6 tips to hiring a successful sales person

Hiring an effective salesperson can have a major impact on your business. If you're responsible for hiring new talent into your team, it's helpful to understand the key areas in which you must focus on in order to get a salesperson that has the right culture fit as well as long-term objectives in mind.

In this article we discuss the common stumbling blocks businesses find when hiring new talent, while highlighting key tips for other start-up scale-up business hiring in the tech space.

 

Understand what you need

Many companies have issues pinpointing when to hire a salesperson, understanding how many salespeople they need and what level the candidate should be. However, it's vitally important you get this right, as the candidates you bring in will be at the forefront of representing your business.

 

Hire a Customer Success Manager

One thing a company can do initially is bring a Customer Success Manager into the business. These people are great at representing the company, tell fantastic stories, create useful case studies and most likely will cost a lot less than a senior sales candidate. They are great advocates of the business and will build long-term client retention for you.

 

Look at previous success 

A good candidate will have great knowledge in their market, be able to tell you what they would do stepping into the business and be able to provide some sort of references that can back this up from previous roles. It's easy for anyone to say they've overachieved, or always hit their targets but can they back this up with data? A good way of doing this is to ask them to demonstrate what they would do stepping into the business through a presentation in the final stage interview. A lot of good candidates will even have a portfolio of companies they've worked with, the work they carried out and still hold good relationships with their old colleagues.

 

Focus on attracting talent

This is something every company wants but not all can achieve. If you want the best salespeople you need to have something that�s attractive for them to work for you. This can be salary and OTE if affordable, benefits or stock options. 

 

Set your budget

There are things to consider when looking at salaries and OTE's. First you need to figure out the level of candidate that you are looking for, what experience they need to step into this role and what's expected of them stepping into the business. Are they coming from a start-up or a large enterprise? Salaries can range from 80k - 120,000k plus commission and stock for a senior individual with great experience.

 

Set goals and objectives

How do you know if your sales team or individual is working out? You should now if this candidate is right and can perform within the first 3-6 months of bringing them into the business. A good way of understanding this is by tracking performance on a monthly and quarterly basis, by setting achievable goals and objectives. By doing this, you can clearly see if your new sales hire is working effectively, needs more time to settle in, or isn't quite the right fit for the business.