Your sales staff members are some of the most important resources in your company. These are the professionals responsible for boosting your bottom line, generating revenue for your business, and ensuring long-term growth.
This means when the time comes to hire team members for your sales sector, you need to make sure you’re choosing the right talent. Here’s how you can ensure you’re hiring the best possible sales staff for your workforce.
Sales Team Assemble: Who Are your Sales Staff?
Your sales staff are all the people in your company responsible for facilitating sales. They can include lead nurturing professionals responsible for having meetings and calls with customers who are still making decisions about your product or service, as well as deal “closers”.
To get the right team hired, you’ll need well-trained, attentive, and reliable specialists who understand not only the most important aspects of achieving successful sales, but also what makes your business or product so appealing. While you can provide your sales staff with extra training to make them more effective, focusing on finding professionals who already have the right underlying skills is crucial.
Notably, in today’s world, it’s possible to hire team members from a range of different environments. You might hire some of your sales professionals in-person, while others join your team after video interviews and remote onboarding sessions.
How to Hire Team Members for your Sales Staff
The first step in hiring the right sales staff, is establishing your goals. You’ll need to start by assessing your current team, and asking yourself exactly who you need to bridge the gaps in your workforce. Are you looking for senior sales leaders who can guide the rest of your employees, or specialists in cultivating and nurturing leads?
It’s also a good idea to think about what your ideal sales representative should be like. What kind of skills do you need them to have, and how will you know whether they’re likely to fit with your team?
You’ll need to:
- Create a plan: Decide how many sales staff members you’re going to hire, what kind of roles they’re going to fill, and what your renumeration offers are going to be.
- Get stakeholder buy-in: Make sure all members of the team are aware of your hiring process, and happy to give you the go-ahead on making buying decisions. If you need someone else to be available at interviews, make sure you take this into account.
- Create job descriptions: Create a job description that highlights the key responsibilities of your new sales staff members to share with your employee. Don’t forget to highlight the benefits of working with your team in the job description.
- Design an interview script: Create a standardized interview process with questions you can use to assess the quality of each candidate. Try not to answer the same old questions, but instead look for questions that can tell you about the candidate’s experience and work ethic.
- Find sales professionals: Look for potential professionals in a range of environments, including social media, specialist forums and even working with recruiters. Be willing to look in a range of different environments to find the right talent.
Choosing your Sales Team: Assemble the Right Characteristics
While the exact skills, features, and characteristics you look for in your sales staff will depend on a number of factors, there are some valuable points to consider when filling any job description.
When hiring sales staff, some of the most important characteristics to look for include:
- Charisma: Sales staff should have a good level of confidence, and be likeable, otherwise they’ll struggle to build rapport with customers.
- Communication skills: Your sales professionals should be able to highlight the benefits of your product or service clearly in a range of communication methods.
- Experience: A track record in sales will usually come in handy, even if you’re willing to offer training. Experience will reduce the amount of work you need to do to get your sales staff ready for action.
- Determination: Hire team members who won’t take no for an answer. You’ll need your sales staff to be committed to getting the win.
- Honesty: You should be able to trust your sales staff to deliver an excellent level of professionalism, and work well with others.
Choosing your sales staff
Remember, when choosing the right sales staff members, it’s important not only to consider the characteristics above, but the unique circumstances of your sales environment. Look for someone who will fit well with your company culture, and work effectively alongside the rest of your team.
Following the tips above should help you to find the right sales staff for your team. However, it’s important to remember to be as realistic as possible. Don’t expect you’re going to find a unicorn straight away. Focus on finding the best team members possible.
