Creating the Most Suitable Recruitment Strategy to Build your Sales Team

The sales team you have can massively impact the revenue you make. So why not create a strategy to ensure you are hiring the right people for your business / team.

Step 1: Hire at the right time

Before even beginning the hiring process, you need to ensure you actually have the time to execute the process properly. There will be times when hiring is more urgent than others – maybe someone has resigned out of the blue for example. However, rushing this process will be detrimental only to yourself and the success of the team.

Furthermore, it’s also important to be assessing your team. Here are some things you can look out for:

• Has the green sales junior progressed massively, and is now seeing huge results? Might be time to add an additional person to the team.
• Are your team struggling with their workload and working long hours over a long period of time? You don’t want them to burn out – might be time to hire.
• Is the team and business growing so much that there are now new objectives and goals which are beyond your current teams capabilities? Maybe time to hire someone senior
• Is there a skills / knowledge gap that could be filled that no one in your team is across? Time to hire!

My point here is to look at the data to help you analyse the above. If the data backs up the trends you are seeing, it could be worth starting to think about recruiting.

Step 2: Writing your position description

I’ve said this before in previous posts so I don’t mean to sound like a broken record but please do not use a generic PD, or a PD that is 5 years old. Candidates can tell and it doesn’t make you look too good.

Your PD should include:

• Gender neural language – there are websites which can help with this
• A background on the business and the product or service you provide. Background can include when the business was founded, how many offices/employees there are, mission and vision
• What the day to day activities will actually include. I have heard many times that candidates are sold jobs which are not an accurate representation of what the job is. This is a recipe for resignation. Be honest and transparent
• The ideal skillset and experience you are looking for. Again, don’t add to this down the line. You should know what it takes to succeed in your team.
• Certain qualities and characteristics you are looking for – you should already know this from step 1 and analysing your team
• And most importantly, benefits for the candidate. What is your EVP? Why should candidates want to work for you? If you don’t know the answer to this, you shouldn’t be hirinig.

Step 3: Create your interview process

I don’t want to spend too much time here as this is something I have covered quite a lot recently. These are the important points to consider:

• Ensure you have enough time dedicated not only to the interview, but before and after too for preparation and debriefing purposes. Also, sometimes we get carried away in interviews and they go on for longer than expected. If you’re really enjoying a conversation with a candidate, give yourself the time to really get to know them
• Having a meeting room / café organised for the interview
• Ensure you have questions prepared which you are going to be asking every single candidate for this job, in the exact same order. Also have a benchmark prepared as to how you will be scoring
• Ensure you are also prepared to answer questions

Step 4: Offering

Great! You have selected the candidate you want to offer and are excited to call and let them know. Ensure you haven’t made any last minute changes. The candidate has asked for $80K plus super? This isn’t the time to tell them that the budget only stretches to $70K plus super.

Hiring is a two way street and you still need to convince them that your business is the best place for them to be. I would recommend reiterating why the job is a good fit for them, and then clearly outline their compensation package and other perks of the role.

Further, ensure the written offer is in their inbox within 48 hours of verbally offering (ideally 24 hours).

Step 5: Retention

The recruitment strategy does not end at offer stage. Now the hard work begins.

Ensure you are fully prepared to onboard your new sales employee. Even if the role is urgent and they’re available immediately, don’t allow them to start the following Monday if their laptop and phone wont be ready.

Ways that you can retain your future and current employees:

• Creating a quaterly anonymous internal survey covering rewards & recognition, process improvement, training and development etc.
• Have regular (weekly) meetings with your employee so they feel supported and on track
• Create a culture of transparency and support so employees feel comfortable in bringing certain topics up

Each employee is different and are motivated by different things in the workplace. This also changes over time. 2 years ago, most Sales candidates I spoke to were motivated by monetary compensation solely. Now however, things such as flexible working are overtaking that. Therefore, this conversations should happen frequently so you can stay on top of the needs of your team, and then use this to drive and adjust your recruitment strategy as required.

If the above is clear, when you interview the right candidate, you will know. The market is tight and you don’t have the luxury of time to choose between candidates by adding in another interview round or implementing a test. This still isn’t a good look when the market isn’t candidate short. Candidates want to feel confident that you know what you’re looking for.?