Recruiting sales professionals is notoriously difficult and unfortunately statistics show that over two thirds of new sales recruits look for another role during the first twelve months. So how can this statistic be improved to get stability in your sales team together with the potent sales performance normally experienced in the second and third year of a new sales employee?

The answer is twofold. Firstly you must select the right sales recruitment partner and secondly you must ensure that you know exactly what it is that you’re looking by having a thorough job specification.

Selecting a recruitment Partner

With over 17,000 recruitment businesses in the UK there is an incredibly wide choice of suppliers available to UK employers. Sales Recruitment is a specialist field and an expert sales recruiter will understand your business and what you are looking to achieve in increasing your sales team. Normally you will pay a fee that’s a few percent more than a high street recruiter but in return your time will be saved.

Three hints and tips for choosing a sales recruitment partner for your business:

What’s their specialism? There are sales recruitment businesses out there that will specialise in a very niche sector such as electronics or capital equipment sales. One of the easiest ways to see if they will both understand your business and have the right candidates to recommend is to simply perform a search of the sales jobs on their website. If they are recruiting for similar vacancies they can probably be able to quickly help fill your vacancies.

What will they do for their fee? Will they meet the candidates that they recommend, will they psychometrically profile each candidate, will they undertake references on your behalf? You may pay more for these services but they will save money in the long term.

What is their rebate scheme? How long will the recruiter underwrite the risk of hiring new sales staff. Most recruiters offer just a 4 week rebate scheme so search and choose your recruiting partner carefully.

Deciding on a Job Specification

Hopefully your recruitment partner will help you to put this together but beforehand it is imperative that you can articulate exactly the kind of sales professional that you are looking to recruit. Sit with a colleague and a white board and spend a half hour describing the role, responsibilities and expectations before then looking at the experience and qualities required to succeed. Too often companies embark on a recruiting campaign and hire someone who from an experience perspective is ideal but from a cultural perspective is disastrous.

What is the job title? What is the geographic area? What doe we expect the individual to achieve in 3 months/6 months/12 months? How are we going to recruit for this person? Do they need to have industry knowledge? Do we want to approach individuals from competitors aligned businesses? What are the hours? What is the ideal basic and commission package that we’d like to pay? What’s the maximum we could go to? What’s the backgrounds of our existing successful team members - would a background like this work again? What training do we have in place - could we employ someone with no market knowledge or product knowledge? What is the sales approach going to be? New business, account management or mix? What personal qualities will the individual need to display? Why would someone want to join our business? Where could this individual go in our business in 12 months/36 months? How would we describe our corporate culture? How are we going to manage this individual? What’s our back up plan if we can’t recruit in 3 months/6 months? What is our recruitment process going to be - first interview, second interview, personality profiling, skills testing, second interview presentation, etc.

I hope that these short hints will help you select the right sales recruitment partner and the right sales professional for your business. Good luck in meeting your sales targets.

If you need extra help for boosting the business, please also pay attention to the tips about how to apply for government grant.

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