Category: Sales Recruiting

Why Sales Turnover Is Killing Your SaaS Growth and How to Stop It

Posted on by Nick Mann

Turnover is an issue for many industries. But it’s especially problematic in SaaS sales. According to research, the average turnover rate of US salespeople is around 30%, which is more than double the 13% of all other professions. Based on these numbers, one out of every three salespeople you hire will quit each year. And if left unchecked, this can be disastrous to your SaaS growth.

For this post, I’ll examine the impact high sales turnover can have on your SaaS company and common sense ways to stop it.

Sky High Recruiting Costs

Hiring salespeople isn’t cheap. While the costs can widely vary, experts say that it can easily cost $7,000 to $8,000 per rep. If this happens at scale, it can quickly result in exorbitant recruiting costs that can eat away at your bottom line.

Because of this added expense and the constant strain on resources, profitability can take a big hit. And if you’re constantly hiring and rehiring, you’re basically running on a hamster wheel, making it hard to achieve any real progress.

Loss of Expertise

Seldom can an elite salesperson be easily replaced. Because they possess a unique knowledge and skillset and have an in-depth understanding of your existing customers, you can’t just grab somebody off the street and expect them to operate at the same level.

Even if you find another superstar sales rep, it still takes time to get them up to speed with how your company operates, learn your products, build rapport with customers, and so on. As a result, sales turnover can be detrimental to your sales process and make it difficult to close deals like you would if retain top talent.

Customer Experience Disruptions

Try to put yourself in an existing customer’s shoes for a second. Their primary point of contact has left your company, and all of a sudden, they have to deal with a new rep who’s just learning the ropes. This is almost guaranteed to disrupt the customer experience and could potentially sour the relationship.

At best, it can create frustration with an existing customer. At worst, it may compel them to seek out a competitor.

And for a potential customer who’s interacting with a new rep rather than an established one, it’s hard to provide the same level of experience simply because a new rep doesn’t know the ins and outs. So from a customer experience standpoint, high sales turnover can be toxic.

Sluggish Sales Cycle

Whenever there’s a constant stream of new reps getting their bearings and learning your product and market, it’s likely to slow down the sales cycle. And that can be a big problem given that the SaaS industry has a notoriously long sales cycle — and getting longer all the time.

“The SaaS sales process has grown more complex,” explains Channel as a Service. “Now, the average B2B buying cycle is 43 days, up from 33 days in 2020. For big businesses, this can go up to 65 days, hurting revenue and growth.”

If you continually have to replace salespeople, it can result in a sluggish sales cycle, which can slow down revenue generation and impede growth.

How to Drastically Reduce Sales Turnover and Fuel SaaS Growth

The bottom line is that turnover is more than simply an inconvenience. Not to be melodramatic, but it’s an issue that can have far-reaching consequences and erode a SaaS company from the ground up. But what can you do about it?

It should probably go without saying, but first, make sure you’re offering a competitive salary and benefits, as this is a precursor to anything else. Even if you check all of the other employee retention boxes, you’re going to struggle if you can’t pay top talent what they’re worth.

As for specific numbers, our research found that, as of 2023, the average SaaS salesperson’s salary was just under $100k at $99,826. We wrote a comprehensive article on this topic that breaks this down in detail, which you can find here.

As long as you’re close to this number, you should be in pretty good shape.

Next, I recommend optimizing your SaaS sales hiring process. In particular, take steps to ensure you find the best of the best candidates who not only meet your qualifications but who are a natural fit your for company culture.

For example, it’s smart to use sales recruiting solutions with in-depth, science-based assessments to quantify a candidate’s capabilities.

This takes the guesswork out of the process, and you can easily compare SaaS sales candidates side-by-side and identify the cream of the crop before moving on to the next round of hiring. Not only does help you find the true superstars, it saves a lot of time.

Third, create a 90-day game plan for onboarding new sales reps to get them up to speed and equip them for success. This could include offering new hires a welcome package, offering structured, phased onboarding, setting concrete goals, and measuring success along the way.

Here’s an illustration of what that might look like.

Note that we wrote an entire blog post about creating a 90-day blueprint to maximize retention, which you can read here.

Fourth, make sure that you prioritize ongoing salesperson development and promotion from within. Feeling like someone is stuck in a dead-end sales job with no room for growth is a surefire way to send reps packing.

But if they’re given a chance to continually develop their skill set and climb the ranks, the odds of them sticking around for the long haul increase considerably.

Lastly, get in the habit of not only accepting sales rep feedback but encouraging it. More often than not, being on the lookout for ways you can improve can help you address small issues before they escalate. Not to mention, reps who feel listened to and their opinion valued are far more likely to be satisfied in their jobs.

Retaining Sales Talent: The Key to SaaS Growth

We all know that high sales turnover is harmful. But not everyone understands the full implications. With SaaS sales having a higher-than-average turnover rate, this is something to tackle head-on.

If you’re ready to level up your sales recruiting, try our Hiring Readiness Assessment. It can help you find ultra-qualified candidates, reduce hiring mistakes, and fill positions faster.

The Future of SaaS Sales Recruitment: Leveraging AI for Smarter Hiring

Posted on by Nick Mann

AI is, admittedly, one of the most overused words in today’s vocabulary. While many companies are jumping on the bandwagon and using it just so they say they can, the fact is that leveraging AI for smarter hiring can have an immense impact on SaaS sales recruiting.

“Around 85% of recruiters think AI is a useful technology that will replace some parts of the hiring process.” And 70% of companies plan on using it in 2025.

But what are the practical applications of AI for smarter hiring? Here I’ll discuss some of the top use cases and their benefits.

Talent Pool Filtering

Historically, one of the biggest obstacles to SaaS sales recruiting has simply been sifting through a large candidate pool to find a handful of ultra-qualified reps. Sure, applicant tracking systems can be helpful for screening and have certainly streamlined the process.

But at the end of the day, much of a recruiter’s time is still spent combing through candidates and trying to find the perfect picks.

But AI has truly changed the game when it comes to talent pool filtering. By using advanced algorithms, AI can search through a massive volume of SaaS sales candidates and narrow it down to the individuals who possess the exact education, skills, and personality traits you’re looking for. In terms of quantifiable impact, “data suggests that up to 70% of time could be saved by strategically using generative AI.”

While there’s still the need for the human touch when you look over a candidate’s resume, cover letter, and credentials, this can dramatically speed up recruiting and provide you with a list of cherry-picked salespeople who are ready to be moved to the next round of hiring.

Applicant Success Predicting

What if before deciding to greenlight a new SaaS salesperson you could see into the future and know how they’re going to perform once the bright lights are on them? With AI you basically can.

Although you can never say with 100% accuracy that a particular salesperson will work out, you can use predictive analytics to analyze previous hiring data to decide which candidates are most likely to succeed in your unique sales environment.

Say, for example, that after looking at past data, you know that some of the most critical traits of successful salespeople are having strong motivation, controlling emotions, and being able to handle rejection. You could use candidate assessments to objectively determine how a potential candidate ranks in each of these areas.

From there, you could prioritize candidates accordingly, so you’ll know for certain which individuals are most likely to thrive on your sales team. With AI, you can evolve from relying on a hunch to relying on legitimate data to reduce your time-to-hire and find the best of the best.

Recruiter Bias Reduction

As humans, we naturally have certain biases. It’s unavoidable.

But when bias is left unchecked in SaaS sales recruiting, it can be detrimental because it can skew your judgment, lead to missed opportunities, and reduce your diversity. And in some cases, hiring bias can even harm your reputation and lead to legal issues.

According to research, “96% of recruiters think that unconscious bias is a problem in the recruitment process, and more than a third believe it’s a big problem.”

Fortunately, this is yet another area where AI can be utilized. Because AI just focuses on the data, you can essentially eliminate unconscious bias from your SaaS sales hiring.

“By leveraging objective algorithms, AI software can assess candidates based solely on their qualifications, skills, and experience without being influenced by factors such as gender, ethnicity, or age.”

Optimized Candidate Experience

Besides making things better for SaaS sales recruiters, AI can also positively impact the candidate experience. There are several applications, but here are two specific examples.

One is to use an AI chatbot to serve as a dedicated point of contact throughout the hiring process. After someone has applied, for instance, they could ask the chatbot questions or find relevant resources. The chatbot could also provide them with information about the next hiring steps, help them prepare for interviewing, send them updates, and so on.

The chatbot would be available 24/7, so any time a candidate needs assistance, they can get it. Of course, if they need to speak to a human member of your sales recruiting team they could do that (the chatbot could point them to the appropriate party). But the vast majority of the process can be handled by AI.

Another use case is having AI automate interview scheduling.

Let’s say you’ve narrowed your candidate pool down to four candidates and you have three rounds of interviews. That would be a total of 12 interviews. When you combine that with all of the subsequent communication that comes along with it, things can get chaotic in a hurry.

Rather than manually reaching out to each person for each round, as well as following up, you could greatly streamline the process with AI automation. For example, you could develop a series of interview workflows and use AI to perform outreach for you. This would ensure timely communication for candidates and recruiters so you could move through interviewing more efficiently and not waste a candidate’s time.

AI for Smarter Hiring: Better Outcomes with Less Effort

With nearly three-quarters of SaaS sales companies planning to incorporate AI into recruiting in 2025, this technology has officially become ubiquitous. However, not all recruiters are entirely sure of how to properly leverage it.

While AI has a wide range of applications, some of the most practical are filtering the talent pool to find elite candidates that match your company’s style, quantitatively predicting candidate success, reducing recruiter bias, and enhancing the candidate experience.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As AI continues to evolve, the applications will only continue to increase, making now the perfect time to get on board.

Are inefficiencies and weaknesses hurting your SaaS sales hiring process? Use our Hiring Readiness Assessment to reduce mistakes and source candidates faster.

Why Your SaaS Company Struggles to Hire Top Sales Talent (And How to Fix It)

Posted on by Nick Mann

Multiple factors impact the success of your SaaS company. Software quality, pricing, and customer retention are just a few examples. But one of the biggest is the caliber of your sales talent. Without a professional, stable sales team in place, SaaS company struggles are almost guaranteed.

In this post, I’ll examine the most common reasons why brands find difficulty hiring top sales talent and practical strategies for overcoming this problem.

Competition

As of early 2025, there were approximately 30,000 SaaS companies across the globe, with 60% in the US.

This industry is scorching hot right now, with new companies constantly popping up in every niche imaginable. As a result, the sheer volume of SaaS companies is a major reason why so many brands struggle with recruiting.

With talented reps having so many options, you’re likely to face challenges if your brand doesn’t have a strong unique value proposition (UVP) and lacks anything to distinguish you from the rest of the pack.

Inefficient Hiring Process

Slow, meticulous, or chaotic hiring is another common way SaaS recruiting teams shoot themselves in the foot. Top sales reps know their worth, and even if they have a strong interest in your company, many will “get off the line” if your hiring process is inefficient.

Pinpointing the exact problem isn’t always easy, but here’s a list of eight particular issues that harm the candidate experience.

Poor Pay and Benefits

It should come as no surprise that elite sales talent expects competitive pay and benefits — if not above average. If, for whatever reason, you’re unable to offer this, it’s going to be an uphill battle from the start.

For reference of what’s considered competitive, you can check out an article we wrote about SaaS sales salary in 2023. Note that there’s been a slight increase as of the time of this writing in early 2025 because of inflation, but it should still provide a basic reference point.

Lack of Career Development Opportunities

MIT research states that 67% of SaaS sales reps value career development. If the position you’re advertising for has little to no options for career development, it’s understandable that you likely won’t attract a large number of qualified candidates.

And even if you do manage to land some A+ talent, your turnover rate will probably a lot higher than what it should be.

Weak Branding

By “weak branding,” I mean lacking the brand presence and desirability it takes to pique the interest of top SaaS sales reps. With so many SaaS companies going after a finite number of qualified reps, it takes something special to make reps want to choose you.

Some of the best examples of companies with excellent branding include HubSpot, Slack, Zoom, and Canva.

How to Fix SaaS Company Struggles

Now that we have crystallized the most common contributing factors to SaaS company struggles, let’s create a formula for overcoming them to help your brand bring in more elite talent.

As we mentioned in the first point, competition is one of the biggest hindrances to building an A+ sales team. By following the strategies for the subsequent SaaS company struggles, which we’ll discuss below, this should give you an edge over many of your competitors and make your brand a more desirable place to work.

This starts with optimizing your hiring process. One of the best ways to go about this is to use cutting-edge technology to objectively identify the best of the best candidates.

HireDNA, for instance, uses sophisticated assessments to determine how well a person will fit in with your unique sales culture and examines core competencies.

It’s also smart to provide a clear outline of what candidates can expect at each stage in the hiring process and maintain close communication from start to finish.

The next issue, poor pay and benefits, can be fixed by 1) identifying what’s considered competitive pay in the SaaS sales industry (in 2023, it was just under $100k) and 2) adjusting your payment structure to match or exceed it.

Admittedly, this can be easier said than done, especially for newer SaaS companies with limited funds. But if you truly expect to build an elite sales force, you’ll need to at least get within the proximity of what other successful brands are offering.

When it comes to career development opportunities, the simple solution is to build your SaaS company in a way that promotes growth from within. Not only can this make your business feel more desirable to work for, it offers a host of impressive benefits, including the following.

  • “Employees stay 41% longer at companies with high rates of internal hiring.”
  • “56% of employees believed promoting from within is better for morale.”
  • “Managers promoted from within were 10% more likely than external hires to report having a highly productive team.”

And given that “33.63% of the workforce has looked for a new job in the last six months due to lack of career growth,” this can be huge for preventing unnecessary turnover and keeping sales superstars around for the long haul.

Finally, weak branding can be addressed in a few ways.

First, work on developing your UVP so that candidates know exactly what makes you different from other competitors and why they should want to work for you. Strive to create unique brand messaging that incorporates your genuine style, philosophy, and values, while being true to yourself.

Build a strong presence on social media and other online outlets to increase exposure and make your brand more recognizable. Also, incorporate positive testimonials on your website and social media from current or previous salespeople to articulate the benefits of working for you.

Making Your SaaS Company a Premier Destination

Unless you’re a well-known mega SaaS brand like HubSpot or Slack, you’ll likely encounter some challenges when attempting to hire top sales talent. By pinpointing the most common reasons for SaaS company struggles — competition, inefficient hiring, poor pay/benefits, lack of career development, and weak branding — and tackling them head-on, you should be able to solidify your brand as a desirable one to work for.

Hopefully, this will supply you with the momentum you need to take the next step forward and build a team of ultra-talented reps.

If you’re looking for the ultimate hiring readiness assessment, check out this one from HireDNA. Use it to source candidates faster, drastically reduce mistakes, increase retention, and build a better sales culture.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Use These Metrics to Ensure Continuous Improvement in Sales Candidate Sourcing and Screening

Posted on by Nick Mann

Like in most areas of business, I’m a firm believer in incremental progress with sales candidate sourcing and screening. I find that, in most cases, major progress doesn’t happen overnight, but gradually over time.

It’s all about creating an initial process, continuously analyzing that process by looking at the right KPIs, and using your findings to make data-driven decisions to spark tangible improvements. Following that logic, let’s look at some essential metrics that can help you drastically improve the initial stages of sales recruiting.

Volume of Candidates Per Source

Starting from the top, it’s important to know how productive each sales recruiting source is. While this won’t necessarily indicate the quality of each source (we’ll get to that in a second), it should give you a baseline of which sources are producing the most sales candidates.

Here’s an example of what that could look like:

  • 30% – Job boards
  • 20% – LinkedIn
  • 20% – Other social networks
  • 10% – Your website careers page
  • 10% – Referrals
  • 10% – Other sources

Having a basic breakdown like this is helpful for understanding which of your sales recruiting efforts are bringing candidates to you. So if you’re putting a ton of time and money into a particular channel and it’s getting minimal results, it would either need tweaking or you may want to scrap it altogether and focus on other channels that are carrying their weight.

Screening Assessment Completion and Pass Rate

From the screening side of things, there are two main metrics that should shed insight into how effective your current system is and if anything needs changing.

First, there’s the assessment completion rate, which is the percentage of sales candidates that successfully complete any assessments or tests that are part of your screening process. What you’re trying to avoid here is a low completion rate, as this may indicate that your current screening process is too long or complex.

If, for instance, you find that only a small fraction of candidates are making it through the assessment, you may want to trim back the number of questions or exercises and simplify it. The end goal is to find the sweet spot, where you can accurately assess candidates without creating a negative experience.

Also, it’s helpful to look at the pass rate. If your current pass rate is extremely high, this may mean your screening assessment is too easy, which may reduce overall salesperson quality. On the other hand, if the pass rate is overly low, it may mean your screening assessment is too difficult.

Getting it just right will likely require some trial and error, but with some ongoing adjustments, you should be able to optimize it.

Number of Qualified Candidates Per Source

I think we can all agree that effective sales candidate sourcing isn’t just about getting a large volume of candidates. You need to ensure you’re getting qualified candidates.

At HireDNA, for example, we vet sales candidates by examining a wide variety of selling competencies, such as motivation, responsibility, relationship-building, and the ability to handle rejection.

To get your sales candidate sourcing to a high level and ensure it’s continually improving, it’s important to measure how many qualified candidates you get from each source. By “qualified,” I mean candidates with the essential skills and experience for the sales positions you’re hiring for.

Say, for instance, job boards are bringing in the majority of sales candidates. However, only a small percentage of those candidates are truly qualified. You would likely want to improve your job postings to filter out unqualified candidates more effectively. Or, you may want to put less effort on job boards and double down on a different sales recruiting channel that’s bringing in a larger percentage of qualified candidates.

These are just hypotheticals, but you get the idea. The end goal is to find sales recruiting channels that bring in a sizable number of candidates while ensuring the majority of those candidates are qualified. If you can do that successfully, you’ve already won half the battle.

Interview Acceptance Rate

Now let’s talk about the next step in the process — measuring the number of candidates who agree to an interview for a sales position.

This is pretty straightforward, where you simply divide the number of candidates who agree to an interview by the total number of candidates during a given period.

So if four out of 10 candidates agreed to an interview, there would be a 40% acceptance rate.

From my experience, 20 to 30% is about the norm for the application-to-interview rate. This, of course, can vary depending on the exact sales position you’re hiring for. An entry-level sales rep position, for example, would likely have a higher acceptance rate than an account manager.

But if your rate is at 20% or higher, you should be in fairly good shape. That said, going higher to 30%, 40%, or more is even better.

Source to Hire Rate

Going one step further, it’s extremely helpful to know what percentage of successful hires come from each recruiting channel. That way, you not only know which sources are leading to the most interviews but which are leading to the most job offers.

Identifying this should help you figure out which channels are getting the best results, which should translate into more offer-worthy candidates later on. Again, there may be one channel that is driving the lion’s share of candidates, but only a small percentage are converting into actual job offers.

If that’s the case, you would likely want to reassess that channel and either figure out ways to make it more productive or shift your focus to other channels that are getting better results.

Keeping Your Sales Candidate Sourcing and Screening Going Strong

You never want to take your foot off the gas with sales recruiting, and optimizing it should never been seen as a one-off type of deal. Focusing heavily on the initial part of sales hiring in the sourcing and screening phases is particularly important, as it helps set up the subsequent phases.

A big part of improving involves leveraging the right metrics like the ones mentioned above, which should give you an objective overview of what’s working and what’s not so you know exactly what to focus on.

If you’re looking to filter through your sales candidate pool to find the best of the best, I suggest using The Objective Management Group Sales Assessment. It accurately predicts which candidates will thrive in your unique sales environment, with 92% of recommended candidates going on to reach the top half of their sales force. Learn more here.

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