Hiring salespeople & business development recruitment

Give a Grad a Go’s experienced sales recruiters have compiled tips and advice to help you hiring sales staff as well as retaining your hires.

If you choose to recruit sales graduates through us, we can help you through every stage of sales team building.

Consider which level you’re hiring

Before searching for sales professionals to hire, are you going to be recruiting Sales Managers or hiring Sales Executives?

This will be important in determining what salary to offer. There are different benefits for each.

Hiring a junior with little experience in your industry will mean that you can teach them sales techniques and train them to fit your specific company processes.

On the other hand, if you hire a Sales Rep with experience, you may find that they bring some invaluable sales tips and insight for the rest of the team, without spending as much money and time on training.

Offer a competitive salary

Our first top tip when recruiting sales personnel is to make sure the salary you are offering is competitive.

This principle applies whether you’re hiring Sales Managers, recruiting Account Managers, or hiring Sales Reps.

You really do get what you pay for.

Providing a strong base salary will ensure you find the very best talent when recruiting sales professionals or hiring a sales team.

Visit our graduate employment statistics archive to find out what other companies are paying business development graduates.

Solid commission structure

It’s not just about the salary for your sales employee.

Remember to ensure your commission structure is competitive too.

A common mistake that sales companies make when recruiting business development talent is to oversell what the company can offer in the interview.

Any sales recruiting firms will tell you that, if the salary and commission structure isn’t solid, then employee retention may drop.

Targets and incentives

Before you begin recruiting for sales staff, make sure that you have good incentives in place to keep your employee’s motivated.

If it’s your first time hiring sales staff, it’s important to think about what realistic targets you can set before you start looking for a sales representative. The candidate is likely to ask you about this in the interview.

Think about what personal and team incentives you can offer.

For example, ‘Sales Employee of the Month’, or additional monetary bonuses to recognise exceptional hard work.

Learning and development

In a recent survey we conducted on graduates, learning and development ranked first on their list of ‘what is most important in a job’.

It scored higher than salary, benefits/perks, and company culture.

So, make sure to prioritise this when hiring a sales team.

Opportunities for progression

Take into consideration both the personal and professional development of employees.

Growth opportunities ranked second in importance for graduates when looking for a job.

So, having a clear path for progression will help to attract great talent, particularly if candidates enquire about this at interview stages.

Onboarding process

Employee onboarding shouldn’t be an afterthought. Making sure you have a well thought out onboarding procedure will help to retain the graduates you hire.

We care proactively about the onboarding of your new hires, which sets us apart from other sales recruitment agencies in London.

We hope this has given you some insight into hiring for sales grads.

If you follow this sales team growth strategy, we are confident you’ll find the perfect candidate for the job.

Get in touch today to recruit sales agents and find out more ways we can help your company grow.

Not looking for managed recruitment services? Advertise a job online and utilise our graduate job board whilst retaining full control over the hiring process.

It’s important, when thinking about how to recruit a sales team, that you consider warning signs in the recruitment process.

It is agreed amongst sales recruiting firms that one of the key things to look out for is longevity.

Although it is well-known that sales roles have a shorter shelf life than most jobs, it is still a good idea to be wary of ‘job-hopping’.

This is anyone who have had multiple sales roles in a short space of time.

It is of course an acceptable way to navigate your career, but it does mean that individual may not be who you’re looking for.

One of our sales recruitment experts explains:

“When you recruit sales reps, you’re aware that it is a target driven industry. The better your sales staff are doing in their job, the more they’ll be earning, the happier they’ll be. Salespeople tend to stick around when they’re doing well and are happy. Granted, sometimes job’s don’t work out, but if there’s a repetitive ‘job-hopping’ pattern then it’s often not the job, it’s the person.”

When you hire a Sales Representative, hire a Sales Assistant, or you’re hiring salespeople generally, it is important to have a structured training and progression plan in place.

Even if you find salespeople with many years of experience, they will still need to understand your company-specific processes to ensure a smooth transition from their previous sales working style.

This is why the onboarding process is so crucial.

It is your responsibility to keep your employees happy, satisfied, and willing to commit to your company for the long-term.

Once you find Sales Reps or recruit Sales Managers, you need to retain them.

Looking for sales job description examples?

If you’re wondering how to write a job description, here are our top tips for writing a Sales Account Manager job description that will target the right candidates and allow you to efficiently hire for your business.

Start with an attention-grabbing job overview

Our top tip for a successful job description is to begin with an impactful job summary describing the role, your company, the industry you operate in, and the location of the job.

You want to quickly sell the candidate your role, and also allow them to determine if they are suited to apply to your role based off their abilities.

Describe the exact duties of the Sales Account Manager job in detail

Next, it’s important to accurately describe the responsibilities and duties of your Sales Account Manager role.

Give enough detail so a candidate can visualise what a day in the role would involve. You want them to be able to quickly identify if they are capable to carry out the required duties.

You want to describe the duties of the Sales Account Manager in as much detail as possible, including who they will be managing, who they will be working closely with, how their position fits into the wider company.

It’s also worth outlining the software/sales performance metrics they will be using.

Be precise on the type of candidate you’re looking for

Sales Account Managers will need a variety of soft and hard skills to succeed in the role and carry out the duties effectively.

They will need to balance managing a sales team with meeting client needs and driving overall sales of the business.

You want to include the required skills, any specific software you require experience in and the number of year’s previous sales experience required.

Make a case for why candidates should apply to your role

An important part of writing a Sales Account Manager job description is enticing candidates and selling your opportunity!

Account Managers will likely have had previous roles and learnt what they like and don’t like in a company, meaning they may be more particular in a role and what they are looking for in a company compared to recent graduates.

Having an accurate and competitive starting salary for your Sales Account Manager role is essential to a successful job application. If you’re wondering what the industry average Sales Account Manager salary is, check out our graduate employment statistics archive to see what other companies are paying their Sales Account Managers.

Looking to hire a Sales Executive for your business and wondering how to write a Sales Executive job description and Sales Assistant job description?

Here’s our top tips for how to write a standout Sales Executive job description and Business Development Executive job description that will attract the perfect candidates to your role:

Make an impact in your opening paragraph

Key to an eye-catching and grabbing job description, is making full use of your first opening sentences.

Use this as an opportunity to sell your sales position, describe your unique company culture, exciting aspects of the role and who you’re looking for. Allow for candidates who might not be even considering junior sales positions to be intrigued by your role and want to continue reading your listing.

Accurately describe the duties of your Sales Executive position

A Sales Executive is a common entry-level and junior sales position, where candidates fist get to grips with the world of sales.

To give a candidate a well-rounded and informed overview of what the role will entail and allow them to see if they are excited about the role, describe the job responsibilities in detail.

List who they will be working alongside, who they will be liaising with regularly, who they will report to, and platforms they will be using.

This is also a great chance to set your expectations of the role from the beginning and the standard you expect.

If you’re wondering what job responsibilities to include in your Sales Executive job description, here are our examples:

• Building business by identifying and selling prospects
• Maintain great relationships with clients
• Identifying product improvements or new products by keeping up to date with industry trends, market activities, and competitions
• Successfully signing up new partners to the platform
• Pitching the company proposition to potential new business partners
• Sourcing and creating a leads list within a specific category to introduce to the business
• Giving weekly updates and reports to the Sales Manager
• Maintaining an excellent level of customer service when liaising with clients

Require important characteristics and skills for sales roles

In your sales job description, whether it’s a media Sales Executive job description, field Sales Executive job description, events sales job description or marketing and sales job description, it’s crucial to list the qualities and skills of the ideal candidate you are looking for.

The world of sales is fast-paced, unpredictable, and high energy, so it’s important that you’re looking to attract a candidate who possesses the ideal qualities to be able to thrive in this environment.

As this is a junior sales role, previous sales experience will be less crucial, but it’s more important to look for candidates who have the key qualities to be able to be trained into becoming an excellent sales employee.

Here are our example Sales Executive qualifications and skills:

• Entrepreneurial spirit: a real self-starter who is self-motivated and driven
• Creative thinker keen to explore new ways of working and drive growth
• Confident, driven, and target-oriented
• A problem solver with an interest in improving processes
• Thrives under pressure and is a logical thinker
• An excellent communicator with the ability to build rapport with ease

It’s important to train sales teams in the right ways and to put a well-structured sales onboarding process in place.

This is essential to retaining your hires and seeing your company develop as much as possible from their work.

Here are our top tips for an effective sales onboarding program and sales onboarding best practices:

Allow time for your candidates to adjust

Sales environments can be fast-paced, often hectic, and high-pressured.

So, it’s important to not throw your salesperson hire in at the deep end.

It’s important to let your candidates gradually take on more responsibility each week, and stagger how much information you tell them.

Training sales jobs is a process that can last six months to a year.

So, it’s crucial that you have a well-structured plan in place that gradually allows your candidates to get to grips with the role, instead of overwhelming them with too much information.

Give your candidates the information they need in an accessible and clear way

Key to a great sales onboarding plan is to give your sales reps resources and reference guides that they can turn to when they need to refresh their memory and when carrying out tasks.

New starters won’t be able to retain all new information and be expected to remember what you said last Tuesday, so make the process easier for them.

It may often be the case that your new starter has a question, but your other employees are busy/on the phone.

So, giving them resources allows them to use their initiative and progress by themselves.

Set expectations from the start

One of the best training sales techniques is to set clear expectations for candidates from the start.

In your first introductory weeks, let your new hires know what is expected of them in regards to individual targets, collective targets, the company’s overarching mission, and the what the company expects their employees to strive for.

Setting clear goals and expectations is key to ensuring targets are hit and employees know the level they need to be working at.

Assign your new hires a mentor

Less relevant for training a Sales Manager, but if you’re onboarding junior sales roles, a great way to train your new hires is to assign each a mentor that they can shadow.

This is a great way for new starters to gain hands-on training and get to know the inner workings of your company’s sales processes.

Not only is this good for training purposes, but it allows a new starter to build trusted relationships with other employees and come to their mentor confidently with their questions and concerns.

If you’re looking to implement a mentoring scheme at your company, visit our blog for the benefits of a workplace mentoring scheme for employers.

Hiring salespeople is a long process, and it only ends once your employee is completely onboarded and comfortable in the company.

For more sales onboarding process tips, check out our new employee onboarding process!