5 Steps to Hiring Salespeople
Hiring commission only sales people is a challenging process, and much of that comes down to finding the right people and motivating them in the proper way. Before you start hiring commission only sales people, follow these five steps to help you build a sales team.
- Offer Incentives and Rewards to Motivate Sales Candidates
- Get Proper Sales Support Systems in Place
- Get Fair Sales Commission Terms and Payments in Place
- Create a Simple Screening and Interviewing Process
- Know What You’re Looking for when hiring salespeople
Time To Hire says: We recommend following all of these steps for building a sales team, but any improvement you make will ease the sales recruitment process.
Offer Incentives and Rewards to Motivate Sales Candidates
The pool of high-performing commission only sales people is very competitive, and you want to hire the best sales talent for your business. Find out what your competitors are offering and offer a higher commission. When trying to build a sales team, think about additional incentives like training, use of company equipment, paid vacations, and more.
Offer trips to exotic locations or other rewards for your highest performing commission salespeople. The best sales talent will want to make at least $100,000 a year, so make sure your sales process supports this. Better incentives and rewards when hiring commission only sales people will drive better talent, more sales and more qualified leads for your business.
Time To Hire says: Remember, it’s not always all about money. There are plenty of other ways to motivate your salespeople.
Get Proper Sales Support Systems in Place
As commission only sales people, you’re only making money when you’re selling. Because of this, selling is the only thing your salespeople want to do. The last thing they want to spend time on is complex sales systems or endless paperwork.
Build your sales team, systems and technology and make sure it’s streamlined to be as fast as possible. This includes CRM software to manage and track clients, prospects, and sales. Invoicing software to quickly raise and send requests for payment, time tracking, and more. Even if you have a short sales cycle, review and refine your systems as much as possible.
Ask your existing sales reps and teams what changes they’d like to see to make their lives easier.
Time To Hire says: Asking your existing salespeople is definitely the best way to find out what could work better. They deal with technology and sales processes every day, and can give you some great insight into what could be improved.
Get Fair Sales Commission Terms and Payments in Place
How short is your sales cycle? Commission salespeople need to get paid as quickly as possible, ideally every week. If you have a long sales cycle, it’s sometimes best to pay a small base salary to motivate your sales representatives. Is your product or service easy to sell? If it’s not, and your sales teams need to spend weeks and months building relationships, provide interim payments or some other type of benefit to your staff.
Create a Simple Screening and Interviewing Process
If you want to make hiring commission only sales people easy, it’s good to have a simple, repeatable method you follow. When hiring commission only sales people, we recommend:
- An initial 2-3 minute phone call that will answer their basic questions; if you’re both satisfied…
- A follow-up call of 10-15 minutes so you can ask questions and screen them properly; if they pass that…
- An invitation to interview, face-to-face
Time To Hire says: Because learning how to build a sales team is tough, we’ve created a guide to putting an effective hiring and sales recruitment system in place.
Know What You’re Looking For When Hiring Salespeople
It’s difficult to bottle lightning, and it can be tough to understand who will end up being the best sales talent, and who will be an “also ran.” Success in building a sales team comes down to several different factors:
- Drive and determination – How driven are your salespeople?
- Incentives – Are you motivating your sales reps properly?
- Training – Are you providing the right training and guidance to help people sell?
- Experience – Have your salespeople and teams sold similar products and services elsewhere?
- Skills – Do your staff have the right negotiation and other skills to land a sale quickly and effectively?
- Raw talent – What natural talents do your best salespeople share?
The best way to see what’s happening in your business is to look at common traits and areas that your most successful sales reps have in common. Look at step 4 in this guide to find out how to do that.
Time To Hire says: Identifying common factors and trends does take time and effort, but once you understand the most effective sales tactics, you can share them with your new and existing sales reps.
We can help you when building a sales team. Get in touch with us now, and we’ll get your phone ringing with qualified sales reps in as few as two days.
