Many organizations are heavily dependent on their sales team to reach their customers and grow. However, the sales industry is symbolized by a high turnover rate of 25%. Essentially, this means that organizations are often faced with a shortage of good salespeople that consistently produce. To help you attract and retain higher quality sales hires, here are some tips to improve your sales hiring strategy.

HireDNA can help you identify, hire, and train the perfect candidates for your sales team. Speak with a sales recruiting expert today.

5 Easy Steps To Enhance Your Hiring Strategy

In addition to solving the high turnover problem, improving your sales hiring strategy can also allow you to hire candidates who are a better fit for your organizational culture, product, and sales environment. Here are three ways to enhance your strategy:

Draft A Detailed Candidate Profile & Job Description

The first step to a high-quality hire is to provide a clearly defined candidate profile and job description that outlines the tasks and level of performance you expect. Specifically, your candidate profile and description should include the job-centric skills and characteristics that are required to excel in this role. You can also include the responsibilities that will be levied upon the new hire. For instance, will they be spending more time prospecting or managing key accounts?

The higher the level of detail in your job criteria, the better your chances of attracting a best-fit candidate. And here’s a tip: to create a tailored fit candidate profile and job description, conduct an evaluation of your top performers to identify the perfect skills and qualities that are most important to succeed in their position.

Use a Predictive Hiring Assessment

So, you’ve received a number of resumes and applicants. How can you screen them faster to find the perfect candidate for the job? Consider using a predictive hiring assessment like the Objective Management Group (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment through HireDNA.

With a science-backed assessment, you can find the right candidate with far greater accuracy than relying on impressions or instinct. In fact, 92% of candidates who are recommended by the OMG Sales Candidate Assessment exceed expectations in the first year! At HireDNA, we can help you to create a custom assessment based on your hiring criteria and unique sales environment. Go beyond personality traits to assess candidates’ true sales DNA and potential in the role.

Learn more about our Predictive Hiring Assessments.   

Strengthen Your Interviews

In combination with a predictive sales hiring assessment, situational interview questions can be a powerful tool to help you assess how a candidate might perform on the job. These questions pose hypothetical situations that candidates must answer, requiring them to think on their feet and eliminating any reliance on cookie-cutter, prepared answers.

• For a dive into some of the best questions to ask in an interview along with the answers you should expect, be sure to check out our blog post on the Top Situational Interview Questions for Sales Reps.
• For even more help streamlining your sales candidate interview process, download our Sales Interview Questionnaire and Scorecard.

Cast A Wider Net

While conventional methods like posting on different job boards might have worked in the past, high-quality candidates no longer depend on such platforms.

In other words, posting on common forums might result in a high number of applicants, but there is no guarantee on the quality of the resumes that will flood your inbox. Here are a few of the leading job posting channels used by top sales recruiters today:

• Industry-Specific Job Boards. Every industry has specific job boards. For instance, the job posting site ‘MedReps.com’ caters to candidates who are interested in working in the pharmaceutical industry. By posting in such targeted job boards, you are likely to come across a greater pool of best-fit candidates.

• LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most popular business-related sites in the world, amassing an impressive 610 million followers. With 92% of Fortune 500 companies also active on the forum, you can expect to find high-quality sales professionals here. Despite this, posting on LinkedIn is usually time-consuming and not always feasible for businesses that experience a high turnover rate.

• Referrals. Ask your team to refer people who fit your job description—and consider setting up an incentive program for successful referrals. As this puts their reputation on the line, people are likely to only refer candidates who are qualified and hardworking. This is the reason why referrals continue to result in highly desirable hires. In fact, 50% of referrals are likely to stay at a job for three years—vs 14% of employees hired from a job board.

• Proactive sourcing. There’s a difference between sitting back and waiting for resumes to come in versus proactively sourcing candidates. At HireDNA, more than 90% of our hires are proactively sourced. We find this to be the best method, because most top sales performers are not active candidates—they’re not actively searching job boards for opportunities. But, if approached with a great opportunity with good incentives, many great candidates will likely consider making a move.

Promote Yourself As A Preferable Employer

Similar to how consumers profile a brand before converting, candidates evaluate employers before choosing to join the organization. High-end salespeople are likely to have multiple offers, which means that they can take their time to research and select the best option and it’s not always about money.

This is why it’s incredibly important to invest in your ‘employer brand’ to ensure your company is positioned as a market leader. Showcase major clients on your website, highlight your sales reps, and make sure to emphasize your resourcefulness and culture to gain the attention of the top sales talent in your niche.

To further up the ante, engage with prospective candidates from the first point of contact (which is usually your website). Feel free to highlight positive testimonials, share success stories, and even include employee success stories to add weight to your claims. By showcasing your achievements, you are appealing to ambitious candidates who want to work with reputable organizations that can help take their careers to the next level.

Create A Highly Successful Sales Team

By optimizing your recruiting strategy, you can create a successful team of high performing sales reps. At HireDNA, our industry-leading, science-backed recruiting process can help you create a robust sales team primed for performance.

Why Choose Us?

• We have an 80% successful placement rate
• 92% of our hired candidates reach the top half of the sales force within 12 months
• With innovative training tools, we help new hires onboard and ramp-up in 50% less time
• Candidates hired via HireDNA have a 79% retention rate

Do you want to build a successful sales team? Contact Us