Life hacks for hiring employees in the sales department

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About 27% of sales managers change jobs every year. Many candidates think that sales does not require special knowledge and skills. Managers, in turn, do not know how to properly conduct a search for employees and assess competencies. Read how to hire a sales manager so that cooperation is beneficial for both parties.

Content

How does the sales system affect employee recruitment?
Searching for personnel in the sales department: where to find the right candidate?
We make the right offer
Principles of objective assessment: how not to lose the right candidate
How does the sales system affect employee recruitment?
Often, business leaders believe that it is enough to hire a good sales manager and then he will do everything himself. In practice, the lack of a sales system leads to many disagreements in work, employees act by the "trial and error" method, lose motivation and overestimate the requirements for the employer.

Before you start searching for candidates, build a sales department workflow, including:

Business processes and sales funnels.
Conversation algorithms and scripts for different cases.
Corporate standards for sales staff.
A system of task setting, reporting and control.
A system of motivation, adaptation and training.
Probationary plan, including financial performance and development of core competencies.
To set up a sales department, you can’t do without a CRM system. With its help, you can quickly and conveniently work with your client base, analyze the effectiveness of sales funnels, and monitor the work of each manager and the entire department. We told you how to build a sales department using CRM in this article.

Searching for personnel in the sales department: where to find the right candidate?
Sources and methods of searching for candidates for the sales manager vacancy depend on the business objectives:

Job search sites will help you get a lot belgium phone numbers list of resumes, but most of them will be from unqualified candidates. A good way if you plan to "grow" your sales managers from scratch and know how to properly select candidates.
Social networks . Can be used for both direct search and job posting. In addition to job search groups, post job openings in thematic professional groups where professionals communicate with each other. Read more about finding candidates on LinkedIn .
Offline employee search. It all depends on where the specialists you need are located. These can be job fairs, advertisements in universities, professional conferences. After all, a candidate with the necessary qualities can be noticed in another company and told about the vacancies.
Employee Search : If your employees like working at your company, they may recommend the job to their friends. Perhaps one of them already has a suitable candidate in mind.
A CRM system for HR will help automate routine candidate search processes: adding contacts to the database and communication histories, correspondence templates, calendar management, and reminders about scheduled meetings and calls.

We make the right offer
Not only are you evaluating candidates, but they are also evaluating your offer. Try to make the vacancy clear and attractive:

Don’t write a ton of text — they won’t read it. In response, you’ll receive resumes from people who don’t really care which vacancy you apply for.

Briefly describe the essence of the vacancy, add transparent conditions. Structure the text using lists and headings. Use sentences of 10-15 words with a simple structure. Add all the necessary information: a worthy candidate is unlikely to respond to a vacancy that lacks specifics: “A successful manager needs a smart employee for the office.”
“Sell” your offer. A professional sales manager knows his or her price and knows how to bargain. If you want to hire a really good sales manager, be prepared for the fact that you will also be evaluated.

Make your offer attractive to candidates. Don’t forget to prepare the employees who will be the first to contact candidates. The office manager and HR employee will need conversation scripts - just like in the sales department.
Principles of objective assessment: how not to lose the right candidate
Small and medium-sized businesses often don't have the funds to hire the "wolves of Wall Street." But professional sales managers also started their careers without experience and knowledge because someone saw their potential in time.

Conducting assessments and interviews is a topic for a separate article. Let's focus on a few principles for distinguishing talented salespeople from those who won't even pass their probationary period.

Don't rely on intuition.
Selecting employees based on the “sixth sense” can destroy all previous efforts to find candidates. A personal impression of a person does not always indicate real competencies and abilities. As a result, a valuable employee can be missed because the person “didn’t like it”, “was nervous” or has 2.5 years of work experience instead of the required 3 years.

Evaluate in perspective
People go into sales because this field does not require specialized education and relatively high profits. Most candidates in the sales field do not have sufficient knowledge, experience and qualities. Often an employee has to be "grown" within the company, and for this it is necessary to assess competencies in the long term.