There are lots of recruitment tips on the web however sorting out the wheat from the chaff can be confusing to say the least.
Here are some tips for running a successful sales recruitment campaign:
Recruitment tip one: Good salespeople are notoriously hard to come by. So the best strategy is to make sales recruiting an ongoing activity. Keep your ‘finger on the pulse’ and make recruiting salespeople an every day activity.
Recruitment tip two: Have in place an on-going strategy to enable you to recruit your salespeople all of the time. Have a clear plan that is carefully thought through and written down in a strategy paper. Plan and develop a flow chart with clear objectives and desired results.
Recruitment tip three: Have a well written job description in place which clearly defines what you want in a good salesperson. Know what you are looking for and don’t leave your selection criteria to chance. Once you’ve developed a clear description of what your perfect salesperson looks like, you are able to distance yourself from the emotions involved in your interviewing and make objective selection decisions.
Recruitment tip four: Have someone in your organization allocated the task of being responsible for sales recruitment. Ensure that this person has the education, qualifications and experience to successfully create and orchestrate a successful recruitment strategy.
Recruitment tip five: Look out for job ads in the Saturday papers and learn what your competition is doing and how they are wording their sales recruitment ads. Create your own ads that will attract attention away from your competition and towards your own organization.
Recruitment tip six: Consider a range of media to advertise for your salespeople. Some of your advertising options include: full-color newspaper inserts, business journal classifieds, a banner ad on your website, university ‘career’ days, job / career fairs, internet job postings and radio ads.
You should never restrict yourself to just one advertising medium. As with any marketing campaign, you need to build a marketing ‘web’ with many branches to get the word out about your organization and to attract good sales people.
Recruitment tip seven: Use the latest sales recruitment and assessment methodologies to test and profile your candidates. A sound testing schedule using valid and reliable assessments has been scientifically proven to improve the outcome of selection decisions.
A range of assessment options are available, including instruments that can measure general cognitive ability, emotional intelligence, personality profiles and sales aptitude.
Recruitment tip eight: Have your questions prepared prior to calling candidates in for their interviews. Preparation will help you to (i) conduct a more effective interview with better sales recruitment decisions arising out of the process, (ii) perform a more systematic, structured and professional interview (iii) ensure that you are asking all of your candidates the same questions, thereby creating a fair process and allowing you to collect the same information from all candidates.
Recruitment tip nine: Don’t assume that an experienced salesperson will necessarily have the skills and abilities to bring in sales results right away. In your sales recruitment strategy, ensure that you incorporate coaching, training and support for all of your new inductees.
The recruitment and hiring of staff is a continual process that does not end with the job interview. Having a consistent plan that incorporates staff development will improve your recruitment outcomes.
Recruitment tip ten: Have an attractive and fair salary plan in place. Consider hiring ‘trainee’ salespeople with no previous sales experience but with great potential to succeed in sales. Reward both your trainees and more experienced recruits with a remuneration package that will not only attract applicants to your job ads, but encourage them to work hard, and stay committed to your organization for the long haul.