Job boards are one of the first places most organizations will search when they want to hire inside sales reps, but while job boards are a huge source of resumes and entry level candidates, relying on them can be a frustrating experience. As one customer explained to us, just sorting through the volumes of unqualified candidates can be exhausting and you are lucky if you find any qualified candidates at all.
The level of position often makes active recruiting cost prohibitive, so beyond placing ads and mining job boards, companies often wonder where else they can turn to find inside sales reps.
Recruiters are another option to consider, and companies can also look inwards for competent people in other functions that might be better suited to perform a sales role. For instance, customer support and field services might have employee with an aptitude for handling inbound sales calls and the outside sales team may have staff that are better suited to performing outbound sales and new business development activities on the phone.
In all cases, your challenge will be to evaluate the candidates to ensure they have the traits and experiences required to be successful in your inside sales position. For junior hires in particular, where there will be limited employment history to study, sales competency and behavioral tests can be useful. As always, the more structure in your hiring process, the more sales success you will experience.
To your success!
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Eliot Burdett
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.
Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)
- 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
- How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
- Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021
Whether you are a CEO or a executive level sales leader in your company, hiring the right sales leader for your organization can make or break your business. Get it right and they will build a strong team of achievers, increase company morale, and generate revenues profits and growth for the company. Hire the wrong person and in a best case scenario, company growth will stall. In a worst case scenario, targets will be missed, customers will leave, staff turnover will increase, and you will have a mess that could take years to clean up.
best phrase a sales person can use to build trust and increase the likelihood of closing a sales is to respond with “I don’t know” when stumped by a question rather than making up an answer. Perhaps this has to do with the perception that sales people will say anything that they think gets the sales so therefore, any sales person who admits they can’t answer a question, must be telling the truth and be demonstrating honesty.
Companies make huge investments in creating value propositions that will attract customers, but reading the typical job ad shows far less effort is put into attracting the top class sales talent that will actually secure those customers. Boring checklists of required credentials and bland mentions of the company’s mission statement will attract lots of candidates in this economy, but few if any of them will be the highly desirable types because these ads don’t speak their language. Forget about “competitive” compensation, benefits and management “that cares about its staff” – these are all important, but every company promises these things. Where is the sizzle??
Interviews are the staple method for most companies when hiring sales staff and often there are multiple interviews conducted by different team members of the hiring company. Some companies will take the screening process a step further and conduct in depth reference checks. All of this is done to ensure the new hire is the right person.
promotions had a huge influence on customer decisions and Herb Tarlek’s character on WKRP in Cincinnati was a funny depiction of the truth, but not totally out of line. Next watch the movie Tin Men to see what selling might have looked like 50 years ago. Each of these eras had their own characters and methods of inducing buyers to buy and today is no different. Pervasive access to information via the Internet and more sophisticated buyers has changed the way buyers buy and the way organizations sell. This in turn has an impact on the people that get hired and traits top performers possess.