Where have all the good sales people gone?
With new financial year rapidly approaching, growth plans and sales revenue are high on everyone’s agenda. In order to grow sales and meet new financial goals, many organisations are focused on hiring and developing new sales staff for the new financial year.
Organisations report a multitude of challenges when recruiting new sales people, and with a typically higher turnover in the sales department than elsewhere in the business, managers and business owners can find it tough to build and maintain a strong sales presence.
In most organisations, 80% of the sales seems to come from 20% – 30% of the sales force, and while its seems like the answer is to simply recruit more top performing sales people, smaller to medium sized organisations often have difficulties attracting and targeting their marketing efforts towards high calibre candidates.
So how can your organisation attract the best sales talent in your industry?
- Financial rewards are only a small part of an attraction strategy. Often organisations report that they can’t compete with the salaries that are being offered by the big players in their industry. While we all know that the typical sales profile shows that financial incentives are a high motivating factor for sales individuals, other factors such as company wide recognition, company culture and flexible working hours/work life balance can be used to assist in the attraction and retention of high performing sales people.
- Broaden your advertising and talent pool. Placing an advert on a generalist job board like Seek or a local print ad, won’t necessarily reach your target candidates. Employment Office advises our clients to think outside of the box when recruiting for top sales talent. Our campaigns regularly consist of generalist advertising, social media strategy including LinkedIn, print advertising and industry niche advertising to get in front of the right market for your position.
- Ask yourself – are you hiring on experience or behaviour? We all know the personality elements that can help identify a strong sales person, buzz words like driven, hungry and competitive always spring to mind. However, often times when making the hiring decision, experience is weighted more favourably than behaviour factors, even though it’s an individual’s attitude and motivation that ultimately leads to their success. The use of recruitment assessment tools like behavioural tests, group assessment days, role plays and more, can help you identify individuals with the right behavioural skills
