-growth start-ups has exponentially increased.
Toronto start-ups have focused on the following hiring criteria when building their sales teams:
Achieved sales quota for the past 5+ years
5+ years experience using a CRM
5+ years experience of successfully building and growing a territory
Successful experience closing six-figure deals
Successful experience working in a entrepreneurial environment
To fill the sales jobs created by start-ups and more established firms, Toronto employers have to present themselves as great places to work and grow careers. “The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) employers understand that they exist in one of the most competitive employment landscapes in the country,” said Richard Yerema, managing editor of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. “The employers who call the GTA home must ensure that their human resource practices are not only competitive within their industry but also in the wider GTA neighborhood.”
This competition for talent is a key selling point for companies looking to expand into the Toronto area. After all, if there is competition for talent, there is compelling talent to be found and hired. A survey of 105 U.S. executives conducted by Development Counsellors International found that “high-quality workforce” is the phrase these executives most commonly associate with Canada. According to the report, “well-educated” and “quality workforce” was also among the themes most frequently submitted by executives regarding Canada’s advantages for U.S. companies looking to relocate or expand.
However, there is a critical shortage of sales talent in the city. Peak’s recruitment engagements in the city have tripled since 2011. In particular, demand for senior reps selling enterprise software and service offerings has increased by 8% since 2014, while demand for regional territory managers and VP Sales for IT, service, and SaaS firms have increased by 13%.
An educated workforce:
Looking towards the future, more and more talent is graduating each year in Toronto and entering the workforce. The City of Toronto has an average of 24,000 students enrolling annually in one of their eight post-secondary institutions – four universities and four colleges – with over 130,000 students currently enrolled.
The University of Toronto, the city’s largest university, offers bachelor business programs with concentrations in Digital Enterprise Management, Finance and Economics, and Management Studies as well as a Masters of Business Administration program. Maclean’s Magazine ranks the University of Toronto, as the number one business school in the country, with nearby York University coming in at number three. Moreover, Humber College offers a certificate of achievement in professional sales, allowing students to acquire fundamental sales skills and knowledge..
Toronto’s Challenges:
Like other major urban centres, Toronto has downsides that create challenges for both employers and employees. Traffic congestion is an ongoing concern and an aging and under-funded public transportation system is presenting difficulties for suburban commuters entering the city.
Another issue is the cost of housing. Housing prices, especially locations in the city and near public transit, are well above the national average. In 2015, the average sales price for all housing, including single-family homes and condominiums was $622,217, an increase of nearly ten percent from a year earlier. The only thing keeping home sales from growing more last year was the fact that demand for housing outstripped the available supply. As a result, experts predict that some of that ongoing demand that will carry over into 2016/2017. With supply and demand continuing to be out of sync, additional housing cost increases appear to be all but inevitable. “The average selling price is also expected to rise to between $655,000 and $665,000 – one of the highest in Canada – up from $622,217.”
Riding the Escalator in Toronto:
What offsets the challenges of living and working in Toronto and its surrounding areas are the benefits of living and working there. A study conducted for Statistics Canada identified Toronto to be an “escalator region.” “Migration into Toronto is associated with an income premium, such that in-migrants appear to immediately receive an income benefit that exceeds the income benefits associated with migrations to other urban areas, and/or staying,” according to the study. “That is, while migrations to other large, medium or small urban areas are also often associated with income benefits, the benefits of migrating to Toronto appear to be greater. In effect, it would appear that income growth was accelerated by migrating into Toronto – a productivity effect.”
This escalator effect yields benefits to both employers and employees.
Migrants moving to Toronto either from within Canada or other parts of the world have greater opportunities available to them. For sales professionals in particular, migration into Toronto offers net new revenue opportunities since the city is home to the largest cluster or bussiness in the country and is strategically located close to some of the world’s largest markets.
Employers looking to hire these individuals benefit from a much larger, more talented and more diverse labor pool than other cities might offer. “The (Toronto) metropolitan area benefit(s) from high in-migration rates among young labor force migrants, and a corresponding net loss amongst older age groups and at retirement,” the Statistics Canada study found.
This turnover from baby boomers retiring at the end of their careers makes room for new talent to thrive. This circumstance is well illustrated when it comes to sales management positions. A Canadian government analysis, for example, shows that demand for sales managers is likely to exceed the talent supply through 2022 as senior sales leaders retire in these positions at a higher rate than workers in other positions. Below is a breakdown of the industries most likely to be hiring sales managers.
An overall look at the workforce in the Toronto area shows a group of 2.8 million people with experience in a variety of industries. Although manufacturing and retail trade employ the most people, there is are a number of industries represented, including professional services and financial services.
Pay Levels in the Toronto Area:
While pay levels in the Toronto area are not the highest in Canada, they are still in the top three of major cities. As seen in the table below, the median total income jumped nearly 12% from 2009 to 2013.
A broader view of pay levels shows wage growth since the 2008/2009 global recession for Toronto and its surrounding areas.
This turnover from baby boomers retiring at the end of their careers makes room for new talent to thrive. This circumstance is well illustrated when it comes to sales management positions. A Canadian government analysis, for example, shows that demand for sales managers is likely to exceed the talent supply through 2022 as senior sales leaders retire in these positions at a higher rate than workers in other positions. Below is a breakdown of the industries most likely to be hiring sales managers.
Data from Environics Analytics provides a clearer picture of income levels by breaking it down into five equal segments.
Statistics Canada provides a breakdown of wages for select sale positions, including the lowest, median and highest wage levels for each position.
Finally, our own data shows a breakdown of the typical compensation packages earned by salespeople in Toronto, according to their position.
A Look Ahead
Although Canada’s oil-dependent economy will rise and fall to some extent with worldwide oil prices, there is reason to expect something different for Toronto. With its diverse economy and healthy start-up culture, the city and its surrounding area is attracting different types of companies that can provide a steadier flow of economic gains, well-paying sales jobs and, for employers, continued competition for the best talent. To be sure, companies that thrive in this environment must go above and beyond to present themselves as employers of choice if they are going attract and retain the sales talent necessary to drive the next level of growth.
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Early stage companies are painfully “misfiring by mis-hiring” the most important role on the sales team. Don’t hire one until…
In Tech, The #1 Most Common Mis-hire is the VP/Head of Sales
In fact, there’s a venture capitalist saying I hate that goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past Your First VP of Sales’ Carcass” or “The Second VP of Sales Is When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof.
It especially bugs me because I’m a firm believer in hiring & training fewer, more committed people rather than taking a ‘churn and burn’ approach.
But…but…those VCs are right. Because in start-ups – especially Software-As-A-Service (SaaS)/ tech, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail. They don’t even make it 12 months (we’ve heard that the average tenure for VP Sales of early companies in the valley averages 18 months – and that includes the winners – ouch!).
Let’s look at what those Sales VPs should do since most founder/ CEOs are looking for the wrong things – especially first time founders, or founders who haven’t spent much time in or with sales.
Top 5 Things a Great VP of Sales Does At An Early, Growing Company (In Order Of Priority)
#1) Recruiting
You hire a VP Sales not to sell, but to recruit, train and coach other people to sell. So recruiting is 20% + of their time, because you’re going to need a team to sell. And recruiting great reps and making them successful is the #1 most important thing your VP Sales will do. And great VPs of Sales know this.
Peak Insight:
Depending on the industry, between 20 and 33 percent of salespeople aren’t capable of hitting their targets.
#2) Backfilling and Helping His/ Her Sales Team
Helping coach reps to close deals (not doing it for them). Getting hands-on when needed, or in big deals. Spotting issues before they blow up. Seeing opportunities ahead of the horizon.
Peak Insight:
Great Sales VPs boost a team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together.
#3) Sales Tactics
Training, onboarding. Territories (you need them). Quotas, comp. How to compete. Pitch scripts. Coordinating FUD and anti-FUD. Segmenting customers. Reports. Ensuring they and the team can get what they need from the sales / CRM system. Etc.
Peak Insight:
Create systems – simplify the sales process so reps can develop strong sales habits and tactics.
#4) Sales Strategy
What markets should we expand into? What’s our main bottleneck? Where should our time & money go? What few key metrics tell us the most about the health of our team & growth?
Peak Insight:
Monitor Activity Volumes – are calls, meetings, proposals, etc. in line with typical ratios required to hit targets?
#5) Creating and Selling Deals Him/Herself
This is last of the Top 5. Important, yes for select deals. But last on the list because if your VP Sales (or CEO, for that matter) is doing the closing rather than their team – you’re bottlenecked. No scaling for you, sir.
Peak Insight:
A founder has to accept that a salesperson in a start-up is sometimes like a boxer fighting with one arm.
SO: don’t hire a VP Salesuntil you are ready to scale and build and fund a small, growing sales team.
And any VP of Sales that doesn’t see this themselves — probably isn’t a great long-term Sales VP for you. Instead, he/she is either just a great individual contributor, a great builder … or a simply a flawed or desperate candidate. One challenge in hiring salespeople is that they’re often extra good at “selling” themselves too…whether or not they’re actually a good fit!
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Sales jobs are constantly evolving in an ever-changing industry landscape. Changes in customer behavior, new kinds of competition, shifting regulation, new methods of distribution and core technologies of production. Together, these factors have the potential to significantly change the nature of an industry. While some industries are on the decline, others are experiencing massive growth. It’s important to be prepared to pivot in your sales career in order to stay relevant and in demand.
So what are the top industries to look for a great sales job? At Peak Sales Recruiting, we’re finding the largest demand (and compensation) in four major B2B market segments: technology and software, healthcare, financial services, and consumer packaged goods (CPG). We’ll go over each industry, describe how they’re changing, present some of the challenges you need to be aware of,and show you why they’re worth exploring further.
Technology and Software
You’d be hard pressed to find a city that isn’t investing in infrastructure to attract tech jobs. Tech and software has long been a staple of the North American economy, dating back to the 60’s & 70’s in Silicon Valley where the first modern technology companies popped up, and still exist today. The dot-com boom in the 90’s, followed by explosive growth in digital in the 2000’s has kept this industry booming. Today’s industry is focused on mobility, SaaS, cybersecurity and automation.
Sales jobs continue to be highly desirable to professionals in this industry. Spiro points out the reasons these jobs are still so hot right now is that the demand is high, job satisfaction is high, pay is better than average, and career opportunities are plentiful and varied.
Growth is expected to expand as it’s “projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than the average for all occupations.” Plus, the industry is not just focused around Silicon Valley anymore. Cities from Austin to Toronto have become hotbeds for the tech community in North America.
There are a few segments of this industry that are really driving growth and creating opportunities:
Cybersecurity
ByGoogleCybersecurity has grabbed a lot of headlines recently with the Russian election hacking and the Equifax data breach. In the first half of 2017 alone, there were almost two million
data record breaches, or about 122 individual records compromised per second – and these events are costly. The average breach costs a typical company 3.62 million, or about 225 dollars per record. This has led to a booming B2B industry with growth in the sector breaking records:
“Cybersecurity deals hit an all-time quarterly high of 146 deals in Q1’17, up 26 percent from the previous quarterly high. The trend held through Q2’17, which saw just one fewer deal (145 total) compared to Q1’17.
The amount of disclosed equity funding to cybersecurity companies has also recently broken records, reaching an all-time quarterly high of 1.6B dollars in Q2’17.”
Big Data / Predictive Analytics / Machine Learning / BI
It’s really hard to separate any of these tech industries as they’ve become so intertwined. Big data gathers the information for machine learning to process, which leads to predictive analytics and business intelligence.
By the end of 2020, the business intelligence and analytics market is expected to exceed 22 billion dollars.
“Purchasing decisions continue to be influenced heavily by business executives and users who want more agility and the option for small personal and departmental deployments to prove success,” said Rita Sallam, research vice president at Gartner. “Enterprise-friendly buying models have become more critical to successful deployments.”
Machine learning is coming of age as well as tech behemoths like Google and Baidu collectively spent 25 billion dollars on AI research and acquisition in 2016. This tech will improve predictive analytics and drive B2B efficiency, and you’re already seeing this in Big Data applications like Google Analytics and Adwords search algorithms.
According to HBR Analytic Services, more than 60 percent of executives believe that their future success depends on the successful adoption of AI. In fact, more than a third of the executives that were interviewed are piloting, or in production, with tools powered by artificial intelligence. These early adopters have recognized that AI technologies will have a massive effect on the B2B revenue generation process. As such, these companies are starting to use tools that have embedded AI capabilities that can augment their “sales productivity, customer retention, account growth and other critical aspects of business success”.
Software as a Service (SaaS) / Cloud Products
Software has increasingly moved from an on-premise system that you purchase and own forever (or at least until you need an upgrade) to a cloud-based model where you pay a license fee monthly or yearly to use the software, but always have the latest version. Companies are increasingly transitioning to a cloud-based technology stack, so in order for software providers to stay relevant their solution offering must comply with the new norm.
One of the best examples is when Adobe made the switch to a subscription based model for all of their B2B products. This transformation has led to record revenues for the company. It’s no surprise that their salespeople are some of the most well paid and can expect an average yearly compensation of 183,000 dollars.
Another example of the growing shift is in accounting software. Recent startups like Xero are offering cloud accounting options as a service. This has forced traditional accounting firms like QuickBooks and Turbotax to adapt or die. With the accounting software industry alone expected to grow to 4 billion dollars by 2021, it’s easy to see the success of transforming a traditional software business to a SaaS model.
You can expect to be well paid as a salesperson in the tech industry as the average compensation is around $80k. However, top performers can easily reach six figures. Looking at the 10 best paying companies in the tech industry, a salesperson can expect to make between $150,000 to $250,000.
There are certainly challenges to working in this field however. Tech changes fast, and you don’t need to look any further than the shift in office-based software over the last two decades. Lotus 123 – the once dominant word processing software, was replaced by Microsoft Office as the standard in most businesses. And now with the prevalence of Google Docs, you’ll find that the use of Microsoft Office in the workplace is declining as well. There are dozens of reasons a tech company could fail, and obsolete tech is one of the most common.
Healthcare
As the baby boomer population retires, the general population expands, and medical technology advances, it’s easy to see why 7 out of 20 of the fastest growing industries on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website are in a healthcare related field.
Growth is explosive in the healthcare industry for two main reasons: an aging population, and a population that is sicker than ever. The healthcare industry is seeing growth in many different areas, including home healthcare, mobility devices, and sports injury centers. However, there are two segments that are highly desirable for sales professionals: pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.
Pharmaceuticals
The worldwide pharmaceutical market has grown from 390 billion dollars in 2001, to more than 1.1 trillion dollars in 2016. Almost half of that is in North America alone.
Although there have been some cutbacks in recent years, the outlook is very promising, with total sales jobs topping 400,000 in the US by 2022.
Medical Devices
Like pharmaceuticals, the medical equipment market is dominated by US companies. Over the next few years, these companies are expected to double their revenue growth rates.
“On average, analysts forecast that revenue at large medical-device companies will grow by between 4 and 5 percent per year over the next few years, considerably more than the 2 percent overall annual market growth recorded over the past five.”
The biggest downsides to the industry lie with insurance companies and government. Drug and medical equipment sales are highly regulated, even requiring approval of sales literature. On top of that regulation, treatment coverage is a moving target and what’s covered one day may not be covered the next and the product or solution you’re selling may no longer be relevant.
That said, compensation remains strong, and remains as one of the best paying sales jobs. The average compensation in the industry is almost 150,000 dollarsbetween base salary and commission. Sales representatives also report many perks to the job, like great benefits, stock options, company cars, and 401k with matching contributions.
One thing to keep in mind: with rapid changes in healthcare, come new requirements for healthcare sales reps, as they’re expected to excel in a few different areas – most notably in digital marketing. This is due to how medical professionals are getting their info, which is to say not just from printed medical journals. If you can excel in these new areas, you can build a great career in this industry.
Financial Services
The financial services industry encompasses a range of B2B services that manage money. This includes everyday banking, stocks and bonds, financing, accounting, insurance products and more. The industry more than doubled in the last three decades, and it’s why you’ll find that financial services makes up an average of more than 20 percent of GDP in most developed countries. In the US, it’s estimated at 7.3 percent of total GDP, which is a massive 1.4 trillion dollars.
Recent years have seen a decline in financial advisor jobs and revenues. This is driven by a new generation of wealthy millennials that are declining to use financial advisors as new products and services become available. However, there is an area in financial services that is growing rapidly, and attracting top sales talent: FinTech.
Financial Tech (FinTech)
Historically, FinTech has referred to the back end computer systems that run the financial industries. This is no longer true, as FinTech is now used to reference all of the technology implemented into the financial services world. FinTech now includes everything from your mobile banking app, online trading platforms, fraud prevention software, machine learning, mobile payments, blockchain technology and the complex trading software used on wall street.
The growth in this industry is staggering:
“Funding continues to remain strong with US8.2 billion dollars invested in the third quarter of 2017. This is after more than doubling to US9.3 billion dollars in the second quarter… Investments in Fintech were still way above the US6.3 billion dollars raised in third quarter of 2016. The United States has led the in global fintech investments. Data shows that in the 3rd quarter of 2017 US5 billion dollars deployed across 142 deals. A major portion of the fintech industry is the blockchain market.”
Bitcoin has blown the blockchain market wide open. Although Bitcoin itself is not relevant here, the technology behind it is. Companies are investing in blockchain technology to secure almost any transaction or record, the stock market, and mobile transactions. We’re just learning about how valuable this technology can be to everyday financial services, but here are 35 real-world examples of blockchain tech in action.
Mobile / Digital Payment Solutions
A subset of FinTech, mobile and digital payment solutions is worth noting as it’s experiencing amazing growth on its own. Startups are creating peer-to-peer money exchanges that work by simply tapping two phones together, transit passes are going phone-based, and B2B transactions are expected to be the next trillion dollar industry.
The days of checkbooks and ATMs may be headed for the history books as this recent study shows:
“Mobile money services have proven to be an effective gateway for financial inclusion among the unbanked, a demographic that could evolve into a US3 trillion dollar payments volume opportunity. Tomorrow, your bankers or wealth manager will coach you throughout your day to take appropriate financial decisions based on a combination of artificial intelligence and transactional and contextual data. Frustration and cost will decrease as new business models and emerging technologies are being adopted to streamline onboarding processes, operations and client communication. The influence that FinTech is having on the market is growing and the long-term potential is even greater.”
Salaries in the financial services sales world vary greatly depending on the product or service you’re selling. Insurance sales are at the lower end of the spectrum and can expect to make above $50k, with an outlook of 10 percent growth over the next 10 years.Financial services, securities and commodities can expect to make closer to 70 thousands dollars with a ten year expected growth rate of six percent, or average. FinTech sales is a little harder to define overall, but quite often falls into the technology sales salary expectations in the first section and can hit six figures.
As with all industries, the challenges in financial services are similar. Businesses can be notoriously slow in picking up new technology. FinTech is also moving fast, which creates two problems: being able to communicate the latest changes to a client, and the dangers of becoming obsolete.
There’s also the issue of recessions and market crashes, which sometimes go hand-in-hand. No industry gets hit harder during a recession than the financial industry. If there’s less money to move around, there are less transactions occurring. This will eat into the desire to use these services and invest in new technologies.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
Consumer Packaged Goods, or CPG, are those purchases that we as consumers make frequently, most notably food, drinks, clothing, household products, and health and wellness. The CPG industry hit 800 billion dollarsin North America for 2016, and although actual dollar growth has slowed, this has more to do with deflationary pressures on currency than on product sales themselves.
Another indication of how robust the market is, is the expected growth:
“Imagine, if you will, that over the next decade the world will gain an additional 81 Procter & Gambles or 458 equivalents of Kellogg’s. This is the sort of growth that will happen in the global consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) sector, which will nearly double in size—to 14 trillion—by 2025, from eight trillion dollars in 2014.”
The growth in this category is fuelling investment into CPG at record rates. There are a couple of reasons why growth is so massive: Ecommerce and emerging markets.
Ecommerce
You don’t need look any further than Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods to see this growth in action. Before Amazon even purchased Whole Foods, Amazon’s online CPG growth was drastically outpacing the global industry.
If that’s not enough, 9 out of every 10 dollars of CPG growth is happening in online. E-commerce is no longer an option for CPG brands, it’s a must have.
Emerging Markets
As poorer nations continue to strengthen and grow their middle-class, like China and India to name a couple of the more populous nations, it’s opening new CPG markets to brands. Emerging markets are expected to grow CPG sales 3 times faster than developed nations, and reach 6 trillion dollars in sales by 2020.
70 percent of the world’s population lives in emerging markets, so the growth opportunity is substantial.
All of this growth is leading to more opportunity for the B2B CPG salesperson. One thing to note is that a lot of CPG sales jobs expect a level of formal education that is higher than most other sales jobs. While you can get away with experience in lieu of education in many fields, CPG sales often requires an MBA due to the complex nature of how CPG are sold, and the need to understand business economics even at the junior level. That being said, the top positions in CPG sales will regularly hit six figures, andhitting 300 thousand a year in salary and commission is regularly achieved by top performers.
The main challenges affecting CPG sales are slow or shrinking traditional growth. In-store retail growth has slowed or disappeared in almost all categories, at least for now. If you’re not keeping up with trends, you can expect sales to lag.
Consumers are also expecting a more personalized shopping experience. Instead of a cost effective one-brand-fits-all approach, companies are finding it’s better to have many brands to personalize the experience. It’s one reason you’ll find more Diet Coke varieties available in 2018 than at any time in history. Having a large number of complex brands can make things more challenging, so you need to adapt to trends quickly, or you’ll find yourself behind.
Sales jobs are some of the best paying positions in most companies because they are directly responsible for driving the organization’s revenues. As technology and industries change, sales will become more important than ever. Staying on top of trends will help you be properly equipped for decades to come.
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If you’ve ever wondered what top sales leaders are looking for when they’re hiring a new rep, this article should provide you with actionable insights that you can use in your next job search. I sat down with Kerry Webb, Director of Sales-New Business at Avast, and asked her a number of questions that our headhunters get asked all the time by sales professionals like yourself.
KERRY WEBB
Kerry has more than 20 years of experience, starting out as a sales rep before moving into leadership. Since the beginning, she has been a perennial top-performer – selling and leading teams in both B2C and B2B, inside and field sales. She has increased sales effectiveness by over 40%, has exceeded company sales goals by over 150%, achieved +725% YOY growth on new solutions all while achieving best in class employee satisfaction scores. She has been in the trenches and understands the challenges and the rewards that come with being out in the field, and she firmly believes that this has been instrumental to her success as a sales leader, and her effectiveness as a coach.
As a sales leader, how do you like to be approached by a salesperson who is interested in joining your team?
There’s no right answer to this. However, it feels very natural to be introduced by someone else – so a referral is great. A LinkedIn message is good as well. Someone who doesn’t approach you when the job is posted, but rather someone who wants to be ready and kept top of mind when a position becomes available. Some of the best people are telling you that they are interested before there is a position. Be proactive! It’s also important for the candidate to demonstrate that they’re positive and energetic as well – I’ve had a lot of people who have approached me and they’re personality and level of interest falls flat. So, there are two parts to this – there’s the way that they approach you and there’s the how. Having confidence, enthusiasm and a certain presence will make the candidate memorable and will make me think about him or her when the time does come to fill a position.
What are the things that you need to see in a sales resume before you consider bringing an applicant in for an interview?
That’s interesting, because I’m not as tough as other people that I’ve worked with. I don’t spend as much time on the resume as many other people do. I’m interested in their core competencies, so I’m usually willing to meet almost anyone. That said, I am looking for consistency – making sure there’s not a lot of gaps in employment and the length of time spent working at each organization. I’m looking at the type of work that they did, to determine if there are transferable skills. If you can find people who have done the job before then that’s great, but I like to give people a chance because I’m looking for the competencies more than I’m looking at what they’ve done. Their resume shows me where they’ve been and what they’ve done in a certain length of time, and it tells me whether it makes sense that they’re applying for the position that they’re applying for. Beyond that, I like to talk to people.
What are some of the traits that you’ve found to be synonymous in a top performer and that you look for in every hire you make?
Top performers are not in the noise. Every organization wants more leads, every organization wishes they had a better compensation plan, and every company has some turnover – but a top performer doesn’t talk about that. Rather, a top performer spends their time saying, “I need this and I need that, I tried this and I tried that” and they’re open and they’re asking for help and they’re just trying to make things happen. Top performers ask questions, they find solutions, they’re not making excuses, and they have a reason as to why they are approaching things a certain way. They make it happen – in their own way, and in their own time.
Furthermore, the top performer is a collaborative person. They’re very outspoken when it comes to what they need and they’re willing to ask more than one person for it. As the manager who works with someone like that, all it does is make things better. They are asking the right questions, they are being inquisitive and they are bringing up the right things. I’ve also found that they don’t want to be recognized, because they’re just so busy making things happen. It’s important for me as a leader to support that, and be available when they need something because when they bring something up, I know that that is something that we need to pay attention to.
Top performers can also be emotional, but they are inherently positive. They are internally driven and they believe that they can do anything. They are competitive and they are always urgent – they never stop when they are stuck. Top performers are motivated by money, but they also want to be the best. A top performer isn’t quiet, and they won’t let anyone beat them. They are also the best trackers of their sales. They are not afraid to call a customer if they are behind on their numbers – which in my experience in very rare. In fact, I would say that less than 10% of salespeople will pick up the phone and call customers if they are behind.
What are the things that you look for or want to address in an interview?
I want to know about their sales process, what motivates them and what kind of environment they are looking for – and then it’s all behavioral around those things, as I can build off of those answers. “What worked for you? What didn’t? Tell me about a time, tell me about a sale, explain your involvement in that sale, tell me why you picked that one to talk about?” This helps me to understand their passion.
I want to see what motivates them. I’ll ask standard questions like what kind of boss brings out the best in them, what type of environment brings out the best in them, if they could pick their job what would it look like, what does a day in the life look like, what’s your sales cycle, etc. But I’m really reading between the lines as I’m trying to identify what their motivators are.
At Avast, we’ve started to ask candidates to present to us. We ask them to sell us what they’re selling today. Like we’re a customer. We give them instructions on how to do it and then they present. This gives us a good indication of how coachable they are, if they can think well on their feet and if they can make it interesting.
How important is culture fit? How can both the salesperson AND potential manager screen for that?
In an interview, I’m assessing whether a candidate is a culture fit by first looking internally. Who do I have on the team today. What works? What’s missing? What can this person add to us? What’s going on in our world and could they handle it? So it’s being aware of what they’re looking for, what they bring, and determining if we need that in our environment at this time. Will it enrich what we have today?
One way that I’ve found to be successful when a candidate is assessing culture is to ask to come in and do a side by side, and I think it’s important for companies to have that kind of open environment. I like it when a candidate asks me what the culture is like, and then they try to figure out if it’s an environment that they would enjoy and thrive in.
For remote employees, it’s crucial that they ask the right questions in the interview. They can’t be afraid to tell the hiring manager what they need to be successful. I would want to understand what kind of support they would need from me in order for them to be successful, because I can tell them right then and there if that’s something that can be done.
How do you position career growth to a potential hire? How do you address that question?
When a candidate asks me about career growth in an interview, I throw it back at them and ask them what kind of growth they’re looking for. In a perfect world, what would they like it to be? I will ask them where they see themselves in one, three and five years. I make it a point to always let people know that they have to do the job that they’re in or applying for first, and that they have to succeed in that role. You’ve got to prove yourself. If an organization is going to make an investment in you, it is essential that they see that that person is succeeding in their role before they decide to further invest company time and resources in their professional development.
What activities should a salesperson do outside of work to make a good impression on you?
It’s great to have interests and to talk about them. Show your passion. This is something I look for in a candidate when I’m interviewing. I want to know that they care about something and that it matters to them. This tells me a lot about a person, as I get an opportunity to find out more about their story. This also tells me that the person has a routine – that they’re disciplined, structured and determined. This is a clear indication that the person will be successful in sales. Involvement in networking groups, trade groups and associations is another one that I look for. Top performers are typically involved in some sort of external community of professionals. They know how important it is to have a network.
What “selling process” or sales methodology do you subscribe to, and how do you disseminate that to your team?
First and foremost, I emphasize what needs to be done on the front end. That’s where most of the work is done. You have to be proactive, and you have to get in front of people – whether that be through your network, through LinkedIn, by building a creative campaign or event. To be successful in sales, this is where you need to spend the majority of your time. Once you have identified a customer that wants to talk to you, you engage in a very detailed needs analysis and discovery phase. After the discovery, there will be some type of presentation, followed by negotiation and close. Too many salespeople go straight to presentation and then try to close, without doing the work on the front end, and this usually backfires. I’ve always been a firm believer in the Consultative approach. I coach my team to approach a prospect as a consultant, not a salesperson. To understand their business and to see where they can help. They shouldn’t have a solution for them at the first meeting, and they may not even have one tomorrow. But at least they’ve taken an inventory, and gotten to know their business. At some point down the line, there will be an opportunity where we can help.
We meet a lot of successful salespeople who are interested making some sort of a transition in their sales career – like selling a different solution or selling into a different vertical. How would those people best communicate their ability to make that transition successfully? How could they convince you that they were right for the job?
The first questions I would ask this person are as follows. “What are the differences between what you’re selling now and what you want to sell? What do you think are the similarities? How would you adjust to those differences, and what would you need to do to prepare yourself for those differences?”. If the candidate can’t make that linkage themselves, then they’re probably not going to be able to convince me.
In your industry, how important is it to hire a salesperson with an existing network in the space? Can a candidate with an understanding of the solution offering and a great track record in executing a similar sales process be just as successful? If so, how can they demonstrate that effectively?
A network can help you but I don’t think it stop you from succeeding. Everyone must start somewhere. In some circumstances having a network will give you an edge, but if you don’t have one, I want to hear how you are going to address the challenges you’ll be faced with by not having a network. You either have a network and you know how to leverage it, or you absolutely know what it takes to build one. In my experience, not a lot of salespeople have that skill. To have what it takes to start from scratch, and to be prepared to show me a plan on how they’re going to do it effectively is a huge asset.
What qualities and individual accomplishments do you look for when deciding who to promote into a leadership role?
They don’t need to be the top-performer, as top-performers don’t necessarily make good leaders. I look for people who have helped others naturally, so when there was a problem they’ve gotten people together to try to find a solution. They’ve taken on projects throughout their time that have not just benefitted them, but that benefitted the team. They get involved naturally with rewards and recognition and incentives. They are someone who people approach for ideas and solutions to problems because they’ve done it and they’ve put themselves out there. They’re not the quiet person in the room. They become the natural go-to person. It’s not a surprise when they want to become a leader because they’ve already been acting like it. They have proactively looked for opportunities that would benefit themselves and the team.
Who’s right to be a leader? I’ll always ask, do you want your success to be in the control of others? Or do you want to have control over it yourself? This is a critical question that makes them really question their ambitions to be a sales leader. I also ask them what their motivation is for wanting to become a sales leader. If it’s money and title, it’s the wrong person. A great leader is motivated by making a difference.
One of your strengths as a sales leader is to take an underperforming sales team and turn it around. What tactics do you advise your team to perform in order for them to turn around their own book of business?
You can’t be afraid of the cold approach, but you can’t just do calls. Calls don’t work – they have to be supplemented with other activities like leveraging their network to ask for introductions, posting on LinkedIn, sending out personalized emails with their picture, wishing them a happy holiday, etc. You must get their attention so that they’ll take your calls. That’s how you get in the door. This is basic, and the most important thing a salesperson should remember is to stick to the basics. Salespeople who try to do more than the basics don’t get a lot of time in their approach, as they are perceived to be junior. Most salespeople think that they’re better than the basics, but in my experience – the basics are best-in-class sales reps.
The San Francisco Bay Area has consistently been ranked number one in the United States for quality of living. It’s also widely considered to be one of the best places for young and hungry software salespeople to establish and grow their careers. As a result, it has long been a tech powerhouse that is only getting stronger.
In fact, in a 15-mile radius you’ll find six out of the top ten technology companies in the world and the largest amount of highly success talent pools to choose from. This abundance of sales talent has caused many of the world’s leading software companies – as well as start-ups- to choose San Francisco as their home.
What does this mean for software sales hiring?
It’s the simple case of software companies moving to where the sales talent is versus trying to get them to come to you.
In a recent study by the Brookings Institute, it shows that no city has created more jobs in the digital world over the last decade than the San Francisco Area. Not even the larger Silicon Valley neighbor San Jose.
For organizations on the hunt for software sales talent, candidate pools in San Francisco are large. But, competition is also heating up. To help employers grow their San Francisco sales forces, here’s statistical look at the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically reviewing:
Software employment trends
Regional growth forecasts
Sales Hiring challenges
Salary trends
Employee expectations
Here is our statistical look at the software sales hiring landscape of San Francisco:
San Francisco is at the center of Northern California’s Bay Area, a diverse region that’s home to almost nine-million residents. Not only is San Francisco centrally located in Northern California, it’s also the state’s center both financially and culturally despite it not being the largest city in the region – with a population of 800 thousand. The title of largest city in the Bay Area goes to San Jose at 950 thousand.
The San Francisco Bay Area was originally settled as part of the Northern California gold rush in the mid-1800’s. However, most people remember the region for the role it played in the “Summer of Love” in the 1960’s and 1970’s and the birth of the anti-war and hippie movement.
A more recent “gold rush” in the 1990’s, known as the dot-com boom. Along with the history of silicon and computer software businesses in the area, San Francisco was cemented as the undisputed tech powerhouse of America. During the dot-com boom, San Francisco’s gentrification accelerated quickly. This helped create the culture we see today in an affluent liberal city that is known for its inclusiveness.
When looking at the software sales hiring landscape in San Francisco, we must include surrounding cities as they’re directly connected by transit and highways. This allows more than 265 thousand residents to commute into San Francisco every day. The close proximity of Oakland to the west, along with high rental rates since the dot-com boom, has lead to a booming start-up community just across the bay, and in turn, attracting top talent.
To the south of San Francisco, there’s Silicon Valley, which includes regions up to the border of San Jose. The regions include Redwood City, Palo Alto and Mountain View. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, this area south of San Francisco was the original home of America’s cutting-edge semiconductor and computer chip manufacturers, or silicon chips. Hence the name Silicon Valley. This made it a natural home for the high-tech companies of the 1970’s and 1980’s, including Atari and Apple.
Today, four of the ten largest software companies in the world are located just south of San Francisco.
Oracle, second only to Microsoft in software sales at 40 billion and is located in Redwood City
Symantec, with 6.6 billion
VMWare – sitting at 6 billion – calls Palo Alto home
Intuit – at 4.6 billion – are located in Mountain View
The region is also home to two of the nation’s top 15 universities: Stanford and UC Berkeley. Both schools have outstanding computer science and engineering programs, which produces and attracts young talent for today’s software industry. This also facilitates the replacement of the baby boomer population as they retire.
In fact, these universities produce more than ten thousand new science and engineering graduates every year. This is part of the reason more than 46 percent of adults in the region hold a bachelor’s degree and 21 percent hold a graduate degree. This makes the region America’s most well-educated – with a minimum of a million people.
Quality & Cost of Living
The standard of living in the area is high and people pay for it. This includes any candidates you recruit through your software sales hiring efforts. San Francisco ranks number 1 in the United States for quality of life, but it’s also the second most expensive city to live in. This results in longer commutes and overall travel times.
The appeal of the San Francisco Bay Area is easy to see due to its: desirable climate, the low unemployment rate of approximately 2.6 percent – with the national average being 3.9 percent – and wealth of culture.
However, it’s not perfect for everyone. As tech industries and young people have begun to dominate the area over the last decade, families are leaving San Francisco in search of a more affordable family life. This has led to one of the lowest rates of family households in the US at 44 percent, with 56 percent considered non-family households.
New York comes in at 61 percent family housing to 39 percent non-family. The national average is 66 percent family to 34 percent non-family. For organizations looking to bring on top performing sales executives who are young and hungry, this is perfect. For sales reps that have established families, organizations will have to provide a cash incentive for relocation or agree to remote sales roles.
Public transit fares are significantly better than most cities, ranked as the number 2 transit system in North America trailing only New York City. An extensive short and long-haul rail network connects the entire bay area from north of San Francisco to the south of San Jose, which consistently ranks the region very high in transit coverage to job access.
The high quality of living, access to transit and education, has created a large pool of qualified candidates. It’s also one of the main reasons software companies choose the area. As more tech companies move in, so do more young candidates, and the cycle continues.
Breaking Down The Bay Area
Software companies take many factors into consideration when deciding where to locate. The main reason businesses will choose to call the San Francisco Bay Area home is the supply chain. There’s a large qualified workforce, STEM education, related businesses to build relationships, and over 70 percent of technology-focused venture capitals are found in this region. For financing factors alone, more than 150 major software specific companies are headquartered in the bay area.
Although not specific to software companies, this Silicon Valley heat map shows that there are two main areas where tech companies are choosing to operate:
The city of San Francisco
Silicon Valley stretching from San Mateo south through Palo Alto, Mountain View and North San Jose.
With the extremely high cost of living throughout the region, the workforce is facing some real pressures. The truth is that when looking at where software salespeople live, the answer is often: wherever they can.
“Silicon Valley has some of the highest housing and living expenses in the world thanks to its booming tech industry. Between 2010 and 2015, tech jobs grew 24.5 percent, leading to an influx of talent to the Bay Area. But housing has grown only 2.6 percent over the same period, sending prices shooting through the roof. Real estate database firm Zillow estimates a single square foot in the city costs US$495 today; the average rent is triple the United States average at US$3,390 a month.”
This has led to some unique solutions, including companies like Facebook paying employees up to ten thousand dollars to move closer to their Menlo Park campus. Tech companies are learning that shorter commutes lead to better lives and more productive workers.
Housing for tech workers is a long-term problem in San Francisco and area but this hasn’t stopped companies from calling the area home. San Francisco continues to take the number one spot on a list of cities of the future. It’s also why every year you’ll find roughly 20 companies from the Fortune 500 list headquartered in this region. Tech companies like HP, Intel, Apple, Cisco, and Google dominate the list.
Market and Business Landscape
In late 2017, the San Francisco-San Mateo area posted its best jobless numbers ever at only 2.2 percent unemployment. The East Bay and Santa Clara region hit an almost 20-year low, matching rates set in 1999.
Despite the great unemployment numbers, job growth in the region is down over the last couple of years. The Bay Area has had job growth of 4 percent in 2015, 3 percent in 2016, and below 2 percent for 2017. For tech jobs specifically, the growth is larger, but also slowing from 6.4 percent in 2014, to 6 percent in 2015, to 3.5 percent in 2016.
Don’t let the growth numbers fool you. San Francisco and Silicon Valley is still the top destination for tech start-ups. High rents are forcing companies to look elsewhere, but for now, Startup Genome’s 2017 report has them ranked number 1:
“28% of the global investments into Early-Stage startups are captured by Silicon Valley companies. Its top contenders are NYC and Beijing, which capture about 11% each. Silicon Valley also has the highest Global Resource Attraction score at 21%.”
This supply chain of talent and financing makes the area compelling despite the cost challenges.
Tech Continues to Drive Growth
To no one’s surprise, tech industries will continue to be a driver in San Francisco for the foreseeable future. They’re expected to continue to outgrow all other industries in the region and as a result, the need for software sales reps will also continue to grow.
It’s not the only industry that’s growing. San Francisco is the second largest financial hub in the US, which makes sense when you consider that the city is home to the largest venture capital industry in the country. While the high cost of the Bay Area has relocated some start-ups, the money is still located here.
Due to the predicted job growth, the population is expected to grow 20 percent by 2035 and more than 80 percent of that growth is expected to happen in just 20 percent of the San Francisco metro area. Investment is already underway on 7 large billion dollar projects that are expected to completely transform the region and increase density.
Population growth in the tech industry will boost the hospitality, health and construction industries. Adding density has already led to record costs in the building industry creating a boom of its own.
Software Sales Hiring in the San Francisco Bay Area
The Bay Area currently has more than 3500 unfilled software sales jobs on Indeed, second only to NYC at 4300 – similar ratios can be found on Glassdoor and LinkedIn. The region is a powerhouse for tech jobs, and software sales is no exception.
Software Sales positions are available at a variety of levels, including:
New York has around 20- 30 percent more openings due to being three-times the size of the Bay Area. But, the average salary offered is higher in the Bay Area, partly because there are significantly more jobs per capita.
San Francisco is also ranked as the number one city in the country where vacant jobs are difficult to fill. Software and technical sales jobs make the task of recruiting new talent difficult. These qualified candidates are some of the most difficult to find and this delay can result in significant dollars lost:
“Paycor Inc., which sells cloud-based software for human resources and payroll management, said it would have forecast $2 million more in 2015 revenue if it had hit it’s 2014 hiring goals for new sales reps in 2014. The time spent bringing new reps up to speed means the company doesn’t see the full benefit of their productivity until 12 to 18 months into their tenure.”
This all sets the stage to explain the demands on hiring for software sales in the Bay Area. A sample of Software Sales jobs on GlassDoor often include qualities you may not have traditionally found:
Analytical/Mathematical Acumen – ability to analyze sales data
Analyze data from multiple sources to uncover opportunities
World-class interpersonal and communication skills to make complex contractual, technical, and financial details sound simple
Able to work cross-functionally during the sales cycle
The last point may be the most important. Quite often, jobs now require a deep knowledge of the technical aspects of the business. The salesperson no longer defers to a team to do so for them.
Lastly, experience is the number one request that is consistent on almost every post. Usually with direct knowledge of cloud services, SaaS, and B2B solutions.
Sales Salaries
The Bay Area, on average, will have the highest salary offerings for software sales positions. It goes without saying the top software sales jobs are located where the top tech firms call home. In recent years, Forbes looked at the companies that compensated their sales force the best, and every single one of them is in the software business. And, 80 percent have their headquarters or a satellite office in the Bay Area. Business Insider notes that in Enterprise Software Sales, attracting the top reps will cost you top dollar.
In fact, an Oracle sales rep has an average base salary of 110 thousand dollars and an on target earnings potential of 250 thousand dollars. However, there are some people in the company who are expected to earn over 500 thousand dollars. For more senior level roles in these organizations – such as a VP of Sales – they’re earning an average of 300-400 thousand dollars per year.
None of this is surprising when you look at the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Sales jobs in the region will have a salary approximately 50 percent higher than the national average. According to their latest report, Sales Representatives in technical and scientific fields are averaging 100 thousand dollars annually. Sales Engineers can expect to make 154 thousand dollars annually. This includes all fields beyond just software.
To drill down and look at software sales jobs specifically, salary aggregators give us a more accurate look. According to Paysa, the average salary for software sales reps, managers and engineers in the Bay Area is closer to 167 thousand dollars annually.
Challenges in the Region
There are a couple challenge factors when hiring for software sales positions in the San Francisco Bay Area. High living costs, high salaries and high demand for employees are all major issues. However, the benefits of locating your business in an area with the highest talent pool outweighs the negatives. The Bay Area certainly fulfills that requirement for software sales jobs.
The region is also shifting where jobs are located within the Bay Area, which is posing a new set of challenges for the companies looking to hire the best talent here.
Silicon Valley is very crowded, and the shift in demographics is making it harder to attract top talent to the southern Bay Area. Those workers prefer life in San Francisco over the valley. Traditionally growth has always been strong in Silicon Valley, but now you’re seeing numbers dramatically rise in the city as companies create a San Francisco employee strategy to deal with these challenges:
“But the Silicon Valley of old is running out of space and many millennials, the new generation of knowledge workers, want to be closer to, if not in, a city with nightlife and culture. That’s led the likes of Google, Yahoo, Cisco and others to open big offices in San Francisco. Spurred by tax incentives, Twitter set up its headquarters in the City by the Bay in 2006, and there it remains.”
The Bay Area is still experiencing tech growth, but the growth is expected to shift towards the city of San Francisco from Silicon Valley. As this shift occurs, it puts further pressures on rents and forcing businesses to make room. For example, Blue Shield is moving its headquarters from downtown San Francisco to Oakland. The same is true for Uber. All this shuffling around is what is allowing room for companies like Apple to move in.
The other major challenge is that other regions are starting to attract the talent. As you saw in the Genome Startup report, many cities are nipping at the heels of the bay area for the tech crown. This has allowed for start-ups to not only spread across the country but also the globe. Recent studies show as many as 40 percent of Bay Area employees suggesting they’d like to leave the region. It’s important for employers to tackle the issue head-on.
Looking Ahead
WalletHub recently completed their comprehensive job market scoring for 150 of the most populated US cities across 17 market indicators including unemployment, job satisfaction, average salary, job security, benefits and more, and listed San Francisco at number 2. Fremont on the east side of the bay area at number 19. Silicon Valley doesn’t make an appearance until number 31 with San Jose.
The region will continue to dominate the software and tech industry for the foreseeable future. Experts suggest that employers should expect the software sales hiring landscape to remain very competitive.
Here are some additional articles about hiring landscapes in similar markets:
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
More than 80% of all B2B leads are from LinkedIn – so if you’re not using LinkedIn, or not using it effectively, you’re missing out big time. There’s a lot of opportunity on a platform that boasts half a billion users and encompasses every industry. But if you’ve only put together a basic professional profile, you won’t reap any of the benefits it has to offer.
Personal branding is key for any salesperson to really benefit from LinkedIn. We’re going to show you exactly what it means to build a personal brand, and how to elevate and leverage it to drive sales.
Four steps to personal branding you can put into action now
Step 1: Define Your Audience
One of the first things to address when you’re building your personal brand is to understand your target audience. Once you’ve identified who you intend to reach, ask yourself the following questions:
What are their likes and dislikes? Do they like long form professional articles, or short status updates with tips? Are they searching for how-to guides, or are they more interested in theoretical content? This will help you determine what type of content to create and share that will resonate with them.
Who are they engaging with? Are there thought leaders already dominating the space? What are they sharing? What can you learn from them?
What solutions are they looking for? Where do they need the most help? How can you position your solution as the right solution for them?
Is there a dominant geographical area? Can you target your communications to be specific to the region? Are there local events that you can tie into your communications that will resonate?
Step 2: Build a Killer LinkedIn Profile
For your personal brand to be effective, you must invest the time and effort in creating and maintaining a strong profile. When you engage with people, you want your profile to help reinforce why people should engage with you.
Creating a robust profile is not a difficult task, it just takes some TLC. The first place you’ll want to start is the prompts you’ll get directly from LinkedIn. The platform will prompt you to fill out various details and let you know what you’re missing.
Customize Your Profile
Don’t just use the default data that LinkedIn provides. Take full advantage of the customizations it offers so you can really stand out.
Use a great profile picture
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. A headshot is usually best, but there are rules that should be followed. Having a picture of you in action is a great alternative to a standard portrait.
Make sure you have a custom LinkedIn URL
Using your name is best for enhancing your personal brand, and it also helps with searchability online.
Write a better headline
Don’t try to be clever, unless that’s your personal brand. You’ll want to state exactly what you do, and how it helps the potential reader. Here are some best practices:
Don’t be boring. Write something that attracts attention.
Be confident. You don’t want to seem like you’re begging for business.
State what you do. Be direct, the reader will appreciate it.
Who are your solutions for? Work that into your headline.
State how you’ll make their life better.
A great example comes from Michael Dodd. He’s direct, you understand what he does, who he works for, and what solutions he can provide.
Make your summary work for you.
Don’t waste the space of your LinkedIn Summary Section. Here’s your chance to grab attention and explain why people should do business with you. Make a convincing case. Here’s a great example from Sales Leadership Consultant, Jeffrey Buskey:
Add pictures and video.
Most people don’t do this, so it’s an area where you can really stand out. A video is not only more enticing, it generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. You can show people exactly what you’re about, and it’s more personal.
Show Off Your Accomplishments
Showing off what you’ve achieved is a great way to build credibility. You’ll want to showcase your overall sales performance, where you ranked on your team, President’s Club awards, territory growth, marquee clients you’ve worked with, etc. Your brand must be centered around how you’re an expert in a certain field, which is why people should work with you. Show off the qualifications that make you that expert, and tell the story of how you’ve achieved success.
Step 3: Build Trust and Credibility
Trust is a key component to any sale. As a successful salesperson, you know how hard it is to earn trust from a potential client. Best-selling author Neil Rackham conducted a study where he interviewed 50 customers who had turned Xerox down because of price. It turned out that in 64% of cases, price was not the primary factor. Buyers didn’t trust the salesperson or were afraid of becoming too dependent on a sole supplier.
Your personal brand and reputation can make or break the first impression you make on your prospective customers.
Build your Reputation
Don’t be shy about asking people to say a few nice words about you. The most sure-fire way to have people trust you, is by seeing that their friends already trust you. Most of the time people are happy to write a few words for you, if you do the same for them.
LinkedIn makes getting recommendations easy as it’s built right into the platform. It may seem obvious, but target recommendations from key players in your industry. Top executives and those who already have credibility and a great personal brand. Don’t be afraid to aim high! The results just might surprise you and give your brand a quick boost.
Here’s a few tips you can use to ask for a recommendation:
Send a personalized email
Write a recommendation for someone first
Contact people you know well
Provide content suggestions in advance
Build by Sharing
Put yourself out there! Sharing information is the easiest way to say “Hey, I’m an expert in this field, and here’s what you need to know about it today.”
Think about the people you follow. Leaders in their field are constantly sharing quality information. It’s a very simple way to show that you know what you’re talking about. If you want to be a leader, you need to be the person people follow for breaking news in your field, and trusted articles they can use.
Writing articles and posting video are two of the easiest ways to share things on LinkedIn. You can also share articles others have written, recommend industry people to your audience, and generally just share things you’re interested in reading and viewing.
Here’s a few examples of sales leaders who do this well:
LinkedIn at its heart is a social platform. Get involved in conversations, comment on articles, share things that you find useful, and ask questions of other creators. You need to be reachable and engaged with your audience.
Being a part of this community will position your brand in your field. It’s how you’ll make connections, get leads, build trust, and build a portfolio that showcases your brand to your targeted audience. That’s what personal branding is all about.
Step 4: Grow Your Following
Now that you have a solid LinkedIn profile, it’s time to think about how you can grow your audience. Each follower is a potential client, so the wider your reach, the more potential followers and clients you can expect.
Building an audience involves ongoing work with a clear focus in mind. If you’re an expert in your niche, keep your focus on that topic. You may be interested in multiple subjects, but you’ll need to keep focus to build your brand for people to find you, follow you, and continue to subscribe to what you’re sharing. You don’t want to be a jack of all trades, master of none.
There are a few things you should always be doing to grow your following and target new opportunities.
Always be Learning
If you want to know what great personal branding looks like, you’ll want to follow the people that do it well. By following and connecting with key players on LinkedIn you’ll learn from them, and apply the lessons to your own brand.
Always be Optimizing
Anytime you attend a conference, gain a new skill, achieve a new award, or generally build on your brand, you’ll want to be optimizing your message to show you fully understand and are involved in your industry. Being on the cutting edge will help you with your brand and keep you at the forefront of the field.
You’ll learn a lot about what’s working and what isn’t with your brand. What articles people like, what content they’re sharing, what questions they’re asking, and what the demographic is. This information will change overtime, and you’ll want to keep optimizing your profile, website, and social feeds to reflect this.
As LinkedIn changes, you’ll want to change too. Take advantage of new tools, implement new best practices, and generally stay on top of things for best results.
Always be Connecting
Think twice about turning down a connection, or an opportunity to connect on social media. Even if someone doesn’t need what you’re selling right now, you never know when they’ll need it down the road.
You’ll also want to try to connect with the audience of those that have personal brands similar to yours. Their audience is your audience. That doesn’t mean taking over their channel and saying “Hey, follow me too!” It means engaging with that audience in conversation, posting positive comments on things that leader is sharing, joining forums they’re involved in, and generally engaging wherever you can.
Building a personal brand is not an easy task, but nothing worthwhile ever is. If you’re still skeptical about the power of personal branding, this video by Brett Cohen is an excellent example of the impact it can have on people’s perceptions. Brett ran an interesting test to see if he could get people to believe he was a celebrity, simply by acting like one – and the results are astonishing.
Now you’ve seen the impact that personal branding can have. Here are a few more resources you’ll want to check out when you’re ready to dive in:
Interviewing salespeople is like peeling an onion. It involves peeling away their superficial layers and getting past conditioned responses to learn about their capabilities, traits, cultural fit, and if they will yield quality results.
With 50% of sales reps today missing quotas, conducting a successful sales interview is the difference between hiring a top performer who will consistently make their number and drive profitable revenue, or bringing on a mediocre salesperson who hinders revenue generation and lowers team morale. So how do you conduct an interview that eliminates under performers, yet challenges top performers to prove they deserve a spot on your team?
In this ultimate guide, we will discuss the dos and don’ts of sales interviewing, which includes common interview mistakes and legal guidelines, a comprehensive list of sales interview questions, what to look for in a candidate’s answers, and red flags to watch out for.
Finally, at the end of the guide we’ve created a template interviewers can use to ensure all candidates are measured objectively.
You’re about to go into a in-person interview with a candidate. You’ve reviewed their resume and cover letter, and based on what you’ve read, they seem strong. They don’t have any employment gaps, their resume focuses on skills and experience, and they’ve listed their quota attainment for the past five-years.
You walk into the conference room and the candidate immediately gets up to shake your hand. Their handshake is firm and confident, and you notice they’re well dressed for the meeting. So far, your first impression of them is positive.
Upon sitting down, you observe that they are giving you their full attention. You begin your interview questions and you facilitate a back and forth conversation. The candidate answers your questions with ease and no obvious red flags arise.
After approximately 45-minutes, the interview comes to an end – you shake hands, and show them out. You’re left feeling positive about the candidate and you decide you want to snatch them up before a competitor does.
They seemed like a strong candidate didn’t they?
Now, look ahead . You’ve hired the candidate, provided necessary training, and have allowed sufficient time to onboard and ramp up.
At this point, you expected a high-level of customer facing activity, a healthy pipeline, and a few deals to have closed. But this isn’t happening. They’ve had extensive coaching and shadowed one of your top performers as they worked through the sales cycle. Nothing is working.
Why is the rep not performing?
You can trace their poor performance back to their in-person interview conducted eight-months ago. The interview went seemingly well, but did you do absolutely everything you could to ensure they were a top performer?
Perhaps you didn’t.
Here is your ultimate guide to conducting successful sales interviews.
Rule #1: You Need To Be Just As Prepared As The Candidate
Being an unprepared interviewer is just as hindering as it is to be an unprepared candidate.
Why?
If an interviewer is unprepared, time is wasted on “get-to-know-you” or “ice-breaker” questions, which does not aid in evaluating the candidate’s skills, experience, and competencies. The candidate has more opportunities to fool the hiring manager into thinking they’re the ideal candidate, and the odds of making a bad sales hire increases.
Top performers expect you to have a robust understanding of the role:
Before going into the interview, think about the role and company information not listed on the job description or company website.
These details could include the size of the sales team and how they’ve been performing over the past 2-5 years, the performance of the territory they would be taking over, vacation time offered, and much more. Top performing candidates want to know this information.
Being able to provide these details – versus needing to follow up with the correct information later, positions your organization as having a strong interview and recruitment process, which improves the candidate experience.
You’ve got the tools needed for proper assessment:
Coming prepared also means bringing the the tools and resources needed to conduct the interview successfully. They could include the candidate’s resume and cover letter, an interview template – which is available to download at the end of this guide – that contains all your interview questions, and note-taking tools.
Taking notes during an interview allows an apples to apples comparison after interviewing numerous candidates. Without taking proper notes, valuable information may be forgotten, which leads to poor sales hiring decisions based on minimal information.
Rule #2: You Need to Abide by Legal Guidelines**
Hiring managers must follow the legal guidelines when conducting a sales interview. There is a fine line between asking a legal and effective interview question, and offending a candidate – resulting in legal repercussions.
For example, under federal and state laws, it is illegal to discriminate against a candidate based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, and age.
There are also states that have made other discrimination categories illegal, such as sexual orientation and marital status.
It may seem natural to inquire about these topics in conversation, however in an interview setting there is a high risk of offending candidates and the chances of fueling a discrimination issue, is even greater.
Some examples of illegal interview questions include:
When did you graduate from high school?
What kind of personal time off will you require on an annual basis and what will they be used for?
Do you have any children?
What kind of childcare arrangements will you be making for them while you’re at work?
What does your partner do for a living?
How long do you plan on working before retirement?
What kind of illnesses have you experience in the past two-years?
Focusing on legal interview questions allows proper candidate evaluation, as the focus is on determining their skills, experience, and competencies.
Another area to avoid is making promises or guarantees in an interview. Interviewers may say things like “permanent position” or “job security”, which causes the candidate to hold them accountable for said statements. These candidates can then claim a breach in their implied employment contract, should any of the verbal promises not come to fruition.
Here are some things that should be done in an interview:
Ask all candidates the same questions
By doing this, interviewers avoid any one candidate claiming they’ve been singled out based on a specific question.
Keep the questions job related
Questions should serve the end goal of discovering if a candidate has the skills, experience, and competencies to be successful in the role. If the question doesn’t serve the end goal, then it shouldn’t be asked.
**Please Note: Be sure to conduct thorough research prior to doing interviews to ensure federal and state discrimination law compliance.
Rule #3: Don’t Make These Common Mistakes
Conducting a successful sales interview is reliant on the interviewer’s ability to run the conversation smoothly and obtain needed information.
But, there are some common mistakes interviewers make; many of which they are unaware of. Anything from trying to make a personal connection with the candidate, to accepting the candidate’s first answer without probing for more information, can hinder an interviewer’s ability to objectively and thoroughly assess a candidate.
Some of the most common sales interview mistakes include:
Allowing the candidate to take control of the conversation
It’s in a salesperson’s nature to talk and convince prospects to buy what they’re selling. And when they’re in an interview, they do exactly the same.
When an interviewer asks a question, the candidate may want to provide as much information as possible in an attempt to successfully sell themselves.
While details are positive, too much detail can result in irrelevant information. As the interviewer, stop them from speaking and steer them back to the point they were trying to make. Interject by saying something like:
“That’s really great information but I would appreciate it if you could tell me more about X.”
Also mention that there’s a limited amount of time and it’s important to use the time efficiently. Top performing sales reps will appreciate these efforts as they understand time is valuable.
Using intimidation to get answers
It’s common to think that because sales reps typically have strong personalities, the hiring manager has to display a certain level of intimidation to match said strong personality. This can either help match the candidate’s tone or cause them to feel intimidated and drop out of the recruitment process.
“I’ve interviewed people who would survive well in ‘intimidation interviews,’ but are terrible at sales. I’ve also interviewed people who would fail, yet are some of the best salespeople I’ve ever met. Is it worth losing talented people before they ever started because you want to show them you are in charge?”
Not asking behavioral questions
Behavioral interview questions inquire about specific selling activities and behaviors the candidate has done in the past, whereas regular interview questions ask what the candidate would do in certain situations.
By asking behavioral questions, the candidate is offering details about their past success, which is used to measure their potential success in the new role. Position these questions in a way that requires them to provide an example to support their claims.
Without using behavioral questions, sales hiring decisions are based on hypothetical promises instead of facts.
Not being transparent about the role
Organizations make the mistake of thinking it’s only the candidate’s job to prove why they’re the right fit for the role. With nearly 75% of candidates today being passive, providing upfront information about growth opportunities, role responsibilities, compensation, and culture will help entice these ideal candidates.
Prolonging the interview process
There is a fine line between taking the necessary amount of time to interview a candidate and stringing them along. Top performers understand when they are being strung along – they are quick to know which prospects won’t close – and will back out of the process as a result.
Typically at the third interview, candidates will begin to ask if it is the final step in the process.
Prolonging the interview process beyond a third in-person interview is a sign that the process is broken, candidates see this as a poor work environment, and they drop out.
Falling prey to interview bias:
It takes an average of seven seconds to form initial judgments about someone, according to recent research. Even people who have the best intentions can harbor different beliefs and attitudes of which they’re not aware – biases.
Non-performance based factors like the Halo Effect, often cause interviewers to eliminate A-players from the hiring pool, or make the mistake of hiring mediocre candidates.
Some examples of interview bias includes:
Leniency/ Strictness Bias occurs when people differ in how they evaluate people. One interviewer may be harder on candidates than other interviewers.
Halo Effect occurs when the interviewer lets one positive factor take precedence and influence the rest of the interview.
Horns Effect occurs when the interviewer lets one negative factor take precedence and influence the rest of the interview.
Similarity Effect occurs when an interviewer rates a candidate based on characteristics the appraiser sees in themselves.
To combat interview bias, three entrepreneurs created software that eliminates ethnicity, gender, age, and educational background from a job seeker’s application, which many companies like Dolby and Mozilla have implemented.
With this software, companies review and evaluate applications solely based on skills and experience, and decide whether to invite the applicant in for an interview.
Be Aware of Your Candidate’s Behaviors
Paying attention to the interviewees behaviors helps hiring managers make the decision to either move forward with a candidate or eliminate them. These conscious and unconscious behaviors give insight into the kind of experiences clients will receive in the field, should the candidate be hired.
Some of these behaviors include:
Their body language
Paying attention to the interviewee’s body language and nonverbal communication, shows how interested they are in the role and how they will conduct themselves in the field. Body language includes facial expressions, eye contact, hand gestures, posture, and more.
Humans produce over 700,000 signs, more than 5,000 distinct hand gestures, 250,000 facial expressions, and over 1,000 different postures, according to recent research.
With 55 percent of effective communication being body language, paying attention to these signs will help make effective sales hiring decisions.
The more open the body is positioned, the more receptive the person is. If they have their arms folded across their chest or have their fists clenched, they’re defensive and unhappy. If their body is oriented away, they are detached or disengaged – which indicates that they’re disinterested in the interviewer, the role, or your company.
In contrast, if they use open hand gestures, this is a sign of interest. For example, they may have their hands resting openly on the table as they answer questions, which indicates a positive emotional response. When their body is directly facing the interviewer, they’re engaged and interested.
Eye contact is a critical step in building rapport and being able to successfully sell. Maintaining eye contact for 60-70 percent of a conversation is optimal in developing rapport.
Pupil size, for example, aids in measuring someone’s interest. When the pupils dilate, it indicates there are positive feelings towards the individual or object they are looking at. In this case, it would be the hiring manager and the role being discussed. If the pupils constrict, they are less receptive and disengaged from the conversation.
Their tone of voice
“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
Sound familiar?
Paying attention to a candidate’s tone of voice provides insight into their ability to prospect, build relationships, negotiate to close deals, and win new business.
When forming conclusions about an individual, 38% of effective communication is tone of voice. Therefore, as hiring managers interview candidates, 38% of the evaluation is based on the tone of voice they experience.
Voice inflection is one way of evaluating if a salesperson can emphasize the important parts of a sentence so the client thoroughly understands the value of the product or service they’re selling. In this case, the candidate is selling themselves and should be able to emphasize their important attributes.
The energy of their voice aids in determining their ability to have an effective conversation versus talking over someone. Being driven individuals, salespeople are eager to move onto next steps, which causes speedy communication.
A top salesperson communicates with purpose, while maintaining a steady pace the average person – or client, can follow. Their voice’s energy is a direct reflection of what clients will experience during a cold call or presentation.
A salesperson’s tone of voice could be the determining factor between winning a large deal, or losing it to a competitor.
If they have questions
A candidate asking questions is an indication that they have done their due diligence in researching the company and are interested in gaining a robust understanding of the role.
Some examples of questions a candidate could ask are:
How would you describe the responsibilities of the role?
Can you describe what a typical day looks like in this role?
Is it a new role? If not, why did the previous sales rep leave?
What kind of travel is expected on a weekly or monthly basis?
What are some of the growth opportunities available should I be hired?
What kind of targets will I be expected to hit in the first year, two-years, etc?
What does the territory look like today? Have there been any issues within the territory?
Top performing salespeople go to interviews prepared to ask questions that help them determine if the role is a good fit.
A Comprehensive List of the Top Sales Interview Questions
Before selecting your sales interview questions, create a set of mandatory hiring criteria all candidates are required to meet to be considered for the position. This will allow you to select interview questions that correlate with what success looks like in the role.
To help you create your hiring criteria, download the worksheet here.
Once the hiring criteria is established, choose the interview questions that will gather the information needed to determine if a candidate has all the skills, experience, and competencies needed for success.
“A candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.”
Interviewers should use their chosen questions to either move them closer to an A-player with a 90 percent chance of being successful, or closer to eliminating a below average salesperson from the candidate pool. If a question does not move the interview in either direction, it does not serve a purpose.
Prospecting
Question 1: When in your career have you been required to do cold calls?
Follow-up question: Did you have a cold call target and on average how many were you making per day/week/month?
Follow-up question: What was your strategy when making these cold calls?
Question 2: How do you maintain a positive outlook in the face of rejection?
Follow-up question: Provide an example of a time when you were rejected by the client.
Follow-up question: How did you handle it and what did you learn?
Question 3: How do you approach prospecting for new leads and opportunities?
Follow-up question: How did you determine what companies you were going to target?
Follow-up question: How do you organize your prospects to ensure consistent communication?
Question 4: Do you generate your own leads and opportunities?
Follow-up question: How do you do this?
Follow-up question: If not all leads are self-generated, what percentage come exclusively from you and how is the remaining percentage generated?
Question 5: What percentage of your leads have you turned into successful sales?
Follow-up question: What steps did you take to achieve this ratio?
Follow-up question: Provide a specific example of a successfully closed deal. Please include the following information: company name, stakeholder titles, deal size, sales cycle, what you sold, the date of the deal, and how you won the account.
Question 6: What tactics do you use to build your pipeline?
Follow-up question: Do you have a target for pipeline size? If so, what is it?
Follow-up question: How do you organize and maintain your pipeline once prospects have been added?
What to look for:
Look for answers that involve their lead generation strategy and quantifiable metrics to back it up. These metrics help determine the level of activity the sales rep needs to maintain to achieve their targets. Their answer could include number of cold calls, meetings, pipeline size, and more. For example, if their lead to close ratio is 6:1 and you will expect them to close ten deals per quarter, that means they need to have at least 60 client meetings per quarter to close those ten deals.
Red flags:
If they’re not able to describe when and how they did their prospecting, cold calling, etc, then they’re at risk of coming into the role not knowing how to develop and execute a prospecting strategy. It’s also an indication that they were not out in the field looking for new business – which is needed if you’re looking for a salesperson to help grow your business.
Deals
Question 7: How long is your average sales cycle?
Follow-up question: What kind of factors impact the sales cycle length (ie, client buying cycle, RFPs, custom products, etc)?
Follow-up question: How do you maintain a relationship with the client – to remain top of mind and avoid any detrimental issues – while you’re waiting to close the deal?
Question 8: What is your average deal size? Please be as specific as possible.
Follow-up question: Do you work off a recurring revenue model or a one-time fee?
Follow-up question: If it is a recurring revenue model, is it monthly, quarterly, or annually? And what are the contract lengths, if any?
Follow-up question: If it is a one-time fee, how do you continue to grow the account and win repeat business?
Question 9: Who are your typical decision makers?
Follow-up question: How do you identify your key decision makers within an organization (ie, research, talking to the gatekeeper, leveraging a champion, etc)?
Follow-up question: What does their buying cycle look like?
Question 10: Describe to me your biggest career win. Please include the company name, stakeholder titles, deal size, sales cycle, what you sold, and the date.
Follow-up question: Describe your strategy behind winning this deal.
Follow-up question: Why is this considered your biggest career win (ie, is it due to the deal size? Was it an account who threatened to cancel but you turned it around? Is it because you competed against larger more established companies to win it?)
What to look for:
Look for specific pieces of information associated with deals they have closed in the past. This information should include the company name – if they’re not comfortable providing the company name then ask for the company size and industry – stakeholder titles, deal size, sales cycle, what was sold, the date, and how they won the deal.
Red flags:
There should be 2-3 deals that stick out in their mind as big wins. If they cannot recall a specific example or claim there are too many to choose from, then perhaps they haven’t had any big wins.
Communication and Negotiation
Question 11: To what extent have you been involved in contract negotiation?
Follow-up question: Please provide a specific example.
Follow-up question: What was the end result (ie, did you win the deal, did you have to compromise on price, etc)?
Question 12: Give me an example of a time when you worked with a difficult prospect?
Follow-up question: What was the outcome (ie, did you win the deal or lose the deal)?
Follow-up question: How did you win the account despite the prospect being difficult?
Question 13: Describe a time when a client was looking to end business with your organization, but you retained them?
Follow-up question: How did you accomplish this?
Follow-up question: How did you ensure this would not reoccur in the future?
Question 14: When in your career have you given presentations to senior decision makers, such as C-Suite?
Follow-up question: What were you looking to accomplish in these presentations?
Follow-up question: How do you present next steps?
Question 15: Tell me how you handle unresponsive prospects during a pitch or presentation.
Follow-up questions: What steps do you take to ensure prospects remain engaged during your presentation?
Question 16: On average, how many presentations do you give every week, month, or quarter?
Follow-up question: What is your target for number of presentations per week, month, or quarter?
Follow-up question: What is your presentation to close ratio?
What to look for:
Look for strong verbal communication skills, such as tone of voice and voice inflection, which helps convey importance and meaning when working with clients. Also look for positive, non-verbal communication, such eye-contact and open body language, as it helps build relationships with prospects.
Red flags:
Be conscious of the amount of eye contact they’re giving as anything below 60 percent indicates a lack of rapport building skills. Also be aware of closed body language – which can include clenched fists, crossed arms, and how their body is oriented – as it indicates disengagement and disinterest.
Problem Solving
Question 17: What are some industry related selling obstacles you’ve had to face?
Follow-up question: How did you overcome them and still hit your targets (ie, collaborating with internal stakeholders, selling into other markets, focusing on growing existing accounts, etc)?
Follow-up question: If you didn’t overcome them, what steps did you take in your efforts to overcome the obstacles (ie, did you do absolutely everything you could)?
Question 18: Describe a time when you lost a deal?
Follow-up question: Why did you lose the deal?
Follow-up question: What did you learn from the loss?
Question 19: When in your career have you had complete autonomy and were required to manage/grow your territory as if it was your own business?
Follow-up question: Describe a typical day.
Follow-up question: Please describe any success during your time working autonomously (ie, exceeding your quota, growing your territory by a certain amount, increasing your book of business by a certain number, etc).
What to look for:
Look for specific issues they’ve faced within their industry – such as their product being more expensive, weather conditions impacting product performance, competitor’s products making theirs obsolete – and how they’ve overcome them. If they did not overcome the issue, what steps did they take in their efforts?
Red flags:
Discussing failures is equally as important as discussing wins. If a salesperson is not able to think of any challenges or issues they’ve faced in the past, then it is unlikely they will be able to come up with solutions to future problems.
Selling Approach
Question 20: How would you describe your selling approach?
Follow-up question: Do you follow a specific selling methodology?
Follow-up question: Have you had any formal sales training (ie, provided by a current or past employer, or on your own time)?
Question 21: How do you establish relationships with clients?
Follow-up question: How do you nurture them long-term?
Follow-up question: How do you ensure no clients are forgotten about (ie, managing regular touch points through a CRM)?
Question 22: Give me your typical sales pitch for your current product or service.
Follow-up question: How have you perfected this pitch throughout your career?
Follow-up question: How do you alter your approach for different clients?
Question 23: Describe a time when you had to change your selling approach to suit a client’s needs?
Follow-up question: How did you recognize that you needed to change your approach?
Follow-up question: What was the outcome (ie, did you win the deal)?
What to look for:
Look for references to a specific selling methodology, such as Six Sigma Black Belt, Sandler, SPIN, Miller Heiman, Challenger, etc. This is an indication of either formal sales training or a drive to improve themselves through learning independently (ie, reading books, listening to webinars, etc). Top performing salespeople have sales strategies they have perfected over time and alter them to fit different clients.
Red flags:
If the candidate is not familiar with any formal selling methodologies or if the candidate doesn’t have a strategy, then it indicates that they are an underperformer who just “wings it” and hopes for the best. It also shows their lack of motivation to better themselves in their selling career as they haven’t worked to improve their approach, skills, and performance.
Sales Performance
Question 24: When in your career have you built a territory from little or nothing?
Follow-up question: What were the results of your efforts (ie, what the territory looked like when you took it over, the revenue increase, the time period of the increase, etc)?
Follow-up question: How did you accomplish this (ie, cold calling, attending trade shows, leveraging your network, etc)?
Question 25: Describe to me your quota and quota attainment numbers over the past five-years.
Follow-up question: If you attained your quota every year, how did you accomplish this?
Follow-up question: If you haven’t consistently hit your quota, what are some of the reasons why?
Follow-up question: Where did you rank on your team (ie, if you didn’t meet quota, then how was everyone else doing)?
Question 26: How did you go about achieving your sales goals?
Follow-up question: What was your strategy?
Question 27: What was the size of the sales team you were/are on?
Follow-up question: Where do you rank in terms of performance?
Follow-up question: What are you doing that other reps are not doing to accomplish their goals?
Question 28: Describe a time when you did not hit your targets or achieve a set goal.
Follow-up question: How did you handle the situation?
Follow-up question: What were the steps you took to ensure you were successful going forward?
What to look for:
Look for specific data that showcases their success over the past five-year – or longer – such as their quota attainment, territory growth, number of new clients they’ve acquired, etc. For example, a top performing salesperson would say “I increased sales by 50% year over year.”
Red flags:
Not being able to provide quantifiable evidence of success is an indication that perhaps they haven’t had success. If the candidate doesn’t know what they achieved, how did they know they were successful? For example, an underperforming salesperson would say “I increased sales last year.”
Strengths and Weaknesses
Question 29: Why do clients choose to buy from you?
Follow-up question: How do you build their trust?
Follow up question: Give me an example of a time when you earned the trust of a client and became their trusted advisor – versus simply a salesperson.
Questions 30: What are 2-3 of your strengths as they relate to sales.
Follow-up question: How do you leverage your strengths to close deals?
Follow-up question: Provide a specific example of a time when you leveraged one of your strengths to close a deal.
Question 31: What are 2-3 of your weaknesses as they relate to sales.
Follow-up question: How do you avoid letting these weaknesses get in the way of your selling?
Follow-up question: What are you doing to improve on your weaknesses?
What to look for:
Look for clear descriptions of what the candidate believes they do well and potential areas of improvement. Also look for why they believe these are their strengths and weaknesses. For example, if one of their strengths is building relationships and one of their weaknesses is that they get nervous when pitching their products or services, then perhaps they are reading books or attending seminars to improve their presentation skills.
Red flags:
If the candidate is unable to discuss their strengths and weaknesses, it’s an indication of a lack of self awareness – which also indicates a lack of structure in their selling. If the candidate does not know where their strong points are then they can’t leverage them to close deals. If they’re unaware of their weaknesses, then they run the risk of letting these weaknesses get in the way of building relationships and closing business.
Culture and Environment
Question 32: How would you describe the corporate culture of your current or past company?
Follow-up question: What was your favorite aspect of the corporate culture?
Follow-up question: If you could change one thing about the corporate culture, what would it be and why?
Question 33: What kind of environment do you thrive in?
Follow-up question: Why do you think you thrive in this kind of environment?
Follow-up question: What kind of environments hinder your ability to perform?
Question 34: How would you describe your ideal Sales Manager?
Follow-up question: When have you worked with a Sales Manager whose management style was not ideal for you?
Follow-up question: How did you handle this situation?
Question 35: What are some of the positive traits you look for in a sales leader?
Follow-up question: What are some traits you consider negative and why?
Question 36: What core values should all strong sales organizations possess?
Follow-up question: Why do you think these values are important for sales success?
Follow-up question: What values do you possess?
Question 37: How would the rest of your sales team describe you?
Follow-up question: Do you agree with these descriptions, why or why not?
Follow-up question: What are some of the areas they think you could improve upon?
What to look for:
Look for a clear picture of the kind of environment the candidate has worked in and the kind of environment they want going forward. It’s critical to discover what kind of environment they thrive in – which could include a collaborative sales team culture, a hands-off management style, a customer centric selling approach – to ensure the company environments are a match.
Red flags:
If the candidate is unsure about the culture they’ve been a part of and the kind of culture they want, or if the culture they’re describing doesn’t align with your own, then there is potential for conflict. For example, if the candidate needs a Sales Manager who is at the office everyday to offer assistance, but you have a Sales Manager who works remotely, then this is a potential issue.
Drivers
Question 38: What motivates you as a salesperson?
Follow-up question: How do you keep yourself motivated?
Question 39: How do you define sales success?
Follow-up question: Where do you feel you have achieved sales success?
Follow-up question: What success would you like to achieve in the next 2-5 years?
Question 40: What kind of sacrifices have you made to be successful?
Follow-up question: How do you maintain a work-life balance for yourself?
Follow-up question: What does a perfect work-life balance look like to you?
Question 41: Why are you looking to leave your current role?
Follow-up question: Would you be willing to provide references from your most recent company, why or why not?
Follow-up question: When calling your references, what do you think they will say about you?
Question 42: Why have you chosen sales as your profession?
Follow-up question: What is your favorite thing about working in sales?
Question 43: What do you dislike about sales as a profession?
Follow-up question: Why do you dislike this aspect of sales?
Follow-up question: How do you ensure it doesn’t affect your ability to close business?
Question 44: What are some of your short-term goals?
Follow-up question: What are some of your long-term goals?
Follow-up question: How does our company and this role fit into these goals?
Question 45: How do you plan on achieving your goals?
Follow-up question: Do you have an achievement plan in place for the next 2-5 years and beyond?
Follow-up question: What does that plan look like and how does this role fit into it?
What to look for:
Look for details about why they’ve chosen sales as a career path, why they’ve chosen to stay in sales, and why they get up every day and perform their tasks. A top performer’s motivators could be earning potential, ranking high on their sales team or within their organization, job security, and much more.
Red flags:
If the candidate doesn’t have a clear motivator, then perhaps they are not motivated to be in sales. Lacking a motivator means lacking the drive to meet and exceed targets. For example, an underperforming candidate might give a vague answer like, “I kind of fell into sales and just decided to stay in it.”
Industry Knowledge
Question 46: How do you stay current on your customers, your industry, and products?
Follow-up questions: Have you attended any seminars or listened to any webinars recently, if so, which ones?
Follow-up question: What did you learn from them?
Question 47: What are some books you have recently read to further your knowledge of sales and your industry?
Follow-up question: What did you take away from them?
Follow-up question: How have they helped you in your sales role?
What to look for:
Look for indications that the candidate is consistently working to further their knowledge and get a leg up on the competition. Look for specific webinars, seminars, books, and podcasts, that they’ve used to educate themselves. Top performers use things like conferences and seminars to expand their network and client base.
Red flags:
If the candidate isn’t doing anything to further themselves, then it’s an indication that they do not have any future goals and do not have a desire to better themselves. It also shows a lack of adaptability as industries change. As a result, they could be using old selling techniques or information that is no longer relevant in the market.
Specific to Your Organization
Question 48: What do you know about our organization?
Follow-up question: What is it about our organization that you find the most interesting?
Follow-up question: Why do you want to work here?
Question 49: Why should we hire you?
Follow-up question: What kind of value will you bring to our sales team?
Follow-up question: What would you be looking to accomplish in the first year, should you be hired for the role?
Question 50: What questions do you have for us?
What to look for:
Look for specific pieces of information about your organization – which could include your company history, community involvement, new product releases, awards, etc – that indicate the candidate has done the due diligence of researching your organization. Look for the candidate to relate what they know about your organization to why you should hire them. For example, if you’ve recently released a new product, they could discuss how they have experience launching new products into the market.
Red flags:
If the candidate hasn’t done any research on your company and cannot speak to why they want to work at your organization, then it’s an indication of a lack of motivation and interest in the role. By having little to no information about the company they’re interviewing with, the candidate is simply looking at this as a job they will switch to – which can result in quick employee turnover rate – versus a strategic opportunity for their career long-term.
Questions for a Sales Management Role**
Question 1: When in your career have you managed a sales team?
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with hiring and firing (ie, how many people have you hired and how many people have you fired).
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with coaching (ie, your approach, how often, etc).
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with planning and strategy (ie, territory assignment, lead generation, etc).
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with forecasting.
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with motivation and incentives.
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with building any kind of sales support for your team.
Follow-up question: Describe your experience with tracking customer data.
Question 2: How would you describe your sales management style?
Follow-up question: Have you had any formal sales management training?
Follow-up question: If so, when and what did it entail?
Question 3: If we asked your current or past team members to describe their experience reporting to you, what would they say?
Follow-up question: What would they describe as opportunities for improvement?
Follow-up: How have you worked to improve in these areas?
Question 4: What is the largest sales team you have successfully managed?
Follow-up question: What kind of sales team was it (ie, inside or outside sales)?
Follow-up question: What success did you see while managing this team (ie, hitting team targets, improving sales rep performance, etc)?
Question 5: When have you managed remote sales reps?
Follow-up question: What were some of the challenges?
Follow-up question: How did you ensure their success?
Question 6: When have you managed a sales rep who had consistently missed quota for three-months or longer?
Follow-up question: Please describe the plan you put in place to help this sales rep be successful.
Follow-up question: If the sales rep’s underperformance persisted, how did you handle the situation?
Question 7: When have you managed a top performing sales rep looking for more responsibilities and room to grow in the company?
Follow-up question: What kind of actionable goals did you help this sales rep set?
Follow-up question: If their goals were not attainable at that time (ie, someone was already doing the role they wanted), how did you keep them engaged and interested in staying at your company?
Question 8: How do you monitor the performance of your individual team members?
Follow-up question: How do you make your team aware of their performance?
Follow-up question: What do you do with this data?
Question 9: How do you motivate your sales team on a day-to-day basis?
Follow-up question: How do you motivate them long-term?
Follow-up question: When have you managed a sales rep who lacked motivation and how did you handle them?
Question 10: Describe a sales strategy you implemented upon taking over a new sales team.
Follow-up question: What were the results you achieved (ie, sales rep improvement, targets achieved, territory growth, etc)?
Follow-up question: Looking back on the strategy you implemented, what changes would you make today to achieve even greater results?
Question 11: Were you responsible for achieving a team quota?
Follow-up question: If so, what was it?
Follow-up question: Describe the team quota attainment numbers during the time you were responsible them.
Question 12: Did you have an individual quota?
Follow-up question: If so, what was it and have you consistently achieved it over the past five years?
Follow-up question: How did you go about balancing your own quota and your managerial duties?
Question 13: Where do you go to source top sales talent?
Follow-up question: How do you decide which applicants you are going to interview?
Question 14: How do you evaluate sales skills in an interview setting?
Follow-up question: What skills do you look for in a candidate?
Follow-up question: What kind of objective measurement techniques do you use when vetting candidates?
Question 15: When have you been involved in decisions about compensation for new sales reps?
Follow-up question: When have you been involved in the decisions to provide raises and bonuses to your sales reps?
Follow-up question: How do you determine raise and bonus qualification?
What to look for:
Look for pieces of information that show strong experience as a sales leader, which could include sales team quota achievements, sales reps receiving promotions, large deals won, overall years of experience, and much more. Top performers will share strategy information about how they approach coaching, process implementation, forecasting, etc. Look to gain an understanding of their management style and how it correlates with your sales environment. For example, if the candidate has a very hands-on management style but your entire sales team is remote, then the candidate may struggle.
Red flags:
If the candidate is lacking evidence of successful leadership, whether it be in examples of success or years of experience, this is a red flag. With 75% of new Sales Managers failing within their first two-years, it’s clear that the skills and experience that make an individual contributor successful are only a small part of what will make them successful sales leaders. An underperforming sales leader may say something like, “I have around eight years of sales management experience and my team has always been successful.” This is vague and does not provide quantifiable evidence to reinforce the claim.
“My objective in interviewing candidates for sales management positions is to determine if these skills exist or can be developed. Clearly, technical competence is important for leading a sales team, but the other critical traits I look for when interviewing a sales management candidate are self-awareness, a willingness to learn, and an understanding of the roles of leadership and coaching.”
** Please note: these questions should be used in combination with the Top 50 Sales Interview Questions previously listed, as many of them are also applicable to someone being interview for a sales leadership role.
Download the Comprehensive List of Top Sales Interview Questions below:
Understand How To Eliminate A Candidate
Telling a candidate they didn’t get the sales job is never a step hiring managers enjoy, however, it’s essential in the hiring process. Eliminating a candidate as soon as you know they’re not the right fit frees up time for other prospects, and it allows the unsuccessful candidate to look for other opportunities.
To effectively determine which candidates to eliminate, hiring managers need to quantify their interview results – which they can do by using the sales interview template at the end of this guide.
This template uses a numerical grade to evaluate the candidate’s answers to interview questions. Hiring managers provide a minimum score the candidate has to achieve to move forward. Should the candidate not reach the minimum grade, they should be removed from the candidate pool.
When you’ve decided to eliminate a candidate, telling them they’re not moving forward in your process needs to be straightforward and personalized. This involves:
Saying thank you
Delivering the news
Giving the main reason
Offering hope
Depending on the role and at what stage they are being eliminated, the rejection letter could be two paragraphs or it could be just a few short lines. For example, if a candidate has gone through one 45-minute interview and is not moving forward, then a few short lines would suffice. If it’s down to two candidates and they’ve been through multiple interviews, 2-3 paragraphs would be more suitable.
What if a candidate asks for feedback?
When providing candidates with feedback, there is a fine line between providing constructive information they can use to improve themselves, and offending them.
Research has shown that only 4.4 percent of candidates receive individual feedback from hiring managers or recruiters. And some of the most common reasons hiring managers do not provide feedback include: requiring too much time, the process could be expensive depending on the number of candidates, they do not want to tell candidates they were unqualified, and there’s the risk of legal issues.
However, there are also reasons hiring managers do provide feedback:
Not giving feedback hurts employer brand
Candidates have invested time and effort into the hiring process and may become disgruntled if they’re not provided individual feedback. This could cause negativity on websites like Glassdoor.
These candidates may be future customers
Having a strong network of candidates – who move from company to company as their careers progress – may result in bringing them on as a client in the future.
Without feedback, unqualified candidates may apply again
If they don’t know they’re unqualified, they may apply again for a future role and cause more wasted time.
If the candidate does request further feedback, here is how you can approach it:
Correlate feedback with the job description
By keeping the feedback directly related to the job, it focuses on their skills, and experience, or lack thereof, as they relate to the role.
Be both constructive and clear
Salespeople want actionable information they can take into their future interviews and roles. Provide them with feedback they can use to improve themselves and increase future success.
Remain factual
These facts can refer to specific answers the candidate provided that were perhaps not what the hiring manager was looking for. Provide an example of what a successful answer may have looked like.
Success Stories From World Class Companies
Every year, Glassdoor releases their list of the “top 50 companies to interview for”. To qualify for this list, companies must receive a minimum of 100 reviews from candidates who have interviewed for them. Depending on the review ratings, companies can rate on the list of top companies candidates want to interview for.
Why does this matter?
Glassdoor is a resource candidates use to find information about potential employers. If a company rates high for positive interview experiences, candidates will be more inclined to apply for vacant roles.
Here are some examples of what the “top 50 companies to interview for” do in their interview process to achieve high ratings:
They treat the interview process as a larger experience. If they are interested in a candidate, then they are known for paying for the candidate’s flight, hotel, rental car, meals, etc, when coming to visit their head office. They also have someone from their company give the candidate a tour of the city.
Other candidates have stated that Caterpillar is very clear about the information they are looking for in their interview questions, and are very open to answering any questions their candidates have.
Their interview process is relaxed and conversational. They make an effort to get to know their candidates and introduce them to other people within the company to learn more about the culture and environment.
They put emphasis on finding someone who is the right fit. While academics are important, the hiring managers are more interested in getting to know the candidates to figure out how their personalities would fit with the rest of the company.
What do these companies have in common?
Being three of the most highly rated companies on Glassdoor for their interview quality, these companies have an employer brand candidates want to work for.
These companies put high emphasis on getting to know the candidate to make sure they have the right qualifications and to make sure they’re the right fit culturally. They go the extra mile to ensure they’re very clear on expectations when asking interview questions, and they welcome the candidate’s questions.
Sales Interview Template
Having a template to use for all interviewees, helps ensure the most effective questions – based on your role requirements – are asked, that all candidates are asked the same questions, and that time is maximized.
In this template we have left room to ask two to three questions for each category outlined in our list of top sales interview questions.
The template is broken down into eleven categories of questions and a ranking chart is at the bottom of each category. To use this interview template:
Decide the minimum ranking the candidate must achieve.
Choose 2-3 questions from each category in our list of the top sales interview questions, and input them into the template.
As the candidate answers the questions, be sure to record their main points for future comparison.
Once all the questions are asked in the given category, mark their actual rating in the chart provided, along with any additional comments.
Use this template for all candidates interviewing for the role, and conduct an apples to apples comparison – using the completed templates – once all interviews are conducted.
Download the Sales Interview Template below:
Peak’s Best Practices
It is fairly straightforward to cover work experience, sales results, and self-perceived strengths in any interview. Consequently, most interviews focus on these things. Sales candidates, anticipating this format, will practice their responses to these questions. As a result, they can appear natural and authentic, even when they are spinning or fabricating the truth.
In most cases – though, surprisingly, not in all cases – candidates will prepare to put their best foot forward and be prepared to make a strong impression.
If the candidate has been to a lot of interviews – in many cases, not a good sign – they may also expect you to ask questions such as what type of company they’d like to work for, their ideal work environment, what they would do for you, and how they might handle certain situations.
While these types of questions shed some insight into the mindset of the candidate, they usually get textbook practiced answers in response, which is not overly useful for making an accurate assessment of whether the candidate can excel.
To accurately predict a salesperson’s capability to meet or exceed sales targets in a new role, the sales interview must address not only sales experience, but also personality and behavioral traits which are as important, if not more important than sales experience.
Make Your Interview Scripts Specific
While Peak tailors its interview scripts to the specifics of each sales role for which we are screening, there are some questions that address the common traits of top sales performers and we do employ certain sales interview strategies to ensure accurate assessments in all of our interviews:
Use a mix of open and closed ended questions
Ask proof questions such as “what did you do in the past” instead of theoretical questions such as “what would you do in the future”
Ask for examples to support claims about strengths
Cross reference by asking the same questions in different ways
Challenge candidates with questions that they won’t be expecting and won’t have practiced beforehand
Use interviews as a way of testing or confirming observations obtained in other parts of a comprehensive and structured hiring process
The reality is, sales hiring managers often ask us to share the best questions used in a sales interview. The answer depends on the nature of the sales position, because there is no definitive list of questions for all potential sales hires.
The interview questions Peak Sales Recruiting uses to assess potential reps for new sales development roles are different from what we ask account managers. Furthermore, the questions used to interview sales representatives are very different from those we ask when interviewing candidates for sales management and leadership positions.
Increase Your Sales Interview Effectiveness
Conducting an effective interview is the difference between hiring an underperforming salesperson who will negatively impact revenue generation and sales team morale, and hiring an A-player who will consistently achieve their targets.
The key is to customize your interview approach – using a sales interview template – for individual roles to ensure all skills, experience, and competency requirements are met.
If your interviews are role specific and all candidates are measured in the same objective way, you will increase your A-player headcount and your sales teams will consistently drive revenue and profitability for your organization.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
accordingly. They use comp to motivate their teams to build meaningful relationships with key account stakeholders.
Pipedrive
the main leading players in the Lead Management Software market. The market competition is constantly growing higher with the rise in technological innovation and M&A activities in the industry. Additionally, many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new vendor entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability and innovations in technology.
in US and Canada.
EcoVadis
HyperScience
DataMinr
SevenRooms
Troops
me what the culture is like, and then they try to figure out if it’s an environment that they would enjoy and thrive in.
Don’t be shy about asking people to say a few nice words about you. The most sure-fire way to have people trust you, is by seeing that their friends already trust you. Most of the time people are happy to write a few words for you, if you do the same for them.
Now, look ahead . You’ve hired the candidate, provided necessary training, and have allowed sufficient time to onboard and ramp up.
For example, under federal and state laws, it is illegal to discriminate against a candidate based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, and age.
Another area to avoid is making promises or guarantees in an interview. Interviewers may say things like “permanent position” or “job security”, which causes the candidate to hold them accountable for said statements. These candidates can then claim a 
By asking behavioral questions, the candidate is offering details about their past success, which is used to measure their potential success in the new role. Position these questions in a way that requires them to provide an example to support their claims.
Typically at the 
Leniency/ Strictness Bias occurs when people differ in how they evaluate people. One interviewer may be harder on candidates than other interviewers.
When forming conclusions about an individual, 
To effectively determine which candidates to eliminate, hiring managers need to quantify their interview results – which they can do by using the sales interview template at the end of this guide.
Research has shown that only 
Why does this matter?
The key is to customize your interview approach – using a sales interview template – for individual roles to ensure all skills, experience, and competency requirements are met.