Sales recruiting may seem pretty cut and dry: find a good candidate, interview him, and hire him. The hard part of being a sales recruiter is identifying who can be a great sales person and who won’t be able to make it in the field.

Not everyone is cut out for a job in sales, and as a sales recruiter, it’s your job to identify the differences. Some candidates might seem great on paper—they have all the right qualifications and experience—but once they get into company you’ve placed them in, they’re flops. That’s because not everyone that looks great on paper or shines during the interview will do well in sales.

If you’ve been in this position and have hired the wrong candidates in the past, and you want to be a better sales recruiter, follow these tips.

Focus on Fit

If you’ve been focusing your efforts on solely finding candidates that have the right skills, you’ve made your first mistake as a sales recruiter. Most experienced sales reps will have the necessary skills, but they might not all work in the company they’re placed in. Finding a candidate that is the right fit for the company is crucial.

If you want to ensure the candidate will be a long-time hire, you must find one that believes in the company’s goals and values and will fit in well within the company’s unique culture. For example, hiring a young, talented sales rep for a position at an old-school sales organization that hasn’t updated its sales techniques in decades isn’t going to work in the long term. Their strategies, ways of selling, performance standards, and general personalities are bound to clash. Alternatively, placing a sales rep who is still used to selling with outbound techniques like cold calling won’t be a good fit in an up-and-coming trendy organization that is primarily focused on new inbound selling strategies. Know your company’s culture and values, and find a candidate that will fit in well.

Identify the Candidate’s Needs

As a sales recruiter, you’re probably used to telling the candidate how great the company is and what an amazing opportunity the position is in order to get the candidate on board. However, you might forget about asking the candidates what their needs are. Knowing what your candidates’ needs and wants are can help you better understand if the position is right for them, so you’ll know if they’ll be happy and stay for the long run.

Create Metrics

As a sales recruiter you’ve probably hired some awesome sales reps and some flops. To be more successful in the future, focus on your top performers’ best traits and create metrics to help you narrow down the candidate pool. Create best hiring practices for yourself by analyzing what has worked in the past so you can create a standard for what to look for when recruiting in the future. Find the links between all of your top performing sales people—what they all seem to have in common—and start a list of traits. Analyzing your past successes and mistakes will help you refine your skills and improve as a sales recruiter.

Know the Sales Process Inside and Out

If you’re a sales recruiter, chances are you used to be a rep. Many sales recruiters used to be sales people. That’s what makes many of them better than the rest. If you’re a sales recruiter and you don’t have past experience as a sales rep, you’re already falling behind. The knowledge of the sales process is crucial. So if you don’t know it inside and out, you need to do some research until you fully understand what it entails—from researching and qualifying prospects to negotiation and closing sales. Only once you know the sales process can you start to be a better sales recruiter and understand which skills your candidates need to have to be successful so you can find and hire only top talent.