Sales is a critical function in any business, as it is responsible for generating revenue. Hiring the right salespeople can make a significant impact on the company's bottom line and help it grow. A sales team is responsible for acquiring new customers and expanding the company's customer base. A skilled sales team can help the company build its brand, increase its market share, and establish a competitive advantage.

In addition to acquiring new customers, salespeople are also responsible for retaining existing customers. Retaining customers is essential for the long-term success of the business, and the right salespeople can help build long-term relationships with customers, which can result in repeat business.

A good sales team not only executes the sales process but also help improve it. They can identify gaps and inefficiencies in the process, propose solutions, and implement changes that result in better sales performance.

Salespeople are often the face of the company and the first point of contact with customers. As a result, they must have a deep understanding of the company's products and services and the market they operate in. Hiring a sales team with this knowledge can help the company communicate effectively with customers and build credibility.

Technology is increasingly being used in sales hiring, with many companies using applicant tracking systems, data analytics, and video interviewing to streamline the hiring process and identify the best candidates.

In this article, we shall delve deep into what makes a great sales hiring and how you can leverage technology to hire a sales team.

Crucial Facts About Sales Hiring: How to Hire a Sales Team

According to a Glassdoor study, the average time to fill a sales position is 59 days. Being one of the most important functions for bringing in revenue, the demand for salespeople is high across multiple industries, including technology, healthcare, finance, and retail.

Owing to the rising demand, evolving market and competition, the turnover rate for sales positions is relatively high, with a turnover rate of 34.7% in 2021, according to a study by the Bridge Group.

Other studies also show that employment of sales representatives is projected to grow 3 percent from 2020 to 2030, which means that you need your A-team to compete with other brands in your landscape and acquire your target customers.

You may also infer that you need stellar candidate and employee engagement to retain salespeople, or they might consider moving on in a short while. Since everyone wants the best talent, it’s wiser to strategically acquire and retain talent, using technology, a humane approach and other futuristic measures to hire a sales team.

What Makes a Great Sales Professional, Apart from Persuasive Speaking?

LinkedIn's 2021 Emerging Jobs Report says that the top three soft skills for sales roles are communication, customer service, and problem-solving. The best salespeople often have a combination of technical and interpersonal skills, as well as a deep understanding of the company's products, services, and target market. The trick lies in keen understanding of customer persona, their thought process and pitching your product just right to meet their requirements.

They should be able to answer any questions that customers have and provide relevant information. Furthermore, a competent sales person should be able to adapt to different situations and customers. They should be able to adjust their approach to meet the specific needs of each customer.

A good salesperson anticipates a customer’s needs based on the background research they’ve done, and uses data to their benefit. They are also great in picking up cues and using them at the right time for cross-selling and upselling. These are only a few qualities that make a salesperson successful. There are domain specific, cross functional and behavioral qualities that predict the success of a salesperson, excluding the position-specific attributes they need to have.

An adept sales professional should be able to build relationships with their customers, gain their trust, and ensure customer delight, sometimes even going above and beyond to persuade them into buying your product or service. Confidence is another key trait in sales. Now, now, you know some people may simply interview with you with bloated confidence and not have the competence to do the job. So, it’s essential to have solid confidence so as to not falter at the job, and at the same time, have the humility to admit that they aren’t always right. Measuring this key trait is important in hiring a good sales person.

How to Leverage Technology to Hire a Sales Team

Like other fields of top talent, using technology to reach out, identify, engage and retain the best folks is essential for sales hiring as well. Here are a few areas where you can use recruitment automation tools to hire the best sales team.

#1 Reaching Out Far and Wide

Reaching out to global talent is becoming increasingly important in today's globalized economy as it allows you to access a larger pool of candidates with diverse skill sets and experiences. This can be especially important for companies that require specialized skills or knowledge that may not be readily available in the local job market. Reaching out to global talent allows you to access a larger pool of candidates with diverse skill sets and experiences. This can be especially important for companies that require specialized skills or knowledge that may not be readily available in the local job market.

Additionally, global talent brings with it a diverse range of cultural perspectives, which can help companies better understand and serve customers from different regions of the world. This can lead to improved customer relations, and can also help build a more inclusive company culture.

Being a recruiting and talent acquisition software, HireQuotient can help with both cold and warm outreach to potential candidates. It can also assist you identify potential candidates who are not actively seeking employment. With its AI-powered candidate discovery engine, Hire Quotient can search millions of profiles on various job boards and social media platforms to find potential candidates who match your criteria.

Once you have identified potential candidates, you can use our candidate engagement tool to automate the process of reaching out to them. Hire Quotient can help you create and send personalized messages to potential candidates, and track their responses to your outreach efforts.

Not only for cold outreach, our tool is your go-to for warm outreach to candidates who have already expressed an interest in your company or open positions. It enables you to create a centralized candidate database, where you can store all relevant candidate information, monitor their progress through the recruitment process, and keep in touch with them over time. You can use Hire Quotient to send regular updates and job openings to candidates who have shown an interest in your company, and engage with them on a more personal level.

In addition to the ones listed above, Hire Quotient also offers other features that can help streamline the recruitment process, such as detailed candidate analytics, that tells you all that you need for an inclusive, effective hiring process. You get to see candidate demographics, education and experience credentials, with which you can view which section of the candidate pool is responding, which ones to target and tweak your strategy accordingly.

#2 Finding the Right People

Now that you’ve reached out to candidates, responses would have started coming in. It’s time to sort them out ASAP and see which ones to take forward. Given your tight deadlines and hiring cycle, it’s not humanly possible to go through each resume in detail. Nor should you give in to the bias of selecting the first ones to apply.

We take this sorting game to the next level by letting AI do it for you. Hire Quotient’s resume parsing and screening tool can scan resumes and cover letters for keywords and phrases that match your job requirements, and filter out candidates who do not meet your criteria. Our tool searches according to your job description (pro tip: it can generate job descriptions for your positions if you don’t have time) and keywords. In a few moments you get a cream layer of candidates who rank high on the search.

From there on, you can either contact them in person to get a flavor of their personality, professionalism and demeanor, or you can let AI schedule a one-way interview where they answer pre-set questions to determine if they’re primarily apt for your company.

#3 Assessing Suitability

Naturally, as an employer, you’d want to know which candidate can do their job well. However, there are other important assessments you need to conduct, to ascertain if they will stay with your company, be an asset to your team, or turn out to be a mishire.

Behavioral assessments can be used to evaluate a candidate's personality traits, work styles, and values. These assessments can provide insights into a candidate's potential for success in a sales role, their communication style, and their approach to problem-solving. Cognitive assessments can be used to evaluate a candidate's critical thinking skills, problem-solving ability, and general intelligence. These assessments can provide insights into a candidate's ability to learn quickly and adapt to new situations, both of which are important qualities for success in a sales role.

Skills assessments ascertain a candidate's proficiency in specific sales skills, such as negotiation, objection handling, and relationship building. These assessments can help you identify candidates with the right skills and experience for your sales positions.

Role-specific assessments can be used to examine a candidate's ability to perform well in specific sales roles corresponding to their job description, such as inside sales, outside sales, or account management. These assessments also include situational judgment tests that can help you identify candidates who have the required skills and experience required for your positions.

If you wish to bring onboard candidates who already have a good grasp of your product, you can have them watch a video or go through resources of your product and then answer questions. These assessments can help you identify candidates who have a deep understanding of your offerings and are well-positioned to represent your brand to potential customers.

Hire Quotient offers a range of assessment options for sales candidates, to assess suitability to your organization. Conduct a variety of engaging, science-backed assessments online with a bulletproof screening mechanism that filters the misfits and highlights well performing candidates.

You can choose from our vast ocean of skills, sorted designation and grade-wise, to find the best fit for your requirement. What’s more, you can also custom-make it to suit your needs by adding or tweaking questions that are more pertinent to your context.

Our assessments are administered through an online platform, which can be accessed by candidates remotely. Once the assessments are complete, Hire Quotient provides detailed reports that summarize a candidate's results and provide insights into their strengths and weaknesses. These reports can help you make informed hiring decisions and identify the best sales talent for your organization.

#4 Keeping Them Attracted to Your Company

In today's competitive job market, it's important to create a positive candidate experience and build a strong employer brand to keep candidates attracted to your company. Technology can help personalize communication with candidates by leveraging data to send relevant messages and content that resonates with the candidate's interests, skills, and experience. It can also help streamline the scheduling process by enabling candidates to schedule interviews or meetings with hiring managers, recruiters, or other team members at their convenience. This can help reduce scheduling conflicts and delays, which can lead to a better candidate experience.

AI-powered recruitment and candidate engagement tools like Hire Quotient also offer interactive, life-like simulations, role-playing exercises, games and other interactive tools that can provide a more engaging and realistic evaluation of a candidate's capabilities, sealing their attraction to your company.

Use recruitment tools to leverage social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and showcase your company culture and brand. Share stories, pictures, and videos that highlight what it's like to work at your company, including employee testimonials, product updates, and upcoming events. Provide candidates with access to sales enablement tools, such as product demos, sales training materials, and customer case studies. This can help candidates better understand your product or service and feel more prepared to sell it. Receiving product and business updates comes in handy when candidates get selected and join your sales team.

#5 Smooth Onboarding With Superb Experience

Right after your candidate accepts your offer, onboarding begins. Often considered as a mundane process, onboarding is a key turning point, as it’s the first step in the candidate transitioning to be an employee. The experience they have will determine if they want to be associated with the company or not. Making it as seamless, stress-free, hassle-free and as engaging as possible is the secret to forging an affinity with the new joiner.

If you’re on a hiring spree, it may not be possible to give special attention to all candidates equally, which is why you can leverage technology to make the effortless transition. It can facilitate the completion and submission of onboarding documents, such as tax forms, benefits enrollment, and employment agreements. This can help streamline the paperwork process and reduce the likelihood of errors or delays.

You may also schedule virtual orientation sessions, which can be especially helpful for remote or geographically dispersed sales teams. Virtual orientation can include video introductions, online training modules, and interactive Q&A sessions, along with peer interactions, buddy connect and manager chat to prep the new joiner for an amazing, connected journey ahead. You can also have all the information they want ready for them in a dedicated space/profile/folder as a ready reckoner and they’ll benefit from it immensely.

Let’s Wrap Up

Using technology tools like HireQuotient can be an effective way to identify top-performing sales candidates. As you go on your hiring journey, you can make sure to evaluate your strategy with our ROI Calculator. By combining all our tools like assessments, outreach campaigns, video interviews, personalized messaging with reference checking, and a streamlined onboarding process, you can hire a sales team that will help drive your business forward.

How to Leverage Recruiting Technology to Hire Sales Team