The Ultimate Guide to Successful Sales Recruiting. A white paper brought to you by Netpique.

Transcription

1 The Ultimate Guide to Successful Sales Recruiting A white paper brought to you by Netpique.

2 Author: Megan Bussjager Recruiting Director, Netpique Megan has been with Netpique since As Director of Recruiting, she is responsible for maintaining full, productive headcount for all of Netpique s sales outsourcing teams, as well as originating and implementing procedures to streamline and optimize the hiring process. When not working, Megan can be found doing equestrian sports and bikram yoga (but not at the same time). Page 1 of 10

3 Introduction Do you ever get the feeling that the sales department is firing reps faster than you can hire them? If you re finding sales recruiting more difficult lately, it s not all in your head. For a variety of inevitable reasons, sales recruiting really is getting harder. The good news is, even in today s difficult business climate, you can find excellent sales reps and convince them to come work for your company. You just need to make sure you re using the most up-to-date and effective strategies for locating and recruiting the sales talent your company needs. The time for running an ad in the local paper and waiting for sales candidates to file in your door is past. Sales recruiting these days requires ingenuity, tenacity, and a wellorganized approach. This white paper will give you the fundamentals you need to run an efficient sales recruiting program. Page 2 of 10

4 The American Salesman Isn t Dead... A front page article on the shortage of sales professionals came out in USA Today in July The title ran: Bosses lament: Sales jobs hard to fill. The article went on to proclaim that The American salesman isn't dead, but he is getting harder to find. So you can see, you re not alone in finding sales recruiting more difficult these days. In fact, check out these depressing statistics: Thirty-five percent. That s more than one in three sales managers who could not find candidates for open positions in 2013, as opposed to 24% in That s a pretty big upswing in 3 years. Why? Well, lots of reasons. Let s take a look at a few: RECESSION. Yep, the big R affected just about everything, and sales jobs were no exception. When nobody is lending and nobody (except Donald Trump) is buying, there s no work for people who sell. Sales jobs were heavily downsized during the recession, and as a result, many sales people simply left the profession to try their luck elsewhere. JITTERS. Page 3 of 10

5 For those sales professionals who managed to hang on to their jobs during the recession, new opportunities, however glittering, can seem less appealing than the stability of keeping their current job. SERVICES. It has become increasingly common for companies to sell services, warranties, or leases right along with their products, resulting in a greater need for sales professionals as product offerings become more numerous and complex, and a correspondingly shorter supply of them. LACK OF TRAINING. Business schools don t typically provide sales training, so it has traditionally been up to hiring companies to train their own sales people. However, the trend is for companies to cut their hiring budgets, even as they increasingly want candidates with pre-existent industry experience and sales skills. The result is a supply/demand nightmare where experienced sales reps are concerned. All this on top of one enduring truth: Sales is a high-turnover job. Let s say that again, because we all know it s really at the heart of our headcount woes: SALES IS A HIGH-TURNOVER JOB. And the only way to stem the tide is constant recruiting. Sales recruiting is not something you can do just once when you first set up a sales team, or in one big push when you re getting ready to expand. Most companies need a full-time recruiting team just to maintain a sales team at full production, let alone do any expansions. So whether you re a sales manager trying to squeeze in recruiting along with training and managing your existing team, the head of recruiting like me, or a high-level sales executive looking to streamline your sales process, you need to pay attention to recruiting. Recruiting is a Full-Time Job You know it, I know it, and hopefully your boss knows it: recruiting is a full-time job. To keep full, productive headcount, you need to not only fill open positions, but also maintain a 30% bench of pre-qualified candidates so that whenever you lose someone, he or she can be immediately replaced. Page 4 of 10

6 Let s take a look at what kind of work it takes to keep that kind of headcount. We ll assume you have a medium-sized sales force of 40 people. You can see that to maintain a headcount of 40, you need to talk to 30 people per week so you can interview 20 people per week, and hire five. On average, that s about 20 reps per month that you need to be hiring in order to maintain a headcount of 40. I know that sounds like a lot, but don t panic. With good organization and a dedicated recruiting team, it can happen not just once, but over and over again. Use the Hunting Model Let s break down the process of how to find all these candidates you need.as I said at the beginning, just placing a few ads in the local newspaper and waiting for qualified candidates to walk in the door is not going to cut it anymore. However, even though ads aren t sufficient in Page 5 of 10

7 themselves, it is a good idea to start with placing internet ads on a variety of job sites and boards. There are sales reps who are actively out there looking for jobs, and it only makes sense that you should make the jobs you are trying to fill as visible as possible to help them find you. However, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to consistently maintain headcount if you rely solely on responses to your ads. Your numbers will be much more impressive if you also go out and search for qualified resumes on large job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. In fact, take a look at the chart below: Source of New Sales Reps Resume Searches 60% Ads 40% As you can see, here at Netpique 60% of our newly hired sales reps come from resume searches, while only 40% come from our ads. We would find it very difficult to maintain headcount if all we did was post ads. Searching for candidates using resume keyword parameters is essential. In the past, we have used the major website CareerBuilder.com extensively. Unfortunately, they ve recently made changes to their search tools that altered the type of keyword searches that were possible, rendering their site much less useful, at least for our purposes. Monster.com is now our preferred job board, not only for its superior search parameters, but also because we tend to receive a better response from candidates we ve contacted through Monster. The icing on the cake is that Monster will also flood our ads through Indeed.com, so we end up with candidates applying through Indeed as well as directly through Monster. Page 6 of 10

8 Starting your ad campaign with Monster is a good idea. However, don t be afraid to experiment with other job sites and venues. Some industries have their own job boards, so look around and see what s out there in your space. Make sure you keep track of what works and what doesn t. A little data can go a long way toward helping you figure out how to be more efficient. Even here at Netpique, there are a few limited exceptions to the We Love Monster rule. For example, Craigslist is phenomenal when searching for candidates in smaller markets, so if you re putting together a sales team outside of a large urban center, you probably want to also post your ads on Craigslist for maximum reach. When searching for candidates for more senior level positions like Regional Sales Managers or Directors, LinkedIn can be a fantastic resource. One final essential element of your digital recruiting toolkit is recruiting software. Most companies use a CRM like Salesforce to organize sales leads. However, a lot of companies don t realize that even a moderately-sized sales recruiting effort will run much more smoothly with the help of recruiting software. A platform like Jobvite or Smart Recruiters enables you to keep track of all your candidates and where they are in the recruiting process. If you have multiple recruiters on your team, recruiting software will also allow easy collaboration and sharing of information and opinions. Qualifications of a Good Sales Rep So now that we ve covered how to rustle up some candidates, let s talk about what to do with them next. The first thing we do with employee prospects here at Netpique is spend about five minutes on the phone with each candidate. This first phone call has two main purposes. First, it is important to assess the candidate s qualifications. You don t want to waste your time (or the candidate s time) if the job is obviously a bad fit for his or her skills. Second, you need to set good expectations and do your best to attract the candidate to your company and the position. Those who pass the phone interview then go on to a 45-minute face-to-face interview with the sales manager. Let s address that first point and have a chat about qualifications. For a lot of companies, the first qualification that comes to mind is specific experience in their industry. It is undeniable that industry experience can be very helpful. But believe it or not, specific industry experience is not the most important qualification for a good sales rep, and making it a concrete requirement could potentially eliminate a lot of great candidates. If industry experience is not the most important qualification, then what should you be looking for? There are a few basic markers that will help you divide the promising from the unpromising without leaving large numbers of potentially good reps out in the cold. Sales Experience is (obviously) important. But think widely. There are a lot of ways to get experience that is useful for sales. Look on resumes for experience in retail, Page 7 of 10

9 customer service, and even phone sales. Outside sales experience is ideal, but any type of customer-facing position can impart some sales experience. At our company, we require a High School Diploma, but not a college degree. Again, we don t want to make the net too narrow and leave out potentially great reps who may be well qualified but not college educated. If you have a candidate who is excited about a sales opportunity, and has the drive for the challenge and the income potential with sales, then previous experience doesn t matter so much. But the number one quality I look for in a rep is Trainability. I cannot overemphasize how important this is. In fact, most of our ads here at Netpique are geared toward entry-level sales reps. That s the area where you ll find a large number of good reps, provided that you have a training program that will accommodate them. Along with positive qualifications, there are some red flags you should watch for. One of the biggest red flags to avoid is over-qualification. For example, that massively overqualified guy with Master s Degrees in comparative literature, biochemistry, and economics? Don t even think about it. It s also important to weed out candidates with salary requirements higher than what you can offer. While the points we ve just discussed will serve you well when hiring sales reps, sales managers are a whole different ballgame. When hiring a sales manager, it really is crucial to focus on industry experience, as well as previous experience leading a sales team. A solid, experienced sales manager is what allows you to hire on promising and trainable but inexperienced reps. A good manager can impart both industry knowledge and crucial sales skills to new reps, creating the positive sales culture and well-trained team you need for a successful sales initiative. Unlike with reps, you don t need to expect a high turnover for managers, which gives you an incentive to choose very carefully initially. Setting Good Expectations and Attracting Potential Reps So back to our call with potential sales candidates. After assessing a prospective employee s qualifications, you ll want to work on setting good expectations. Even if you think the person is perfect for the job, if he or she doesn t understand what the position entails, it will come back to bite you later. A rep deserves to know what the job is really like before the interview, and reps who know what they are getting in to from the beginning are exponentially more likely to Page 8 of 10

10 stay on long-term. You ll also save time for the interviewing manager, who will only be interviewing candidates who are really interested in the job. Some of the expectations I like to set relate to the earning potential for our reps. With all of our positions, we offer a substantial base salary, which is a huge draw for candidates who are applying for other jobs that pay only commission. However, they do need to understand that they will need to live off of the base salary for the first few months until they start to make sales and receive their commissions. It s also important for potential reps to get a clear idea of the day-to-day requirements of the job, and what exactly they will be expected to do. Things like hours to be worked, quotas, and regular attendance at sales meetings are relevant here. Make sure they are OK with handling rejection, because they are going to get a lot of it in a sales job. You ll want to see that they can handle it, recover from it, and move on to the next potential customer. As I mentioned in the section on qualifications, an upbeat, positive, and outgoing personality coupled with a drive to succeed is at least as important as experience. One of the best ways to attract reps to your company is simply to sound like a person they want to work with. As the recruiter, you are their introduction to the company, so their first impression will be based almost entirely on how you behave. Being friendly, cheerful, nice, and most importantly, helpful, goes a long way. Page 9 of 10

11 Sometimes potential employees fall through the cracks during the hiring process because they have questions or concerns that aren t addressed, there s a miscommunication, or maybe they even get lost on the way to the interview. As a recruiter, you should let them know that you are a resource so that they will feel comfortable calling before the interview (or even after it) if they have questions or concerns. If your company offers any unusual benefits (or heck, any benefits at all in this economy), be sure to mention those. Netpique, for example, offers paid training, salary plus commission, and full benefits, including medical, dental, and vision, as well as a company-matched 401K plan. We re also a W-2 employer in a 1099 world, and I make sure potential sales people understand all the benefits we offer. Finally, you really do need to sell the opportunity. Let potential candidates know that your company promotes from within, that there is room for growth, and that they can look for career advancement if they take the job. Of course, for you to be able to attract quality employees, the job needs to be a good job. Your sales people are worth treating right. They are the ones carrying your brand into the marketplace and representing you. I like to think of them as the lifeline of your organization. Treat your employees like you want your employees to treat your customers because that s the best way to ensure that they will. I hope this white paper has given you some useful ideas to incorporate into your sales recruiting efforts. Happy recruiting! This white paper is brought to you by Netpique, which offers a full range of sales consulting and outsourcing options. Want to talk? To see how Netpique can help you improve your sales strategy, please call us at (386) or visit us on the web at Page 10 of 10