Tag: sales hiring

How to Identify Salespeople Who Can Handle the Complexity of Selling SaaS

Posted on by Nick Mann

Sales in general can be a challenging profession. However, because you’re often dealing with multiple stakeholders, longer buying cycles, and high turnover, selling SaaS comes with a unique set of challenges that only a small percentage of people truly thrive in.

To ensure you build a strong SaaS sales team, it’s essential to know which characteristics to look for in candidates and use the right tools to objectively understand what each person brings to the table. With that said, we’ve narrowed it down to four of the most critical core competencies, along with practical strategies to find the best of the best.

Focus on Consultative Selling

In the past, many of the top salespeople were the ones who were the most skilled at pushing products on buyers, even if they weren’t necessarily the best fit. Those who were most aggressive and didn’t take no for an answer were usually the reps who won.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly important to actively pursue leads and keep your foot on the gas. But in today’s SaaS sales world, finding success is more about helping customers solve a problem and acting as a consultant rather than pressuring them to buy. Using old-school, aggressive techniques is a major turnoff for most buyers, and they’ll simply look elsewhere.

That’s why it’s so important for a rep to take the time to truly understand a buyer’s needs and pain points and find the SaaS product that perfectly checks all the right boxes. To do this, you’ll want to look for candidates who are skilled at asking open-ended discovery questions, building dialogue, and are capable of building genuine trust with buyers.

A simple way to gauge this is to run them through a scenario where there’s a buyer who isn’t sure what they need and see how the candidate responds — ideally, asking questions rather than jumping straight to the pitch.

Measure the Will to Sell

It goes without saying that motivation is integral to success when selling SaaS. But when you consider the lengthy sales cycles that reps often contend with — “SMB cycles usually take 1-3 months, while enterprise deals can extend to 6-12 months or more” — finding those with a deep will to sell is absolutely vital.

The only problem is, how can you objectively measure a person’s motivation level?

In the past, you typically had to rely on their previous track record and the impression they gave during an interview. But fortunately, there are now tools available that allow you to put a quantitative score on the will to sell, so you can compare multiple candidates side-by-side to see who wins.

The Sales Skills Assessment, for example, looks at traits like motivation, desire, commitment, outlook, and responsibility. Then it crunches the data and gives you a concrete score, so you know exactly what you’re working with.

That way, you can ensure that whoever you ultimately hire is naturally wired to be highly motivated and can dramatically increase the odds of them being an asset to your team.

Look for Hunters

This overlaps somewhat with motivation, but focuses on the ability to continually seek out new sales opportunities without any hand-holding.

Regardless of how well-established your SaaS company is, ongoing pipeline generation should always be part of your agenda. Even if you have a lower-than-average turnover rate, you always want to be adding new buyers to your customer base. That’s why finding natural hunters should be another top priority.

Here are some specific traits to look for.

  • Proactiveness
  • Having a go-getter mentality
  • Competitiveness
  • Motivatation
  • Innovation
  • Resilience

And how do you identify hunters?

A great starting point is to look for candidates who have a history of finding self-sourced leads rather than needing marketing to serve them up on a silver platter. Also, during an interview, you can ask a candidate about creative strategies they’ve used to find highly targeted leads in the past and how they’ve closed deals.

Identify Coachable Candidates

No matter how skilled, how educated, or how seasoned a SaaS salesperson may be, there’s always room for improvement. And whenever you bring a new rep on board, they certainly won’t have all of the answers right off the bat. Combine that with the constant evolution of SaaS and adding new features, offerings, etc., and you can see why it’s so important to choose coachable salespeople.

To be clear, coachable means being willing to accept feedback, being open to constructive criticism, having a willingness to adapt, and generally being able to adapt to a complex SaaS selling environment. If you can land this type of salesperson, they’ll be far more likely to become a valuable asset, as opposed to someone who’s uncoachable and unwilling to accept feedback.

In terms of identifying this type of candidate, injecting coachability questions into your interview is one of the most effective strategies. Below is a set of example questions from HubSpot that’s good for gauging coachability.

Also, after performing a sales role play, you can give a candidate direct feedback to see how they respond. This should offer firsthand insight into what their level of coachability is like, so you’ll know how they’d likely behave in your SaaS sales environment.

Finding Reps Who Can Handle the Challenges of Selling SaaS

It takes a very specific skillset of both hard and soft skills to truly thrive in selling SaaS. And honestly, it’s not for everyone. To ensure you build a strong foundation and continually add top talent to your team, you need to 1) know what to look for in SaaS salespeople and 2) use practical strategies for finding the right people.

While we by no means covered everything, the traits above should serve as excellent starting points and help you filter through the talent pool to find the winners.

Looking for a simple yet incredibly potent tool to pinpoint elite sales candidates? Check out the Sales Skills Assessment. It evaluates 21 core competencies to provide high-level insights into each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses so you can make confident, data-driven hiring decisions.

Top 5 Mistakes SaaS Founders Make When Hiring Salespeople

Posted on by Nick Mann

There are countless twists and turns when building a SaaS company from the ground up. But you could argue that few decisions carry as much weight as making your first hires. The collective caliber of your team will impact productivity, initial sales, repeat sales, customer relationships, ROI, and the overall trajectory of your company. That’s why it’s so important to recognize the most common yet critical mistakes SaaS founders make when hiring salespeople and steer clear of them.

With that said, here’s the top five hiring mistakes to look out for.

1. Not Leveraging Concrete Candidate Data

In the past, sales recruiters had limited information to go on when assessing the talent level of potential salespeople. Sure, they could filter applicants through an ATS, look at a candidate’s resume, and check references. But there wasn’t any high-level technology that could paint a vivid picture of a candidate’s true abilities from every angle.

Fortunately, that’s changed recently, and SaaS recruiters can now use a wide range of cutting-edge recruiting tools that provide concrete, objective data on each candidate so they can make data-driven decisions 100% of the time. For instance, the Sales Skills Assessment lets you gain full visibility of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, analyze 21 core competencies, and quantify everything from desire and commitment to motivation and selling skills.

And while a certain level of instinct can sometimes help in the candidate selection process, it’s not wise to rely solely on a hunch. But what’s crazy is that as many as 90% of SaaS sales recruiters still rely on intuition when hiring.

Because of the ubiquity of this outdated strategy, I’ve chosen to list not leveraging concrete candidate data as the number one mistake SaaS founders make. And fortunately, it’s a mistake that can be easily avoided with the right tool.

2. Being Swayed By Charisma Over Ability

Here’s a common scenario that often results in a less-than-ideal hire. The SaaS sales recruiter interviews a candidate who has off-the-charts charisma and says all the right things. The recruiter is so captivated that they go ahead and pull the trigger, deciding to hire the candidate rather than fully considering alternatives, simply because of their charm.

However, after some time passes, the company realizes that the candidate’s charm in the interview doesn’t translate into performance in a real-world setting.

This is a trap that’s easy to fall into because 1) we naturally tend to prefer charismatic people, and 2) a certain level of charisma can be helpful in sales. However, this can be detrimental long-term if a recruiter primarily bases their decision on charm rather than true credentials.

That’s why, again, it’s so important to use objective data and look at the big picture when making hiring decisions.

3. Not Keeping Candidates in the Hiring Loop

Sometimes it may feel like the SaaS sales recruiter has all the leverage when hiring. And there are certainly many situations when that’s the case. But when it comes to hiring top talent (which is what you’re usually trying to do), you can easily miss out on golden opportunities simply because of a lack of communication.

Say, for example, you get a little lax about keeping shortlisted candidates updated on an interview or what to expect next. They may sour and look elsewhere, especially when they know they’re skills are in high demand.

We wrote a previous article called 89% of Sales Candidates Accept Job Offers of the First Recruiter Who Contacts Them: How to Leverage This for Winning Top Talent, which covers this concept in-depth.

In it, we mentioned how frustrating it can be for candidates when they deal with unresponsive recruiters who don’t keep them in the loop. For perspective, 57% of people say it’s the most frustrating part of the job search.

And nearly 25% of candidates lose interest if a recruiter goes more than one week without contacting them after the first interview, while 46% lose interest in the one-to-two week range. The bottom line is that failing to maintain proper communication can be toxic to your SaaS sales hiring and should be a top priority for winning the talent war.

4. Not Taking Cultural Fit Into Consideration

It may sound a little cliché, but creating a strong culture truly is essential for building a thriving SaaS company. Even if you hire a high-octane salesperson who wins in all the right areas, the impact will likely be marginalized if they don’t fit in with your culture. It’s like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

At best, it may lead to minor friction. But in more severe situations, it can create ongoing conflicts that disrupt daily operations, lead to premature turnover, and diminish the customer experience.

That’s why it’s important to fully crystallize your company culture when hiring and look for candidates with values that align with it.

5. Not Properly Onboarding

When hiring an elite salesperson, it’s common to think that they’ll “just figure it out” and seamlessly sync into their role. But even the most capable reps need strong onboarding to truly thrive.

From understanding macro/micro goals to assembling the right tech stack to knowing your strategy behind delivering a seamless product demo, it’s crucial that new reps have a firm foundation. If you’re looking for a straightforward way to optimize onboarding for the first 90 days, check out this previous post we wrote about the blueprint for new hire success.

Avoiding the Most Common Mistakes SaaS Founders Make

Hiring quality salespeople is one of the most essential parts of building a successful SaaS company. It’s also one of the trickiest, especially if it’s your first time doing it. By understanding the most common pitfalls SaaS sales recruiters make, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the process and build an elite sales team right off the bat.

Ready to make smarter, data-driven hiring decisions? Use the Sales Skills Assessment, which predicts future sales success with 95% accuracy.

The Role of Sales Assessments in Identifying High-Performing Candidates

Posted on by Nick Mann

Today’s sales industry is more competitive than ever, and you can bet that your competitors are leveraging every tool they can to find the best and brightest candidates. As such, you can’t expect to build a winning sales team with intuition alone. A key component of winning the competitive battle is gaining data-driven insights from sales assessments.

What Exactly Are Sales Assessments?

A sales assessment provides a standardized framework for objectively analyzing the capabilities of potential candidates. It allows you to look at things like hard and soft skills, strengths, weaknesses, and cultural fit, so you can determine how likely someone would be to succeed on your sales team.

Here’s a formal definition from Vaia.

“A sales assessment is a structured evaluation designed to measure the skills, competencies, and potential of sales professionals, helping businesses identify strengths and areas for improvement within their teams. It typically includes a series of tests and exercises such as role-playing scenarios, behavioral interviews, and knowledge-based quizzes to assess various aspects like communication, negotiation, and closing skills. Implementing a sales assessment allows companies to optimize their sales force, enhance performance, and increase revenue by ensuring the right fit for every role.”

Here’s an example of what a sales assessment looks like when measuring the will to sell.

Why Traditional Hiring Techniques No Longer Cut It

For many sales recruiters in the past, their ultimate decisions were often based on gut feelings. And while instinct certainly still has value and you don’t want to blindly trust any old data, relying on “a hunch” carries a high level of risk. According to research, “Most hiring decisions are made intuitively, in only four minutes — with 75% of those hires resulting in costly mis-hires.”

This is due to several reasons, including a natural unconscious bias that humans can’t completely escape, limited insight, and the inability to completely understand a candidate’s true talent based on a resume and interview. Also, if a candidate is highly charismatic, it’s easy to choose them over another more qualified candidate, even if they’re not actually the best fit.

But with many modern sales assessments implementing cutting-edge technology, there’s no reason to take a chance.

Practical Use Cases for Sales Assessments in Modern Hiring

Objectively Analyze Core Competencies – Perhaps the biggest reason to use sales assessments is that you can gain in-depth insights into the core competencies that are most critical to being a successful salesperson on your specific team. For instance, the Sales Skills Assessment evaluates 21 core selling competencies, such as desire, the will to sell, hunting, and relationship building, so you can 1) determine how capable someone is with real data and 2) compare them against other top candidates to see who the best of the best is.

Identify Top Performers – By using the data generated from a sales assessment, you can look at candidates side-by-side to gain a full overview of what everyone brings to the table. Whether it’s experience, culture, or any other factor, you can get an exact match score to guide your decision-making.

Increase Hiring Accuracy – We all know that making the wrong hire can have disastrous consequences and can be costly, time-consuming, and disruptive to overall company growth. However, using a sales assessment can dramatically increase your hiring accuracy because you know exactly what you’re getting when deciding to bring someone on board. For perspective, companies that use the Sales Skills Assessment have a 95% accuracy rate when predicting the future success of a candidate.

Shorten Salesperson Hire/Ramp Time – When you’re able to swiftly filter through a large pool of candidates and find those that are truly elite, it naturally cuts back on your hire time. Rather than sifting through resumes, scheduling several interviews, and meticulously going over the pros and cons of each potential candidate, a sales assessment does most of the heavy-lifting for you (with much greater accuracy than traditional sales hiring techniques). That way, you can make the right hire and quickly get them onboarded with no wasted motion.

A Sales Assessment is Fully Customizable – No two sales teams are exactly alike. Therefore, you don’t want to use a copy-and-paste system to find candidates. And that’s another one of the main benefits of a sales assessment — each one can be fully customized for your specific role and selling environment. Also, as your needs and knowledge evolve, you can continually tweak an assessment to further optimize the results.

How to Integrate Sales Assessments Into Your Hiring Workflow

First, do some brainstorming to determine what the ideal candidate looks like for a sales role. Pinpoint the exact core competencies that are most important so you can use them as KPIs when comparing different candidates.

Next, choose the right sales assessment tool. This is the most important part of your workflow, and given the vast amount of options, making your final choice isn’t always easy. We personally recommend the Sales Skills Assessment because of the exhaustive list of core competencies it analyzes and its 95% accuracy rate.

But you can find a detailed list of the top 20 sales assessments here.

Third, use a combination of a sales assessment along with structured interviews. At the end of the day, this technology works best when it’s used in conjunction with the human touch. So it’s ideal to identify the top three or four candidates out of the pool and engage with each of them one on one. This should help you dial in on who would truly be the best fit.

Finally, be sure to track your results and continually refine your system as you gather more data. Doing so should work out the kinks and, in time, get it working like a well-oiled machine.

Wrapping Up

There’s a lot of great technology that can enhance sales recruiting. But pound for pound, sales assessments may be the most potent. It’s just a matter of understanding how they work and how to harness their power to assemble the ultimate sales team.

Ready to take the next step? Get started with The Sales Skills Assessment today.

Emerging Trends in SaaS Sales Hiring: What CEOs Need to Know in 2025

Posted on by Nick Mann

While SaaS sales trends are always evolving, 2025 has seen transformation at breakneck speed. From the infusion of AI to hybrid work being the new norm to burgeoning salesperson salaries, a lot is going on this year. With that said, let’s jump right into the emerging 2025 trends in SaaS sales hiring that CEOs need to know about.

AI is Approaching Ubiquity in Sales Candidate Screening

Given that AI has spread its tentacles to nearly every area of business and life, it should come as no surprise that it’s being utilized in SaaS sales hiring as well. Nearly every company with even an ounce of tech-savvy is experimenting with AI in at least some capacity.

While AI hasn’t quite become ubiquitous in SaaS sales hiring, it’s getting pretty close. In fact, recent research states that “87% of organizations now use AI at some point in the hiring process.” And with more and more people seeing firsthand the immense impact AI can have on sales recruiting — mainly being able to effectively filter through a huge candidate pool and find the best of the best — this is a trend that’s only going to continue to grow.

Not to mention, AI offers plenty of other ultra-practical features like auto-scheduling interviews, offering 24/7 responses to candidate inquiries, and sifting through mountains of data to help recruiters make smarter long-term decisions.

Put that all together, and it’s clear that those at the forefront of SaaS sales hiring are looking for innovative ways to leverage AI in their workflows.

Tech Stack Fluency is Officially a Must

SaaS sales reps sell tech. So it only makes sense that they shouldn’t just be knowledgeable about tech. They should be extremely proficient.

A big part of that is what I like to call tech stack fluency, which means having the ability to assemble a list of cutting-edge tools that covers all the bases — from lead nurturing to CRM to delivering demos and beyond.

This is a huge contributor to enabling a rep to perform their job at a high level and provide the best possible customer experience. That’s why I suggest making tech stack fluency a prerequisite for landing a job at your company and directly asking candidates about the specific tools they use.

The Majority of Sales Reps Now Work Hybridly

The trend of SaaS sales reps working hybridly, with a mix of their time spent in-office and at home, has been steadily growing. And of course, COVID cranked it up to a new level. That said, you’ll likely be surprised at the sheer number of salespeople working hybridly today.

According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Sales Report, “71% of US sales pros work hybrid, up 45% from May 2022.

And Mark Burdon, a former IBM Solutions Sales Rep and HubSpot blog contributor says this is having a positive impact on sales. “Sales development reps used to be in the office before … smiling and dialing as they used to call it … but working from home enables them to now interact with customers more and be customer-facing,” Burdon explains.

Given how common hybrid positions now are and the benefits they can have, such as boosting salesperson productivity and making reps happier, this is a work arrangement that’s well worth considering in 2025. For more information on the pros and cons, check out this blog post we wrote about remote vs. in-house sales teams.

Salesperson Salaries Have Seen a Noticeable Spike

Like most industries, salaries generally rise consistently in SaaS sales. But in recent years, we’re seeing a trend where compensation is stronger than ever.

This is especially true for account executives, who, as of 2025, earn between $92,000 and $218,000 per year. For SDRs, those numbers are lower, but they’re still clocking in at $88,000 to $177,000. And when it comes to enterprise reps, you can expect to pay even more.

For perspective on what the trajectory looks like over time, here’s a graph that shows the on-target earnings for AEs from 2012 to 2024.

The takeaway here is that securing highly talented SaaS salespeople is becoming costlier — something that’s due to multiple factors, but a talent shortage mixed with high demand is one of the main reasons. Therefore, it’s more important than ever to offer competitive pay and benefits, and if possible, go higher than your competitors.

This brings us to the last of the 2025 trends in SaaS sales hiring.

Evolving Buyer Needs Demand Deeper Salesperson Knowledge

You could make the argument that SaaS buyers are collectively more cautious than ever. This is especially true when it comes to buying premium SaaS products, especially on the enterprise level, where a major investment is involved.

With so much riding on making the right decision and so many options to choose from, it often takes a lot to get leads over the buying hump. To thrive in today’s intense SaaS selling environment with evolving buyer needs, a salesperson needs to possess deep knowledge and be comfortable working their way through an often longer sales cycle than what we saw in the past.

So, how should you respond to this trend?

If possible, opt for more seasoned SaaS sales candidates rather than rookies, as they’re more likely to be able to handle the challenges and complexities. Also, aim for a consultative approach to selling, where reps focus on building relationships with leads rather than just making a quick transaction. Reps with strong listening skills, communication, and collaboration, and who can deliver a personalized customer experience, tend to do well with consultative selling.

Getting on Board with 2025 Trends in SaaS Sales Hiring

SaaS sales hiring is undergoing rapid change in 2025, with things like advancements in AI, tech stack fluency, and hybrid work standing out. By staying proactive with your approach, you should be positioned to find elite reps and stand out in the increasingly competitive landscape.

And if you want to find the best and brightest in your industry, use the Sales Skills Assessment to analyze core competencies with 95% accuracy.

How to Create a Talent Development Plan to Keep Your SaaS Salespeople Engaged

Posted on by Nick Mann

Hiring top SaaS sales talent is incredibly important in today’s hyper-competitive business landscape. But that’s only half the battle. You also need to retain them, as this is the real key to thriving long-term. Rather than leaving retention to chance, your best bet is to create a fleshed-out talent development plan that crystallizes the exact steps you’ll take to keep your SaaS salespeople engaged.

Below is the core process for creating a winning talent development plan.

Bake Mentorship Into Your Team Dynamic

Let’s say you recently hired a new sales rep with a proven track record and talent that’s off the charts. You know that if given enough time, they’ll thrive on your SaaS sales team. But what can you do to accelerate the process and throw gasoline on the proverbial talent development fire?

One of the best ways is to have a system where seasoned salespeople who know the ins and outs of your company can impart their wisdom and knowledge. In other words, mentorship.

Now, some degree of mentorship happens organically on a sales team. But you can expedite it by baking mentorship into your team dynamic and prioritizing it with new hires.

According to research, “97.6% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs,” with 91% proving to be effective.

As for the nuts and bolts of a mentorship program, there are five key steps involved.

You can learn more about the process through this in-depth guide.

Identify Skills Gaps

I think most of us can agree that internal hiring is usually a smart move if you have a focus on salesperson engagement and retention. For perspective, “Statistics show that when employees are promoted, they are 70% more likely to stay long-term. And 62% of employees who make lateral moves experience high retention rates with the company.”

But to be successful with internal hiring, you need to first pinpoint where you’re lacking and what specific skills gaps there are. Maybe, for example, your sales demos aren’t advancing enough leads to the next stage of the sales funnel. You could likely benefit from moving a promising sales rep up the ladder to become an account executive, where they could strive to refine sales demos.

The point here is that an integral part of talent development is figuring out exactly what skills demand your attention. This brings us to our next point.

Offer Individualized Skills Development Training for Skills Gaps

Once you know which skills need work and which positions need filling, you’ll want to do two things. First, figure out which salespeople are a good fit for development. And two, offer each salesperson individualized training to help them reach their peak potential.

Note that you probably won’t have the time to devote attention to every single salesperson in your SaaS company, especially if you’re a mid-sized or large business. In fact, I generally recommend using the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule here, where you focus on the most promising 20% of your team.

Then, once you get that initial 20% squared away and have improved their skills, you can move on to the next segment of your workforce.

When I say “individualized training,” I mean zeroing in on developing the necessary skills that are lacking by position, as well as the areas in which each rep could improve.

Some examples could include:

  • Cold calling
  • Delivering demos
  • Handling rejection
  • CRM mastery
  • Deal negotiation

Here are some more ideas.

Be Sure to Provide Incentives

For reps with a natural drive, skills development in and of itself is enough to keep them motivated. Others, however, may need a little incentive to keep them on the progression path. And even the most type-A sort of personality still wouldn’t mind a little something something for their troubles.

That’s why we suggest providing incentives with your skills development training, as this can break down many barriers of resistance and give reps the fuel to keep pushing onward when they “hit the wall.”

Note that this doesn’t have to be anything over the top. In many cases, simply making it a point to acknowledge a salesperson’s wins and give them recognition is all it takes. Other ideas include creating a “skills development leaderboard,” where you highlight who’s stepped their game up and the specific areas they’ve developed.

Or if you want to spice it up, you can always offer financial incentives like gift cards or bonuses. Often, the small financial investment you put up for these incentives will pale in comparison to the increased revenue you’ll see from talent development.

Keep Iterating Your Talent Development Plan

Everything we’ve mentioned so far — mentorship, identifying skills gaps, individualized training, and incentives — is the core part of a talent development plan. But there’s one last step in the process, and that’s continually analyzing and refining your talent development plan to ensure it’s firing on all cylinders.

The best way to do this is to use AI or analytics to track the KPIs that are most instrumental to your sales team’s growth and evolution.

Say, for instance, the main purpose of mentorship is to accelerate new hire ramp time and help them reach their sales quotas quicker. You may want to measure the time it takes for them to reach full productivity or a specific sales benchmark.

Then, you could compare that against prior data to see if your efforts are paying off. If not, you would need to make some adjustments. And if they are paying off, you would want to see if there are any micro-improvements you could make to drive further progress.

Besides just looking at the numbers, also be sure to gather firsthand feedback from team members to see where talent development could be improved.

Development > Engagement > Retention > Success

Simply hiring great talent is a good start. But it’s not enough to flourish in the SaaS industry.

You need to think long-term and focus heavily on salesperson development and engagement, which not only helps them stay locked in and committed to their job but also sets the stage for retention and true success.

If you’re ready to turbocharge your SaaS sales recruiting and build an airtight recruitment funnel, schedule a demo with HireDNA today.

How to Stand Out to Top Sales Talent in a Competitive SaaS Market

Posted on by Nick Mann

It’s something I’ve said time and time again on this blog. The size of today’s SaaS market is truly staggering. Data varies, but a recent study estimates that there are up to 42,000 SaaS companies operating globally, with 17,000 in the US alone. While this means exciting tech advancements and endlessly innovative features for consumers, this presents a recruiting conundrum for many SaaS brands, and it’s essential to stand out to top sales talent.

Otherwise, finding consistent growth and success will likely be an uphill battle. With that said, I’ve compiled a brief list of practical strategies to not only appeal to today’s top talent but also retain them.

Start with Offering a Competitive Salary and Benefits

SaaS recruiting trends are continually changing. But one thing that will never change is elite sales talent seeking competitive pay.

Top salespeople know they’re skilled. They also know they have plenty of leverage and shouldn’t settle for below-average or even average pay. In fact, one study found that 89% of salespeople leave for better pay.

The same article also mentions the financial impact that high turnover can have on a company. “Turnover rates near 35% can be expensive, requiring not only the costs of training and investment, but also of acquiring a replacement.”

So even if you save a little bit initially by paying salespeople less than your competitors, you can easily end up paying more in the long run when you consider costs like rehiring, onboarding, and training.

The bottom line is that offering a competitive salary and benefits is a must for getting ahead in the SaaS industry. And benchmark salaries are something you shouldn’t continually assess to ensure you remain competitive.

For insights on how much you should pay top talent, check out this blog post we wrote on SaaS sales salary.

Build a SaaS Recruiting Hub on Your Website

This strategy seems like a no-brainer to me, and I find it shocking that more SaaS companies aren’t doing it. By the way, when I say “recruiting hub,” I’m referring to a dedicated section of a website where candidates can find information on your company, benefits of working for you, testimonials from current/previous employees, and job listings.

Hands down, one of the best examples is HubSpot Careers.

It’s simple, straightforward, and very professional.

With just a few minutes of browsing, candidates can learn everything they need about HubSpot and find an up-to-date listing of all available positions.

Keep in mind that HubSpot is one of the biggest SaaS companies in the world, and their Careers page is quite exhaustive. Therefore, you probably won’t need to create a recruiting hub that’s this robust for your SaaS company. But this example should serve as an excellent example to get your creative juices flowing.

Once you have a solid resource, you can point candidates to it from job boards, social media, or anywhere you recruit. And at the same time, it works as a passive recruiter, as anyone who lands on your website can easily find it.

Not to mention, when done professionally, this can go a long way in helping you stand out to top sales talent and distinguish your brand from the competition.

Win the Recruiting War with Data

If you’re not using data, you’re missing out. It’s that simple.

One example is analyzing key hiring metrics like time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and sourcing channel effectiveness, which provide clear insight into what’s working and what’s not. In turn, you can make ongoing adjustments to optimize all of these areas and maximize your ROI.

Another example is using predictive analytics to determine the likelihood of a candidate’s success with your SaaS company. With HireDNA, for instance, you can create a candidate profile for each person and, at a glance, analyze their core competencies like motivation, responsibility, and the ability to handle rejection. All of which are scored, so you can quantitatively measure one candidate against another.

If you haven’t implemented some form of analytics yet, now is the perfect time to get started, and you should see a noticeable impact within a month or two.

Make the Candidate Experience a Pleasure, Not a Burden

Elite candidates don’t stay on the market for long, and they don’t want to deal with a bunch of hassle to find a position. Therefore, providing an amazing candidate experience should be another top priority.

So, how can you do this?

First, keep the length of any forms candidates have to fill out to a bare minimum. Don’t ask needless, extraneous questions, and offer auto-complete so candidates don’t have to manually fill out basic contact information.

Next, automate hiring communication to keep candidates in the loop without needless back-and-forthing. Not only should this provide a better candidate experience and maximize transparency, it should also save you time as well.

Third, let candidates schedule interview times that are convenient for them with a tool like Calendly. This allows them to look at multiple interview slots and choose the optimal time without zero friction.

Best of all, you don’t have to waste time setting up interviews, and both parties will receive reminders before an event.

Finally, don’t have any more interview rounds than absolutely necessary. For most SaaS sales positions, two is plenty. Once you go beyond that, you’re likely to see a steep drop-off rate.

Using Smart Tactics to Stand Out to Top Sales Talent

With SaaS being such a saturated industry, you can’t expect to slap up an ad on a job board and be flooded with A+ talent. Finding success requires careful analysis and putting yourself in the shoes of top salespeople. Winning is one part tried-and-true techniques, like offering a competitive salary, and one part cutting-edge techniques, like leveraging data and automation technology to win over elite candidates.

If you’re ready to elevate your SaaS sales hiring, try out our Sales Skills Assessment. It’s 95% accurate in predicting future success and was voted the gold medal winner top sales assessment for 11 consecutive years by Top Sales World.

What SaaS Founders Need to Know About Building a World-Class Sales Team

Posted on by Nick Mann

Outside of the product itself, your sales team’s performance is arguably the biggest factor in your SaaS company’s long-term success. As such, it’s essential to look beyond quick wins and see the big picture when deciding who to hire. For this post, I’ll dissect the components that go into building a world-class sales team so you’ll have the right mindset to thrive in the subscription economy.

Success Relies on More Than Just Hard Skills

Don’t get me wrong. Hard skills like product knowledge and pipeline management are extremely important. And you’re probably not going to get far if you hire SaaS salespeople who lack fundamental hard skills.

But I think a common issue among many SaaS founders is that they focus too heavily on hard skills, to the point that they neglect equally critical soft skills. In fact, given how soft skills like communication, active listening, and resilience are to this profession, you could argue that many soft skills are just as important to a rep’s success.

For perspective, I asked Google Gemini to create a table with a side-by-side comparison of core hard and soft skills.

With a glance at this table, it’s easy to see why you shouldn’t skimp on soft skills. Instead, finding salespeople who possess essential soft skills is something you want to bake into your SaaS sales recruiting process. This brings me to my next point.

Objectively Understanding a Rep’s Core Competencies is Vital

As I just said, hard skills are certainly important. But that doesn’t mean soft skills should be overlooked.

But even better than basing your hiring decision on analyzing both hard and soft skills is basing it on understanding a rep’s core competencies — something that’s almost guaranteed to show you the big picture.

Some specific examples of core competencies can include motivation, being able to control emotions, lead-hunting capabilities, and decision-making skills. There are a plethora of other core competencies, but this should give you a basic idea of what I’m referring to.

The question is, how do you objectively assess a salesperson’s core competencies?

Perhaps the most straightforward strategy is to use a SaaS sales recruiting tool like HireDNA. With it, you can create a detailed candidate profile that includes all of the core competencies you need.

This gives you a complete overview of what someone brings to the table, and you can easily compare multiple candidate profiles side-by-side for a bird’s-eye view to choose the optimal candidate.

Choosing the Right Salespeople Depends on What Stage You’re At

Another important aspect of building a world-class sales team that some SaaS founders overlook is their current growth stage. If, for example, you’re a brand-new startup just getting the ball rolling, you’ll likely want to aim for ultra-scrappy go-getters who will scratch and claw their way to build relationships and reach their sales quotas.

However, if your SaaS company is well-established and you have a well-defined sales process, you may want to aim for salespeople who can play by the rules and consistently move leads through the pipeline.

While you’ll always want individuals with a certain amount of hustle, this is a factor to keep in mind and know that who you consider to be “the right salesperson” may evolve over time.

Data is Everything

Like most business areas, using insight-driven data can have a positive impact. But when u building a world-class sales team, data isn’t just a luxury, it’s a necessity — especially when considering the hyper-competitive landscape of the SaaS industry.

According to a sales operations survey by Gartner, Inc., “42% of sales leaders rate their sales analytics ROI as significantly higher than expected.” And a report by Deloitte found that it leads to a 35% boost in salesperson performance.

From identifying weaknesses in your sales pipeline to increasing customer engagement to optimizing customer personalization to predicting future trends based on prior patterns, sales data is your ticket to getting your sales team to operate at its peak potential.

That’s why I believe a strong sales analytics platform should be implemented from the very start, and you should use the data you generate to continually refine your processes, as there’s always room for improvement.

Great Performance Requires Ongoing Development

Speaking of ongoing improvement, the final way SaaS founders can go about building a world-class sales team is to invest in the perpetual development of their reps. Think of it like this.

Hopefully, the initial group of salespeople you hire is professional, capable, and productive. And if you use a quality SaaS sales recruiting tool, it should be.

But like I just said, there’s always room for improvement, and getting your SaaS sales team to operate at their best requires endless iterations. And when you consider how fast the SaaS industry (and tech in general) is moving, you must stay at the forefront.

That’s why it’s important to use an ongoing SaaS sales training program that fine-tunes the skills of your salespeople and helps them stay sharp. This doesn’t need to be anything over the top, and you certainly don’t want to burn your team out from fatigue. But a steady drip of training and development can go a long way.

For an overview of some of the top sales training platforms, check out this list from Salesforce.

Building a World-Class Sales Team from the Ground Up

Let’s be honest. Jumping into the SaaS industry and trying to compete with well-established titans can be daunting. And there is no magic bullet for ensuring success, no matter how great a digital product you have.

That said, following a well-laid-out template can tilt the odds in your favor so you can 1) get started out on the right foot and 2) set the stage for sustained growth.

If you don’t want to leave your SaaS sales hiring to chance and want to find the true superstars with elite sales DNA, check out the Sales Skills Assessment. It leverages 30 years of data and is 95% accurate at finding the optimal salespeople.

How SaaS Talent Leaders Can Simplify Sales Hiring Without Compromising Quality

Posted on by Nick Mann

I don’t need to tell you how disastrous a wrong SaaS sales hire can be. For perspective, a single bad hire can cost up to three times the rep’s annual salary—translating to losses between $250,000 and $500,000 when accounting for missed quotas, lost pipeline, and the expenses of replacing them. In the never-ending quest to accelerate SaaS sales hiring and quickly fill positions, it’s easy to take shortcuts. Sometimes those pay off, but in many cases, they don’t. For this article, I’d like to explain specific strategies on how to simplify sales hiring without compromising quality.

In fact, these techniques should maximize your collective candidate quality and help you pinpoint your industry’s true elite. Let’s dive in.

Start By Analyzing Existing Data

Assuming you’ve been in business for at least six months and have a decent amount of SaaS sales hiring data, the first thing I recommend is thoroughly analyzing your existing data to identify patterns, trends, and most importantly, weaknesses. Note that if you’re a brand-new startup and haven’t done any hiring, you’ll want to skip this step, but you should definitely use it later on once you’ve generated some initial data.

Here you’ll want to zero in on the most critical metrics, such as applications per opening, time to fill, time to hire, quality of hire, and cost per hire. Here’s a more extensive list for additional ideas.

Armed with this information, you should be able to get a baseline reading of how well you’re performing in each area and identify any glaring inefficiencies that are holding you back.

For instance, maybe your time to hire is much longer than it should be, but everything else looks good. In this case, it would be clear that lowering your time to hire should be your top priority. Improving in this area should put you on track to achieving greater efficiency and minimize candidate drop-off.

Use a SaaS Sales Recruiting Tool

Although recruiting tools have been around in some capacity since the 1970s with the advent of application tracking systems, their capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years. Case in point — a SaaS sales recruiting tool like HireDNA.

With this platform, you can simplify sales hiring in a wide variety of ways while also finding the best of the best candidates.

For example, HireDNA uses cutting-edge data-driven assessments to provide an objective overview of each candidate’s core competencies, such as motivation, responsibility, and the ability to handle rejection.

Using a simple scale system, you can conveniently compare candidates side-by-side and confidently narrow your candidate pool down to the cream of the crop. Rather than relying on your gut, which is prone to bias, this gives you crystal clear insights into what each candidate brings, so you find the optimal fit for a position.

Best of all, it can be a huge time-saver because you don’t have to manually sift through a mountain of candidates, which can dramatically lower your time-to-hire.

Leverage Candidate Scorecards

Once you’ve narrowed down the candidate pool to a few select candidates, you need a way to efficiently see how they stack up against one another and how good of a fit each one is to your unique SaaS sales environment. But how do you do this?

One of the best ways is to use candidate scorecards, which allow you to objectively compare each SaaS sales candidate at a glance in key areas.

For example, you could use a cultural fit scorecard where you rate how well someone aligns with your company values or their work style compatibility.

Or you can rate specific skills, such as their proficiency using software or problem-solving skills.

There are many possibilities. Implementing scorecards like this should help expedite shortlisting as you navigate through the latter stages of SaaS sales hiring while giving you a bird’s-eye view of how adept each person would likely be if hired.

Automate Interview Scheduling

While this isn’t as integral to the SaaS sales hiring process as the previous strategies, this can have a tangible impact. Not only can it simplify and streamline things, it can also contribute to creating a better candidate experience, as it gives them flexibility for choosing convenient interview slots without unnecessary back-and-forthing with recruiters.

One of my favorite tools for interview scheduling is Calendly because it makes the end-to-end process a breeze.

A candidate can easily choose a date and time that fits their schedule based on open slots.

Then the interview time is automatically synced with your sales recruiter’s schedule with zero disruptions. Besides that, Calendy offers automatic reminders to drastically reduce no-shows.

That way, you can focus on more pressing business activities and coordinate SaaS sales interviews with minimal friction to better simplify sales hiring.

Reduce the Number of Interview Rounds

In many cases, there will be multiple rounds of interviews for a SaaS sales position. This is especially true for mid-level, high-level, and specialized roles.

And that’s fine. Often, it takes more than one round to get a sense of who’s the best fit for a role.

That being said, you shouldn’t have any more interview rounds than you truly need. This only adds complexity, slows you down, and can be a turnoff for many elite candidates who don’t want to go to the trouble of showing up for interview after interview.

What you want to do is find the sweet spot where you can confidently choose the best person for a role without having needless interview rounds. That’s why I recommend experimenting with this until you find the lowest number without sacrificing candidate quality.

Simplify Sales Hiring: Streamline for Speed and Success

Accelerating SaaS sales hiring isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about leveraging strategies and tools to slash through inefficiencies and find legitimate superstars without wasting time and money.

To recap, this includes tapping into existing hiring data, using a SaaS sales recruiting platform, implementing candidate scorecards, automating interview scheduling, and trimming back interview rounds.

If you want to take the guesswork out of hiring and leave nothing to chance, try the Sales Skills Assessment to provide in-depth insights into each candidate.

Using Data-Driven Assessments to Hire High-Performing SaaS Salespeople

Posted on by Nick Mann

Here’s a sobering stat. 70% of SaaS salespeople failed to reach their quota in 2024. While there’s a laundry list of reasons why many SaaS salespeople fall short, it’s important to look to the very beginning — the initial hiring stage — when looking for a solution.

If a hiring leader fails to make the right decision and hire truly elite talent that not only has the skills and qualifications but also fits in culturally, problems will likely arise. Fortunately, many hiring mistakes can be avoided by using data-driven assessments to find the best of the best.

The Problem with Intuition

In the past, much of SaaS sales hiring relied heavily on intuition. The logic was that if a hiring manager knew the ins and outs of their product and industry and what it takes to succeed, they could use their expertise to find talented SaaS salespeople.

And in some cases, intuition works out. That said, it’s easy to get yourself in trouble with this approach.

That’s because relying on one person’s subjective judgment — something that’s often laced with bias — can lead to bad decisions and potentially high turnover.

For perspective, “When hiring is over-reliant on intuition and assumptions about candidates, we make successful hires only about 30% of the time. At that rate, you get better odds with a coin flip.”

As hiring technology has progressed, we’re now able to quantify things that previously were unquantifiable and objectively measure a SaaS sales candidate’s ability to make smarter decisions.

That’s where data-driven assessments come in.

The Power of Data-Driven Assessments

Rather than taking what a candidate says at face value and relying on intuition, data-driven assessments arm you with valuable information to help you make consistently great hiring decisions. Let me give you an example.

The Sales Skills Assessment by Objective Management Group allows you to thoroughly analyze a SaaS sales candidate on a granular level by objectively assessing multiple selling competencies, such as relationship building, consultative selling, presentation approach, closing, and much more.

This gives you a bird’s-eye view of exactly what each candidate brings to the table, which allows you to make a hiring decision with far greater certainty and accuracy. With it, you can compare candidates side-by-side to see who’s truly the most skilled based on the specific criteria you’re looking for when filling a role.

While it’s always been easy to compare candidates on factors like education, previous experience, and industry knowledge, core selling competencies have been trickier to pin down. But with data-driven assessments, you can know for sure just how capable each candidate is to dramatically improve your SaaS sales hiring.

If you’re looking for concrete numbers, 92% of candidates recommended by the Sales Skills Assessment went on to reach the top half of their sales force within their first year. And 72% became top performers.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Sales Skills Assessment is just one example, and there are several other options you can use to zero in on the particular aspect of SaaS sales hiring that you want.

For instance, there are personality assessments that provide insights into a candidate’s true personality so you can get a sense of how well they would match your company culture. There are situational assessments that let you see how they would react in real-life SaaS sales scenarios.

There are behavioral analysis assessments that give you a feel for interpersonal skills. And there are psychometric assessments that provide insights into cognitive abilities and working style.

Whatever part of a SaaS salesperson you want to analyze, odds are there’s a data-driven assessment for it.

The Full Scope of Benefits When Using Data-Driven Assessments

At this point, it’s clear that using data-driven assessments can help you make better hiring decisions. But let’s go a bit deeper and discuss some specific reasons why.

First, it significantly increases your odds of choosing the right person for each role. By analyzing hard skills, soft skills, and everything in between, while factoring in the specific role you’re trying to fill and company culture, you can use the data to greatly improve hiring accuracy. That way, you’re far less likely to make the wrong hire, which brings us to our next key benefit — less turnover.

One study from Deloitte “found that companies leveraging data-driven approaches to hiring saw a 36% increase in employee retention.” And it’s easy to see why. Whenever you find the perfect person for a SaaS sales role — someone who was made for the position — it’s only natural that they’ll A) succeed and B) stick around for the long haul.

This means you don’t have to worry about excessive turnover, where you constantly have to rehire. By getting it right the first time, there should be greater stability and you can build a cohesive SaaS sales team, with some hires moving up the ladder into leadership positions.

It also streamlines your hiring process. Rather than having to meticulously sift through candidate after candidate the old-fashioned way, data-driven assessments help accelerate recruiting so you can create a shortlist of top candidates without eating up a ton of time.

And let’s not forget about sales performance. Whenever you hire the cream of the crop, where SaaS salespeople possess the essential core competencies it takes to thrive, you can expect increased performance.

Needless to say, that’s extremely helpful, as this often leads to a host of other benefits, including higher conversion rates, increased profitability, greater customer satisfaction, and a stronger bottom line.

Final Thoughts

We’re at an exciting point in history where hiring leaders now have access to cutting-edge technology that simply didn’t exist a decade ago. Case in point — data-driven assessments, which can be used to quantify and objectively understand even the most intangible of candidate traits.

By leveraging this technology, you can capitalize on a plethora of amazing benefits, including smarter hiring decisions, shorter hiring time, reduced turnover, better sales performance, and ultimately bigger profits.

Learn more about the Sales Skills Assessment feature above and how it can help you find A+ SaaS salespeople.

What SaaS Sales Leaders Look for in a Winning Sales Rep in 2025

Posted on by Nick Mann

The SaaS industry is known for innovation and being in a state of constant flux. To build a high-performance team SaaS sales leaders need to look beyond traditional skills and acclimate to an ever-changing market. For this post, we’ll look at five must-have qualities a winning sales rep should possess in 2025.

A High Tech IQ

Given that technology is inherently infused into the SaaS industry it’s only natural that a winning sales rep will have a high tech IQ. By this I don’t just mean being tech savvy but eating, sleeping, and breathing tech.

This starts with having an acute understanding of the SaaS industry itself, including your specific niche, product, and competitors. A salesperson should be proficient with sales and CRM software so they can effectively manage every stage of the sales funnel and customer relationships.

They should be able to put together a solid tech stack, which includes sales and CRM software, as well as networking platforms, social media, video conferencing, and so on. Here’s an example.

Besides that, a winning sales rep should be proficient in sales analytics. They don’t need to be a data scientist, but they should be able to extract insights on macro and micro trends and apply them to everyday operations.

AI Fluency

In the span of just a couple of years, AI has essentially gone from being a novelty to infiltrating nearly every corner of work and life. As of 2024, 75% of salespeople were using AI in the workplace. And 56% reported using it daily.

Based on the current usage trajectory, it’s likely that nearly all salespeople will be using AI in some capacity by the end of the 2020s (if not sooner). Therefore, having AI fluency is no longer merely a preferred ability but a necessity.

From identifying qualified leads to lead scoring to automated outreach to sales forecasting, AI has an abundance of use cases in SaaS sales.

That’s why one of the most critical traits SaaS sales leaders now look for in a winning sales rep is the ability to practically use AI to increase their efficiency and effectiveness, which helps improve the customer experience and close more deals.

Consultative Storytelling Abilities

Would you believe that “94% of SaaS buyers don’t trust sales teams?” It’s true.

Skepticism runs rampant with the majority of today’s customers, so taking a hard-nosed, old-school approach with aggressive sales tactics seldom ends well.

What most buyers are receptive to, however, is what I call “consultative storytelling.” This is where you work to first understand a customer by identifying specific needs, pain points, challenges, and any obstacles that are getting in the way of them buying. Then you seek to provide solutions and position your SaaS product as the ideal platform that checks all the right boxes and delivers genuine value.

A big part of this is acting more as a consultant rather than a salesperson, where you build rapport and collaborate with a customer to ensure you find them the perfect product. Storytelling also comes into the equation, where you objectively show the tangible impact your solution can have by sharing examples and case studies.

That way, you don’t have to rely merely on saying your product is a great fit, and you can show a customer firsthand.

Natural Resilience

Being a salesperson is tough.

And you could argue that it’s never been tougher than it is today, especially in SaaS sales. With so many companies battling it out, competition is incredibly fierce.

As a result, rejection is baked into the job description for SaaS salespeople, and it takes a certain type of personality to shake it off and keep moving forward. If a rep lacks natural resilience, they’re going to have a hard time succeeding in this profession, which is why this is such a vital characteristic to look for.

But with resilience being a soft skill and hard to quantify, how exactly can you pinpoint this in a potential salesperson?

You can always ask behavioral questions that gauge resilience in an interview. Here’s a list of questions for reference.

But one of the better ways to determine someone’s resilience is using a tool that delivers data-driven insights via candidate profiles. With HireDNA, for example, you can generate a comprehensive breakdown of a rep’s core competencies, with the ability to handle rejection being on the list.

This provides a measurable means of determining just how well a SaaS salesperson deals with obstacles, which can help you assemble the best team possible.

Adaptability

As I stated in the intro, the SaaS industry is in a state of constant flux. And as technology continues advancing at its current breakneck speed, the rate of change will only continue to intensify.

That’s why adaptability is the final trait a winning sales rep should possess in 2025.

I like what Mindy Murphy of The Center for Sales Strategy has to say about it.

“An adaptable salesperson has the ability to adjust and thrive in various situations and environments, making them a valuable asset to any sales team. They can quickly respond to these changes and adjust their strategies accordingly.

And they possess the agility to:

  • Respond swiftly to market changes
  • Build stronger, more personalized client relationships
  • Handle rejection with resilience and learn from setbacks”

While you never know exactly what will happen in the SaaS sales world and what changes will unfold, having reps that are equipped to adapt to current circumstances should ensure you’re prepared to handle whatever comes your way. In this respect, adaptability helps “future-proof” your business to a certain extent.

It’s just a matter of finding candidates that possess adapability skills — something that can be done through candidate profiles as I mentioned earlier, as well as using scenario-based assessments, problem-solving tasks, and role-playing exercises during interviews.

The Anatomy of a Winning Sales Rep

Although certain essential characteristics will never change, I feel the five outlined above are absolutely critical to SaaS sales rep success in 2025. Zeroing in on these should help you find superstars who aren’t only equipped to thrive in today’s environment but in the future as well.

If you’re ready to level up your SaaS sales recruiting to reduce mistakes and speed up your time to hire, try out our free Hiring Readiness Assessment.