Your company can’t flourish without top sales reps, and this can be frustrating if you’re struggling to find the right people for your team. At a time when the job market is increasingly competitive, it can be hard to not only find your ideal candidates, but to entice them into choosing you over their competing offers. There is always some bad advice circulating about what it takes to attract and hire good sales reps, so what actually works?

Here are a number of solutions that can help your team understand how to attract sales people for your company.

Incentive-Based Compensation

Compensation is essential for attracting an excellent sales team. When you’re hiring in a competitive market, compensation and it’s different forms can help close a deal quickly and prevent your candidate from taking a different offer.

Incentive-based compensation comes in the form of commission, bonuses, or profit-sharing opportunities, and can offer the additional perks your potential hire is looking for. A good salesperson will be drawn towards incentive-based compensation; having a lower fixed salary will be accepted when they’re confident in their ability to close a deal and make sales. This is an extremely motivating factor for top sellers and crucial when you’re figuring out how to attract sales people. You’re also being cost savvy for your business; if your sales reps simply aren’t making sales, you won’t have to pay for it.

Clearly Defined Success

When creating a plan that will help you determine how to attract top sales people, it’s important to consider how your company values and recognizes success. The best sales reps work hardest when success is clearly defined; it allows for them to establish clear goals based directly on your expectations. Having frequent performance reviews keep sales people motivated, and in this way everyone benefits.

Strong Leadership and Coaching

A great sales team can’t exist without a strong leader, and if you’re wondering how to attract sales people, you’ll want to enlist effective management. A top seller will know a great manager versus an ineffective one, and know how to use them to their selling advantage.

In other words, a top salesperson will want someone there to coach them. They understand the value of a strong leader to help them reach their potential; whether it’s integrating them into the sales process and training them as effectively as possible, or helping them secure the clients they need to achieve success, every great sales person will want to know there is strong leadership present before they accept a position.

A Positive Work Environment

It seems as though lately everyone is talking about the importance of corporate culture, so much so that it’s necessary in order to snag a competitive sales person. When you’re determining how to attract sales people, you’ll want to show that your company has a positive working environment—somewhere they’d enjoy spending their time, with people they enjoy working with under management they trust.

Having a poor working environment is a leading reason why people leave their old companies to seek new opportunities, and this factor provides an opportunity for you to attract top talent who are looking to start afresh. Start with identifying what makes a good workplace and integrating those values into your company’s mission.

Partnering with a Recruitment Agency

There is no shame in getting help from experts. If you’ve tried to implement the above factors and are still struggling with attracting top talent, you may want to consider putting your time and money towards the more effective and efficient means of hiring an agency. With their superior market knowledge and ready pool of strong candidates, partnering with an agency may be what it takes to attract the sales reps you’ve been hoping for.