7 Tips for hiring the best salespeople

Successful sales strategies help companies stay afloat. Better the sales number, the more you increase your company’s lifespan in the market. Every business owner will agree to the fact that they need top salespeople in their organization for those sales strategies.

Searching for talented sales representatives is a crucial and frustrating quest because you need sales professionals who will keep pushing forward so that you can move your business to the next level, without breaking your spine.

Here are a few simple tips that might come in handy in your quest of hiring the best salespeople for your organization:

1. Be on the lookout for someone who has industry expertise

The process of getting someone new onboard and train them is a time-consuming task. Time is of immense importance for every business owner. This pushes the fact forward that you must lookout for someone who has the right industry expertise.

Sometimes your products play a crucial part too

• While it is easier for salespeople to quickly learn about some products and start their sales pitch to prospects, some products need in-depth knowledge before the sales pitches can start.
• Salespeople belonging to your industry will quickly understand the sales dynamics which will smoothen the process of making sales using the trade-tricks they have learned.

Lack of industry experience is not a deal-breaker; however, an ideal sales candidate must have some experience close to the same background.

2. Must have a high sales IQ

This statement is not to demotivate the sales fraternity, but it is imperative for businesses to hire salespeople who have a high sales IQ for doing the job in the manner you want them to.

• To excel at their job, i.e., sales, salespeople must have a particular skill set.
• Many of the skills can be taught like creating a conversation with a prospect or writing attractive cold emails or proposals.
• But some skills are just inherent.
• For a successfully running tenure for your business, you will need to hire people who have a natural knack for building lasting relationships with their prospects.
• An elevated level of emotional intelligence is also part of the skill set you must look for in a sales candidate.
• Another essential skill is of quickly reading people and picking up a conversation at the correct time. They should also be great listeners.
• High performing salespeople are the ones who understand what the prospects and customers want from producers.
• The most important skill that your candidate must have is that they need to be highly persuasive.

If they can’t close a deal, they are not contributing to your company’s goal of staying afloat in the market.

3. Understand the needs for your latest sales hire

Knowing the why behind your hiring requirement also plays a significant role for you.

You might be hiring X number of salespeople because you are on the road to success or you have not found the correct mix of people with ample sales skills.

4. A clutter-free Sales Hire Budget

You know that the next step for you now is to put up a job description to look for your requirements.

• Review your current business needs and assess any experience gap that is present in your sales department.
• Cross-check the skill set you are looking for against the experience level you need.
• Create an affordable budget so that you can match it with the salary that you plan to offer your sales hire.

When you’re in a start-up, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10 percent of the company. So why wouldn’t you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does. – Steve Jobs

5. Reach out to the right candidates

In the hiring process for the best salespeople, you must understand that they are always elusive in saying yes to businesses.

• Many online portals help small and mid-sized businesses in searching for the ideal sales candidate.
• Many candidates in these portals are not looking for a change, but they will sway with a perfectly persuasive and personalized appeal.
• Generate enough interest for the ones that you think are the ones for your organization that they take time to think over your offer.
• While these more passive candidates may not be crawling the web for their next job, with a compelling and personalized pitch, you may be able to generate interest in what your company has to offer.

For the active candidates, personalize your offer emails with a message that focuses on the opportunities. Also, let them know the reasons why you think they are a perfect fit for your organization.

6. Develop a clear interview process

With a structured interview process, the chances of finding the correct person for your sales requirement becomes easier. Every business is different and has its own set of unique needs.

We are listing down the standard practice for conducting interviews:

• An informal chat is an excellent conversation starter with an icebreaker up your sleeve.
• A series of the personality-based question also help the candidate decide whether your organizational culture is adaptable or not.
• A more formal meeting with the key members the potential candidate will work in the future allows you to ask specific questions from all areas of the business.
• Ask your candidate to prepare and deliver a presentation to key stakeholders in the business. This will allow assessment of the candidate’s ability to work under pressure.
• The Sales department depends on sales reps’ skills. So, make sure that your hire is persuasive and knows how to engage prospects.
• A presentation provides you with insight into the candidate’s suitability for the role.

7. Make an offer and negotiate

With so many guidelines and tests, you certainly have good salespeople listed out to join your business. This is the time of making them an offer and counter the negotiations.

The interview process takes a long time. One more reason for the elongated process is that the better candidates are speaking to multiple recruiters to get the best pay scale in the industry. Make sure that you keep the communication open and transparent, for avoiding future complexities.

• Show them the willingness of hiring so that they won’t feel trapped between offers.
• If the chosen candidate is a great salesperson, they will negotiate with you about the offer, rather than accepting it on the first go.
• The superstar salesperson will expertly negotiate the best possible salary from you.
• Those who can convince you to hire them with their offers are the ones you want to make a part of your winning sales culture.
• After all, you are doing this for generating better revenue for your business.

Conclusion

A good, hard-working, and efficient salesperson or a whole bunch of them will easily achieve their sales targets if they are supported with an equally capable sales tool.

Salesmate CRM is the ideal tool for every salesperson on the job; we help our clients smoothen their long sales cycles. We are a cloud-based sales CRM solution that specializes in handling and streamlining the sales process for small and medium-sized businesses.

We help our clients understand their deals’ overall value, provide a 360 view of their customers and sales funnel.

If you have any questions related to the various features that Salesmate has in its arsenal, get in touch with us for satisfactory answers.

Recommended Reading: Sales Hiring Made Simple-An Exclusive Guide for B2B Startup Founders