How to Attract Sales Reps to Your Company
The one thing that top-performing sales representatives have in common is that they always hit their quotas.
To recruit and retain the best salespeople, you need to take a look at what you are doing. Are you doing enough to attract and hire A-players?
When hiring managers don’t consider how their companies are positioned to attract and retain top performers, they risk hiring the wrong people.
You may already have the next great sales reps on your payroll
When looking for new sales talent, the first place to look should be within your own company.
“Many companies fail to consider the benefits of hiring from within, and so they often find themselves disappointed in their recruiting results,” says VP of Sales at Peak Recruiting, Brent Thompson.
What companies need to do to attract top salespeople is offer a comprehensive package that meets the needs of the candidate both financially and intangibly.
This means being aware of what your competitors are offering and making sure you are able to outpace them in order to get the best sales candidates.
Sales pros who want to be the best in their field look for companies whose products, services, and reputation are at the top of the market. They also want opportunities for career advancement.
Recruiting Sales Professionals – 7 Tips To Attract The Best Talent
The best sales reps have dream employers they can’t turn down when they come knocking. What is it that makes some employers so attractive places of work for top sales talent?
Here are our top tips on how to recruit the best salespeople:
1 Build an Attractive Employer Brand
A great salesperson’s desire to work for one company is almost entirely dependent on the employer branding of that organization.
59% of employers spent more on their brand as an employer in 2016 than in 2015. This brings a new emphasis on branding for job seekers.
In short, top salespeople are attracted to employers that have a strong employer brand.
Developing a meaningful onboarding experience, acting on employee feedback, and using social media to promote your values as a business are some of the ways to improve your employer brand.
2 Use Your Company’s Reputation to Your Advantage
If there’s little to no history of sales at a business, and sales representatives are failing to meet their quotas, smart sellers know better than to waste time trying to get a job at your company.
Employers who leverage their reputation for breakthrough products, despite being small and not as successful, can attract the attention of top salespeople.
After succeeding at the biggest companies, some sales reps may no longer be motivated by money alone, but also by a desire to sell products that disrupt entire industries and truly make a difference.
By highlighting your successes, you can draw in top candidates you may not have thought you could attract.
3 Provide a sales-friendly environment
The best sales reps prefer to work where the work culture promotes teamwork and productivity. Do you have tools in place that help your reps perform at their absolute best?
In order to attract the best talent, you need to emphasize your pro-sales culture. A sales culture is one where collaboration is valued, but so is competitiveness. This attracts great talent because it gives them the chance to work with a team, but also compete against each other.
A tight-knit group of peers that push each other to meet their sales goals is appealing to top-performing reps. They look for a balance between a company’s willingness to support their salespeople and giving them enough freedom to do their jobs.
4 Create a great career track
To attract the best talent, companies need more than just to offer them a better salary.
Top-tier sales reps know that they will be provided with opportunities to grow their sales skills through ongoing training. They want to know they will be given the support they need to build a robust portfolio of successful deals.
Companies that excel at sales development have excellent training programs, allowing their reps to grow their careers quickly. Develop such a program and the best sales talent will be dropping their CVs at your reception.
Even though they have already achieved so much, top salespeople have an insatiable desire to keep developing and prefer to work where they will be helped to do that.
5 Offer competitive salaries
This one is pretty obvious, but we will mention it anyway. If businesses want to hire salespeople with proven track records, they need to offer a competitive salary.
According to the authors of “Contemporary Sales: Building a Relationship and Creating a Value,” (Johnston and Gregory W,), it’s because “cold callers are perceived as having little value.”.
Holding down your sales team’s pay may seem like a good way to cut costs, but this isn’t the case. When you hire a salesperson, you’re actually paying for their skills and experience.
If low-paid, inexperienced employees are put in charge of sales, they will almost certainly fail.
If a firm wants to avoid high turnover rates and the associated costs, they need to be willing to pay top-tier sales professionals what they’re worth.
Offering below-average compensation is only going to attract poor performers who will ultimately end up costing the company more money in the long run.
Top-tier salespeople demand above-average pay that corresponds with their skill level, sales experience, and selling ability. Offering them a simple-to-understand commission structure with an immediate effect on their paycheck is a great way to get them on board.
6 Show how the job will make a difference
The sense of purpose that sales professionals experience from their jobs is what often drives them to leave one company for another.
Former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, Patty McCord, advises that employers should promote their open positions as opportunities for employees to make a positive difference.
Start-ups can offer sales representatives the opportunity to be a part of a fast-growing company and help build the company from the ground floor up. This is an exciting opportunity for high-performing salespeople.
Rather than spending money on extravagant office amenities, focus on giving your employees the opportunity to have a real impact on the company.
According to research by Harvard Business, employees who feel a sense of purpose and meaning in their jobs are more likely to stay at their companies, are 1.7 times happier, and 1.4 times more engaged in their work.
Sales executives are also responsible for recognizing the importance of these intangible factors when it comes to attracting and retaining top-performing employees.
7 If you want the best, then offer the best
Highly talented sales professionals are often inundated with job opportunities. And does not mean just a high salary.
Companies need to stress to potential employees that they can make a meaningful impact on the company. Top salespeople need to know that they will be provided with the best tools to do their jobs effectively. These include tools for lead generation, task automation, analytics, and reporting.
How To Retain Top Sales Talents in your team
Did you know that 8% of salespeople account for 80% of your company’s sales?
Those salespeople are your top performers, the ones who generate the most revenue and help the company thrive.
It can be difficult to find and recruit top performers, so it is easy for sales managers to see how losing even 1 of them could have a significant impact on the sales department and company.
There are many steps you can take in order to keep your top performers happy. Here are some tips to help you retain top salespeople and achieve outstanding results.
1 Set clear expectations for candidates during the interviews
When hiring a salesperson, be sure to set the right expectations during the interview. This will allow them to know the type of work environment they will be working in if they are hired.
This will help you avoid exaggerating the positive aspects of your company and downplaying any negatives during interviews.
Instead, be open with potential new hires, even if it means that you have to talk about the difficult aspects of being a salesperson in your company.
A driven salesperson will not be intimidated by any sales opportunity.
You will find that salespeople are frustrated and unhappy if you don’t set the right expectations during the interview. This will likely result in a high turnover rate within your department, which can lead to lost time and money.
2 Set realistic goals and track progress
Top salespeople are competitive and are always curious about their work results. It is therefore important that you set realistic goals for your salespeople and give them the resources they need to reach those goals each month.
You should also keep an eye on the progress of your salespeople and communicate with them regularly to ensure they know where they are at all times and how they can improve.
This type of open communication will keep your salespeople informed about their performance and help you build a healthy relationship with them.
3 Offer sales incentives
High-performing sales reps can be motivated by simply rewarding them for their hard work. You can also motivate your team by creating a creative sales contest, where the winner gets a reward.
4 Offer sales training and coaching
Your top performers will leave your company if you don’t offer them coaching and training.
Why?
High-achieving salespeople are driven and want to be more effective in selling. Talk one-on-one with your top salespeople and discuss any areas they need to improve.
Also, make sure that you provide feedback on a regular basis. This will make them feel like they are improving and not stagnating at work.
5 Offer a good compensation package
Experienced managers know that money is a major motivator for top-performing salespeople. This is why top-performing salespeople will often leave companies if their compensation or commission structure changes.
Although it will cost your company some money, offering a competitive compensation package can help you retain top-performing salespeople. The revenue generated by these salespeople will likely outweigh the cost of offering a competitive salary and commission structure.
6 Conduct sales exit interviews
Want to know why your top salespeople are leaving your company? Then ask them. Although this may seem obvious, many companies don’t take this step. These companies keep going the same way, losing salespeople as before.
Listen attentively to the answers of your resigning salesperson and take notes. You can then look for commonalities in the answers of top performers who have resigned and make positive changes based on those answers.
You will reduce employee turnover costs by doing this.
Conclusion – How to Attract and Retain The Best Sales Talent
As you will notice, attracting and recruiting the best sales talent does not happen without a conscious effort to make your company a truly great, preferred place to work. It has to be a culture that is etched in your corporate values and which cascades right from the company president to the sales reps’ immediate bosses.
Remember, if you want the best sales reps, you need to offer them the best. This means a competitive salary, great benefits, ample vacation time, and a positive company culture. By offering the best of everything, you’ll be sure to attract the best sales talent out there!
Need Help Automating Your Sales Prospecting Process?
LeadFuze gives you all the data you need to find ideal leads, including full contact information.
Go through a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach. This is crazy specific, but you could find all the people that match the following:
- A company in the Financial Services or Banking industry
- Who have more than 10 employees
- That spend money on Adwords
- Who use Hubspot
- Who currently have job openings for marketing help
- With the role of HR Manager
- That has only been in this role for less than 1 year