How to Find and Hire Great Inside Sales People

December 30, 2010

To cel­e­brate the launch of the Open­View Labs site in 2010, we are regifting the most pop­u­lar arti­cles of the year every day this week. Today’s arti­cle fea­tures insights building an exceptional inside sales team.  It was orig­i­nally pub­lished on Novem­ber 26th.  Since then it has accu­mu­lated the second great­est amount of page views on the site.  Enjoy!

How would you define the ideal inside sales candidate?

Are they affable and engaging, intuitive and resourceful, or maybe confident and competitive? The best inside sales reps are all of those qualities and more. But how do you find and hire them?

At the expansion stage, it’s imperative that companies have well-prepared, productive, and motivated inside sales teams. Yet, in my years working with growth stage software companies, it seems that one of the biggest challenges those companies face is assembling, training, and retaining them.

Because of their relative infancy, some of those companies simply lack experience hiring, managing, coaching, and developing their inside sales people.

The first step is hiring the right people with the right disposition to succeed. Inside sales reps need to be coachable, strategic, disciplined, and fearless. It’s not always easy to find those people, but it can be done. Here are some suggestions to help complete that goal.

Hire Commitment Over Competence

If you have a good 90-day ramp up program, you can invest in competence. Companies cannot, however, coach up commitment. You’ll want to look for core competencies, but don’t let sales experience be the thing that keeps you from hiring someone. If you can tell that the candidate is teachable and will dedicate themselves to the craft, hire them.

Focus on Behaviors

Pay special attention to a potential employee’s behaviors. Are they competitive, goal oriented, and career driven? Is the person motivated in industry? If they have those qualities already in place, you can teach them about your company, product, and customers.

Don’t Be Afraid to Hire Out of College

When expansion stage companies are hiring sales reps, experience can be costly and many experienced inside sales reps come with the baggage of previously learned bad behaviors. Invest in your team’s development and you’ll be rewarded. Sales can be taught, work ethic and intelligence cannot.

Always Over Hire

No matter what you do, inside sales attrition is inevitable. Make use of metrics so that you know when to hire staff and what each hire will cost you. Companies can start by hiring low cost individuals, focusing on proactive activities with a career path to deeper sales roles and more reactive selling activities.

Set Culture in Motion from Date of Hire

When you hire an inside sales rep, it’s critical that you set expectations when that person interviews, is offered the job, and begins orientation. Communicate your investment in those individuals’ competency development so that they know that you’re committed to their success.

Invest in Recruiting

Use the obvious resources to find talent, including paid online job boards. This AllBusiness.com article discusses a few other ways to recruit online, like browsing resume banks and using social networking sites like LinkedIn. It’s a good idea to partner with local colleges, too. Companies can work with those college career departments, offer internship and co-op programs, and use business school professors to source the best talent.

Evan Klonsky at Inc. Magazine wrote this article in September, advising start-up and growth stage companies how to recruit on college campuses. Klonsky’s piece provides some great pointers on how smaller companies can overcome some common recruiting hurdles, including name recognition. Among his suggestions:

  • Young, growing companies offer employees the chance to make an impact and a name for themselves. Emphasize that opportunity, communicate your strengths, and connect on a personal level with the individuals.
  • Partner with student associations and leadership groups that are in line with your business and the position you’re hiring for.
  • Focus on specific schools or programs that you’ve had success with in the past.
  • Be creative in your approach. Cloud computing start-up Box.net placed this ad in the Stanford University student newspaper to narrowly target potential candidates for their company.

Each of those tips are helpful, but you’ll need to tailor your approach to target inside sales candidates specifically. Just as Box.net placed a targeted ad with a complex math problem to target Stanford’s elite engineering students, companies can take a similar approach to find students with the right inside sales makeup.  If you are still stuck on recruiting, here are 8 tips for hiring at startups.

Offer a Referral Incentive Program

Sales people will generally recommend only talented individuals, so look to your own employees for top-notch referrals. Don’t be afraid to ask candidates you interview for referrals, too. If you’re going to hire that candidate, they might be a perfect source for prospecting additional talent. Putting the right people in place is important for every company, so exhaust all possibilities to make sure you get the best of the best.

Inside sales staffing is a little bit more complicated than recruiting for other positions, but it’s not impossible to find the right people. Human capital is one of the best investments a company can make and by constantly sourcing the best talent, companies are making the most of that investment. Remember, no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. But unless you’re prepared to spend time sourcing on a regular basis, the best talent may be going to work for someone else.

SVP Marketing & Sales

<strong>Brian Zimmerman</strong> was a Partner at OpenView from 2006 until 2014. While at OpenView he worked with our portfolio executive teams to deliver the highest impact value-add consulting services, primarily focused on go-to-market strategies. Brian is currently the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at <a href="http://www.5nine.com/">5Nine Software</a>.