Suppose your business is at that point where it’s ready to launch into growth mode. But you require a team of well-trained sales representatives to cement its place in the market, except you don’t know where to start to source high-caliber candidates. Here are some helpful tips to find the best sales team to support your growing business.

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Reasons Why Recruiting a Sales Team is Necessary

If your business is past the start-up point and is now on the path to growth, you’ll need a sales team to give your business the boost it needs to be able to expand your company into new regions because they’ll have the know-how and skills to market your business in such a way that it facilitates its growth.

What Makes a Good Salesperson?

Recruiting the right candidate in an employee-rich market might seem easy, but that is not the case for many business owners who seem to cannot find salespeople that live up to their expectations.

When looking for the right salesperson, we must first ask ourselves, why do some owners and salespeople struggle while others find easy success? It’s not that they were born salespeople or they have a natural ability to sell. It’s that sales success comes from three things – Attitude, Activity, and Ability.

We talk about this more in this week’s ActionTIP video.

Hiring Practices to Attract Great Employees

When it comes to sourcing the ideal sales candidates for your business, this will usually require coming up with a hiring profile so that you have something to match potential candidates to. Of course, there are a few common traits that most salespeople will have in common such as the requisite experience as well as the necessary soft and hard skills, etc. which should help when it comes to short-listing the best applicants for the position.

Creating a Positional Contract

You’ll have to come up with an apt description that describes the role precisely (without making it excessively long) and what qualities or traits you expect from the candidate in return.

Instead of a job description, we suggest creating positional contacts. These are job descriptions that outline the function and the areas of influence each employee will be responsible for, and outlines how the employee will be measured on their performance.

It’s always a good idea to provide a rough indication of what the salary on offer is. And don’t forget to highlight any perks to make the proposal that much more attractive. Then you could go about selecting what job boards to advertise your job vacancy on. These are generally better if you want to widen the scope of your search so that you have access to the larger talent pool.

Finding the Best Candidates

Suppose you’ve received a number of applications for the sales position you have advertised. Now, you have to sift through each and every application to find only the most suitable candidates to help your business reach its growth potential.

The next step in the recruitment process will usually entail a screening process to find the most suitable applicants for the role in terms of skills, experience, and cultural fit. Moreover, a pre-screening interview is likely to reduce your candidate pool quite a bit so that you can concentrate your efforts on finding only those candidates that will suit your job description to a tee.

Of course, if this doesn’t produce the results you’re after and you’ve yet to talk to your ‘star’ candidates, there are other ways you could go about finding suitable hirees by implementing an employee referral program within your business to help you find quality candidates through connections you or your staff already know. Or you could make use of staffing agencies to do the groundwork for you so that you can concentrate on the more intensive parts of the hiring process.

Make Your Selection

Say you’ve found the person you’re looking for and you’re looking to make an offer to them; be sure to offer a competitive salary and an attractive benefits package if you don’t want them looking elsewhere for better compensation and be sure to do so quickly since the profession they have is in high demand. Once your offer has been verbally agreed upon, sending a formal letter of employment is the next thing to do.

Investing in Your Staff

Most employees will agree that they tend to work harder and are more motivated when they feel valued. So, invest in continuous training for your sales team as well as offer opportunities for growth if you want them to keep reaching and exceeding their sales targets. Furthermore, you are more likely to retain top-quality talent if appreciation is shown for the complex job they have to do. And don’t forget that bonuses are also likely to be noticed if an employee goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Also, look out for ways you can make their job easier by registering your business as a DBA (‘doing business as’) if you have multiple product lines on offer so that your sales team can market your business under the relevant title to reduce confusion on the customer’s behalf. This will also make it easier for your sales rep to relay information easier because their sales pitch will be concise and to the point.

Hiring a sales team will be an essential step in your business’s journey especially as your business grows from one phase to the next.

Are you ready to build your dream team of highly-effective sales people? This is a huge task that can greatly benefit from the guidance of a professional. Schedule a complimentary business strategy session with one of our coaches.