The race to hire top sales people is heating up as organizations increase recruiting budgets in an improving economy. Businesses looking to attract top sales people are focusing more than ever on the sales person’s point of view in order to identify and implement the criterion that top sales people look to when choosing an employer. If your organization is not keeping up with this curve, you might fall further behind in the contest to hire and attract these sought after candidates.

Employers Must Have a Well-Defined Company Culture

While benefits and perks are important in the race to attract top sales people, a company’s culture is becoming an equally decisive metric to highly qualified sales candidates. In many cases, top sales people receive more than one offer, and when the compensation packages offered come out equal, a company’s culture can be a deciding consideration. In fact, companies with notable corporate cultures may even be able to hire top sales people with lower benefits packages. Throughout the hiring process, emphasize your organization’s culture through:

• Telling your organization’s story in relatable terms
• Defining the personality of your organization and how it helps form and retain business relationships
• Highlighting the unique activities in which your organization is involved, such as environmental awareness, community sponsorship, and employee support programs

Employers Must Have Opportunities for Career Advancement

The organizations that regularly hire top sales people are invariably organizations that offer opportunities for career advancement and personal development. Through in-house mentoring and training programs, businesses in all industries can gain an edge in attracting the best of the best, and by clearly outlining potential career routes to positions of greater responsibility within an organization, these businesses can attract top sales people who are highly qualified and driven to succeed. Consider adding the following to your organization’s recruiting and retention strategies: 

• One on one coaching or mentoring
• Performance targets aligned with development opportunities
• Transparent explanations of available career paths, including necessary skills and certifications

Employers Must Have an Effective Recruiting Process

Formal and repeatable are the key words in any hiring process, and organizations that need to hire top sales people need to have a process that integrates these rules in order to adequately identify and measure sales candidates. An effective recruiting process will:

• Utilize suitable recruiting outlets for your organization;
• Attract top sales people with an appropriate job description;
• Implement an efficient interview process with objective measurement criteria;
• Maintain contact with top candidates throughout the hiring cycle;
• and provide incentives to these candidates that will allow the organization to hire top sales people from the candidate pool.

Organizations that are not succeeding in the competition to hire top sales people may have an issue in one or more areas of the recruiting process. Top sales people are interviewing companies at the same time they themselves are being interviewed, and a process that seems poorly constructed, overly long, or unfair can easily derail an organization’s opportunity to hire a top candidate. 

An effective recruiting strategy also takes into account that many of the individuals organizations are looking for under a plan to hire top sales people might be passive job seekers, those who are moderately satisfied with their current positions but would make a change for the right company. These passive job seekers typically are not using career boards and other traditional outlets, but instead turn to sales recruiting agencies that will create a profile of the candidate’s ideal sales position then contact the candidate when such a position becomes available. In effect, then, to attract top sales people from these passive candidate pools, as well as from more active candidate pools, organizations should have a fourth constant that can also help to streamline all other areas of the recruiting process – a relationship with a sales recruiting agency.