Tag: SALES RECRUITING

4 of the Biggest Sales Recruiting Challenges in 2022 (And How to Overcome Them)

Posted on by hiredna

Let’s be honest. Finding quality salespeople has never been easy, and sifting a pile of resumes (the average position receives 118 applications), can be onerous. But 2022 has its own unique sales recruiting challenges that must be addressed.

In this post, I’ll break them down one-by-one based on recent data and provide actionable strategies on how to overcome them.

An Overview of the Top Sales Recruiting Challenges

In a joint study between LinkedIn and Jobvite, experts pinpointed a list of specific sales recruiting challenges based on feedback they received from recruiters. Here’s what their findings looked like.

Now let’s unpack the data from top to bottom.

1. New Hires Lacking Soft Skills

Above all else, a lack of soft skills among new hires is the number one challenge sales recruiters face in 2022 at 89%. This is something I covered in detail in my last post where I mentioned that hard skills are fairly easy to identify and quantify. But this isn’t usually the case with soft skills. In particular, soft skills like communication, collaboration, empathy, and rapport-building have been historically difficult to gauge.

Up until recently, most sales recruiters have simply relied on basic behavioral assessments and reading body language to analyze soft skills. But, unfortunately, that’s not always sufficient. Some ways to address this issue, however, are to first identify a handful of vital soft skills and make them your key areas of focus when recruiting.

There are also a few pieces of technology you can use to objectively analyze candidates. One example is eSkill which is ideal for assessing emotional intelligence such as communication and collaboration. Another is a sales recruiting platform like HireDNA which analyzes “sales DNA competencies” including emotional control, supportive beliefs, and the ability to handle rejection.

From there, HireDNA will provide you with a list of qualified sales candidates that are interview-ready.

2. Hiring Salespeople Who Didn’t First Appear to Fit

The second biggest challenge involves selecting candidates that didn’t initially seem to be assets to a company. According to the study, “77% of recruiters go back and hire candidates who at first didn’t appear to be a fit.” The issue is coming up with an effective way of pinpointing individuals who slipped through the cracks at first and incentivizing them to come on board.

As I mentioned in another article, there’s a small window of just 10 days on average in which you have to hire elite talent. After that, most have already found another position. So to be fully transparent, there will be many cases where the ship has already sailed and it’s simply too late.

That said, reaching out to quality candidates as soon as you realize their potential can sometimes lead to a hire. I also suggest focusing on the following incentives, if possible, as data shows they are the main things that attract candidates to new organizations.

3. Candidates Changing Their Minds

Here’s one of the sales recruiting challenges that can really drive companies crazy. You find A+ talent and get something lined up only to have a candidate change their mind at the last minute. And it’s an issue that happens more than you may think with 75% of sales recruiters saying they’ve experienced it at some point.

While there’s no magic bullet for ensuring this never happens to you, there are a few ways to reduce the likelihood of candidates changing their minds. First, be sure you have adequate incentives in place — ones that specifically zero in on what attracts candidates to a company (see the graphic above I just mentioned). Next, provide candidates with a clear outline of what the onboarding process looks like and make it as streamlined as possible. Third, maintain close communication with candidates from the start, making sure to “read their digital body language” so you can address any potential problems before they escalate.

Besides that, it’s helpful to have at least one backup in place just in case someone drops out unexpectedly.

4. Finding Quality Entry-Level Sales Reps

Finally, there’s the issue of attracting entry-level candidates, with 41% of companies saying these are the hardest positions to fill. Two main reasons why it’s notoriously difficult are because 1) entry-level positions don’t usually pay as much as more experienced positions and 2) candidates often lack the ideal skill set and experience a recruiter is looking for.

So what do you do about it?

When it comes to the pay, I suggest thoroughly analyzing what your competitors are offering for similar positions and either match or exceed it, if possible. You can find more information on current salesperson salaries here.

If that’s just not possible, here are some potential workarounds:

  • Offer plenty of advancement opportunities giving entry-level salespeople the chance to progress
  • Create an amazing culture, and emphasize it in your recruiting
  • Offer flexible work schedules and remote working opportunities as this tends to be effective for recruiting younger reps

As for addressing the issue of limited skill set, it’s all about finding the diamonds in the rough. This, of course, is easier said than done as many candidates will have minimal experience, but there are tools that can help. HireDNA, for instance, can come in handy here because it can be used to objectively screen candidates and predict their likelihood of success. In turn, it’s much easier to identify candidates that will thrive in your specific sales environment.

Overcoming Today’s Unique Sales Recruiting Challenges

To recap, here are the top challenges for sales recruiters in 2022:

  • Candidates lacking soft skills – 89%
  • Hiring candidates who didn’t first appear to fit – 77%
  • Candidates changing their minds – 75%
  • Filling entry-level positions – 41%

While these can be tricky to navigate, each problem has a corresponding solution, and implementing the right one should help your company thrive in today’s recruiting climate. To learn more about how HireDNA can help you select elite talent in your industry, get in touch with us today.

89% of Recruiting Experts Say Bad Sales Hires Lack These Skills

Posted on by hiredna

Selecting salespeople based on hard skills is pretty straightforward. You see that a candidate clearly has the quantifiable abilities and experience required for a sales position, and often, you can easily verify it. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for the other type of skills I’ll discuss in this post — soft skills.

According to an in-depth study by LinkedIn, 89% of recruiting experts say there’s a common denominator between most bad sales hires. They lack the right soft skills.

LinkedIn’s Findings Behind Bad Sales Hires

In 2019, LinkedIn performed an exhaustive report where they surveyed over 5,000 talent professionals across 35 countries and analyzed comprehensive behavioral data. One of the primary areas they focused on was soft skills, as they found that it was the number one trend transforming the workplace that year. In fact, 91% of talent professionals agreed that soft skills were “very important” to the future of recruiting.

Going one step further, LinkedIn wanted to determine the impact soft skills had on the long-term success of candidates that were hired. And it turned out that the impact was quite immense, with their data finding a lack of soft skills to be a key contributor to most bad sales hires.

According to their findings, only 11% of recruiting experts said bad sales hires lack hard skills. However, 45% said they lack soft skills, and 44% said they lack both soft and hard skills. Put that all together, and 89% of recruiters said bad hires lack soft skills.

Why Soft Skills Are So Important in Sales

As you probably know, there is a wide range of factors that determine how successful someone is at selling. Obviously, having hard skills like product knowledge, knowing how to use a CRM, and performing sales demos is important. But this doesn’t always translate into success. To truly predict how good a candidate will be at their job, you need to see the big picture and also take soft skills into account.

Some examples include:

  • Collaboration
  • Communication
  • Rapport-building
  • Empathy
  • Quick problem-solving

Beyond that, it’s important for a salesperson to be nimble and think on their feet. You could even argue that having a certain level of likability is critical to building relationships and winning over customers. But there’s a problem.

Assessing Soft Skills is Notoriously Difficult

As I mentioned earlier, evaluating a candidate’s hard skills is fairly simple. A quick glance at their resume, for example, will usually give you a basic idea of what they bring to the table. You can also have them perform a test on their product knowledge, see how well they understand a particular business platform, perform a mock product demo, and so on.

“Identifying poor soft skills, however, is much harder, which is why they’re often discovered too late, after a hire has been made,” LinkedIn explains. “But as the data shows, bad hires are almost never a matter of hard skills alone.”

The main issue sales recruiters run into is that they lack a formal approach for assessing soft skills. In fact, 68% say they rely on basic behavioral questions or simply reading body language. “She seemed upbeat, so she’s probably a good collaborator; he seemed nervous, so he’s probably not a good leader. The problem is that these perceptions aren’t predictive, and worse, they’re often unconsciously biased.”

Given the inherent limitations of this commonly used approach, it’s unsurprising that so many sales recruiters struggle to accurately gauge soft skills in candidates. This brings me to my final point.

How to Effectively Evaluate Soft Skills

Given how tricky it’s been historically, how exactly should you go about assessing soft skills in sales candidates?

Here’s a four-step system that I feel is highly effective:

  1. Identify essential soft skills – Pinpoint four or five specific skills that are a must for being a successful salesperson at your company and make them a top priority when recruiting.
  2. Leverage assessment tools – Back in the day, recruiters had to primarily rely on behavioral cues and body language, but now there are several objective tools like eSkill and Pymetrics that can provide you with quantifiable data. eSkill, for instance, allows you to measure emotional intelligence to ensure candidates have a high level of communication and collaboration.
  3. Be aware of unconscious bias – LinkedIn found that unconscious bias often gets in the way of recruiters assessing candidates. You may, for example, be inclined to like a particular candidate because they have a similar personality as you. But keeping this in mind can help steer you away from this issue.
  4. Standardize your interview process – “Train interviewers to ask a standard set of questions suited to the skills you’re targeting. This allows you to easily compare evaluations, even if they’re done by different interviewers.”

Beyond that, many companies can benefit from using a sales recruiting platform like HireDNA. It uses science-based assessments that look at core selling competencies like motivation, desire, and coachability to predict success and can quantify what used to be unquantifiable.

Avoiding Bad Sales Hires

Having the right mix of hard and soft skills is critical to making good hires and building a strong team of salespeople. Unfortunately, the latter is more difficult to evaluate and has created a consistent problem for many brands over the years. Further, nearly 9 out of 10 recruiting experts say bad hires lack soft skills.

While assessing soft skills will, admittedly, always be trickier than assessing hard skills, it’s certainly possible. And the four-step process outlined above should help.

To learn more about HireDNA and how it can dramatically improve your sales recruiting, reach out to us today. 92% of candidates recommended through this platform become top performers within a year.

How to Avoid Costly Sales Rep Hiring Mistakes

Posted on by hiredna

Hiring salespeople is typically among a company’s largest budget items, and the cost of a bad hire is immense. The average cost of a bad sales hire is more than $115,000, while the cost of a bad sales management hire can reach as high as  $3.5 million, as outlined in our recent blog post on hiring effective sales managers.

These numbers represent average costs; you can use this free Hiring Mistake Calculator to determine your organization’s specific bad hire impact, including your cost of recruitment, development and lost business.

And that’s strictly from a mathematical perspective – the overall impact is compounded when you factor in the loss of resources devoted to the bad hire, lowered team morale and performance, and the damage to your brand reputation among your clients and prospects. 

In this blog post, we examine why the wrong sales reps are hired so often, and what smart sales leaders are doing to reduce the risk and impact of hiring mistakes.

Wrong People Are Hired 77% of the Time

According to a recent evaluation by Objective Management Group (OMG), the wrong salespeople are hired 77% of the time. According to OMG, these bad hires: 

  • Make excuses for their lack of performance (60%)
  • Lack commitment to sales success (37%)
  • Are not motivated to achieve sales success (20%)

How to Avoid a Bad Sales Hire

When OMG compared data between all salespeople and the lowest-performing 50%, they found that the most significant differentiator among “good” and “bad” hires was their Sales DNA – the unique set of  traits and behaviors that influence a rep’s performance. 97% of weak salespeople lack the minimum required Sales DNA for success in their roles. 

In a detailed white paper exploring the science behind salesperson selection, OMG outlined five key components of a rep’s Sales DNA that signal a potential bad hire: 

  • Need to Be Liked – While it’s important for a sales rep to be likable, reps who demonstrate a need for approval usually have difficulty facing potential challenges like confrontation, rejection, and asking tough but necessary questions.
  • Tendency to Become Emotional – Reps with higher emotional involvement may struggle to listen and remain focused on the prospect, which can result in missing important details or losing control of a conversation.
  • Self-Limiting Beliefs – Ineffective sales reps exhibit a number of self-limiting beliefs that can sabotage their selling process, such as “I don’t like making cold calls” or “It’s impolite to ask a lot of questions.”
  • Bad Empathy – Sales reps who make their own major purchases using a non-supportive buy cycle (comparison shopping, heavy research, long decision timeframes, etc.) are more likely to empathize with prospects who engage in the same behavior, and are less effective at helping prospects move forward with the purchase decision.
  • Discomfort Discussing Money – When sales reps are uncomfortable asking questions about budget or a prospect’s financial position, they are unable to ask the necessary questions or make suggestions on solving potential budget-related objections.

Science-based sales assessments that identify a candidate’s Sales DNA, along with other sales competencies, can help sales leaders determine a candidate’s likelihood of success before making a costly hiring mistake. 

Build A Winning Sales Team

At HireDNA, we offer a range of science-based recruiting and assessment solutions for companies looking to hire and retain top sales talent. We help sales leaders determine candidates’ Sales DNA, among other competencies, and avoid costly hiring mistakes.

Why Choose Us?                

  • Our predictive candidate assessments eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes
  • Businesses hire 50% faster when they work with us
  • We have an 80% success rate for placements across organizations

Secrets To Sell Your Company To Prospective Employees

Posted on by hiredna

As the labor market tightens, companies are in search of new recruitment tactics that can attract top sales talent to come work for them. It’s easy to get caught up in what candidates have to offer, but the key to successful hiring lies in making the right offer. That’s because top tier candidates want to hear what makes your company the best place to work. In this post, we’ll teach you key strategies to sell your company to prospective employees so you can attract the best talent to your organization.

At HireDNA, our recruiting experts can help you attract, hire, and retain the perfect candidates for your company. Learn More.

Start By Setting Clear Expectations

Securing jobs is no longer as important for candidates your company is likely looking to hire. Unlike their older counterparts, millennials tend to look at their jobs as a form of advancement in their careers—just another stepping stone. According to a Gallup Report, 87% of Millennials said career growth was an essential factor in their job search. The bottom line? Prospective candidates want to know how they benefit from working for you.

To attract top talent, employers should outline the recruits’ learning journey at the company at the outset of the hiring process. Have an honest conversation on what resources your organization will provide for their learning and development. Talk to them about the nature of their work and the room for growth in the near future.   

Be Transparent

Be transparent about your hiring process. 83% of candidates say their experience would improve if employers gave a timeline of their employee acquisition processes. In a time where companies are competing to secure skilled candidates, being transparent can help retain candidate interest in your offering.

Distinguish Your Company Culture

Your work culture is a reflection of your company’s vision and values. Luckily, it’s also a marketable facet of your business as a workplace. Your company culture should attract candidates that would be an excellent fit for your work environment and repel those who seem unlikely to flourish.

It’s important to establish your culture through channels such as your company website and social platforms. Use social media to give future employees an inside look into what your company represents and create more transparency into how it functions.  

Remember, you’re selling a vision of where your company is and where you’re going. Help candidates see how your company culture will help them thrive. Aligning your company’s goals with your candidate’s goals will attract better talent.  

Revamp Your Employment Brand

Did you know that a poor company reputation can cost you approximately 10% more per hire? Your employee brand tells fresh hires precisely what they’re getting into and could help to strengthen the idea that your company as the ideal workplace for them.

Employment branding isn’t just renewing your company logo or boosting your advertising. Your employment brand needs to be just as strong as your consumer brand, and you won’t find better ambassadors for your company than your employees! Empower your employees to become brand ambassadors, engage them in your business, and inspire a commitment to your company mission.

Manage your employment brand, so it increases the value recruits see in working for you. Address poor reviews on employment sites like Glassdoor, touch up your LinkedIn profiles, and always put your best face forward as an employer.

Personalize Your Hiring Process

Accepting your job offer is an extremely important decision for job candidates. They have much to consider:

  • Will they have to relocate to come work for you?
  • How does your job affect their family?
  • Does it mean they spend less time at home?
  • What if they’re leaving a job? Will your company match any benefits they are giving up?

Candidates may consider refusing your offer because a job with you might render them unable to fulfill personal commitments. Recruiting teams must realize that their candidates have other options. You need to know what you’re up against, and how to make counteroffers that recruits simply can’t ignore. Ask the right questions regarding compensation needs and work closely with candidates to outline a competitive offer that they can’t refuse.

Build A Winning Sales Team

At HireDNA, we offer a range of solutions for businesses looking to hire and retain top talent. Our expert sales recruiters can help you find top talent, assess candidates, evaluate your current talent pool, and more.

Why Choose Us?                

  • Our predictive candidate assessments eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes
  • Businesses hire 50% faster when they work with us
  • We have an 80% success rate for placements across organizations

Ready to hire the best salespeople for your company?

Contact Us

Offer Stage Recruitment Tips to Win Over Top Candidates

Posted on by hiredna

Sales organizations are always on the lookout for standout reps that can boost their team’s performance. These exceptional individuals bring a proven track record of success, a wealth of experience and a role model presence to your team that positively affects the entire organization.

While recruiting top sales reps is a unique challenge on its own, the offer stage represents the last hurdle before you get them on board. Some recruiters mistake the offer stage as a mere formality, assuming the deal is already closed. Instead, it is arguably the most important stage where the candidate will make their final choice. Here are some offer stage recruitment tips to help you win over top candidates.

Do away with guesswork and hire the best candidates for your organization based on a data-backed predictive hiring system. Get in touch with a HireDNA sales recruiting expert today.

4 Offer Stage Tips For Top Candidates

If a candidate makes it to the offer stage, it means that they have been vetted, interviewed and passed all relevant organizational checks. Now is the time to close the deal effectively, and you should be well prepared. Here are some tips that can help increase your odds of attracting the best sales talent available.

Highlight The Details Behind Your Offer

Many times, sales managers simply parrot the offer details without attempting to extrapolate the value behind it and lend insight as to how your offer can truly benefit the candidate.

Simply repeating what you have been told by your HR manager is less likely to impress a top candidate that may very well have several other offers on their desk. Instead, you should take the time to help them understand the nuances behind the offer. For instance, if equity is involved, it is your duty to help the candidate understand the value of the equity being offered. Beyond the routine discussion involving vesting cycles and benefits, try to highlight how your offer can work toward their benefit down the line.

Of course, it’s important to have a detailed and realistic compensation plan available to walk the candidate through. Top candidates will want to know how existing reps are performing against targets and will want a clear roadmap for achieving success. No candidate wants to sign up for a role with unrealistic expectations.

Partner With Human Resources

Highly talented salespeople know their worth and often have the freedom to choose between several organizations. When seeking a new opportunity, the culture, onboarding process, and career growth opportunities are some of the commonplace concerns top sales reps share.

Partnering with your hiring manager or human resource manager can allow you to have a knowledgeable aid by your side who can answer pertinent questions with ease. They can help to elaborate on the individual growth prospects available at your organization and other key benefits available.

Eliminate hiring mistakes and improve retention rates with our proven hiring tools. Learn More.

Don’t Go Overboard

Asking too many questions, making too many calls or scheduling too many interviews are all signs of an organization going overboard with their recruitment process. Hiring top sales talent is a priority for many companies—and once you get to the offer stage, you are more likely to anticipate the deal as good as done. However, as the candidate is nearing their decision, they may become increasingly observant of their (potential) next employer.

Excessively nagging them to conduct multiple touchpoints will not only convey your organization as desperate but may adversely affect the candidate’s decision to stick with their current employer or go with another opportunity. Furthermore, asking repetitive questions regarding their desired role or salary can also work against you. You may come across as unsure, or unwilling—and when you’re aiming to recruit top sales talent, such ambiguity can work against you.

We recommend no more than three steps to the interview process before extending an offer. Any more is overkill. If you thoroughly screen candidates before the interview and use a sales specific assessment to predict compatibility and success, there’s no reason you need more than three interviews to make a decision. In today’s low unemployment market, you risk losing top talent to an overly complex, long, and unproductive interview process. 

Don’t Start From Your Lowest

The modern business world is highly competitive, and every company can benefit from having a high performing salesperson. Once you’ve found a top candidate and have managed to hold on to them until the offer-stage, don’t risk losing them because your offer couldn’t match their ambition.

Many organizations still deploy the age-old tactic of lowballing. However, there is one major flaw in this strategy—it doesn’t work with modern salespeople. Modern salespeople know their worth. By offering them a low starting offer, you are signaling that you don’t value them as much.

The best strategy is to present what you think is the strongest possible offer and elaborate on why you think it is right. It is important to remember that top sales talent may not be actively pursuing a new opportunity, so your offer needs to have the persuasive element that eases their decision in your favor.

There are online resources like salary.com that will provide insights on competitive comp plans. A good recruiting firm will also have data they can share and will identify each candidate’s desired comp in the screening process to help you determine what a competitive offer looks like. 

Build A Highly Talented Sales Team

Recruiting and retaining top sales talent is one of the greatest challenges sales managers face. HireDNA offers you a modern approach to the hiring process with our data-backed, scientific technology that allows you to discover top candidates, eliminate hiring mistakes, decrease onboarding ramp-up times, and grow your sales potential!

Why Choose Us?

  • 80% placement success
  • 79% candidate retention
  • 50% faster new hire ramp-up

CONTACT US