Your goal when you have a vacancy on your sales team is to fill it with top sales talent. Each time you hire is an opportunity to add a difference maker to your team – a top sales rep who will motivate your current reps, someone who will take the lead, and a rep who will blow sales quotas out of the water.

Why is finding the right person so important in sales? It’s because turnover is extremely high.

“Average annual turnover in sales is 25 to 30%. This means that the equivalent of the entire sales organization must be hired and trained every four years or so, and that’s expensive,” says Frank V. Cespedes and Daniel Weinfurter on Harvard Business Review.

“Companies typically spend more on hiring in sales than they do anywhere else in the firm. So how do you improve the returns on this investment?” they add.

4 Tips to Hire Top Sales Talent

Here are a number of recruiting strategies that you can implement to attract and hire the best sales talent:

1. Be more concise about the sales experience you require:

A top sales rep in one industry can struggle mightily in another. When writing job ads, be explicitly clear about the exact type of sales experience you require. Do reps need experience in selling to customers, small business, C-level?

2. Hire for the required task:

Look for the perfect match between a rep’s skill and previous experience, and the task that needs to get done. Focusing on this match will help you find someone who can excel in the role.

3. Know your company brand:

Having a strong brand is a key factor that will attract top industry talent. We all know how important reputation is in business, and if you can create a strong organizational culture and a reputation for being a great place to work, it will be easier to recruit top sales talent that can make a difference.

4. Have the best offer:

No one wants to lose a top talent to a competitor, so make sure you are putting your best offer forward during the recruiting process. Offer a strong compensation package, and emphasize job meaning and impact.

Hiring top sales talent really comes down to fully understanding your company needs and matching those needs to the skills and abilities of available sales talent. Learn more about hiring the best sales talent by reading 6 Interviewer Techniques to Find Your Next Sales Star.

SalesForce Search is a sales recruiting company which specializes in the recruitment and placement of sales professionals. We recruit sales people in every sector of the economy including, software, manufacturing, financial services and medical devices. Find the right sales person for your organization, start your search here.