A good sales team is essential for businesses looking to increase their revenue. Therefore, there is a high demand for top sales talent in different industries.
Companies jostle to attract the best trading reps. However, so much needs to happen to get the most suitable talent for your brand.
This article discusses the most effective ways to attract top sales talent to your company. By implementing these strategies, you are one step away from building a top-class trade team for your business.
Recruitment is never-ending
Sales managers must understand that getting the right talent does not stop at recruitment. Likewise, getting top candidates doesn’t stop at posting job descriptions and searching for suitable candidates for such positions.
A business serious about attracting the best hands must show why they are unique and better than the competition. This is because job seekers want to work with a top-performing brand.
Effective tips to attract top sales talent to your company
The hiring process for top sales talents should be well-thought-out. There should be a clear path or strategy for the hiring. The following tips will help attract the desired candidates:
Build a convincing career page
One of the ways to stand out from the competition and attract top salespeople is through an exciting career page. It is one of the first things a candidate checks on your website page.
If your career page doesn’t look promising, define the company’s culture and values, or offer something the competition does not have, the top sales reps may overlook you.
You can attract prospects for your company by using a career page builder like Recruitee. The software helps you to build a career site without a developer.
Recruitee has a multi-language feature, making it easy to connect with global candidates. Also, it enhances your company’s values, teams, offices, and jobs. Finally, an excellent career page and the strategies below will help you employ the most suitable people.
Have an attractive company culture
You can’t attract suitable candidates to your company without a conducive work environment. People want to work for a company with the right culture and values.
Salespeople need to believe in a company they work for before they can effectively communicate its products or services’ values to prospective clients. Thus, getting good sales reps may be difficult if a company doesn’t have a thriving work culture.
Communicate company values during the hiring process, from the job ads to the final interviews. Such gestures go a long way to attracting the right staff.
Show the candidates the value of their roles
The top sales talents don’t just want a job but also want to make a positive impact. Thus, demonstrate how valuable and essential your prospective employees’ role is to the company.
Describe your company’s mission and purpose to prospective employees and establish how they are a crucial part of the process. Explain to them how indispensable they are to the brand.
People get excited when they realize they are not a tiny part of the company but critical to its success. When you communicate this well enough, you will attract prospective employees who are more concerned with making a positive impact than their paychecks.
Prove that career advancement is possible
Most top sales talents are ambitious. They want to succeed in what they do and move to higher positions eventually.
So, show them your company offers an excellent chance for advancing their careers. Then, match your prospective sales reps’ ambition by demonstrating that future advancement is possible and guiding them on how to achieve that.
There should be mentorship and training programs for new sales reps. These coaching and mentorships should be continuous. Such incentives help the sales reps to get better at their jobs and eventually become industry leaders.
The interview process should be candidate-centered
During job interviews, use a candidate-centered method. Such a process allows the potential employee to be at ease. Also, it is easier to evaluate their skills and determine if they fit into the company’s culture in a relaxed setting.
Besides these benefits, candidate-centered interviews make you a top choice if the candidate receives multiple job offers. In such cases, they may gravitate to the company where they had their best interview experience. If that’s your business, you have an edge over your competitors.
A candidate-centered interview process should have the following features:
- First, it should involve the whole team. This shows the company’s employees care and are interested in its future.
- Build rapport with prospective employees during interviews by knowing them as individuals and not just candidates.
- Mentor and advise the prospective worker during the interview by making it an educational process. The top sales reps enjoy learning progressively on the job. Hence, if they see the company as one where they can learn and grow, they are likely to choose it over others.
- If a candidate does not pass the interview process, the company should reject them respectfully and provide valuable feedback. If a company treats its unsuccessful candidates disrespectfully, it will damage its reputation among sales reps.
Ask the right interview questions
Although many salespeople have incredible CVs, you can’t know how good they are at selling until you test or interview them. Therefore, you should ask questions that genuinely test their abilities during discussions.
Some of the possible questions to ask sales candidates include:
- Demonstrate your sales process
- Have you lost any deal before? What lessons did you learn from that experience?
- Have you adjusted your sales process through the years? If so, how did you do it?
- Teach me something
- Sell me this product
- How would your former sales supervisor describe you?
- How do you keep up to date with your target market?
- In your last position, how much time did you spend on cultivating customer relationships versus hunting new clients, and why?
- What roles does social media play in your selling process? And so many other insightful questions.
Set realistic goals and track progress
Top sales talent love competing and meeting targets. One way to spur such people is by setting realistic goals and setting a workable deadline for achieving them.
However, besides setting realistic targets, it is essential to provide recruits with enough resources to achieve their goals. In addition, monitor their progress and communicate effectively with them on how they are performing.
Open and productive communication helps the sales team do more and shows them how they can improve. Top sales talent love a company where they can get challenges and positive feedback on their progress.
Offer attractive compensation
One of the most effective ways of attracting top sales talents to a company is by providing attractive compensation. However, many businesses neglect this and offer low wages to their staff.
Sales executives are critical to a business’s revenue generation. They tell others about the brand, engage customers, and motivate them to buy products or subscribe to services.
It is only wise to encourage them with a befitting compensation. Therefore, don’t fail to discuss payment with a prospective hire during the interview process.
Discuss On Target Earnings (OTE) and emphasize how they can achieve it. Ensure the OTE is straightforward and achievable.
Many top talents run away from brands with unachievable OTEs. If your company has a reputation for unachievable OTEs, other sales representatives will hear about it and avoid you.
On the other hand, when a company sets challenging but achievable targets and has a competitive salary, they enjoy the benefits eventually. To make it even more competitive, companies also work with tax experts to structure salary pay stub for each of their employees in a way that’s optimized for tax savings. A combo of extra pay and optimized salary structure is too good of a deal to ignore for all talented pros including sales experts. It not only helps in hiring talented people but also in retaining them.
Leverage social media
Social media dominates today’s business world. Hence, if you wish to attract top talent, take advantage of social media.
Post engaging content about the company. This content should tell the business’s story and convey the image you want people to associate it with.
Besides social media, check internet ratings about your company to see what customers and past and present employees say about it. If you have negative reviews, work to change them by improving the areas complained about. Conversely, if the reviews are positive, take action to maintain and even surpass those levels.
Finally, sell your brand on social media by telling success stories. Such accounts establish you as an industry leader and prove that you have the best hands.
Invest in the sales team
One way to attract top talent to the company is by making the existing sales team the best at what they do. When a company does this, it increases the chances of retaining the workforce.
Prospective hires want to join a brand with a highly productive sales team. They know they can attain such great heights by working in the company and can grow and learn more.
Conclusion
Having a competent and sound sales team is crucial to a business’s survival. Therefore, look to hire the best talent. Start by creating an impressive career page.
Then implement the strategies highlighted in this article. They include having an attractive company culture, showing prospective hires how valuable their roles are, and demonstrating the growth they can achieve with the company.
Also, have a candidate-centered interview process, ask the right questions during interviews, and offer competitive wage packages. Finally, don’t forget to leverage social media and invest in a sales team.
