The success of your business depends on the success of your sales team, which in turn relies on the success of the sales people you hire. Yet a significant percentage of any sales team might be underperforming even in the best of circumstances, and turnover at all levels of performance is a fact of business. How do you minimize these impacts and ensure that your business always has access to highly qualified sales people? Using an expert sales recruiting firm is the best solution. Find the sales recruiting firm that’s right for your business with these guidelines.

Choose a Firm that Recruits Consistently

A sales recruiting firm that consistently recruits new sales people will have a better candidate pipeline than a sales recruiting firm that does not. Not only will the active recruiter have more candidates available, but those candidates will be more highly qualified since the sales recruiting firm is always able to choose from among the best candidates applying at any given time. This has major benefits for your business, since your business can choose from top quality candidates already located and vetted by the sales recruiting firm.

Avoid Firms That Charge Applicants

There are a small number of sales recruiting firms that charge their candidate pool for applying. There are many reasons to avoid using a sales recruiting firm that follows this practice, and many organizations refuse to work with agencies that do. A few of the problems that arise with a sales recruiting firm that charges applicants include:

• A smaller candidate pool, since fewer applicants pursue the openings
• A risk that the sales recruiting firm will be more likely to send unqualified applicants to your firm, since the applicants did pay the recruiting agency for opportunities
• Questionable ethics, since firms using this model can’t be truly objective

Look for a Firm that Can Do More

Whether your business is currently looking for temporary sales representatives or thinking about using a sales recruiting firm for permanent placement, it is helpful to use a sales recruiting firm that works with all types of placement. By doing so, you can ensure that your business needs are covered even if those needs change. Similarly, using a sales recruiting firm that can adapt to higher or lower capacity, different sales specialties, and other changing needs can save your business time and money no matter how your recruiting situation evolves.

Identify a Firm with Sales Expertise

Sales recruiting is a different proposition than any other type of recruiting. Top quality candidates are not only rare but difficult to attract. Vetting candidates for sales positions is also challenging given the difficulty of accurately benchmarking a sales person’s skills, which can be highly variable. Add to this the fact that the costs of making a sales hiring mistake can be huge, and you can begin to see why using a recruiting firm with a focus on sales makes sense. Only a specialized sales recruiting firm understands the sales hiring landscape and the unique hiring needs of sales departments.

Seek a Long Term Partner

The sales recruiting firm, candidate, and your business should all have the same goal: Long term success. In order to make that happen, a sales recruiting firm should be willing and able to become a long term partner to your organization. This involves not only being flexible to your business needs, expert in sales hiring, and active in the recruiting market, but listening and responding to your requirements. A top sales recruiting firm can also analyze where your recruiting strategy is and help you improve so that your business is always attracting and hiring the top sales people available. You’ll know when you’ve found the right sales recruiting firm because afterwards, you’ll wonder how you managed hiring before your partnership started.