Tag: saas sales hiring

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.

SaaS Sales Hiring for Beginners: How to Build a Winning Team From the Ground Up

Posted on by hiredna

Besides having an amazing product, SaaS sales hiring is arguably the most critical part of building a successful business. It’s also one of the most daunting, with Bersin Research, reporting that 75% of companies struggle with SaaS sales hiring.

Even for established companies with deep pockets and a dedicated recruiting team, it can be tricky. But if you’re a new startup just getting your bearings, it can be truly intimidating.

For this post, I’m going to lay down a simple template you can follow to build a winning SaaS sales team from the ground up so you’ll know which specific areas to address and assemble a team of true rockstars. Let’s get right into it.

Figure Out What Type of Culture You Want

It may sound a little cliche, but I believe that building a great SaaS sales team starts with first setting a firm foundation. And perhaps the most integral part of establishing a foundation is deciding what you want your culture to be like.

Why?

Because your culture will set the tone on how you approach sales hiring, what type of salespeople you want, what skills and characteristics you want them to have, and so on. Without a clearly defined culture, you’re almost guaranteed to lack direction, which will throw off every subsequent step in the formula.

So I recommend taking the time to crystallize exactly what type of culture you want. It will likely evolve over time, but having a clear initial snapshot should help you get started out on the right foot. For guidance on this, check out this Forbes article.

Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

Once you have a grasp on the company culture you’re going for, you’ll want to use that to create an ideal candidate profile. This can include industry experience, hard skills, soft skills, talent needs, working style, and so on. The more specific you get, the more likely you’ll be to find winning candidates that will thrive in your sales environment.

A tool you can use to streamline this process is HireDNA, which will help you build an ideal candidate from scratch.

With it, you can pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for in a SaaS salesperson, leaving no stone unturned, which brings us to our next step.

Use Data-Driven Sourcing, Assessments, and Screening

SaaS recruiting has advanced dramatically in recent years. Rather than relying on “old school” tactics for sourcing, assessing, and screening candidates, you can now leverage cutting-edge technology and concrete data that simply wasn’t possible in the past.

With HireDNA, for example, you can tap into a national network of hundreds of thousands of SaaS salespeople — both active and passive candidates — to find relevant professionals based on your ideal candidate profile.

For assessment, HireDNA uses a data-driven evaluation, looking at key factors like the role, your culture, required experiences, and unique selling skills. Each candidate receives a score in each category, and those with a match score of 75% or higher qualify for the position.

And for screening, HireDNA uses a sophisticated science-based skills assessment that tests 21 core selling competencies, such as the will to sell, motivation, and responsibility.

That way, every candidate in your talent pool is thoroughly vetted, and you can narrow it down to the absolute cream of the crop. From there, it’s just a matter of interviewing the list of candidates you’ve shortlisted and choosing those that best match your culture and ideal candidate profile.

Set Your Sales Reps Up for Success

Up until this point, I’ve talked about the steps leading up to the pre-hire moment. But for the rest of the post, I’ll focus on everything post-hire, starting with equipping your salespeople with what they need to succeed.

This typically begins with robust onboarding, which is something I’ve covered extensively in this post. Some essentials of SaaS onboarding include:

  • Offering new reps an end-all-be-all orientation resource to quickly get them up to speed
  • Formally training them on the software they’ll be selling
  • Educating them on buyer personas
  • Educating them on your UVP and competitor strengths and weaknesses

Another big piece of the puzzle is providing salespeople with proper mentorship and coaching, especially during the initial stages. This should ensure they have the built-in support system needed to “get in the groove” with minimal friction. Not to mention, it’s an effective way to reduce turnover.

Also, simply making it a point to consistently check in with SaaS salespeople to see how they’re doing and if they’re comfortable can go a long way.

Objectively Assess Performance with Analytics

Finally, you’ll want to identify a list of core metrics that most essential to success and stay on top of them with analytics. You don’t need to go crazy with it and measure every single metric, per se, but you should analyze those that are critical to your bottom line like maximizing revenue, increasing efficiency, and fueling growth.

Some examples include:

  • The number of qualified prospects a rep reaches out to
  • Conversion rate
  • Length of the sales cycle
  • Gross revenue
  • Long-term sales growth

You can find a list of the best SaaS sales analytics platforms here.

Winning with Your SaaS Sales Hiring

The fact that three-quarters of companies struggle with SaaS sales hiring speaks to the inherent difficulty of the process, especially for beginners. But by following a proven template that checks all the key boxes, you’ll know how to systematically approach the process and assemble a team of professionals that will position your business for success.

To learn more about how HireDNA can help with SaaS candidate sourcing, assessments, screening, and more, schedule a demo today. Companies that use HireDNA are able to cut their hiring time in half and eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes.