Hiring a salesperson who is bad at his job or who is disruptive to other members of the team can have a big impact on the sales performance for your entire company. Hiring the wrong person can be costly not just because of their salary payments – you can also lose out through the cost of lost sales and possibly through reduced effectiveness of other members of your team because of the influence of the bad performer. Most poor hires result from sales recruiting mistakes made during or even before the recruiting process, by learning about and recognizing the following 5 sales recruiting mistakes you can avoid making them in your own company:

Not defining the attributes you desire in advance

Some of the biggest sales recruiting mistakes happen because companies fail to do the required work for a recruitment process prior to starting to recruit. If you have no understanding of the personality traits your company exhibits and values as a collective it can be hard to find someone that fits your culture. Consider your corporate identity and what you would like your staff to be like – then hire with that in mind.

Not screening candidates properly before interview

Another of the top sales recruiting mistakes involves failing to weed out weak candidates prior to the interview stage. Scrutinize every CV for things that will make that person a poor fit for your company. If you don’t do this the risk is that a poor candidate may have strong interviewing skills and could potentially slip-through when they could have been weeded out simply by reading their CV a second time.

Offering too low salary

Most sales people have a good idea what their skills are worth and you are unlikely to get a great batch of candidates if you’re offering uncompetitive salaries and bonus schemes. This is one of the easiest sales recruiting mistakes to fall into since it isn’t immediately obvious where you are losing out – however in the long run your team is likely to become comprised of the merely average since better candidates will leave for higher paying jobs at other companies, which will weaken you further if these companies are also your direct competitors.

Rushing the recruiting process

While it may seem urgent and that you are losing sales every day that you don’t fill a sales position, one of the top 5 sales recruiting mistakes involves rushing the process. The more you rush the process the more sales recruiting mistakes you are likely to make and the more likely that you will end up with a disruptive or inferior candidate. Rushing may mean you miss out on spotting a flaw in someone’s character during the interview phase – or deciding to overlook it because you really want to fill the position. You may also miss out on a great candidate who might enter into the recruitment process if you had kept the application window open for a bit longer.

Hiring on past performance alone

The final of the top 5 sales recruiting mistakes is to hire on past performance alone without taking into account other factors. From a sales point of view one candidate may stand out with stronger performances in past sales roles but don’t hire them unless they also meet your other criteria. Some great performers may struggle on your team and become disruptive if they are used to being a star performer and are now asked to operate in a team that does not center on them. Of course this may not be the case and you may have a star performer on your hands that will fit in great with your company structure and personality! This is what the sales recruitment process is for – and by avoiding these 5 sales recruiting mistakes you should have a great chance of finding ideal candidates.