Sales Recruitment
Setting your path to success by sorting your sales recruitment
The value of good staff is often overlooked until you hire someone who really doesn’t fit the bill. The countless hours in recruitment, training, induction, HR, and client relationship is all lost just months down the track because the fit wasn’t right.
Expectations on both sides just weren’t being met. As usual it all comes down to communication – understanding the framework, time required, scope of role and expectations of performance. A lot of these things are only ironed out in the wash – unknown until someone’s actually in the role.
But what if you worked things a little more thoroughly before getting a person in the role?
We help companies make sales recruitment a sure thing – quality sales applicants that have more than just potential. Through DISC assessment, we help prove they have the abilities and persona to complement your team and secure sales.
The importance of effective sales recruitment
As sales people leave or you need additional sales resource, it’s critical that you have the right people joining the team. They need to be “A Players” and not just the best available person at the time.
The cost of a bad hire can be devastating for smaller companies, yet still a huge financial and morale hit for larger companies.
Evidence shows that bad hires cost companies thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in time, money, severance, and lost sales.
You can measure the financial impact pretty readily, but the impact on morale and productivity is proven to be even higher.
We believe you’re far better to invest in the recruitment process than the departure process. Both have a cost, but team members leaving is likely to cost you far more holistically.
Invest before hire, rather than picking up the pieces.
How do we do recruitment right?
1. Don’t be reactionary
Recruitment is about need – often what seems like a desperate need. A role to fill, tasks to be completed, burden to be taken care of. But this need usually draws us into the trap of accepting a good enough candidate, rather than an ideal candidate. We’re masked by getting the hire done, rather than doing it right.
Often we don’t even know we’re doing it wrong until months down the track when the new player just isn’t working out.
At SLP, we believe sometimes the wait is worth it.
We help sales companies do all the background checks, DISC assessments, and thorough discussions around role and expectations, to come up with talent that fits.
We’re specialists, and we’ve got the time to help you recruit your ideal candidate.
2. Employ the team
Management doesn’t always know best! It’s a team effort. We encourage managers to include their sales team in the recruitment process. Sometimes the people out in the field see things a bit differently to management in the office, who are often quite removed from the day to day reality of sales. That team insight is valuable – take it in, discern it, use it to help you refine the skills needed for the role advertised.
3. Seek assistance
Time is money, and likely story, you haven’t got a lot of time on hand. Know when to invest in help, particularly for specialist roles like sales recruitment. Your money is better spent now than more spent later cleaning up the aftermath of a bad hire.
At SLP we provide recruitment assistance – this ranges from candidate assessment right through to full recruitment services for selected clients.
We will work with you to develop a recruitment model that will attract high quality candidates, identify those candidates that will be successful selling your product to market, and help you develop an induction program for quick onboarding.
Know that you’re speaking to true sales specialists when you use SLP. There are a lot of recruitment companies out there who make a good job of putting candidates in front of you, but not such a great job of sifting and straining those candidates to ensure they’re the right fit to fill the sales gaps in your team.
Talk to sales specialists, not the recruitment specialists.
4. Invest in induction
Great, you’ve nailed getting an on-point candidate. Leave them to it, right? You know better.
Onboarding and induction are incredibly important to getting your new staff members up, running and productive as soon as possible. Done well, induction embeds company culture, expectations and value, quickly. It saves you time in the long run, and ensures your customers are getting a cohesive picture of how professional your brand is.
We’re experts in helping companies formulate and deliver engaging induction training. Talk to us for help.
5. Keep checking in
Roles move and shape with the people in them. Keep communicating with your people, keep a listening air open, create a space for collaboration in making the sales team gel and take ownership of their team. Make time for regularly scheduling sales assessments (every year to 18 months) to see where people are at and where the team might need a little assistance or reformation.
Recruiting and retaining staff is one of the biggest energy and financial drains for a business
About Us
Our name, Sales and Leadership Performance, spells out a little of what we do. We're a team passionate about sharing the skills we've honed through the years working in and around sales teams.
