Your salespeople sell your products or services and generate revenue for your company. If any of your employees were the most important to your company, it would most likely be your salespeople. Without them, you’d have no income and wouldn’t be in business for very long. And because they’re so critical to your organization’s success, you need to ensure that your sales hiring process is up-to-date, effective, and just downright amazing so that you can ensure you only hire the best and brightest in the industry.
To amp up your sales hiring process, you need to take advantage of the most effective tools on the market, like these eight.
Mid-sized and large companies in particular should invest in applicant tracking software as they do a lot of hiring. Such a program will allow you to track resumes, automatically match skills to open roles, post job descriptions on multiple channels, and create reports. ATS can make your sales hiring process more efficient and productive, so you can focus on finding the best candidates rather than on the administrative tasks that come with hiring.
Social media is a great tool to use in your sales hiring process. It can help promote your employer brand, reach a wider and more diverse audience, and help you find and engage passive candidates, all of which will lead to a higher quality candidate pool to choose from.
You likely communicate with candidates primarily through email. So you should be using an email tracking tool to get insights into those conversations. You’ll be able to see who opened your messages and clicked on your links, when, and how many times. This real-time data can help you keep track of your candidates and your communication efforts.
Most sales skills can be learned on the job, so what’s important for you to focus on during your sales hiring process is personality. Not everyone is cut out for the industry, and using personality assessments can help you weed out the seemingly good candidates who probably won’t work out.
You should definitely be utilizing your website as part of your sales hiring process. It’s a way to build your employer brand by displaying all of the great things about working for your company. It’s also a good place to post job openings and track where your candidates are coming from, so you can better understand which channels are most effective.
People are now using their smartphones to access the internet just as much as, or more than, they’re using their desktops and laptops. Make sure your job postings and website are optimized for mobile, so you can make it as easy as possible for candidates to apply from whatever device they prefer.
Video interviewing can help you interview applicants who are out of town and unable to get to your office, increasing your flexibility and widening your reach. And if you tape your interviews, you can go back, review them, compare candidates, and possibly spot things you didn’t notice before, so you can ensure that your final decision is the right decision.
Though not a tool per say, using a sales recruitment firm can be the best thing you do for your sales hiring process. These agencies understand sales and salespeople and they have the expertise and experience needed to ensure that you only hire top talent in the industry. When you engage a sales recruitment firm as part of your hiring process, you can ensure that your salespeople really become your company’s most valuable asset.
Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.