Author: Nick Mann

The A/B Testing Approach: Refining Your SaaS Sales Job Descriptions for Maximum Impact

Posted on by Nick Mann

When most people hear the term A/B testing, they think of sales and marketing. Most of today’s businesses use A/B testing to measure website performance, landing pages, SEO campaigns, emails, and so on. But that’s not the only thing it’s good for.

A/B testing can also be applied to writing SaaS sales job descriptions. When used correctly, this allows you to gain data-driven insights that can help refine every element of your job descriptions to attract better candidates, fill positions quicker, and increase salesperson retention.

Here are the nuts and bolts of the A/B testing approach to help you write the best SaaS sales job descriptions possible.

Figure Out What Needs Improving

Before doing anything else, you first need to pinpoint exactly what you’re looking to accomplish.

For example, maybe you’re not pulling in the volume of candidates you need. Here your goal would be to improve your job descriptions to make your company more appealing to increase the number of applications you receive.

Or maybe you’re currently getting a high volume of SaaS sales candidates with your job description, but the quality level is lacking. In that case, your goal would be to improve the collective quality of candidates.

Whatever the case, figure out precisely what needs improving. Also, it’s usually best to focus on one area at a time when A/B testing SaaS sales job descriptions, as trying to fix more than one area at once can be overwhelming. Once you’ve made your initial improvement, you can move on to other areas. But stick with one element at first to keep things simple.

Choose Testing Variables

After you’ve identified what needs improving, it’s time to determine the specific variables to test. This can be a little tricky, given how many different components make up a SaaS sales job description. Here are the core 10.

The key to effective A/B testing is choosing variables you believe are most instrumental in helping you achieve your goal. If, for instance, you were struggling to bring in enough qualified candidates, you may want to focus on skill sets and education qualifications.

This should help weed out more underqualified candidates so the majority of the ones who apply have the qualifications you’re seeking.

Develop Two Test Versions

Now it’s time to create two test versions — a control and a variation — to see which performs the best.

Let’s go back to our example about trying to improve candidate quality. In an attempt to drive more qualified candidates, you could try two different test versions of the skill set section of your job description.

Version A could be a shorter section, which covers the essentials but doesn’t go into much detail.

Version B could be a longer section, which is more specific with the skills a SaaS salesperson needs to thrive at your company and goes into greater detail.

A potential hypothesis would be that version B would result in more qualified candidates, as it’s more exhaustive in terms of the skills your ideal SaaS salesperson should possess.

Generate Measurable Data

Once you have your two test versions, it’s time to put them to use in a real-world setting and start generating data. For our example, you could split the two job description versions 50/50 so half of the the candidates see the shorter job description version and the other half see the longer job description version.

This would be a simple way to objectively compare the two versions to see which yields the best results.

The more data you have, the better. Therefore, you’ll want to run testing in as many places as possible. So, for example, instead of just doing testing on job descriptions on your website’s career section, you may want to branch out to job boards, email, or wherever else you recruit.

Analyze the Results

This is the fun part. After you’ve accumulated enough data, it’s time to see what the results are. If you were trying to determine whether a shorter or longer job description was best for reeling in quality candidates, you could analyze application quality, specifically looking at experience, skills, and cultural fit.

Say 75% of the candidates that applied to version A — the shorter list of necessary skills in the job description — were highly qualified and 85% of the candidates that applied to version B — the longer list of required skills in the job description — were highly qualified. Based on those findings, you could surmise that version B had the bigger impact and helped bring in more highly qualified candidates.

That would mean that being more detailed with the required skill set should reliably produce higher-quality candidates.

This example is arbitrary, but you get the idea. Other key metrics you could analyze include the number of applications you receive after A/B testing, the average time candidates spend on a job description page, and the click-through-rate.

Nearly any element you can imagine can be tested with this technique, and a side-by-side comparison should give you objective insight into what works best.

Use Your Findings to Refine Future SaaS Sales Job Descriptions

Knowing for certain what it takes to optimize your SaaS sales job descriptions can be incredibly exciting. Rather than guessing what works, you know for a fact based on concrete data.

While finding the “low-hanging fruit” and improving a critically flawed area of your job description is good, that’s only the start. The key to being successful is continually performing the process until you’re able to write job descriptions like a well-oiled machine.

I suggest making a list of what needs your attention the most with the biggest issues at the top and the lesser issues toward the bottom. That way, you’ll know what to prioritize, and you can move through the list systematically until you’re firing on all cylinders.

If you’re looking to find the cream of the crop sales reps based on critical capabilities like the will to sell and trainability, check out The Original Sales Assessment. It can be fully customized to contour to your unique sales role to quickly filter through the candidate pool and find elite talent.

Build a Collaborative Sales Culture By Encouraging Teamwork and Knowledge Sharing

Posted on by Nick Mann

It may sound cliche and a little cheesy, but the saying “success is a team sport” applies to sales 100%. If your salespeople exist in a silo with little to no collaboration, it’s hard to succeed, let alone reach the top of your industry.

But don’t take my word for it. For this article, I’ll share some concrete data that quantifies just how big of an impact building a collaborative sales culture can have and proven strategies for making your team more collaborative.

Need to Know Stats

To put things into perspective, I’ve compiled several illuminating stats that show why having a collaborative sales culture is so important.

First, it’s been found to increase customer satisfaction ratings by 41%. Next, it improves product quality by 34% and product development by 30%.

And the stat you’re probably most interested in is that it increases sales by 27%.

Here’s a graph to help visualize this data.

If you’re looking to check all the most critical boxes for getting ahead in business, strong collaboration is just the ticket. It helps improve the customer experience, enhance product quality, and boost sales for a win-win-win.

Conversely, “A recent survey revealed that 85% of employees believe that poor communication is the primary reason for project failures. When sales teams struggle with collaboration, sales performance takes a hit. In fact, teams that experience high levels of miscommunication can see a decrease of up to 20% in their overall sales performance.”

The question now is, what exactly can you do to make your sales team more collaborative?

Like any other area of sales or business, my philosophy is to keep it simple and practical, focusing on the most critical areas. This brings us to our next section.

Teamwork and Knowledge Sharing: The 2 Pillars of Building a Collaborative Sales Culture

Let me start by saying that there are a ton of factors that can contribute to building a more collaborative sales culture. Here are eight that apply across the board.

While it’s nice to incorporate all of these elements, I find that it’s best to concentrate on two in particular when shifting momentum initially. As you improve, you can always work on these other areas later on. But at first, you need to zero in on what will get the biggest overall results.

From my experience, teamwork and knowledge sharing are “the big two” that should get the ball rolling when sparking sales culture transformation.

Encouraging Teamwork

Typically, the best way to get started is to build a framework that promotes cross-functional collaboration between different departments, such as marketing and customer support. Because company departments don’t exist independently and depend on each other greatly, it’s important to create a system where there’s heavy communication between all departments.

A simple example would be using a robust CRM platform where all departments have a 360-degree overview of each customer. Marketing would input the initial customer profile, which your sales and customer support team could easily reference. And whenever changes are made, updates should be made in real time.

Another good way to improve teamwork is to have a policy where open communication is welcome, as long as it’s constructive. When your sales team knows they have a safe space to voice their opinion, this naturally creates a more collaborative environment where individuals can share ideas and work on correcting problems so they don’t have a chance to fester.

And something you can do as a sales manager is to lead by example by doing the following:

  • Be quick to communicate and collaborate with all team members
  • Praise salespeople who are committed to teamwork
  • Celebrate successes by congratulating salespeople (if they’re comfortable with that)

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a great resource for more innovative ways to improve sales teamwork.

Encouraging Knowledge Sharing

The second part of the equation is getting serious about knowledge sharing. When information is siloed, it hurts everyone.

For instance, if your marketing team doesn’t provide your sales reps with enough information, it makes it harder to prioritize leads and make conversions. If your sales team doesn’t provide customer support with enough information, it makes it more difficult to retain customers. And if your sales team doesn’t keep the information flowing with one another, there could be clunky handoffs and your customer may not get the optimal product.

So how can you remedy this?

You can make a lot of progress by simply leveraging the right tools in your tech stack. Start with the basics like having your sales team use a collaboration tool like Slack or Microsoft Teams. That way, everyone can stay up-to-date on what’s happening in real time without skipping a beat.

When it comes to knowledge sharing between marketing and sales, a lead scoring tool can be invaluable, as it quantifies how hot a lead is so your salespeople can prioritize their efforts. For example, Pipedrive provides a simple system that lets marketing hand off leads to sales and lets them know who’s primed to buy and who needs more nurturing.

Finally, I suggest creating a centralized resource where everyone can instantly find essential information like:

  • Your sales playbook
  • A list of customer personas
  • The UVP and key features of different products
  • Customer testimonials
  • Case studies

This should keep everyone on the same page and should accelerate the ramp time of new sales reps.

Infusing Collaboration Into Your Sales Culture

To recap, collaboration contributes to optimizing the three most crucial areas of your business —customer experience, product quality, and conversions. The numbers don’t lie.

While a lot goes into building a more collaborative sales culture, zeroing in on teamwork and knowledge sharing should help you make big gains the quickest. From there, you can make iterations until you’re firing on all cylinders.

Ready to take your sales hiring to a new level and eliminate weaknesses while increasing screening accuracy? Take the HireDNA Hiring Readiness Assessment today.

89% of Sales Candidates Accept Job Offers of the First Recruiter Who Contacts Them: How to Leverage This for Winning Top Talent

Posted on by Nick Mann

Here’s the scenario. After extensive (and costly) sales recruiting, you’ve finally pinpointed your dream candidate — someone who checks all the right boxes and who you feel would be the ideal salesperson for your role. But when you give them a call or shoot them an email, you find that they’ve moved on and have accepted a role with another company.

What happened? What went wrong?

More often than not in this situation, the problem is that you weren’t proactive and didn’t offer them the job quickly enough. For this post, I’ll discuss why this can prevent you from winning top talent and how to make sure you don’t fall into this trap in the future.

One Statistic You Absolutely Need to Know

First, try to put yourself in the shoes of an elite salesperson for a second. This person likely has plenty of options and leverage.

If they applied for multiple positions — as many jobseekers do — odds are more than one company is interested in their talent. And it probably won’t be long before someone recognizes what they bring to the table and tries to bring them on board.

Even if your company was the one they were most interested in, they’ll likely accept a comparable position if someone gave them an offer before you did. It’s nothing personal. It’s just a matter of who’s quickest to the punch.

And if the candidate needs to get hired in a hurry, it stands to reason that they would accept the first solid job offer that comes their way. This brings us to the one statistic you absolutely need to know.

“89% of applicants accept job offers faster when a recruiter contacts them.”

Rather than waiting around and leaving someone hanging after you’ve made a hiring decision, it’s crucial that you reach out right away with a formal job offer. Otherwise, you run a significant risk of losing top talent to a competitor.

You don’t need to rapid-fire right into onboarding, but you should let them know that you’ve chosen them for the job and what to expect next.

Two Other Compelling Stats

This makes sense considering that having to wait to see if they get an offer can be incredibly vexing for salespeople. In fact, 57% of people say the most frustrating part of the job search is waiting to see if they got the position after going through the interview process.”

Besides that, “Nearly one-quarter lose interest if they don’t hear back within one week after the initial interview; another 46 percent lose interest if there’s no status update from one-to-two weeks post-interview.”

And how can you blame them? The last thing you want to deal with when your livelihood is on the line is sluggish recruiters who leave you in the dark.

The bottom line is that candidates — especially those with a ton of talent and leverage — don’t want to wait around after an interview to be offered a job. They want it quickly.

Understanding this and adjusting your sales recruiting strategy accordingly is key to winning top talent. With that said, here are some specific ways to ensure you don’t squander golden opportunities.

Make Faster Decisions

A precursor to everything else is hastening your hiring decision-making. By this, I’m referring to avoiding requiring multiple levels of approvals from different team members before pulling the trigger. When this happens, you may have A+ sales candidates slip through your fingers by the time you’re able to get the green light for an offer.

Now I’m not suggesting foolishly rushing and not getting anyone else’s feedback. But it’s important to evaluate how many approvals you need before giving a sales candidate an offer and seeing if you could trim it back to streamline the process.

Maintain Consistent Candidate Communication

Communication throughout the hiring process is important anyway. But it’s especially critical after an interview and a candidate is waiting to find out if they landed the job or not. So you want to be sure that either you or a dedicated team member keeps your final round of candidates posted on the job status.

This starts with developing a sales candidate communication plan (you can learn how to create one here). And if someone reaches out to you to check the status, you should respond within 24 hours max.

Strike Fast With a Job Offer

Once you’re certain that you want to hire a particular candidate, don’t waste any time giving them a formal job offer. As soon as all key stakeholders agree, go ahead and let the candidate know right away so they don’t get lured into another position.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to provide them with ALL of the information right off the bat. This will come in phases during onboarding. But you’ll want to give them the good news that you want to bring them on board and provide them with the basics of what to expect next.

Also, be sure to include the basics like contact info, job details, salary, and benefits for quick reference.

That way they can officially shut down their job search and start preparing to join your sales team.

Winning Top Talent By Proactive Recruiting

Let’s recap. Sales recruiting can be incredibly competitive, and highly talented reps often have multiple companies vying for them. One of the main keys to landing superstar reps is having an efficient recruiting process and ensuring a team member immediately contacts them once they’ve been chosen.

The longer you wait, the greater the chances of them being snatched up by another company. But if you act quickly and maintain close communication along the way, the odds are in your favor that you’ll come out on top.

Want to take your sales recruiting to the next level by eliminating weaknesses and attracting ideal candidates? Take the HireDNA Hiring Readiness Assessment. Using it can improve screening accuracy, help you source candidates faster, reduce time to fill, and more.

Identifying Sales Rep Struggles: How to Recognize and Address Performance Issues

Posted on by Nick Mann

According to Salesforce, “67% of sales reps don’t expect to meet their quota this year, and 84% missed it last year.” Also, 53% of sales pros say it’s harder to sell than a year ago.” While I doubt that the numbers are this high across the board, this data shows how common sales rep struggles are.

And let’s be honest. This is not an easy profession. With quotas to meet, tons of stress, and skeptical customers, most reps have their work cut out.

For this post, I’ll identify what I believe are the biggest sales rep struggles, pointing out how to recognize and swiftly fix them to get your sales team operating at its peak potential.

Poor Product Knowledge

Let’s start from the top. Sometimes the main reason for a rep struggling isn’t due to anything complex or convoluted. Sometimes they simply don’t have proper command of the products they’re selling.

When this is the case, it creates a negative domino effect where they struggle to convey value to leads, demonstrate how your products will make the lives of your leads easier, build trust, and so on.

And it’s easy to see why poor product knowledge can be such an issue, especially when it comes to SaaS. Many SaaS products, for example, have a wide range of solutions and features, and cater to different demographics like solopreneurs, small businesses, and enterprises. Just look at how many popular features HubSpot has.

If you throw a salesperson in head-first without adequate time to learn the ins and outs of your products, understand the greater context, and how the dots connect, their conversion rate is likely to suffer. That’s why offering robust training to ensure new reps not only learn how your products work and their benefits but how they fit into a customer’s business processes.

Also if you offer a wide range of products, it’s usually best to allow new reps to only focus on a few initially and gradually have them branch out over time as their knowledge grows. To learn how salesperson training can have up to 350% ROI, check out this article.

Inefficient Time Management

Here are a few stats I couldn’t believe regarding salesperson time management.

If your sales team is anywhere near these numbers, it’s guaranteed to hurt their performance. Just imagine only spending two hours a day actively selling.

So what’s the solution?

First, I suggest creating a tech stack that features the perfect mix of tools for activities like:

  • Setting appointments – Calendly is great for this
  • Customer relationship management – HubSpot is an excellent choice
  • Task management – I love Trello
  • Time tracking – Toggl Track is great

That alone can make a big difference.

Next, your salespeople must prioritize tasks and focus their attention on 1) actually selling rather than administrative tasks and 2) going after hot leads rather than squandering their time on those that still need nurturing.

There are a ton of lead-scoring platforms out there, but ActiveCampaign is one of my favorites because of its simplicity and user-friendliness.

Also, if you find your team constantly swamped with repetitive administrative tasks, it’s smart to hire someone to handle this part of sales so you can free up your sales reps’ time for more important matters.

Lack of Motivation

Even if you have the most skilled, talented, superstar salespeople, their productivity will likely be minimalized if they lack motivation. And considering 79% of today’s workers are disengaged to some extent, this is an issue you’re almost guaranteed to encounter at some point.

So what leads to a lack of motivation?

Poor compensation and lackluster incentives like rewards and benefits are a big reason. Overlooked achievements where major accomplishments go unnoticed are another. Also, having little to no career development opportunities can cause salespeople to stagnate, as there’s not much of a reason to keep pushing.

While you can’t necessarily expect every rep to give 110% effort every single day, your workforce should be sufficiently motivated. Otherwise, you’ll want to identify the root problem (likely one of the issues I just mentioned) and figure out what you can do to remedy the situation.

For a deep dive into this topic, I suggest reading this article from The Harvard Business Review.

Difficulty Closing Deals

Imagine this. Your marketing team has done an amazing job cultivating high-quality leads — individuals who have expressed a clear need and interest in your product — and served them up on a silver platter for your sales team. But despite being ultra-qualified, the conversion rate is far lower than what it should be.

This can be incredibly frustrating, and if left unchecked, it can suck the life out of your ROI and put a damper on company morale. But what can you do about it?

It starts by understanding some common reasons why reps fail to close deals, such as:

  • They don’t fully understand your product (this goes back to our first point)
  • They’re unable to explain the full value of your product
  • They’re not truly listening to the needs of your leads
  • They’re not skilled at persuading leads to pull the trigger
  • They give up too easily

Of course, there are a ton of other potential reasons for a low conversion rate, but these are good places to start. Once you identify a possible culprit, zero in on what you can do to help your reps improve in that department.

For instance, if they’re unable to convey your UVP, you may want to create a bullet list of the core benefits for each customer persona. Or if they’re not fully listening to your leads, you may want to provide coaching on how to improve active listening.

Identifying and Overcoming Sales Rep Struggles

Even the best of the best salespeople will struggle from time to time. Your job as a team leader is to quickly pinpoint performance issues and help steer your reps back on track.

To streamline the process of identifying and eliminating weaknesses in your sales recruiting, check out the HireDNA Hiring Readiness Assessment.

Building Trust and Transparency: Addressing Candidate Concerns During the SaaS Sales Hiring Process

Posted on by Nick Mann

Building a foundation of trust from the beginning is important on many levels when hiring SaaS salespeople. From attracting talent to creating positive interactions to getting superstar reps to accept a position to long-term retention, trust is paramount. Unfortunately, the SaaS sales hiring process is lacking in this department for many brands.

In this post, I’d like to share some recent data to provide perspective and offer practical ways to build trust and transparency with your SaaS sales hiring.

A Current Snapshot of Trust Levels Among Candidates

In 2023, Gartner published some intriguing data that offers perspective on where most candidates are at in regard to employer trust and just how big of an impact having trust and transparency can be. Here are some of the highlights.

“Trust is low among employees today. Only 36% of employees report high trust in their organizations. Only 54% of candidates say they trust organizations to be honest with them during the hiring process, and commitment to accepted offers hangs in the balance. 44% of candidates have accepted an offer but then decided not to start the position.”

This data shows there’s a high level of skepticism among many candidates. But as Gartner points out, “trust is key to attracting, engaging, and retaining talent in a competitive, candidate-powered labor market. Employees with high organizational trust express an 11% higher intent to stay and show 39% higher engagement than those with low trust. “They also put 6.35 times as much discretionary effort into their jobs.”

The bottom line is that trust and transparency are highly important to the SaaS sales hiring process, as well as your bottom line. However, these are things that are collectively lacking among many of today’s brands. But if you go the extra mile to build trust and transparency, this can give your brand a major edge over most of your competitors.

With that in mind, here’s how to address concerns during the SaaS sales hiring process.

Create a Clear Hiring Timeline

Last month, we wrote a post about the importance of having a clear hiring timeline and mentioned that this is something that 83% of candidates want to have. One of the best ways to get started out on the right foot with SaaS sales candidates is to let them know exactly what to expect so there’s no guessing on their end.

This shows that you respect their time and it should ensure that they’re not left hanging, creating unnecessary resentment along the way. I highly recommend reading this blog post, as it walks you through the details, but here’s a simple example of a hiring timeline you could share with SaaS sales candidates so they know what to expect.

Be Detailed About Salary and Benefits

Research has found that nearly four out of five candidates want at least some form of transparency regarding salary and benefits, and nearly one out of three want total transparency.

Only 21% aren’t concerned with pay transparency when looking for a job.

Therefore, another critical part of establishing trust is to put this information out in the open so there are no surprises later on. This means being crystal clear about:

  • Base salary
  • Commission
  • Bonuses
  • Benefits
  • The potential for pay bumps over time

It’s also wise to discuss the potential for career development opportunities that could increase a salesperson’s earnings.

Doing so should alleviate frustration and mistrust and ensure you’re on the same page right from the get-go. If you’re wondering how much to pay top talent, we wrote an entire post about this topic.

Be Upfront About Job Challenges

Obviously, SaaS sales recruiters want to let candidates know about all of the great benefits of joining their company and focus on the positives. But no matter how amazing a position is, there will inevitably be drawbacks. And it’s important to offer a holistic perspective and a realistic overview to convey the role honestly so candidates know what to expect.

Say, for example, your SaaS sales reps may need to pull some extra hours from time to time. Or maybe it’s a fast-paced environment where you need reps who know how to manage stress.

These are potential challenges you would want to be transparent about during hiring so candidates who are brought on board have the right expectations and don’t quit prematurely.

Offer Responsive Feedback (Even if it’s Negative)

One of the quickest ways to create friction during SaaS sales hiring is to leave candidates in the dark during important decision-making. Whether it’s deciding which candidates make it to the next round of hiring or when someone gets an official offer, it’s crucial that you’re as prompt as possible.

Further, it’s equally as important to offer responsive feedback even if it’s not good news. If, for example, you liked a candidate overall but you decided to move on to the next round of hiring without them, you should let them know shortly after you made that decision so they could look for a different position.

Anyone who’s been a hiring manager knows that delivering bad news isn’t pleasant. But out of respect for the candidate, it’s important to keep them in the loop with timely communication.

Quelling Candidate Uncertainty with Your SaaS Sales Hiring Process

With only 54% of SaaS sales candidates saying they trust brands to be honest with them during the hiring process, this is something worth tackling head-on. By establishing your company as one that values its candidates’ time and maintains transparency from start to finish, you should be in a position to increase engagement and retention, while also getting maximum effort out of the candidates you hire.

Not to mention, it can do wonders for boosting your overall brand equity.

Ready to elevate your sales recruiting by finding elite SaaS sales candidates quicker while drastically reducing hiring mistakes and improving accuracy? Get HireDNA’s Hiring Readiness Assessment.

The Impact of Compensation Structure on SaaS Sales Recruitment

Posted on by Nick Mann

There are several factors that SaaS sales reps consider when looking for a job, including career development opportunities, working environment, benefits, and company culture. But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, compensation is still number one for many reps. Therefore, compensation structure will greatly impact your SaaS sales recruitment.

In this article, I’ll break down the specifics regarding the impact of compensation structure and offer recent data on how much salespeople earn on average.

Attract Top SaaS Sales Talent

According to the 2022 Salesforce State of Sales report, “The top reasons sales professionals want to leave their jobs include unrealistic sales targets and uncompetitive pay and benefits.” Although money isn’t everything, there’s no denying that it’s a major factor, if not THE main factor for SaaS salespeople when considering which company to work for.

If you want to attract the true superstars of your industry, you’ll need an enticing compensation structure. Later I’ll provide a breakdown of what companies pay on average so you’ll have a benchmark for reference. But for now, know that the salary you offer top SaaS sales candidates will heavily impact your ability to bring them on board.

Motivate SaaS Salespeople

Not only does a solid compensation structure help attract top talent, it also plays an instrumental role in motivating them to perform at their best. I think this quote from the Revenue Operations Alliance says it perfectly.

“Poor compensation is a major contributor to sales rep turnover. If you don’t nail your approach to compensation, you may be at risk of losing your top talent. Rewarding your sales team with competitive pay and setting them realistic quotas, keeps them happy and motivated to perform. If quotas are too high, you risk demotivating your reps.”

Just put yourself in the shoes of an elite rep for a second. If they know they’re getting paid fairly and have incentives like bonuses and other rewards for going above and beyond, they’ll be far more motivated than if they were getting paid below average with zero incentives. And if they work for a company that pays better than most competitors and offers robust bonuses and rewards, the rep will likely push themself even further.

Conversely, if they receive less than average pay with little to no bonus opportunities, you’re likely to get only the bare minimum from them. This classic scene from the movie Office Space comes to mind here.

Drive Revenue Growth

When you’re able to 1) attract top SaaS sales talent and 2) keep them consistently motivated to perform at their best, an inevitable result in most cases is increased revenue.

As we’ve discussed, well-paid sales reps are more likely to go the extra mile. In turn, this can translate into a host of benefits, including:

  • Alignment with company goals
  • Not only reaching but exceeding sales targets
  • More closed deals
  • Improved customer relationships to set the stage for upselling and repeat purchases
  • Better collaboration with other salespeople, as well as with other company departments

When you look at it from this perspective, investing more in a salesperson’s salary can pay off in the long run. Although you may spend more upfront, the revenue spike you’ll likely will often justify it.

Retain Sales Reps

And let’s not forget one of the most critical elements for building a successful SaaS company — retention. Obviously, retaining customers is huge for gaining momentum. But it’s also extremely important to retain your salespeople, especially top performers.

This starts by offering a strong salary structure to begin with. But experts say it’s also important to offer periodic salary increases. In fact, “59% of professionals polled believe that salary increases are the most effective tool in retaining top talent.” It’s also worth noting that “26% consider bonuses to be the primary mechanism.”

Ideally, you’ll lay a strong foundation by offering new SaaS salespeople fair or better-than-average pay. And over time, with good performance, you’ll steadily increase their salary and offer bonuses along the way.

How Much Should You Pay Your SaaS Salespeople?

Now that we’ve established why having the right compensation structure is important, let’s discuss the question you’re probably wondering right now. How much should you pay your SaaS salespeople?

This is a topic we covered in-depth in this article, which contains a ton of great 2023. Here are the highlights to give you a basic idea of what most companies are paying their SaaS sales reps.

According to data from Comparably, the US average in 2023 was $109,335, which was the highest of the three sources I analyzed.

Glassdoor had a slightly lower number at $108,003.

And ZipRecruiter had the national average considerably lower at $82,141 per year.

After crunching these numbers, the overall average between the three sources was $99,826 a year. While there are numerous factors like location, company size, and employee experience that will impact how much a SaaS salesperson should get paid, I feel that around $100,000 a year is a pretty good baseline number.

Note that those in the SaaS industry tend to get paid more than other salespeople due to the level of expertise, training, and tech savviness they need to possess. So that’s something to take into consideration. If you’re looking for a practical guide on how to set up a compensation structure for your SaaS company, I suggest this one from HubSpot.

The Importance of a Strong Compensation Structure

To recap, having the right compensation structure can help you attract top talent, motivate your reps, drive revenue growth, and boost employee retention. Beyond that, it plays a vital role in the overall longevity of your SaaS company and in building brand equity. The bottom line is that you want to find the sweet spot where you pay SaaS salespeople enough without throwing money away by going overboard.

If you’re looking to level up your SaaS recruiting to find sales reps who check all the right boxes, try our Hiring Readiness Assessment. Improve screening accuracy, reduce hiring mistakes, and turn your sales hiring into a well-oiled machine.

From Guesswork to Growth: How Data Analytics Can Supercharge Your SaaS Sales Hiring

Posted on by Nick Mann

Multiple boxes must be checked when doing SaaS sales hiring, from process efficiency to candidate quality to cultural fit to addressing potential bias. Otherwise, if even one box is left unchecked, it can lead to a host of issues like an overly lengthy hiring period, a poor candidate experience, and high turnover to name a few. Fortunately, we live in a day and age where data analytics can take much of the guesswork out of SaaS sales hiring and provide you with a steady stream of high-quality candidates — many of which will convert into loyal salespeople who crush their quotas.

Here are some specific ways data analytics can supercharge your SaaS sales hiring.

Identify Ideal Salesperson Qualities

Ask most hiring managers what the ideal salesperson looks like and they’ll probably say that they’re confident, resilient, a great communicator, and so on. But they likely don’t have a concrete salesperson profile based on completely objective data.

That’s where data analytics comes in. With this type of platform, you can analyze historical data to generate a crystal clear candidate profile, highlighting things like:

  • Education
  • Experience
  • Desire
  • Commitment
  • Personality
  • Behavior
  • Motivation
  • Responsibility

And we’re not just talking about a generalized, cookie-cutter profile that could apply to any company. Data analytics can be fully tailored to your unique sales environment so you know for certain which types of candidates are most likely to succeed working for you.

That way, you can target your SaaS sales hiring approach to filter through the candidate pool and zero in on the true superstars, which should result in A+ hires while lowering your turnover rate. This brings us to our next point.

Assign Scores to Candidates for Easy Comparison

Based on salesperson qualities that contribute to an ideal candidate, you can use data analytics to generate a numerical score for each person who applies. Here’s an example of what that can look like where you objectively rate a potential candidate based on core competencies so you can see where they rank in terms of qualities like desire and commitment.

In turn, you can instantly see how a candidate stacks up against others, while always maintaining consistency. So if it comes down to a few candidates that you’re interested in but aren’t sure who to choose, having a quantitative score like this can make your decision much easier.

Lower Your Hiring Costs By 3x

The SaaS sales industry has a notoriously high recruitment cost. According to SHRM, the average cost per hire across all industries as a whole is around $4,700. However, the typical cost for sales roles is much higher, often ranging from $7,000 to $8,000 for each salesperson.

One of the biggest reasons to use data analytics is that it can help you find the cream-of-the-crop sales candidates more quickly. From using applicant tracking systems to keyword filtering to behavioral assessments to gauge the odds of candidate success, this technology helps you move through the sales hiring process much more efficiently than doing so manually.

In turn, this can significantly lower hiring costs. To quantify, “Organizations that use analytics to improve the quality of a recruiting effort can reduce the cost per hire by three times,” explains RecruitingDaily. Even filling one position can save money, but when you look long-term, this can dramatically lower your sales hiring costs.

Create a Far Better Sales Candidate Experience

Because you’re able to create a more efficient, streamlined SaaS sales hiring process, this tends to result in a better candidate experience. This mainly stems from moving through the process quicker where you’re able to provide candidates with timely updates on their job application status.

That way they’re not left waiting, and you can get them from one round to the next without wasting their time with long, drawn-out sales recruiting. Besides that, you’re less likely to lose A+ candidates to competitors simply because it takes too long to hear back from your recruiting team. So it’s a win-win situation.

Eliminate Hiring Inefficiencies for Continual Improvement

No matter how good your SaaS sales hiring process is, there’s always room for improvement. But without the right data, there’s usually a fair amount of guesswork rather than data-driven decision-making.

The beauty of data analytics is that it continually provides you with objective data that helps you get better and better. Let’s say your hiring process looks something like this.

But somewhere along the way, quality candidates are dropping off and you’re missing out on golden opportunities. However, you’re not exactly sure where it’s happening.

Armed with data analytics, you could pinpoint precisely where the majority of candidates are being lost. For instance, maybe everything is going smoothly up until the phone interview. But poor communication or inefficient interviewing results in a high level of qualified candidates ditching your SaaS hiring process without moving on to the next round.

By having this information, you would know that the phone interview would be the area you would want to focus on improving. Once you’ve done that, you can eliminate a major friction point and create a more seamless hiring process.

Build Your SaaS Sales Dream Team Data Analytics

With so many variables that can affect SaaS sales recruiting success, it’s important to leave nothing to chance. Although there is no magic bullet that can guarantee a 100% success rate with every hire, data analytics has been proven to get legitimate results.

Using the right platform should help you predict which candidates are most likely to thrive in your sales environment, while simultaneously reducing your time-to-hire, lowering your hiring costs, improving the candidate experience, and more. For an overview of some of the top data analytics products on the market, I suggest reading this guide from People Managing People.

And if you’re looking for one of today’s leading hiring readiness assessments to level up your SaaS sales recruiting, check out HireDNA’s free assessment.

83% of Sales Candidates Want a Clear Hiring Timeline: Here’s How to Give it to Them

Posted on by Nick Mann

Put yourself in a sales candidate’s shoes for a second. The average person is eager to find a sales position and ready to start ASAP. They’re also likely facing a lot of uncertainty that could make them anxious. The last thing they want is any vagueness with the hiring process.

In fact, this could easily result in them jumping at another sales position, where you lose out on top-tier talent to a competitor. A simple way to avoid this problem is to provide sales candidates with a clear hiring timeline so they know exactly what to expect.

Why It’s Important to Have a Clear Hiring Timeline

Almost everyone knows what it’s like to be in job search mode. I know I do.

You’re busy sending out resumes and cover letters, filling out applications, and corresponding with hiring managers. There’s a lot going on.

When you find a prospective employer that looks promising, your goal is to quickly build rapport and swiftly move through the hiring process. From initial screenings to interviews to follow-up conversations to ultimately getting an offer and beginning onboarding, you want to navigate through this sequence of steps seamlessly.

But what if you find what seems like an amazing employer but they have absolutely no transparency in terms of what to expect with the hiring process? This can be incredibly frustrating, and many would-be superstar salespeople may be lost because of it.

Having a clear hiring timeline is essential because this provides the structure that lets sales candidates know for certain what’s about to happen. And this is something that most people crave, with research finding that “83% of candidates prefer having a clear timeline of the hiring process.”

But it goes deeper than that and is beneficial for your hiring team as well. This quote from ClearCompany summarizes it perfectly.

“Without a hiring timeline, you’re essentially creating a new process every time you hire. You can’t tell candidates — or your internal teams — when a decision will be made. Everyone, including your recruiting team, is in the dark. That’s frustrating for employees and candidates alike.”

With that said, here’s a straightforward strategy for giving sales candidates the clear hiring timeline they seek.

Outline the Sequences of Your Hiring Stages

First, you’ll need to articulate the exact series of steps involved in your sales hiring process. This can look slightly different from company to company, but here are two examples that you can build your outline around.

This one is quite simple and involves five basic steps.

  1. Verify a candidate’s information
  2. Interview them
  3. Evaluate their skills
  4. Perform employment verification
  5. Make your hiring decision

The other example is a little more involved with additional steps, but it should provide a thorough hiring process that increases your chances of finding the ideal sales candidate.

I suggest spending some time looking at these two examples and considering any other steps that are unique to your hiring and fleshing out a concrete process. Also, be sure to include roughly how long each step will take so that candidates and your sales hiring team know.

For example, you may mention that candidates can expect to hear back from you within three days after conducting an assessment test to schedule an interview.

Keep in mind that you can (and probably should) make changes as time goes on. But this should serve as a solid first draft so you can be on the same page with sales candidates. This brings us to our next point.

Provide an Overview of the Hiring Timeline to Sales Candidates

Once you’ve got a finished product, you’ll want to type up a tangible outline that you can give to sales candidates, as well as your hiring team. Here’s a simple example that I came up with off the top of my head.

Application Review and Screening1 week
Initial Phone Interviews3 days
In-Person or Video Interviews3 days
Reference/Background Check3 days
Offer and Negotiation1 week
Onboarding2 weeks

Notice that this not only shows the precise sequence of steps that will occur in the hiring timeline but also the approximate length of time with each step. And in the spirit of underpromising and overdelivering — which I find to be highly important in hiring and business in general — it’s best to give yourself some wiggle room with dates.

For instance, it would be better to tell candidates to expect it to take a week to receive an offer after conducting a reference/background check and it only takes five days to get back to them rather than promising three days and it taking you five.

In terms of the tools for creating a clear hiring timeline, a basic spreadsheet should be sufficient. However, you can find free, customizable templates here that have stronger aesthetics.

Track Progress and Make Adjustments

After you’ve identified the hiring timeline, created a tangible outline, and started implementing it, be sure to track your progress and measure the results.

Here are some specific quantitative KPIs to look at:

  • Time to fill
  • Time to hire
  • Interview-to-offer ratio
  • Offer acceptance rate
  • Quality of hire
  • Cost per hire
  • Employee retention

It’s also important to dive into qualitative metrics that rely less on numerical data and more on feedback. Mainly, I suggest getting direct candidate input on what their experience is like so you can identify pain points to fix. It’s also smart to get direct input from your hiring team to see how satisfied they are with the process and what could be improved.

Optimizing Sales Recruiting with a Clear Hiring Timeline

Given that 83% of sales candidates like having a clear hiring timeline it’s definitely worth your time to provide them with one. And it’s really not that complicated and only involves three steps.

Outline your hiring stages. Provide a concrete overview of those stages to sales candidates and your hiring team. Make ongoing improvements as you gather data.

Do that, and you should be on your way to creating an amazing sales candidate experience, which should result in more quality hires, increased ROI, and greater retention.

If you’re looking to eliminate weaknesses in your sales recruiting, try out our Hiring Readiness Assessment. It can help lower your recruiting costs, expedite your time to fill, and dramatically reduce poor hires.

How Optimized Sales Recruiting Can Shorten Your Hiring Cycle By 60% 

Posted on by Nick Mann

The average time to hire in 2023 was 44 days, with research finding that the process is harder than ever. While you never want to cut corners and risk the quality of the salespeople you hire, it’s important to shorten your hiring cycle as much as possible. According to a 2024 study, the best way to accomplish this is with optimized sales recruiting, which can shorten your hiring cycle by 60%.

For perspective, if it normally takes your recruiting team 44 days to make a hire, that number would be slashed to around 17 days. For this post, I’ll unpack the three main strategies to establish optimized sales recruiting based on the 2024 study referenced above.

Refine Your Job Posting

Sales recruiters tend to run into one of two problems with job postings. They either bring in too many unqualified candidates, which creates delays as they have to sift through a bloated candidate pool. Or they don’t bring in enough qualified candidates, which means they have to make revisions and spend more time chasing down additional candidates.

Ideally, you’ll find the sweet spot, where you drive a sizable volume of qualified candidates, which you can quickly narrow down into the best of the best. But how do you do this?

Here are some suggestions:

  • Use clean job post formatting that’s easy to read
  • Include must-have requirements in a job posting
  • Be transparent about salary
  • Be clear about your company’s values and culture
  • Offer employee testimonials

Another hack is to include a specific keyword toward the end of your job description. When applying, ask candidates to mention the keyword to prove they read the entire job description.

Remove Candidate Application Obstacles

Let’s say a qualified candidate has found your job posting, checked out your brand, and is ready to apply. But once they start the application process they quickly sour because they encounter frustrating obstacles — mainly the application being overly lengthy or complicated.

This is an issue that’s far too common. In fact, one study even found that as many as 60% of talented salespeople ditch an application because it’s too long or complex. Because more than half of would-be candidates never enter the candidate pool because of the application process, this is a low-hanging fruit that most sales recruiters need to assess.

We wrote an entire article on how to simplify the job application process, which you can find here. But some of the highlights include:

  • Keeping the entire process under five minutes
  • Avoiding having multiple steps where candidates have to fill out several pages or forms
  • Avoiding requesting excessive, unnecessary data
  • Avoiding asking a candidate to create an account to apply
  • Having autofill to instantly populate an application with sales candidate info

Also, keep tabs on the functionality of your application, ensuring pages load quickly and there are no glitches that are creating disruptions.

Outline the Hiring Process

The final strategy stated by the 2024 study to reduce your hiring cycle by up to 60% was clearly outlining the hiring process so candidates know exactly what to expect. Not only does this set the right expectations with sales candidates right from the start and create a better overall experience, it also helps your recruiting team because it provides you with a consistent roadmap so you can move through the process more efficiently.

Below is a simple example of what a hiring process outline may look like. Note that this is an arbitrary example and doesn’t specifically involve the sales industry. However, it does a great job of showing what a concise overview should look like.

Use Analytics to Pinpoint Specific Areas to Improve

Like most areas of business, succeeding with sales recruiting requires making data-driven decisions. Even the most airtight sales recruiting process has some type of weakness, and analytics will help you find it. That’s why I suggest using a recruitment analytics platform to make a thorough assessment of your process.

While you can figure out a lot on your own, this provides full transparency that lets you see the big picture. For example, you can see:

  • The total number of candidates you’re getting
  • How many days it takes on average to fill a position
  • How many days to the first interview
  • Which sources are generating the most candidates
  • Which devices candidates are using

Here’s a real-life example of what the main dashboard looks like for recruitment analytics platform Talentech.

This is extremely helpful for getting an overarching view of what’s happening. It should also help you identify any issues that are getting in the way. For instance, maybe you’re spending a lot of time and money on a particular source for driving candidates but it’s only having a minimal impact. In that case, you would want to reevaluate your strategy and potentially pivot, where you double-down on a different source that’s having a bigger impact.

I also like that Talentech has a candidate quality score, which gives you a quantifiable number of what percentage of candidates possess the qualities you’re looking for.

Keep in mind that this is just one platform, and there are numerous options available, each with different strengths and features. The bottom line is that if you haven’t been using recruitment analytics up until this point, it’s definitely worth considering, as it can improve nearly all aspects of the recruiting process.

Drastically Reducing Time-to-Hire with Optimized Sales Recruiting

Hiring Readiness Assessment

Sluggish, inefficient sales recruiting can be toxic to your company, as it can put a strain on your workforce, lower morale, and increase turnover. Therefore, developing a game plan for optimized sales recruiting should be a top priority.

Some of the best ways to do that are to improve your job posting, remove application obstacles, clearly outline the hiring process, and use analytics to eliminate problem areas. Do that effectively, and you can shorten your hiring cycle by as much as 60%.

When it comes to recruiting elite sales talent, try the Objective Management Group sales assessment. It’s designed to help you find rockstar candidates who will thrive in your unique sales environment and keep turnover to a minimum.

Remote vs. In-office SaaS Sales Teams: Stats That Show the Pros and Cons

Posted on by Nick Mann

In 2015, 10-15% of SaaS sales teams worked remotely, at least some of the time. In 2024, that number ballooned to 71%.

This begs the question. Is it better to have a remote SaaS sales team or stick with the traditional in-house model?

While there’s no black-and-white answer, let’s look at some interesting stats that should indicate what’s right for your company.

The number of SaaS salespeople who work remotely at least part of the time increased by 26% from 2022 to 2023.

A recent study by HubSpot found that 45% of SaaS salespeople worked hybrid in July 2022. By July 2023, that number grew to 71% — a 26% increase.

Now these stats refer to reps that work remotely part of the time (only 10% are fully remote). However, it still illustrates the huge spike we’ve seen in remote work in the past few years. The shift from in-house to remote was already underway pre-COVID. But the pandemic really threw gas on the fire and greatly accelerated the growth of remote SaaS sales teams.

Now in 2024, we’re at the point where it’s become ubiquitous. While only a small percentage of sales teams are fully remote, that number is almost guaranteed to increase in upcoming years.

84% of sales reps say working remotely would make them happier

Employee satisfaction is extremely important, as it tends to correlate with less turnover, better morale, and increased performance. A study by Owl Labs that surveyed 2,050 full-time workers found that the vast majority (84% of reps) said, “Working remotely after the pandemic would make them happier, with many even willing to take a pay cut to continue to work from home.”

You might say that “the genie came out of the bottle” during COVID. By sheer necessity, a large percentage of sales teams were forced to work online. And though it certainly has its drawbacks, the data suggests that most people consider having the option to work online as a good thing.

The fact that many are even willing to work for less shows just how popular this working arrangement can be.

90% of salespeople say they’re more productive when working remotely

One of the biggest concerns for sales managers is productivity. After all, with minimal supervision, can you expect a sales team to maintain as high of a level of productivity at home as they would in an office?

According to the same study by Owl Labs, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. “90% of respondents said they were equally as (or even more) productive when working remotely — compared to when they worked in-house. And 55% said they worked more hours when working remotely than they did in office.”

Some potential reasons for this productivity spike can be attributed to no commute time, flexible work hours, fewer distractions, and a comfortable working environment.

67% of sales managers say managing remote SaaS sales teams is challenging.

Given that working remotely tends to translate into increased employee satisfaction and higher productivity, it sounds like sales managers should go all-in, right? Like implementing most major changes in a workplace, there are also some downsides to be aware of.

One of the biggest is that over two-thirds of sales managers (67%) say that managing SaaS sales teams is more challenging than they anticipated. This stat references the work-from-home environment that was thrust upon so many companies during the pandemic.

According to a study by Saleslion, the two biggest challenges cited by most sales managers were the breakdown in communication and collaboration that often happens without a physical working environment. As they put it, “Without the ability to walk over to a colleague’s desk or hold impromptu meetings, sales teams can become siloed.”

Besides that, it can be trickier to assess a SaaS sales team’s performance and offer feedback when everyone is working remotely.

While there are plenty of tools that can measure performance to some extent and quantify progress, you just can’t get the same personal touch as you would in an in-house environment.

Remote workers are nearly twice as likely to change jobs than those working in-office.

Here’s the stat that really caught my attention. And it’s not something I had given much thought to beforehand.

One study found that remote salespeople are “twice as likely (37%) to switch jobs compared to those working in an office (21%). The top reasons for changing jobs were better pay (84%), better career opportunities (82%), and better work/life balance (78%).

And this makes sense when you think about it. Say a salesperson is working a traditional in-house position where they live in a particular area, have a home, their kids are in school, and so on. They’re fairly well-rooted and are less likely to jump at the first opportunity that comes their way.

However, say someone is working online and can easily take another position without having to uproot their life. It would be far easier to jump ship.

While giving salespeople the option to work remotely can increase satisfaction — something that correlates with lower turnover —, it also has the potential to increase turnover because of how easy it is to switch companies.

So this is something to take into consideration when deciding which approach to take.

Remote vs. In-Office SaaS Sales Teams: Which Option is Best?

With remote sales teams (at least on the partial level) becoming the norm, it’s easy to jump in head-first. But as we’ve learned, there are pros and cons to each working arrangement.

You obviously want to keep your sales force happy and productive and keep up with the competition. However, you don’t want it to hinder communication and collaboration and have to continually replace your staff because they leave for greener pastures.

If you’re considering making the move to remote, I suggest giving careful consideration to the pros and cons and doing some experimentation before going all-in. Also, you may want to stick with a hybrid model, which many SaaS companies are having success with.

Looking to recruit elite SaaS sales talent and retain the maximum percentage of your reps? Register with HireDNA and leverage our cutting-edge sales recruitment technology.