Finding good SaaS salespeople has never been easy.

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It is even harder these days than it was in the past.

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As a client when you are looking for good salespeople it’s about whether you believe what you hear or are told and whether you can trust the individual. Would you buy from this person?

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With the annual tenure of a salesperson in a SaaS company currently 18 months, technology and software companies experience some of the highest sales attrition rates in the industry, with a significant percentage of salespeople leaving voluntarily each year.

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It’s the competitive nature of the industry, the high demand for experienced sales professionals, and the often-demanding nature of sales roles in the fast-paced SaaS environment.

An ideal criteria for hiring salespeople:-

i.??????????????????? People with a good track record of hitting or overachieving targets.

ii.?????????????????? A level of longevity in previous roles, no one wants a job hopper but someone who will stay the course.

iii.???????????????? People that understand the SaaS model and how best to sell it.

iv.???????????????? Well trained individuals that know and understand how to execute a sales strategy.

v.?????????????????? Someone who knows how to build a pipeline, manage it and make it work for themselves and the company.

vi.???????????????? Confident, personable, outgoing and friendly individuals.

vii.?????????????? Open and honest individuals.

viii.????????????? People with the right skills and experience for the role they have.

ix.???????????????? People with the right behaviour, so they will fit into the team and company culture.

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The difficulty with so many salespeople with an average tenure of 18 months is for them showing and demonstrating that they have delivered for a client. There is always a reason why someone moves on but when they get three or four, 18-month tenures it makes it hard for a new employer to trust they will stay for the full tenure with them or do they simply move on after a year and a half. You can have a good first year and cruise the last six months expecting to get another gig before the pressure kicks in to perform in year two.??

I have a couple of clients that will only look at people from specific competitors or even other target companies that are non-competitors but have staff that have had the right level of sales training and understand how to execute a sales strategy.? Some because they don’t have time to train people themselves and want people to hit the ground running others because unless you ‘Get It’ they don’t have the patience or time until the penny drops.

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What needs to happen is every company needs to train their own people, put in place a comprehensive training program. It’s one thing to teach the ‘Sales Play Book’ but individuals need continuous reinforced sales training, I don’t just mean in different sales methodologies but in the basics, relationship management and sales strategy as well as execution.? When I interview sales candidates, I’m forever shocked that so many simply have not had a deeper level of sales training and typically ‘wing it’ most of the time with a level of luck to achieve their targets.

The reality is, it’s a bit of science, a numbers game, a process and if you don’t apply it, you are never in control of the sale. Some of the best salespeople I know are actually pre-salespeople, they have a process and once it’s complete they pass it back to the salesperson to close.

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The danger of hiring someone who has had their last three tenures of between 16-18 months is its hard to pin down or confirm the number against target that they did, especially if they are still employed.

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I have been fortunate to have worked with a large number of exceptional salespeople who typically close multi-million-pound quotas against their target, and with overriders in place are extremely well rewarded. Something most clients are uncomfortable with for a strange reason, paying someone for overachieving should be a goal and an experience full of pleasure.

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How to avoid a mis-hire

Apply the salespeople criteria for hiring above. But it starts before that with a process: -

a.????? Define the Ideal Candidate Profile

b.????? Craft a Compelling Job Description

c.????? Find a good, experienced recruiting partner

d.????? Implement a Structured Interview Process

e.????? Assess Behavioural and Cultural Fit

f.??????? Provide Realistic Job Previews

g.?????? Focus on Continuous Learning and Development

h.????? Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits

i.??????? Foster Diversity and Inclusion

j.??????? Use Data-Driven Decision Making

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Gain engagement with a short-list of candidates (2/3 people), get them to do presentations and assessments, spend time with them to better understand who they are and their motivations. Get multiple people involved in the interview process and get them to grade the exercises they do and hire based on the data this generates.

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???????? About the Author

Howard Longstaff has over 20 years of experience delivering people within the talent acquisition arena. Having worked extensively across the UK, Europe, USA, and Canada.

Over the years he has specialised in two fundamental areas, the first area he has a real passion for is ‘building Sales Teams’.? The second area he loves getting involved in, is the leadership team, the C-Suite, helping to get the balance right, covering the gaps in knowledge, and back filling these roles as companies grow.

‘Getting it right first time’ is never easy, Howard is one of the few, executive search consultants who is willing to guarantee the work he does, offering a 12 month free replacement.

‘No one is perfect, but a team can be’, working with SaaS startups, SEM’s and Mid-Market clients who are scaling up. In most cases we work in either an exclusive or retained basis and are typically engaged for a 3–5-year period, sometimes much longer.

Howard is someone that uses technology to enhance the hiring process, to save time, money and effort. Taking the pain out of the process, we operate a ‘Private Client Video Portal’ keeping everything together & secure, candidate videos, as well as the psychometric behavioural assessments on each candidate and executive profiles. He has repeatedly built teams across three continents, has a good breadth of knowledge across the talent acquisition arena.

[email protected] ? +44 (0) 7710 907 988