Tag: SALES RECRUITING

The Impact of Compensation Structure on SaaS Sales Recruitment

Posted on by Nick Mann

There are several factors that SaaS sales reps consider when looking for a job, including career development opportunities, working environment, benefits, and company culture. But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, compensation is still number one for many reps. Therefore, compensation structure will greatly impact your SaaS sales recruitment.

In this article, I’ll break down the specifics regarding the impact of compensation structure and offer recent data on how much salespeople earn on average.

Attract Top SaaS Sales Talent

According to the 2022 Salesforce State of Sales report, “The top reasons sales professionals want to leave their jobs include unrealistic sales targets and uncompetitive pay and benefits.” Although money isn’t everything, there’s no denying that it’s a major factor, if not THE main factor for SaaS salespeople when considering which company to work for.

If you want to attract the true superstars of your industry, you’ll need an enticing compensation structure. Later I’ll provide a breakdown of what companies pay on average so you’ll have a benchmark for reference. But for now, know that the salary you offer top SaaS sales candidates will heavily impact your ability to bring them on board.

Motivate SaaS Salespeople

Not only does a solid compensation structure help attract top talent, it also plays an instrumental role in motivating them to perform at their best. I think this quote from the Revenue Operations Alliance says it perfectly.

“Poor compensation is a major contributor to sales rep turnover. If you don’t nail your approach to compensation, you may be at risk of losing your top talent. Rewarding your sales team with competitive pay and setting them realistic quotas, keeps them happy and motivated to perform. If quotas are too high, you risk demotivating your reps.”

Just put yourself in the shoes of an elite rep for a second. If they know they’re getting paid fairly and have incentives like bonuses and other rewards for going above and beyond, they’ll be far more motivated than if they were getting paid below average with zero incentives. And if they work for a company that pays better than most competitors and offers robust bonuses and rewards, the rep will likely push themself even further.

Conversely, if they receive less than average pay with little to no bonus opportunities, you’re likely to get only the bare minimum from them. This classic scene from the movie Office Space comes to mind here.

Drive Revenue Growth

When you’re able to 1) attract top SaaS sales talent and 2) keep them consistently motivated to perform at their best, an inevitable result in most cases is increased revenue.

As we’ve discussed, well-paid sales reps are more likely to go the extra mile. In turn, this can translate into a host of benefits, including:

  • Alignment with company goals
  • Not only reaching but exceeding sales targets
  • More closed deals
  • Improved customer relationships to set the stage for upselling and repeat purchases
  • Better collaboration with other salespeople, as well as with other company departments

When you look at it from this perspective, investing more in a salesperson’s salary can pay off in the long run. Although you may spend more upfront, the revenue spike you’ll likely will often justify it.

Retain Sales Reps

And let’s not forget one of the most critical elements for building a successful SaaS company — retention. Obviously, retaining customers is huge for gaining momentum. But it’s also extremely important to retain your salespeople, especially top performers.

This starts by offering a strong salary structure to begin with. But experts say it’s also important to offer periodic salary increases. In fact, “59% of professionals polled believe that salary increases are the most effective tool in retaining top talent.” It’s also worth noting that “26% consider bonuses to be the primary mechanism.”

Ideally, you’ll lay a strong foundation by offering new SaaS salespeople fair or better-than-average pay. And over time, with good performance, you’ll steadily increase their salary and offer bonuses along the way.

How Much Should You Pay Your SaaS Salespeople?

Now that we’ve established why having the right compensation structure is important, let’s discuss the question you’re probably wondering right now. How much should you pay your SaaS salespeople?

This is a topic we covered in-depth in this article, which contains a ton of great 2023. Here are the highlights to give you a basic idea of what most companies are paying their SaaS sales reps.

According to data from Comparably, the US average in 2023 was $109,335, which was the highest of the three sources I analyzed.

Glassdoor had a slightly lower number at $108,003.

And ZipRecruiter had the national average considerably lower at $82,141 per year.

After crunching these numbers, the overall average between the three sources was $99,826 a year. While there are numerous factors like location, company size, and employee experience that will impact how much a SaaS salesperson should get paid, I feel that around $100,000 a year is a pretty good baseline number.

Note that those in the SaaS industry tend to get paid more than other salespeople due to the level of expertise, training, and tech savviness they need to possess. So that’s something to take into consideration. If you’re looking for a practical guide on how to set up a compensation structure for your SaaS company, I suggest this one from HubSpot.

The Importance of a Strong Compensation Structure

To recap, having the right compensation structure can help you attract top talent, motivate your reps, drive revenue growth, and boost employee retention. Beyond that, it plays a vital role in the overall longevity of your SaaS company and in building brand equity. The bottom line is that you want to find the sweet spot where you pay SaaS salespeople enough without throwing money away by going overboard.

If you’re looking to level up your SaaS recruiting to find sales reps who check all the right boxes, try our Hiring Readiness Assessment. Improve screening accuracy, reduce hiring mistakes, and turn your sales hiring into a well-oiled machine.

83% of Sales Candidates Want a Clear Hiring Timeline: Here’s How to Give it to Them

Posted on by Nick Mann

Put yourself in a sales candidate’s shoes for a second. The average person is eager to find a sales position and ready to start ASAP. They’re also likely facing a lot of uncertainty that could make them anxious. The last thing they want is any vagueness with the hiring process.

In fact, this could easily result in them jumping at another sales position, where you lose out on top-tier talent to a competitor. A simple way to avoid this problem is to provide sales candidates with a clear hiring timeline so they know exactly what to expect.

Why It’s Important to Have a Clear Hiring Timeline

Almost everyone knows what it’s like to be in job search mode. I know I do.

You’re busy sending out resumes and cover letters, filling out applications, and corresponding with hiring managers. There’s a lot going on.

When you find a prospective employer that looks promising, your goal is to quickly build rapport and swiftly move through the hiring process. From initial screenings to interviews to follow-up conversations to ultimately getting an offer and beginning onboarding, you want to navigate through this sequence of steps seamlessly.

But what if you find what seems like an amazing employer but they have absolutely no transparency in terms of what to expect with the hiring process? This can be incredibly frustrating, and many would-be superstar salespeople may be lost because of it.

Having a clear hiring timeline is essential because this provides the structure that lets sales candidates know for certain what’s about to happen. And this is something that most people crave, with research finding that “83% of candidates prefer having a clear timeline of the hiring process.”

But it goes deeper than that and is beneficial for your hiring team as well. This quote from ClearCompany summarizes it perfectly.

“Without a hiring timeline, you’re essentially creating a new process every time you hire. You can’t tell candidates — or your internal teams — when a decision will be made. Everyone, including your recruiting team, is in the dark. That’s frustrating for employees and candidates alike.”

With that said, here’s a straightforward strategy for giving sales candidates the clear hiring timeline they seek.

Outline the Sequences of Your Hiring Stages

First, you’ll need to articulate the exact series of steps involved in your sales hiring process. This can look slightly different from company to company, but here are two examples that you can build your outline around.

This one is quite simple and involves five basic steps.

  1. Verify a candidate’s information
  2. Interview them
  3. Evaluate their skills
  4. Perform employment verification
  5. Make your hiring decision

The other example is a little more involved with additional steps, but it should provide a thorough hiring process that increases your chances of finding the ideal sales candidate.

I suggest spending some time looking at these two examples and considering any other steps that are unique to your hiring and fleshing out a concrete process. Also, be sure to include roughly how long each step will take so that candidates and your sales hiring team know.

For example, you may mention that candidates can expect to hear back from you within three days after conducting an assessment test to schedule an interview.

Keep in mind that you can (and probably should) make changes as time goes on. But this should serve as a solid first draft so you can be on the same page with sales candidates. This brings us to our next point.

Provide an Overview of the Hiring Timeline to Sales Candidates

Once you’ve got a finished product, you’ll want to type up a tangible outline that you can give to sales candidates, as well as your hiring team. Here’s a simple example that I came up with off the top of my head.

Application Review and Screening1 week
Initial Phone Interviews3 days
In-Person or Video Interviews3 days
Reference/Background Check3 days
Offer and Negotiation1 week
Onboarding2 weeks

Notice that this not only shows the precise sequence of steps that will occur in the hiring timeline but also the approximate length of time with each step. And in the spirit of underpromising and overdelivering — which I find to be highly important in hiring and business in general — it’s best to give yourself some wiggle room with dates.

For instance, it would be better to tell candidates to expect it to take a week to receive an offer after conducting a reference/background check and it only takes five days to get back to them rather than promising three days and it taking you five.

In terms of the tools for creating a clear hiring timeline, a basic spreadsheet should be sufficient. However, you can find free, customizable templates here that have stronger aesthetics.

Track Progress and Make Adjustments

After you’ve identified the hiring timeline, created a tangible outline, and started implementing it, be sure to track your progress and measure the results.

Here are some specific quantitative KPIs to look at:

  • Time to fill
  • Time to hire
  • Interview-to-offer ratio
  • Offer acceptance rate
  • Quality of hire
  • Cost per hire
  • Employee retention

It’s also important to dive into qualitative metrics that rely less on numerical data and more on feedback. Mainly, I suggest getting direct candidate input on what their experience is like so you can identify pain points to fix. It’s also smart to get direct input from your hiring team to see how satisfied they are with the process and what could be improved.

Optimizing Sales Recruiting with a Clear Hiring Timeline

Given that 83% of sales candidates like having a clear hiring timeline it’s definitely worth your time to provide them with one. And it’s really not that complicated and only involves three steps.

Outline your hiring stages. Provide a concrete overview of those stages to sales candidates and your hiring team. Make ongoing improvements as you gather data.

Do that, and you should be on your way to creating an amazing sales candidate experience, which should result in more quality hires, increased ROI, and greater retention.

If you’re looking to eliminate weaknesses in your sales recruiting, try out our Hiring Readiness Assessment. It can help lower your recruiting costs, expedite your time to fill, and dramatically reduce poor hires.

How Optimized Sales Recruiting Can Shorten Your Hiring Cycle By 60% 

Posted on by Nick Mann

The average time to hire in 2023 was 44 days, with research finding that the process is harder than ever. While you never want to cut corners and risk the quality of the salespeople you hire, it’s important to shorten your hiring cycle as much as possible. According to a 2024 study, the best way to accomplish this is with optimized sales recruiting, which can shorten your hiring cycle by 60%.

For perspective, if it normally takes your recruiting team 44 days to make a hire, that number would be slashed to around 17 days. For this post, I’ll unpack the three main strategies to establish optimized sales recruiting based on the 2024 study referenced above.

Refine Your Job Posting

Sales recruiters tend to run into one of two problems with job postings. They either bring in too many unqualified candidates, which creates delays as they have to sift through a bloated candidate pool. Or they don’t bring in enough qualified candidates, which means they have to make revisions and spend more time chasing down additional candidates.

Ideally, you’ll find the sweet spot, where you drive a sizable volume of qualified candidates, which you can quickly narrow down into the best of the best. But how do you do this?

Here are some suggestions:

  • Use clean job post formatting that’s easy to read
  • Include must-have requirements in a job posting
  • Be transparent about salary
  • Be clear about your company’s values and culture
  • Offer employee testimonials

Another hack is to include a specific keyword toward the end of your job description. When applying, ask candidates to mention the keyword to prove they read the entire job description.

Remove Candidate Application Obstacles

Let’s say a qualified candidate has found your job posting, checked out your brand, and is ready to apply. But once they start the application process they quickly sour because they encounter frustrating obstacles — mainly the application being overly lengthy or complicated.

This is an issue that’s far too common. In fact, one study even found that as many as 60% of talented salespeople ditch an application because it’s too long or complex. Because more than half of would-be candidates never enter the candidate pool because of the application process, this is a low-hanging fruit that most sales recruiters need to assess.

We wrote an entire article on how to simplify the job application process, which you can find here. But some of the highlights include:

  • Keeping the entire process under five minutes
  • Avoiding having multiple steps where candidates have to fill out several pages or forms
  • Avoiding requesting excessive, unnecessary data
  • Avoiding asking a candidate to create an account to apply
  • Having autofill to instantly populate an application with sales candidate info

Also, keep tabs on the functionality of your application, ensuring pages load quickly and there are no glitches that are creating disruptions.

Outline the Hiring Process

The final strategy stated by the 2024 study to reduce your hiring cycle by up to 60% was clearly outlining the hiring process so candidates know exactly what to expect. Not only does this set the right expectations with sales candidates right from the start and create a better overall experience, it also helps your recruiting team because it provides you with a consistent roadmap so you can move through the process more efficiently.

Below is a simple example of what a hiring process outline may look like. Note that this is an arbitrary example and doesn’t specifically involve the sales industry. However, it does a great job of showing what a concise overview should look like.

Use Analytics to Pinpoint Specific Areas to Improve

Like most areas of business, succeeding with sales recruiting requires making data-driven decisions. Even the most airtight sales recruiting process has some type of weakness, and analytics will help you find it. That’s why I suggest using a recruitment analytics platform to make a thorough assessment of your process.

While you can figure out a lot on your own, this provides full transparency that lets you see the big picture. For example, you can see:

  • The total number of candidates you’re getting
  • How many days it takes on average to fill a position
  • How many days to the first interview
  • Which sources are generating the most candidates
  • Which devices candidates are using

Here’s a real-life example of what the main dashboard looks like for recruitment analytics platform Talentech.

This is extremely helpful for getting an overarching view of what’s happening. It should also help you identify any issues that are getting in the way. For instance, maybe you’re spending a lot of time and money on a particular source for driving candidates but it’s only having a minimal impact. In that case, you would want to reevaluate your strategy and potentially pivot, where you double-down on a different source that’s having a bigger impact.

I also like that Talentech has a candidate quality score, which gives you a quantifiable number of what percentage of candidates possess the qualities you’re looking for.

Keep in mind that this is just one platform, and there are numerous options available, each with different strengths and features. The bottom line is that if you haven’t been using recruitment analytics up until this point, it’s definitely worth considering, as it can improve nearly all aspects of the recruiting process.

Drastically Reducing Time-to-Hire with Optimized Sales Recruiting

Hiring Readiness Assessment

Sluggish, inefficient sales recruiting can be toxic to your company, as it can put a strain on your workforce, lower morale, and increase turnover. Therefore, developing a game plan for optimized sales recruiting should be a top priority.

Some of the best ways to do that are to improve your job posting, remove application obstacles, clearly outline the hiring process, and use analytics to eliminate problem areas. Do that effectively, and you can shorten your hiring cycle by as much as 60%.

When it comes to recruiting elite sales talent, try the Objective Management Group sales assessment. It’s designed to help you find rockstar candidates who will thrive in your unique sales environment and keep turnover to a minimum.

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

Posted on by Nick Mann

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

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

Volume of Candidates Per Source

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

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

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

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

Screening Assessment Completion and Pass Rate

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

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

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

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

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

Number of Qualified Candidates Per Source

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

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

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

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

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

Interview Acceptance Rate

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

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

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

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

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

Source to Hire Rate

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

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

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

Keeping Your Sales Candidate Sourcing and Screening Going Strong

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

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

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

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From Startup to Enterprise: Strategies for Scaling Your Sales Team

Posted on by Nick Mann

Regardless of the industry or the products sold, the end goal of nearly all businesses can be boiled down into one word — growth. You want to go from a fledgling startup just finding its footing to a profitable, well-established company with a solid slice of the market. While countless factors contribute to achieving this growth, a big one is effectively scaling your sales team.

Unfortunately, the odds for new startups aren’t great, as only 10% succeed in successfully scaling their business. However, if you can get it right, you should be well-positioned, because businesses that successfully scale up see an average revenue increase of 40-60%.

On that note, here’s a step-by-step process you can follow to scale your sales team and go from startup to enterprise.

Build a Strong Technological Infrastructure

Whether your sales team is 100% in-house, 100% remote, or a hybrid, you need the right tech stack. This helps your teams do their jobs more efficiently, be more productive, collaborate better, and provide the best possible customer experience.

When you’re at the initial startup stages, it’s crucial that you build a strong technological foundation from the start — one that meets your current needs as you gain initial momentum and one that’s capable of growing along with you over the years.

While the specific needs of each business can vary, some of the primary types of tech you usually need are a CRM platform, meeting and demo scheduling software, customer engagement tools, resource management software, and something for handling proposals and contracts. To simplify things, here’s a table that breaks down popular options for each category by each stage of growth.

Develop a Sales Talent Pipeline

Let’s be honest. Turnover is going to happen.

Studies have found that the average sales turnover rate can be as high as 35%, which is nearly three times the average for all professions at around 13%.

Like it or not, sales is an inherently high-turnover career. No matter how great your company is to work for and how far you go to retain top talent, unfortunately, turnover is going to happen. Without a process in place to “reload” when salespeople leave, scaling your sales team is going to be an uphill battle.

That’s why it’s so important to develop a streamlined system that allows you to quickly replace lost reps with talented new ones. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t work diligently to reduce turnover and twiddle your thumbs while rockstar reps walk out. But you should have a realistic game plan in place when salespeople inevitably leave at some point.

I find the best way to do this is to build a talent pipeline through techniques like:

  • Enhancing your brand
  • Creating a dedicated careers page on your website
  • Building your social media presence
  • Creating an employee referral program

We actually wrote an entire blog post that discusses the concept of a sales talent pipeline in detail, which you can find here. That’s a great starting point and can help you get the ball rolling.

Leverage Sales Automation

One of the biggest drains on a salesperson’s time is non-selling activities like handling emails and inputting customer data. These tasks can be tedious and time-consuming and take away from a rep’s ability to focus on more important activities like engaging with leads and closing deals.

What’s crazy is that Salesforce reports that “sales reps spend 66% of their time on non-selling activities.” And “in light of these responsibilities, 57% of reps expect to miss their quota.”

Needless to say, if your sales team is bogged down with burdensome, redundant tasks like these, it’s going to minimize their impact. And long term, this can be extremely detrimental to scaling your sales team and growing your business.

Fortunately, there are a ton of repetitive tasks that can be largely automated without skipping a beat.

Here are some examples.

  • Automated email reply tools
  • Automated data entry on CRM platforms
  • Lead scoring tools to automatically score leads
  • Online meeting scheduling software that allows leads to set up meetings

If you haven’t been using sales automation yet, now is the perfect time to get on board.

Stop Wasting Time on Unqualified Leads

One major hindrance to closing deals and business growth is sending unqualified leads to your sales team. And this is a bigger issue than you may think, considering that one study found that only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales.

While the definition of a qualified vs. unqualified lead can vary, for simplicity’s sake, I’m referring to “qualified” leads as sales qualified leads (SQLs), which “have been qualified, vetted, and expressed intent to engage in a sales cycle.”

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs), on the other hand, are more likely to buy than other leads but are still higher up in the sales funnel in either the awareness or interest stage. MQLs may become SQLs in the future, but they’re not scorching hot and likely still need some nurturing before being passed off to sales.

By having a clear understanding of which leads are SQLs and which are MQLs, you’ll be in a much better position to supply your sales team with the best of the best leads. In turn, this makes their jobs easier, and they can make more conversions, which should help grow your business quicker.

The question is, “How do you effectively qualify leads?”

It usually starts with creating your ideal customer profile (ICP), so you have a clear understanding of who you want to send to sales. And, as I touched on earlier, lead scoring tools can be incredibly helpful for objectively assessing a lead’s odds of buying through quantifiable data.

A simple example would be assigning points based on actions like visiting your pricing page, opening an email, and downloading content.

While this doesn’t always tell the entire story, it’s a reliable way of giving each lead a score so you know who’s ready to be sent to sales and who still needs nurturing.

Scaling Your Sales Team From the Ground Up

Confidently scaling your sales team and growing your business requires a well-defined, systematic process that you can build upon as you go. Although every company’s game plan will look a little different, the strategies outlined above should cover the essentials and spark noticeable, sustained growth.

When it comes to finding top talent to add to your sales force, HireDNA can be a huge help. It uses a data-driven, scientific approach to finding elite salespeople that can take your business to the next level. Register today and build an all-star team with HireDNA.

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Evaluating Cultural Fit in SaaS Sales Recruiting: Beyond the Resume

Posted on by Nick Mann

Skillset, industry experience, a proven track record, communication. These are some of the main factors SaaS sales recruiters look at when assessing candidates. And they’re all incredibly important. But there’s another vital factor that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves — cultural fit.

What is Cultural Fit?

This refers to how well a SaaS sales candidate fits in with your team from a cultural standpoint and can include sharing the same goals, values, attitudes, and working style. When someone is a good cultural fit it increases the chances of them meshing well with your existing team for better collaboration and overall harmony within your organization.

Conversely, if someone isn’t a good cultural fit it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. If their goals, values, attitudes, etc., don’t align with the rest of your teams, there’s almost guaranteed to be friction right from the start.

Here are a few stats that shed light on the importance of cultural fit.

While choosing someone who’s a good cultural fit doesn’t guarantee success, it’s extremely important for retention and profitability. In fact, “The result of poor culture fit due to turnover can cost an organization between 50-60% of the person’s annual salary,” Forbes reports. When this happens at scale it can quickly erode your overall foundation.

With that said, here’s a straightforward way to evaluate cultural fit in SaaS sales recruiting to drastically increase your odds of making the right hire.

Write a Job Description That Reflects Your Company’s Culture

Technically, the first step is to define your company culture. But assuming you already know that, the first thing to do is ensure any job description you write clearly reflects what you’re looking for in a salesperson in terms of culture.

For instance, you may want to mention what your specific values are, what your day-to-day work environment is like, and what’s important for being successful in a role. Here’s a real-life example from Google where they mention their ideal salespeople have experience working and learning in a fast-moving, dynamic environment and have a passion for using Google products.

Making it clear what your culture is from the start should reduce the number of poor-fitting candidates who apply and save you time when narrowing down your candidate pool.

Create Cultural Fit Interview Questions

Perhaps the most crucial step in the process is asking SaaS sales candidates the right questions that specifically target cultural fit. Generally, this should consist of around five or so questions that allow you to gauge this with a reasonable amount of objectivity.

Here are some examples of basic questions to ask:

  • What’s your ideal working environment?
  • What are your core goals and values?
  • What’s your preferred management style?
  • Do you work better independently or as part of a team?
  • What motivates you to make sales?
  • What do you feel you need to succeed in a SaaS sales position?

And here’s a more detailed list that focuses on behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and assumptions.

To ensure consistency, you’ll want to ask the same questions to every candidate you interview.

Compare a Candidate’s Answers with Your Culture

With each response, pay close attention to how well it fits in with your company’s culture. For instance, if being able to work well collaboratively as part of a group is critical to succeeding in your SaaS sales role, you would likely want a candidate who works better as part of a team rather than independently.

Or if some of your core values are passion, teamwork, and continual improvement, you would want a candidate’s responses to be similar. Just be sure that whoever handles recruiting understands what you’re looking for and listens for cues during their interactions.

Pay Attention to Personality and Character

Another part of the process is a bit trickier to analyze and isn’t something that can be done quantitatively. But paying attention to personality and character during interactions, from initial outreach, to interview scheduling, to the interview itself, is a great opportunity to assess cultural fit as well.

For example, during the first few moments when you’re meeting with a candidate and having a casual conversation, use it to get a feel for what their natural demeanor is like and if they seem like someone who would get along with your existing team.

Are they polite and courteous? Do they conduct themselves professionally? Are they a smooth conversationalist?

These are just a few things to consider during casual conversation and can add to the rest of the input you get from previous steps to determine overall cultural fit.

Be Careful of Bias

One last thing to note is that you should always be aware of the potential for bias and not let that cloud your judgment. While it’s impossible to eliminate bias 100%, it’s something that can be largely reduced by simply being aware of it.

Also, it’s helpful to get feedback from multiple team members when making the final hiring decision. I find that this tends to provide a clearer perspective on how good of a cultural fit a candidate is, and you’re less likely to fall into the bias trap when you get the opinions of multiple people.

Let’s Recap

One area of SaaS sales recruiting that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves is cultural fit. While it may not be quite as important as skillset and experience, it plays a significant role in how likely someone is to mesh with your team. To avoid premature turnover and other complications, it’s worthwhile to make assessing cultural fit part of your hiring process.

That way, whoever you hire should truly check all the boxes, and it greatly increases the odds of things working out for both parties.

If you’re looking to make your SaaS sales recruiting more accurate and predictive to find the best of the best talent, check out the Objective Management Group sales assessment. It can be fully customized to your unique selling environment, and 92% of candidates recommended by it go on to reach the top half of the sales force.

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Building a Sales Talent Pipeline: Long-Term Strategies for Recruitment

Posted on by Nick Mann

Finding and retaining quality sales talent is a constant challenge. Even with all of your ducks in a row, you’ll inevitably encounter issues at some point. Therefore, it’s not enough to be reactive with your recruiting, where you find yourself scrambling to fill a position. You need to be proactive and build a sales talent pipeline to ensure you have a steady stream of qualified candidates at all times.

In this post, I’ll highlight what I’ve found to be the most effective and practical strategies for developing a sales talent pipeline so that you don’t find yourself in a bind.

Show Sales Candidates Why They Should Choose You

Before doing anything else, it’s important to show sales candidates that your company is the one they want to work for.

  • What makes your company stand out above your competitors?
  • What makes it special?
  • Why should sales professionals want to develop their careers with you?

These are just a few questions you should answer for candidates so that when you pique their interest they’ll want to take the next step and apply with you. There’s a lot that goes into this, but it starts by striving to improve your company culture and focusing on reputation management.

Create a Dedicated Careers Page

In the past, very few companies had a dedicated careers page, and it was typically reserved for larger enterprises with deep pockets. But I’ve noticed a significant increase in recent years, where a growing number of small and mid-sized companies are now using this strategy as well.

I like a dedicated careers page for two main reasons. First, it actively recruits for you. Through search engine queries, sales candidates can find your company, learn more about you, and apply. It basically acts as an automated recruiting funnel.

Rather than having to post on multiple job boards every time you need to fill a position, sales candidates can come to you. Take SaaS productivity and note-taking company Notion for example. Their careers page is set up so candidates can find them through search engines, social media, and other digital outlets.

And after landing on that page, candidates can get a basic overview,…

…learn about Notion’s story,…

…and check out open sales positions.

So if you haven’t gotten around to creating a dedicated careers page yet, I highly suggest doing so. Here’s a basic guide for getting started.

Improve Your Social Media Presence

Another way to build brand equity while simultaneously funneling candidates into your sales talent pipeline is by going all in on your social media. By this, I don’t mean simply slapping up an occasional post on Facebook. I’m talking about putting together a full-scale campaign that targets consumers, as well as sales candidates.

Let’s look at Notion again for an example. They have an impressive social media presence, with 324k followers on Instagram, 267k subscribers on YouTube, and 551k followers on LinkedIn.

On their LinkedIn page, users can learn about their company, check out their LinkedIn posts (something that establishes thought leadership), see what employee life is like at Notion, and look at recent job openings.

From there, users can learn more about job opportunities and apply directly from LinkedIn.

Through this social media campaign, Notion can build their reputation while seamlessly connecting with professional sales candidates. It’s baked right into their campaign.

And while you can’t necessarily expect to build a following quite this size, it shows how social media kills two birds with one stone and can send a steady stream of sales candidates coming your way.

Encourage Referrals

You may already know that salesperson referrals can have a big impact. To quantify:

  • “Referred employees are 18% more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.”
  • “Referral hires are 40% more likely to be retained after one year than non-referral hires.”
  • “$7,500 is the amount of money saved in productivity and sourcing costs when hiring a referral.”

Besides massively increasing salesperson satisfaction and retention and decreasing costs, referrals are also an excellent way to build a sales talent pipeline.

So at the very least, I suggest encouraging your existing salespeople to send vetted candidates your way. Even if you don’t need to make a hire right away, this will provide you with a list of candidate profiles that you’ll have at your fingertips whenever a position does open.

And if you want to go all in, you can create an employee referral program, which you can learn about here.

Offer Career Development Opportunities

Finally, hiring from within can ensure you always have a short list of top-tier candidates at the ready for mid and upper-level positions. While this won’t necessarily help with hiring entry-level sales reps, it’s perfect when hiring for more advanced positions and gives you access to salespeople you know and trust.

And here’s the kicker. Salespeople who are hired from within stay an average of 41% longer than those who are hired from outside. Further, 69% of companies who hire internally say they’re able to bring those team members to a positive state more quickly.

Not to mention, salespeople who have a legitimate opportunity to climb the ranks tend to work harder and be more invested in their jobs than those who don’t. By taking a hiring-from-within approach to recruiting, you not only have immediate access to high-quality salespeople, it also helps strengthen your overall culture at the same time, for the ultimate win-win.

Building a Strong Sales Talent Pipeline From the Ground Up

While it’s impossible to never feel hiring stress, constructing a sales talent pipeline in the way we discussed here can dramatically lower your chances of running into issues. Instead of waiting until someone leaves or you need to scale up, having processes in place should ensure you always have access to a pool of amazing candidates.

Speaking of amazing candidates, register with HireDNA today to use our all-in-solution to attract, recruit, and retain the best of the best.

The First 90 Days: A Blueprint for New Hire Retention Success

Posted on by Nick Mann

The first 90 days after hiring a new salesperson are make or break. Make them feel welcome, get them up-to-speed quickly with efficient onboarding, and help them build team connections, and you stand a much greater chance of new hire retention.

On the other hand, failing to check these boxes can put them at far greater risk of premature turnover. Poor onboarding in particular is problematic, as 80% of new hires who receive lackluster onboarding say they plan to quit soon.

In this post, I’ll offer a simple blueprint for the first 90 days of a new salesperson’s tenure so you can get them plugged into your team, equip them for success, and dramatically increase new hire retention.

Create a Welcome Package

First impressions are everything. If you go out of your way to make a new sales rep feel welcome and quickly get their bearings, it sets a positive tone moving forward.

One of the best ways to do this is by creating a standard welcome package for every new hire, which “is a collection of paperwork, resources, information, and welcome items.” Here are some common things you may want to include:

  • A welcome letter
  • Team member directory
  • Office and parking lot layout information
  • An overview of your company culture
  • WiFi login info
  • Workplace policies
  • Recommended local restaurants and shops

You may also want to include some gifts like company apparel, books, or a gift card to get started out on the right foot. Here’s an example of what Salesforce includes in its welcome package.

For a detailed overview of how to create your own custom welcome package, I suggest reading this post from HR software company Eddy.

Offer Structured, Phased Onboarding

Research has found that “organizations with strong employee onboarding can increase retention by 82%.” However, a large number of today’s companies (36%) lack a structured onboarding process.

These numbers tell us that, by default, optimizing your onboarding process should put your brand in the top two-thirds, and there should be a tangible impact on retention. More specifically, it’s best to develop a structured onboarding system that moves in phases, allowing salespeople to gradually grow and build their skills without overwhelming them.

Here’s a simple example of what it may look like where phases are broken down into 30-day increments.

During the first 30 days, there’s a focus on the basics like understanding your company’s mission, learning the ins and outs of products, and identifying priorities. From 30 – 60 days, a rep is expected to gain three new accounts and manage three existing accounts. And from 60 – 90 days, a rep prepares for mid-level accounts, builds on their product knowledge, and so on.

Again, this is an oversimplified version of onboarding, but it shows how having a clearly defined system that lays the groundwork for incremental progress can help get a salesperson firing on all cylinders.

Have Routine Check-Ins

Whether it’s keeping tabs on a new salesperson’s progress, answering questions or concerns, or just chatting about their overall experience, maintaining a clear line of communication should go a long way in helping a rep reach their full potential while also providing a positive experience. This is especially important during the first 30 days when a person is just learning the ropes and should help any minor issues from escalating into larger ones.

Ideally, you’ll have a dedicated senior team member check in at regular intervals with each new hire. And always be sure that you 1) have an open door policy where reps know they can promptly get in touch with someone whenever they need to and 2) encourage them to initiate a discussion.

This brings us to the final part of the new hire retention formula.

Facilitate Relationship-Building

Another common barrier to retention is a lack of connectedness or, in many cases, loneliness — something that’s become quite common in the modern workplace. And we’re not just talking about remote workers. In total, 82% of employees said they felt lonely at work during a 2022 study.

Needless to say, if someone feels like they’re on an island, they’re unlikely to experience a high level of job satisfaction. When this happens at scale, it can create a serious turnover problem.

In terms of a solution, it largely boils down to being proactive about facilitating relationship-building. I like what The Harvard Business Review has to say about it.

“Building relationships during their first year can help new hires feel less isolated and more confident. New hires, in partnership with their manager, should identify 7-10 people — superiors, peers, direct reports, and internal and external customers — whose success they will contribute to, or who will contribute to their success. The new hire should then craft plans to connect with each stakeholder, one-on-one, during their first year.”

While your game plan doesn’t necessarily have to be as comprehensive as this, creating strong relationships should be a priority and is integral to building a winning culture.

New Hire Retention: Making the First 90 Days Count

With a third of salespeople quitting their jobs within the first 90 days, this is a critical time to go above and beyond. While there’s a lot that goes into maximizing new hire retention, four key areas to focus on are properly welcoming new salespeople, providing them with adequate onboarding, maintaining close communication, and helping them truly become part of the team.

By checking these boxes, you can help them get plugged in and fully integrated with the least amount of friction. In turn, you can reap the rewards of low turnover by reducing recruiting costs, strengthening company culture, boosting morale, and much more.

And if you’re looking to recruit the best of the best salespeople in your industry, check out the Objective Management Group sales assessment. It focuses on core competencies to find candidates who are not only great salespeople but who are equipped to thrive in your unique selling environment.

Beyond the Job Posting: Innovative Ways to Attract Sales Superstars

Posted on by Nick Mann

For many sales recruiters, the first thing that comes to mind when hiring is slapping up a job posting on a career site. While that can certainly still work, we live in an age where sales recruiters have access to a wide array of innovative new options to attract sales superstars.

Not only is it helpful to leverage innovative recruitment strategies, you could argue that it’s now become necessary for standing out from the competition and accessing a wider talent pool. Further, it can drastically reduce your chances of making the wrong hires, as well as reduce turnover because of the caliber of talent you can attract.

With that said, here are some specific strategies I recommend.

Create an AI-powered Sales Recruiting Chatbot

These days, we’re accustomed to encountering chatbots on websites and apps across nearly all industries. They provide a simple yet effective way to answer visitor questions and direct them to the right resource or rep. We even use one on HireDNA.

As AI technology evolves, so do the applications of AI-powered chatbots. And we’re now at a point where they can be used to not only automate sales recruiting but also improve the candidate experience.

Take, for instance, a platform called HireVue, which provides a “text-powered recruiting assistant that enables you to hire up to 4x faster by engaging your candidates all the way from ‘Hi’ to ‘Hired.'”

It can be used on your website, email, social media, SMS, and other messaging apps — wherever you interact with sales candidates. Whenever someone is interested in applying, the chatbot will engage with them throughout the process, answering questions, pointing them to relevant resources, and ultimately setting them up for an interview.

This creates a frictionless candidate experience and should supply you with a steady stream of qualified leads while saving your sales recruiting team a ton of time in the process. In terms of impact, HireVue states that companies that use it see:

  • 5x faster time-to-interview
  • 32% higher candidate satisfaction
  • A 20% decrease in cost-per-hire

You can learn more here.

Show Sales Candidates What it’s Like to Work for You Firsthand

Every sales hiring team is going to hype up their company and say it’s a great place to work. But that’s only going to take you so far. To really attract sales superstars and motivate them to apply, it’s helpful to show them firsthand why they’d love working for you.

And there’s no better way to do that than to let them hear from members of your current sales team. One company in particular that stands out in this area is Proctor & Gamble, which offers a robust sales page on its website that lets potential candidates view all sales opportunities,…

…get an overview of sales responsibilities,…

…and walks candidates through a day in sales and a year in sales, complete with video testimonials from actual salespeople.

The videos are brief at around 1 1/2 minutes, but they’re excellent at connecting the dots for interested candidates and driving home the key benefits of working as a salesperson for Proctor & Gamble.

The other thing I love about this technique is that Proctor & Gamble’s sales recruiting page acts as a valuable SEO resource. Because it’s loaded with targeted keywords, I would imagine that they receive a significant volume of organic traffic from qualified candidates without having to post traditional job ads. Therefore, I suggest checking it out and using it for inspiration in your own sales recruiting campaign.

Partner with Colleges and Universities

Let me start by saying this strategy won’t be viable if you’re looking for seasoned salespeople with years of experience. However, if you’re interested in acquiring fresh, young talent and sculpting them into professional salespeople, this strategy may definitely be for you.

The idea is to offer internships, sponsorships, or mentorship programs to college students or recent college graduates who show a lot of promise — preferably individuals who are majoring or who have majored in relevant degrees like business or finance.

After identifying a list of schools you’re interested in, “You need to create a compelling value proposition that showcases why your organization is a great place to work for their graduates,” explains HR and recruiting expert Uros Dmitrovic. “You need to highlight your mission, vision, culture, benefits, and opportunities in a way that resonates with your audience and differentiates you from your competitors. You can also use testimonials, stories, and videos from your current employees who graduated from those schools to add credibility and authenticity.

From there, it’s just a matter of building relationships with a few key stakeholders, crystallizing a formal partnership program, and building a talent pipeline. Going this route, admittedly, takes a substantial amount of time to set up. But once you have it in place, you should have access to some of the best and brightest sales talent in your area.

Thinking Outside the Box to Attract Sales Superstars

Don’t get me wrong. Posting job ads on career sites is still a viable way to find sales talent. But in today’s increasingly competitive business world, it feels that it’s having less and less of an impact.

Getting creative and thinking outside the box using strategies like the ones mentioned above can provide your sales recruiting team with exciting alternatives that can help you tap into A+ talent in a way that your competitors are not.

On a final note, one of the best ways to gauge a candidate’s ability, skillset, and overall “sales DNA” is with a sales assessment. The Original Sales Assessment is one of the most accurate and predictive in the industry, with 92% of candidates reaching the top of their sales force.

You can learn more about The Original Sales Assessment here.

Screening Sales Resumes: Key Indicators of High-Performing Candidates

Posted on by hiredna

Countless factors determine a salesperson’s likelihood to succeed. For perspective, the screening process we use at HireDNA analyzes 21 selling competencies, including the will to sell, hunting, and relationship-building just to name a few. So it’s no surprise that HR/talent leaders can feel slightly overwhelmed when screening sales resumes.

For this post, my goal is to provide you with a streamlined, ultra-concise methodology for efficiently screening sales resumes to find high-performing candidates. Let’s jump right in.

Quantifiable Achievements

While achievements don’t always tell the whole story, they usually serve as a good starting point for assessing a salesperson’s general abilities. They also allow you to objectively measure someone’s past performance so you can determine how likely they would be to thrive in your sales environment.

Therefore, achievements — specifically quantifiable achievements that are measured in numbers or percentages — are one of the first things I suggest looking for in salesperson resumes. Some examples can include sales revenue generated, percentage of quotas met or exceeded, and number of leads converted.

Sustained Sales Growth

Everyone has to start somewhere in the sales industry. And even the best of the best may struggle initially as they’re cutting their teeth. That’s why you can’t necessarily judge someone’s capabilities by their first couple of years in sales.

However, looking at larger patterns like sustained sales growth over time (assuming they have at least three or so years of experience under the belt) should lend accurate insight into their performance. After all, if someone has proven they’ve consistently improved over time, this typically indicates an ability to learn from mistakes, implement feedback, and persevere through challenges.

Again, it’s helpful to have quantifiable data because concrete numbers paint a clear picture.

Motivation

You could argue that half of the battle of successful selling is simply staying motivated. By nature, the sales industry comes with a lot of ups and downs. When the chips are down, reps may find it difficult to find the will to keep pressing forward. And when things are going well, reps may be inclined to become complacent.

An essential part of building an elite sales team is finding a group of reps that continually stay motivated regardless of the situation. So how do you identify motivated candidates by screening sales resumes?

One way is to look for individuals who have shown an eagerness to take on new projects and learn new skills. Say, for instance, someone voluntarily participated in multiple sales training courses to enhance their skill set. That would likely indicate a high level of motivation.

Resilience

To say that sales can be challenging would be an understatement. It’s incredibly competitive, and dealing with rejection on a constant basis is part of the job description. Therefore, it takes a certain personality type where someone can handle frequent rejection and get right back on the horse.

It takes resilience.

Like motivation, resilience isn’t something that’s easy to quantify. But there are ways to find candidates that demonstrate resilience if you know what to look for.

What I suggest is looking for candidates who highlight their ability to overcome rejection, handle objections, and adapt to changes. Ideally, this is something they’ll specifically address on their resume.

Sales Tool Knowledge

Whether you’re looking to hire someone for an onsite position, remote, or hybrid, it doesn’t make a difference. To thrive in today’s tech-centric world, almost everyone needs to have an intimate knowledge of sales tools like CRM software, lead outreach apps, and lead scoring software.

While you shouldn’t necessarily disqualify someone just because they don’t have direct experience using the exact tools your team uses, it’s extremely important that they know the ins and outs of general sales tools. That’s why this is something else to look out for when screening sales resumes.

Take this sample resume, for instance. Here the candidate specifically references using Zoom to maintain a 91% closing rate. On top of that, they mention that they used Hootsuite to develop and schedule social media content, which shows they have experience using software for other purposes outside of direct sales, for an added plus.

Strong Communication Skills

This is a no-brainer, but I wanted to include communication skills because 1) they’re such an integral part of sales success and 2) you can assess communication skills directly by reading a candidate’s resume.

While you can’t necessarily measure the full spectrum of a person’s ability to communicate from a resume, you can get a solid idea of how well they articulate their ideas by simply reading their writing. For instance, if they provide a concise overview of their skills, qualifications, education, and so on, that should be a good indicator that they can communicate clearly with leads and customers.

On the other hand, if they’re writing is inarticulate and lacks brevity, their communication skills may be lacking. This isn’t to say that you should expect every salesperson to be a wordsmith, but they should be able to clearly present the information on their resume to you.

Finding Elite Reps By Effectively Screening Sales Resumes

As I said before, a resume won’t always tell the whole story of a candidate’s full abilities. But it can tell you a lot.

While I recommend leveraging other tools like a data-driven sales recruiting platform to find the best of the best, effectively screening sales resumes should still provide you with a shortlist of high performers. You just need to know the key indicators to look for and how to measure them.

For help building an all-star sales team, register with HireDNA today. We offer cutting-edge technology that can help you find top candidates and eliminate 96% of wrong hires.