Choosing the staff for your sales team may be the single most important you’ll ever face-whether you’re a team lead, middle management, or a C-level executive, you future can often be charted directly to the skill of the sales team you put in position. Unfortunately, selecting sales personnel isn’t as easy as it may seem-choosing the right mix of people to create an optimally functional sales division takes as much skill and tailored insight as leading that team. That’s where a sales recruiter comes in. Without a sales recruiter, you’re leaving the quality of your team to blind chance, and the future of the company with it. You might be wondering why. Fortunately for you, this article has all the reasons you need to hire (or train up) a sales recruiter of your own.

What Makes a Recruiter?

Before we discuss the reasons for having a sales recruiter, it may do us some good to agree on what counts as a true sales recruiter. A sales recruiter is not, in fact, the random person from HR that you task to find new sales personnel, the overworked team lead asked to vet candidates from other departments, or even the normal hiring manager, although that last one is far closer than the rest. A sales recruiter knows sales, knows candidates, and knows how to fit an individual to an organization quickly and effectively. It’s a full-focus job that shouldn’t be handled as a secondary role in most situations. A good sales recruiter more than pays for their efforts in benefit to the company, just like any other vital personnel.

Why a Recruiter?

• Quality of Hires. Perhaps the most obvious benefit of a dedicated sales recruiter. Getting the best people for the job (and your budget, culture, product, location.) can be a monumental task, but a good sales recruiter can make it happen. A specialist spots flaws that a team lead may not, sees diamonds in the rough where others might only see inexperience, and recognizes what’s needed, not what’s wanted. In short, if you want to get the best hire whether they’re local or abroad, a new graduate or old hand, then a specialist sales recruiter’s more or less mandatory.
• Compensation. Of course, getting the perfect candidate isn’t the only reason to take on a sales recruiter. A good one will make sure you’re compensating your team effectively-not breaking the bank, not wasting money on wasted talent, not losing your best and brightest newcomers to better-paying competition once they have experience under their belt. Give a good recruiter free rein within your compensation budget, and they’ll take it further than you’d dream it could go. You’ll get better results AND take less of a hit to your staffing budget. Win/Win.
• Cohesion. The last benefit of a proper sales recruiter lay in their ability to put together teams, rather than just pick random individuals with good resumes. It’s one thing to place an ace salesman in your team and have him do a great job, it’s another to find one that fits your corporate culture and will work with your other ace salespeople to make a greater whole. That sort of cohesion also contributes greatly to concerns such as team morale, customer satisfaction, public image, and the ever-fearsome turnover. A company that’s great to work for, because it’s your perfect fit, is a company you’ll work better, harder, smarter for. A sales recruiter can make sure that happens by intent, not accident.

So you have the reasoning for choosing specialized sales recruiters over part-time hirers. Whether that means developing your own full-time in-house recruiter or picking up the services of a third-party agency will depend largely on your staffing requirements and long-term expectations. The investment in tools, training, and regular pay may or may not be in your best interest, so you consider your options before you leap one way or the other.