Tag: sales hiring

How to Find Great Talent in Tough Economic Times

Posted on by hiredna

Finding talented salespeople can be difficult in even the best of circumstances. But it can be especially challenging to find great talent in tough economic times.

And that’s precisely what sales recruiters are up against today. Although the recruiting climate has stabilized somewhat in the wake of COVID, there are still some major challenges that must be overcome to secure elite talent.  

In this post, I’ll offer some background on the current rocky economic state and specific strategies and tools you can use to find rockstar salespeople in your industry.

Some Statistics for Perspective

By definition, the US is not currently in a recession as of the time of this writing in May 2023. However, many financial experts believe there could be one on the horizon.

“Slowing in GDP could be due to negative US inventory accumulations and trade deficits,” writes Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank. “Whether these factors will continue dragging on the economy throughout 2023 remains to be seen, but steadily slowing GDP growth could be an advance warning of recession ahead.”

Besides that, there are also the issues of inflation, stock market volatility, sluggish retail sales, and other factors that are contributing to our current economic woes.

And from a recruiting standpoint, today’s businesses must contend with what McKinsey calls “the Great Attrition” or “Great Resignation,” where a staggering 40% of American workers say they may leave their job in the near future.

By these numbers, two out of every five salespeople are theoretically ready to look elsewhere, which is no doubt alarming to many recruiters.

Capitalizing on Opportunities

This isn’t to say that everything is all doom and gloom. In fact, there are plenty of opportunities for sales recruiters to find great talent in tough economic times.

For instance, this often translates into a larger candidate pool that wasn’t available a few years ago. You may also be able to find elite-level talent from other organizations that wouldn’t have previously been possible.

It’s just a matter of adjusting your sales recruiting strategy, which is what I’ll discuss for the rest of this post.

Start with Your UVP

I love what Cassie Pike, managing director at Cielo Talent has to say about the importance of strengthening your UVP in tough economic times.

“When slowdowns occur and candidates are in the market, it’s prime time for companies to campaign for who they want and show why their offerings stand out amongst the rest. It’s important to help candidates understand why you’re hiring and why you’re a safe bet for them when it comes to a job change. It’s about more than the money; it’s about the full value proposition, including stability of your organization, growth for the organization, and what it provides for your employees, as well as other non-monetary benefits like flexibility.”

Refining your UVP is a critical precursor to anything else, especially in our current economic climate, because it affects everything else. This is a topic I’ve covered in detail before, and you can learn how to create a winning UVP here.

Use a SaaS Sales Recruiting Platform

Perhaps the best way to streamline recruiting is to use a data-driven tool like HireDNA.

With it, you can tap into a robust national network of qualified sales talent and access top performers — both active and passive candidates — that have the exact skills and qualifications needed to thrive at your company.

Here’s how it works.

First, you’ll be assigned a dedicated recruiting manager who will work alongside you to create an ideal candidate profile.

Based on that, we’ll come up with a list of verified candidates that match what you’re looking for using 26 profile data points and 21 core selling competencies. Note that this goes beyond just traditional hard skills and is extremely granular with traits like motivation, desire to sell, the ability to handle rejection, and much more.

From there, we’ll provide you with a short list of handpicked, verified candidates that are most likely to succeed.

And finally, you choose the candidates you’re most interested in and can schedule interviews.

Sales recruiters that use HireDNA are able to eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes, speed up their time to hire by 50%, and have 50% less turnover. So if you’re looking to streamline your sales recruiting and find the best of the best, this type of platform can be very helpful.

Hire for Skills Over Industry Experience

The other main strategy I recommend to find great talent in tough economic times is being flexible with your job requirements.

In a previous blog, I explained why selling skills are often more important than industry/product experience. Although this post is over two years old, I think it’s just as relevant as ever.

The bottom line with this logic is that you can always train someone on a product, but you can’t always teach someone how to sell.

Say, for example, you find a candidate that has a stellar track record and has consistently exceeded their expectations in all previous roles, but they don’t have any experience in your specific industry. Odds are, they could learn it fairly quickly and use their natural talent to reach the top of your sales force.

On the other hand, let’s say there’s another candidate that does have plenty of experience in your industry, but they have a history of underwhelming performance. Although you could probably get them up to speed quicker, they’ll likely hit their plateau and won’t have nearly the same potential as someone who’s a natural winner.

This is a simple example, but I’m sure you can see my point. More often than not, prioritizing raw sales talent over experience and being willing to hire someone you know can sell, even if they lack direct industry/product experience, should lead to positive results and can give you an edge over many competitors.

Finding Great Talent in Tough Economic Times

Although the current economy is far from ideal, it’s still possible to find elite talent. In fact, there are golden opportunities as long as you leverage the right strategies and take advantage of helpful tools.

To see HireDNA in action and learn how it can take your sales recruiting to the next level, schedule a live demo today.

Why Creating a Clear Hiring Process Timeline Can Make Your Brand More Appealing to 83% of Sales Candidates

Posted on by hiredna

Searching for a sales job can be overwhelming and stressful. In fact, 73% of job seekers say it’s “one of the most stressful events in life.” As a recruiter, it’s important to simplify and streamline things to 1) improve the candidate experience and 2) increase your odds of acquiring A+ salespeople while building strong relationships right off the bat. And this often starts with creating a clear hiring process timeline.

In this post, we’ll look at some compelling data that shows just how important a hiring process timeline is, along with specific elements to focus on.

Putting Yourself in a Sale’s Candidates Shoes

Nearly everyone will perform a job search at some point in their career. And nearly everyone will experience the struggles that come along with it.

Searching for a new sales position marks a big life change. A person may need to give notice to their current company, figure out how to transition from their current job to a new one, switch up their daily schedule, or even move to a new city. Not to mention the potential financial strains it can create.

With this comes a lot of uncertainty and stress if a sales candidate is left in the dark about what’s happening with a potential employer. This is bad for everyone because, on their end, it hurts the candidate’s experience. And on your end, the friction it creates can sour what could have been a solid relationship.

Even if a sales candidate was initially excited about the idea of joining your team, they may end up going elsewhere simply because they weren’t sure about their status. In turn, quality candidates can end up slipping through your fingers, and in the long run, this can even hurt your brand equity if you get negative online reviews from resentful ex-candidates.

Looking it at like this, lacking a clear hiring process timeline is bad all around. However, when sales candidates know what to expect, it can create positive rapport and make things smoother for both parties.

What the Data Says

Now the question is, just how big of an impact can a clear hiring process timeline have?

According to SmallBizGenius, “83% of candidates say it would greatly improve the overall experience if employers provided a clear timeline of the hiring process.” Based on this data, you could create a pleasant experience for more than 8 out of 10 candidates by simply making the process more transparent.

In a world where many companies are struggling to create a positive candidate experience and 58% of job seekers say they’ve declined an offer because of a negative experience, this an extremely important stat to take note of.

To crystallize things further, here’s some additional data:

  • “52% of job seekers cite lack of response from employers as their biggest frustration
  • 75% of applicants never hear back from employers
  • 81% of job seekers say employers continuously communicating status updates would greatly improve their candidate experience” 

At this point, it’s clear that the vast majority of sales candidates want more transparency from employers and that offering it can have significant results. But how exactly do you go about that?

Elements to Include in the Hiring Process Timeline

For starters, you’ll want to give sales candidates at least a rough idea of how long your hiring process is. While the specific stages of recruiting can vary, the seven fundamental stages usually look something like this.

Seven Steps of Selection Process

So, for instance, when a sales candidate submits their application, you could send them an email outlining what to expect, what the next step is, and when they’ll hear from you next. Keep in mind you don’t necessarily need to include exact dates, but try to give them a basic overview of what your timeline looks like so you’re on the same page.

For candidates that make it to the interview stage, you’ll want to be more detailed with the upcoming phases in the process. This can include how many rounds of interviews there will be (e.g. an initial 15-minute Zoom call and a longer follow-up call if they pass), what will happen during each round, and how long it will take your recruitment team to make their decision.

This alone can make for a far better candidate experience and should help you avoid many of the common “friction points” that are detrimental to the process.

When it comes to sales candidates that have been disqualified, you’ll want to let them know as soon as possible that you’ve decided to move on. While this, understandably, can be difficult and no one wants to be the bearer of bad news, you never want to leave someone hanging when they’re no longer in the candidate pool. In this situation, you’ll want to thank them for applying and let them know that you sincerely appreciate their interest in your company, but you’ve decided to go with someone else who is a better fit.

If you’re not sure how to approach this, here’s a basic email template you can use.

10 Essential Recruiting Email Templates

Also, note that most experts suggest never going longer than a maximum of one week to follow up at any point in the hiring process.

Wrapping Up

A poor sales candidate experience can be toxic to everyone involved. It leaves a sour taste in the mouth of what could be a rockstar salesperson. And it can hurt your company if you lose out on top-tier talent to competitors. Fortunately, this is often avoidable by creating a transparent hiring process timeline.

Doing so puts you on the same page with sales candidates and drastically reduces the likelihood of friction arising, as they’ll know what to expect every step of the way. From putting in their application to scheduling an interview to making your final decision, you’ll have close communication throughout.

If you’re looking to fill your pipeline with leading sales talent while cutting your hire time in half, check out HireDNA. Recruiters that use it eliminate, on average, 96% of mistakes and lower turnover by more than 33%.

Hiring Your First Sales Leader? Here’s How to Handle the Process Strategically.

Posted on by hiredna

Choosing your first sales leader is exciting, but it can also be a little nerve-racking. With so much riding on their success, it’s a critical position you want to find the ideal candidate for.

In this post, I’ll explain how to handle the process strategically and provide helpful tools to dramatically increase your chances of choosing the right sales leader.

Identify Critical Traits

Before you do anything, it’s important to figure out exactly what you’re looking for in your first sales leader, as this will impact your job ads, interview questions, and more. While what is considered ideal traits will vary from company to company, there are nine attributes to look for across the board, including trustworthiness, being a natural motivator, and being an excellent communicator.

This graphic is a great starting point for coming up with your list.

9 Traits of a Sales Leader | The Sales Hunter

Keep in mind that you’ll also want to consider cultural fit and what type of personality will mesh the best with your existing sales team. Once you’ve got a tangible list of traits ironed out, the rest of the hiring process should be a lot easier. This brings us to the next step in the process.

Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

Based on the information you’ve generated from identifying critical traits (which you can think of as a rough draft), use it to create a fully fleshed-out ideal candidate profile. The more detailed the better, as it will provide a clear template to draw from when later assessing sales leader candidates for a position.

Along with the attributes I discussed earlier, some elements to include in your ideal candidate profile can include:

  • Education
  • Selling and leadership experience
  • Industry experience
  • Candidate demographic
  • Location
  • Hard skills
  • Soft Skills

One thing I’d like to point out here is that some sales recruiters get too hung up on looking for candidates with industry experience that they miss out on potentially A+ talent. I’ve found that, in many cases, candidates with proven sales and leadership abilities can make for excellent hires even if they don’t necessarily have direct industry experience. My philosophy is that it’s easier to train on products than it is on sales and leadership.

So this is something to keep in mind if you find a candidate who looks promising but lacks direct industry experience. Check out this article for more info.

Build Your Talent Pipeline

Now that you have a clear idea of the type of candidate you want to be your first sales leader, it’s time to build a talent pipeline to help you procure a true rockstar. There are several ways to go about this, including:

  • Recruitment marketing on job boards
  • Paid advertising on search engines and social media
  • Recruiting internally
  • Getting referrals from current employees
  • Email newsletters
  • Engaging passive candidates

Like any other aspect of sales recruiting, building a talent pipeline will likely require trial and error until you find the right formula. A great way to streamline this part of recruiting is to use a platform like HireDNA.

HireDNA used powerful technology that identifies and engages both active and passive candidates that match your ideal candidate profile, allowing you to cast the widest possible net with maximum efficiency. With it, you can tap into a national network of experienced sales recruiters to quickly fill your pipeline.

So if you’re struggling in this area, using a platform like HireDNA can be a huge help.

Screen and Assess Candidates

At this point, you should know the critical traits you’re looking for in a sales leader, have developed an ideal candidate profile, and have a talent pipeline in place. And that’s half the battle. Now, it’s time to screen candidates and evaluate them based on your specific criteria to find the right fit for your unique selling environment.

Given how overwhelming this phase can be, I usually suggest using technology to streamline it to A) save time and B) increase your odds of success. One way to go about this is by using an applicant tracking system (ATS) to filter through candidates and organize them so you can narrow your talent pool down to the best of the best. G2 has a great resource that covers some of the top applicant tracking systems.

Another way is to use HireDNA to screen and assess candidates using data and science to better predict the likelihood of success. This looks at numerous core competencies like motivation and desire to determine the top candidates for a sales leadership role to ensure you’re never “going on a hunch,” but rather making assessments based on concrete data.

To save even more time, HireDNA delivers qualified candidates right to your inbox for maximum convenience.

Interview and Hire

From this point, the heavy lifting is done. Now it’s just a matter of shortlisting the cream of the crop and interviewing the candidates that check the right boxes.

Note that interviewing for your first sales leader position will likely look a little different than if you were interviewing for a regular sales rep position and will be more extensive. Venture capital firm Stage 2 Capital suggests conducting two interviews, with the first being with your CEO/founder and marketing leader.

Then, if they pass their first round, the second interview will be a group meeting with your sales team and executive team and another with your CEO/founder.

This, of course, may not be the exact formula you want to take, but I think this is a good template to borrow from. And you can always refine your strategy later on when you hire again.

Finding the Perfect First Sales Leader

A sales leader is a pivotal position, and whoever you hire will have a ripple effect throughout the rest of your company. So you want to get it right. By taking a strategic approach as I’ve outlined above, you can methodically move through the process to ensure a strong candidate pool and narrow it down until you have a winner.

To learn more about how HireDNA can help you find sales leaders and schedule a live demo, reach out to us today.

Over Half of Salespeople Will Take a Pay Cut for Increased Flexibility: How to Attract Top Sales Reps When You Can’t Win the Bidding War

Posted on by hiredna

Sales recruiting is hard. When you combine a global talent supply shortage, younger professionals shying away from the sales industry, and increasing competition, it’s not easy to attract top sales reps. This is especially true if you’re a fledgling startup and simply don’t have the financial power to pay big salaries.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround that can help you snag A+ talent without having to shell out big bucks. And it all boils down to one thing — flexibility. Allow me to explain.

Sales Rep Salary Outlook

A few months ago, I wrote an article about sales rep salary in 2022 that discussed how much today’s salespeople earn on average. In it, I mentioned that the annual median salary is around $62,000. However, more talented individuals can earn closer to $90,000 per year.

And when you look at the overall trajectory of salesperson salary moving forward, it’s clear it’s not slowing down any time soon.

While keeping up with salary growth may not be a big deal for well-established companies with deep pockets and plenty of clout, it’s not always easy for smaller businesses that are just getting their footing. So if your company is closer to the latter and you can’t afford to write huge paychecks, you need to get creative in order to attract top sales reps.

This leads me to the crux of this article.

How to Attract Top Sales Reps with Increased Flexibility

While there are numerous strategies for winning the talent war without paying more, one of the most realistic is to create a more flexible workplace that helps salespeople establish a healthy work/life balance. According to a recent PwC study about the future of recruiting, they found “slightly over half (51%) of sales reps would forgo higher salaries for more flexibility. That’s even higher among women (53%) and those who have been in the workforce longer (56%).”

More specifically, sales reps are willing to give up to 12% of their salary to have great flexibility.

And there’s plenty of other data that echoes the same sentiment. In fact, a recent hybrid working study by the Harvard Business Review said “59% of respondents reported that ‘flexibility’ is more important to them than salary or other benefits.” By these numbers, it’s clear that offering more flexibility can be an effective way to level the playing field when you can’t offer as high of a salary as other companies.

What Types of Workplace Flexibility Are Most Effective?

There are two main types of arrangements that can create a more flexible workplace.

First, there’s telecommuting where salespeople can work from home or on the road either full-time or part-time. With COVID basically forcing businesses to embrace contactless communication within themselves and with their customers, telecommuting has rapidly evolved in a short period of time. That’s why it’s something to heavily consider adapting in at least some capacity if you haven’t done so already.

Fortunately, with an abundance of cutting-edge software available for nearly every industry, telecommuting is easier than ever. A sales management system, for example, allows you to automate workflows, assign leads to sales reps, track KPIs, and more. A video conferencing platform like Zoom allows for high-quality sales calls, group meetings, and sales demos. And project management software like Asana and Trello makes it easy to break large projects down and monitor them from conception to completion. You can get a ton of helpful information on managing a remote workforce in this previous article we wrote.

Second, there’s flexible scheduling, which according to the SHRM, can include the following arrangements:

  • Flextime
  • Compressed workweek
  • Shift work
  • Part-time schedules
  • Job sharing

While it can, admittedly, create scheduling conflicts, and you need to look at it from every angle before letting salespeople work whatever schedule they want, flexible scheduling can be highly effective for attracting top talent. It’s just a matter of figuring out what will realistically work for your company. Also, it will likely take some trial-and-error before you get it just right. But with a bit of refinement, flexible scheduling has the potential to work well for your company.

Note that flexible scheduling can create some challenges from a legal perspective. Managing benefits, workers’ compensation, and independent contractor classification, for example, can become more difficult when you’re not operating with a traditional full-time work week. That’s why you’ll need to fully consider all the legal implications before making any official changes.

This resource from the SHRM is extremely helpful for this and highlights everything to take into consideration before implementing flexible scheduling.

Looking Beyond Salary to Attract Top Sales Reps

Let’s be real. Salary is important. At the end of the day, talented salespeople will always want to be paid well. But it’s not the only factor that determines who they choose to work with.

Workplace flexibility has become increasingly important for many salespeople, and that’s not a trend that’s likely to end any time soon. While this won’t guarantee you’ll get every rockstar you want, it can definitely put your company on the radar of more talented reps and help get your foot in the door when you can’t afford to pay a big salary.

Find out how HireDNA can help you get a steady pipeline of pre-screened, qualified sales candidates to grow your team and thrive within your industry. HireDNA can cut your hiring time in half, and 92% of recommended candidates become sales leaders within their first year.