Recruit and Hire Your Inside Sales Dream Team

When it comes to hiring your inside sales team, go for commitment over competence. You want someone who’s hungry and committed to you and your team. With your 90-day ramp up program, you can help those who lack in competence. However, you don’t have the time or money to teach commitment. It needs to come with the employee prior to hiring.

Focus on the Right Stuff: Great Behaviors

Look for tried and true behavior patterns in potential employees. Things like:

• Are they competitive?
• Goals oriented?
• Career-driven and motivated?
• Can they complete something?

Go Beyond College Borders

Don’t be afraid to hire someone without a college degree. Experience can cost you a lot. Also, many experienced inside sellers often have learned bad habits and bad habits can be hard to break. It can be just as easy to hire newbies and train your staff up to be the staff you want and need. If you invest in your team’s development, you’ll get back what you invest.

Over-Hire, Don’t Under-Hire

It’s better to have too many on a sales team to start with than too few. Attrition is part of the brutal world of sales. If your correctly utilizing you’re built in sales metrics, you’ll know when it’s time to do more hiring. You can also hire lower cost individuals and develop them with a career path leading to deeper sales opportunities and more reactive selling opportunities at a later point.

Invest in Recruiting

Traditional recruiting tactics can work and can be successful. Don’t be afraid to use them. Start with the obvious paths first like popular job websites like Monster and Hot Jobs. There are also many great recruiting opportunities on a more local level like partnering with local colleges and universities. This can include things like:

• Working with college Career Departments
• Internships
• Co-op programs
• Business school/professors to source the best talent

If you are going to hire someone, ask them for other potential job candidate names. You can also offer a referral incentive program to current employees. Generally, skilled sales people will only recommend those who possess a talent to do well in the industry.